Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(74)
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he told me.
My fingers dug into the hard muscle of his back, pulling him in closer. I wrapped my legs around his waist. “I’ve wanted you…” I groaned as he began to move faster, harder. “…too.”
“Will you be my partner in the trials?”
An inferno raged inside of me, building and burning. Heat pulsed through my body in dizzying, feverish waves. The hot-white kiss of his fangs pierced my skin, and I nearly came again.
“You know I will, Nero. You’ve always been there for me. I’ll always be there for you.”
“Will you be my partner in life? Mine, my lover, the keeper of my heart?” The raw vulnerability in his voice nearly made me cry.
“Yes. I’m all yours.”
Satisfaction spread across his face, lighting up his eyes. Gold and silver flashed across a sea of green, like a tropical lightning storm at sea.
His next thrust came so hard that the lounge chair groaned in protest beneath us. “Say it again.”
A soft whimper tore out of me. “I’m all yours.”
“And I am all yours.” He traced his finger down his neck. “Show me.”
I sank my fangs into his throat, and as the sweet nectar of his blood filled my mouth, he bit me too. Pain collided with pleasure in an explosion that sent a shock wave rippling through my whole body. A deep growl tore out of Nero, his face twisting in pure rapture. His body still shaking, he folded his arms around me.
“Show you like that?” I asked with a shy smile, my heart hammering in my chest.
“Yes, Pandora.” He kissed my forehead. “Just like that.”
21
Lightbringer
My dreams came in jumbled flashes of battlefields and armies, of angels and monsters. The nauseating carousel of broken images spun me around and spat me out in the desert.
I ran barefoot, in stumbled steps across the scorching sand. The white-hot sun beat down on me, burning against the wet sweat that drenched my dehydrated body. My tired, broken wings dragged a trail of blood behind me. I was dirty, wounded, thirsty. My hair hung limp and lifeless on my back. My tongue felt like sandpaper.
A fierce, primal roar tore across the empty expanse, and a monster leapt out from behind a forest of cacti. A sand wolf. It was only the size of a large dog, but in my current state—weak, weaponless, and half-dead—it was more than enough to finish me off. It bounded toward me on pale blond paws, its mouth opening in anticipation of dinner. I didn’t have enough power left in me to do magic, so I had to let it get close. As the monster sprang into the air to tackle me, I stepped out of the way. It flew right past me. I tackled it before it could come around for another pass, snapping its neck in a single merciful stroke. It fell to the ground, never knowing what hit it.
I spread the sand wolf across my lap, my fangs descending from my dry, swollen gums. I bit down on the fat vein in the wolf’s leg and quickly drained its blood dry. The creature had been starving just like I was—and its impatience had gotten the better of it.
A chorus of howls pierced the quiet air. I rose quickly, tossing aside the dead wolf. Its pack was close by, at least twenty wolves by the sounds of it. Too many to fight. Fear rattled against my many years of Legion training, intensified by my pain and starvation.
“Cadence Lightbringer.”
I spun around. Two angels stood before me, cast in the harsh glare of the sun. I squinted to see them more clearly. They were beautiful, both with long, luscious hair that shimmered with magic. The male angel wore a suit of bright armor. It reflected so much of the sun’s light that I had to look away. His companion wore a light dress and a pair of boots. A bow was slung across her back. The angels’ wings were a delightful tapestry of perfect color combinations, and their eyes…their eyes were strangely calm. At peace. So unlike an angel.
“Who are you?” I asked, wiping the beast’s blood from my lips.
I knew every angel and dark angel, but I didn’t recognize either of them. I might have thought they were new, but their magic felt older than mine. They possessed a power immune to the ebb and flow of time, to the world’s changing tides.
“We’ve come to help you, Cadence,” the female angel said, waving her hand in a smooth circle.
A glow brighter than the sun broke through a rift in the air. Magic swirled around it, a perfectly balanced dance of light and dark.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“We are the Guardians,” she said.
The name sounded vaguely familiar. If only my head hadn’t hurt so much, maybe I could remember where I’d heard it before.
“We’re the defenders of magic in its true, pure form,” the male angel added. “Before gods and demons split magic into light and dark. Before they tore the Earth apart.”
His comrade shot me a sympathetic smile. “You have lost so much to the unnatural division of dark and light. The Legion of Angels ordered you to kill your beloved because he was ‘too dark’.”
Memories bombarded me, every bad thing that had ever happened to me compacted into a dense, five-second burst. Fighting Damiel. The Legion forcing my hand. The demons attacking, their Dark Force surrounding me. My son, my sweet boy I had to leave behind so he wouldn’t grow up powerless. Without joining the Legion, without drinking the gods’ Nectar, he wouldn’t become an angel.