Chapter 27
You were torturing me with fear—probably would’ve ended up throwing me off the ledge a few times and catching me again, just to hear me scream.
—Elena to Raphael (Once, after Raphael was Quiet)
Raphael and Elena left for the Refuge the day after the gathering in the Enclave.
Their territory was in safe hands, and—but for the constant rumblings at the Aegaeon-Illium border—the world remained at peace. As a result, he and his consort took their time with the flight.
Elena could cover the distance now, no longer needing to rely on the mortal machines that had become ever sleeker over the years. She couldn’t, however, do it in one go as Raphael could if he put his mind to it. His hunter had to stop to rest—and right now, she had to stop to eat.
“Our little spark has good taste,” she muttered around a mouthful of a protein-heavy muffin that Sivya had baked for her just that morning, the cook sweetly attentive to all of Elena’s dietary requirements.
She’d no doubt be the same with their babe—their child would spend half their time underfoot in the kitchen; of that, Raphael had not a single doubt.
“You know Sivya will be incapable of disciplining our child?” Raphael said with a smile. “Whatever they want, they’ll receive from her.” He ran his knuckles over Elena’s cheek.
Leaning her body into his, Elena smiled.
“Every kiddo should have a doting honorary aunt. Our kid is going to be surrounded by warriors and other highly controlled adults most of the time—I can’t see them becoming spoiled.
” She looked up at him, her smile fading.
“We’ll do a good job, won’t we, Raphael? ”
His heart thudded. Pressing his lips to her hair, he said, “We have your grandparents and Lady Sharine to go to for advice. And later…my mother.” If she woke. “For all she became, she was a good mother to me when I was a boy.” Firm but affectionate. “As Nadiel was a good father to me.”
All the fractures had come after he was full grown.
Elena wrapped her arms around him in silent comfort, his own arm around her shoulders, and they sat in the sun while the waves lapped at the shore…until her stomach rumbled.
Laughing, he dug into their supplies to pass her a block of “chocolate” that was, in truth, a high-energy supplement. Then, as she ate, he rose to stretch out his legs and back, spreading his wings at the same time.
Kicking off his boots and socks to walk barefoot on the glittering white sand, he found his eye caught by a shell formed into a perfect spiral. He picked it up, handed it to his lover, his heart. “Look, hunter-mine.”
A delighted smile as she held the shell up to the light to see the silica on it glimmer. And he fell for her all over again, this hunter who had forever altered his life the day she’d walked onto the Tower roof, brash and brave and electric with an intelligence that challenged his arrogance.
Before her, he’d been on the road to becoming the kind of cold and heartless being who would not have been a good father, a cruel archangel whose territory was calm but afraid and cowed, instead of an archangel whose territory was calm but vibrant with energy, its people happy to call it home.
Before her, he’d have crushed the shell without even noticing its delicate beauty.
“Knhebek, Elena,” he murmured.
A startled smile. “I love you, too,” she said, then patted the sand beside her. “Come, sit. Eat a bite with me.”
He didn’t need any food at that point, but he sat with her and ate the nibbles she fed him just because it made him happy to be with her—and delighted her.
The sun shone down on them as waves rolled in to shore.
After a while, lazy in the heat, he lay down on his back with his wings out so they would act as a protective carpet for Elena.
When she kicked off her own boots and socks, and put her head down on his chest, he curled an arm around her body, holding her to him as they both dozed, their lives in the midst of a beautiful, cataclysmic shift.
* * *
Elena woke to the realization that she’d fallen into a deep sleep on her archangel’s wide chest. Rubbing her cheek lightly against him, she made a face because he was wearing flight leathers and not the lightweight shirts or tunics he most often wore in New York.
He didn’t stop her when she began to unbuckle the leathers off his body, cooperated by rising when she pushed the top off his shoulders. She sighed at the warm glory of his skin under her palm, but even that wasn’t enough.
Sitting up, her eyes locked onto his lazy half-lidded ones, she took off her own leathers. Hers had long sleeves and a thermal coating on the inside. Because even though she was far stronger than when she’d first become an angel, she still hated the cold up in the higher elevations.
Being able to bear and survive those temperatures and actually enjoying them were two different things.
The sun was warm on her sensitive breasts. “I think these are getting bigger,” she mused, cupping them.
Raphael’s hands on her back, his voice languid as he said, “Come closer so I can judge better.”
Laughing huskily, she leaned over him, her breasts pressed only lightly to his chest because of their increasing tenderness, and her braid falling over her shoulder to lie on his skin. “This is what got me into this position in the first place. Barefoot and pregnant on an uninhabited island.”
A slow, sinful smile as he used his strength to shift her up far enough that he could kiss her breasts.
After dropping a single—almost chaste—kiss on the flushed plumpness of her skin, he said, “That means we can’t get into any more trouble no matter what else we do.
” The next kiss was wetter but at just the right intensity that it was pleasure, not pain.
Her body was changing as their baby grew inside her, and they were both learning and handling it as they went. Today, her thighs clenched around his hips as he nudged her to the edge of madness with licks of his tongue and knowing strokes of his fingers.
Nakedness wasn’t an eventuality but an absolute.
She shivered as she sat astride him not long afterward, his hands digging into her butt as he settled her on his cock. She shivered, swollen with need, every thick inch rocking sensation through her.
“We should be like an old married couple by now,” she said even as she moved on him with lazy pleasure, her hands braced on the hard planes of his chest. “How many times have we done this?”
His voice was rough, breathless when he said, “Not enough.”
Her archangel rose up to drop a kiss between her breasts, the midnight strands of his hair brushing her skin in featherlight strokes as they moved together in a knowledge born of all those centuries of loving. “Never enough, Elena-mine.”
She ran her fingers through his hair, nuzzling at him. “Are we going to scandalize our future teenager?”
A chuckle, his head lifting so that she could see those beautiful eyes that were her eternity and her heart. “It is the job of parents to scandalize their children.”
Their kiss was created of affection and a love primal and infinite, their bodies moving in the slow glide of skin on skin, the climax that came no short, sharp crescendo but a slow, sumptuous wave.
Her tears were salt on her lips. “I love you,” she whispered, overcome.
“Forever and beyond, hbeebti.” He wrapped her in his wings, his arms the most solid thing in her entire universe.
* * *
“We should take a dip,” she murmured into Raphael’s chest at some point in the aftermath. “Clean up and dry off in the sun before we keep going.” Much as she wanted to stay on this beach with Raphael, she wanted to share their news with the other members of their family more.
Raphael stroked his hand up her back, his tenderness threatening to make her cry again. She’d never been a crier, not like this. But…she didn’t mind. Not with the archangel who had seen her at her most vulnerable and still seen her.
“The water’s cold.” Rising, he tugged her up, led her to the edge of the waves, then told her to wait.
She laughed with the giddy delight of a teenager as he used archangelic power to create a huge bubble of water that he then heated up. “Gives a whole new meaning to the term bubble bath.” She dove into the balmy waters of the bubble while he held it aloft, then she drew him in with her.
The bubble collapsed at his entry, but the water remained warm around them for a time as they played in the ocean like two young seal pups, hair and bodies sleek under a shining sun.
* * *
Deep, deep in the ocean, seven hundred and seventy-seven beings who were one smiled in their dreamscape, awash in joy carried on the ocean currents.
Aeclari, they whispered. Aeclari, we are here.