Angels' Flight(111)

“You weigh less than a feather.” So fragile, she was so very, very fragile. His hunger, by contrast, was such a vast thing—he was terrified it might crush her. And he couldn’t bear to imagine Jessamy turning from him, scared and disappointed. Especially when he could almost believe the emotion he saw in her eyes was that rare gift no one had ever before given him.

Vowing to hold her safe even from himself, he rose into the night sky, Jessamy’s body aligned to his. He flew high, higher than he’d ever before taken her, until they could’ve touched the stars, the air cold and thin. No playful flying today, just a brutally straight line—he had no patience for making this anything beyond hard and fast, but for Jessamy, he’d try.

“Don’t fight it, Galen,” she said when they halted, so high up that frost formed on their lashes. “Surrender.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” She was the most precious thing in his life.

“I’m an angel, too. An immortal. Treat me as one.”

The haunting plea beneath the demand broke him. He’d lay the world at her feet if she so asked. “Promise me you’ll stop me if I’m too rough.”

Huge dark eyes looked into his, raw with desire and a need that rivaled his own. “I promise.”

Taking her at her word, this woman who understood pain on a level most would never comprehend, he tightened his grip to steel and ravaged her mouth as he held them in position with faint movements of his wings. When she slid up just enough that she could cradle him between her thighs, he angled them until they faced earthward, bit down on the curve of her shoulder… and shut his wings.

They plummeted.

Jessamy’s scream held wild delight, no terror. Teeth bared in fierce joy, he snapped out his wings again right before they would’ve crashed into the mountains, dipped left and took them on a heart-stopping flight into and through a large cavern, barely avoiding the razor-sharp edges of rock that would have cut and bruised, before shooting out a jagged hole caused by some long-ago event, and spiraling up into the night sky once more.

“That was wonderful!” Jessamy’s grin was as feral as his.

Laughing in primal happiness, he stole a kiss before breaking it off to concentrate on beating his wings ever harder as he pushed them high, high up into the sky. When his mate rubbed with feminine impatience against him, he was so deep into the dance that he hooked her leg around his waist and slid into her in a hard, almost brutal thrust. Too late, the mists parted. “Jessamy, did I—”

She squeezed her inner muscles, cutting off his words. “Let’s fall again.”

Perfect, she was perfect. The most primitive pleasure in every drop of his blood, Galen didn’t do a straight vertical drop this time. Controlling their descent with the brute power of his wing muscles, he dropped for a heartbeat before jerking to a sudden stop, his body rocking deep into her with the jolt.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until Jessamy attacked his mouth, her hunger voracious. Any control he might have retained was lost, the thread snapping with an almost audible sound. Keeping her locked to him with one arm, he fisted his free hand in her hair, and took her down in an almost impossibly fast spiral that seemed destined to end with their bodies broken on the unforgiving mountains.

Pulling up at the last possible instant, he winged his way back to the skies without giving Jessamy time to catch her breath. No warning, no gentleness, he fell again, her body tight and hot and silken around him. Feeling her muscles start to spasm, pleasure rocking her body, he ran his lips down to the pulse in her neck as they rose, sucked hard as they fell.


Jessamy’s muscles felt like they’d turned to liquid, her thighs in danger of sliding off Galen’s body when he took them high into the starry night again, each beat of his powerful wings pushing the hard length of him inside her in a sensation so deep, she felt branded. Tiny inner muscles continued to clench and unclench with the aftershocks of the most violent pleasure she’d ever experienced.

Right when she thought she could bear no more, she glanced up, saw the naked passion of him, and felt her body quicken to shocking readiness. “Strong, gorgeous man,” she said, giving him words because her Galen needed words. “Just so you know—you’re mine. Always and forever. So don’t even think about changing your mind.”

Shuddering, he dropped his head, pressed his cheek to her own, and murmured words in a language both beautiful and ancient. Tears burned in her eyes, passion torn through with wild tenderness.

I’m yours.

So simple. So powerful. His heart laid at her feet.

He locked his mouth to her own before she could find her voice, and they plummeted in a passionate kind of insanity. Lost in the magnificent power of him, she hardly felt the spray of water on her back when he jerked them up above the pond, rising a bare wing-length before bringing them to a gentle landing on the snowy verge.

His clothing was soft beneath her back, the ground hard. And Galen… he was an inferno.

She screamed as he gave her his surrender, hard and hot and without restraint.





15


The exhilaration of their dance continued to hum through her veins days later, as she completed her notes about Raphael’s territory that she would enter into the histories when she returned to the Refuge.

Outside the library window, she could see the archangel drilling with a mixed unit of angels and vampires, the snow a seamless white blanket in every direction. Children’s laughter drifted up from the mortal city, carried by a whimsical wind, and she felt a poignant tug in her soul, an awareness of the forces and duties that pulled her to her home in the mountains… while her barbarian must wing his way back to Raphael’s territory, his task not yet complete.