Chapter 33
You seek to fracture destiny, child of mortals.
—Archangel Cassandra, Seer of Seers, to Elena (Before Prophecy’s End)
Elena woke to the sight of wildfire crawling up her arms and sparking on her primary feathers. She turned, hoping Raphael had slept through the entire thing, but of course he was awake.
Leaning on his elbow beside her, all wide shoulders and delicious chest, he raised a single eyebrow. “What were you up to? Don’t even try to hide it.”
“Ugh! This is the problem with immortal love—you can read each other’s minds!”
His smile held an intimacy that made her stomach flutter.
She glared at him. “I’m already pregnant. Stop smiling at me like that!”
That got her thoroughly kissed, his hands stroking down the bare skin of her waist to cradle her hip. “What was it?” he murmured afterward. “I’m even more curious now. You had the most interesting expressions on your face throughout.”
Clearly, he hadn’t caught any signs of distress or he’d have woken her as he always did when she became trapped in a loop of nightmare. “I asked Cassandra to wake up. I wanted to ask her if the fact Hannah and I are both pregnant at the same time is some kind of portent of doom.”
Groaning, he nipped at her lower lip. “Stop. Waking. Her.” A growl of an order. “But what did she say?”
Stroking the muscled line of his shoulders, making sure to pet the insanely sensitive inner arch of his wings at the same time, she told him of the dream so lovely and soft. “She’s never lied to me, to us. I feel a lot better about the whole thing now.”
“Me too,” he confessed. “I have to admit I had the same question.” A scowl. “Next time you decide to poke the bear, tell her we thank her for putting our minds at rest.”
An owl appeared at the end of the bed, padding up over the sheets until it sat on Elena’s leg. Weightless, made of dreams and power, the creature nonetheless felt like it was right there. “Um, I think she knows. And is saying you’re welcome.”
Raphael followed her gaze…and very gently moved his wing out of the way so that it wouldn’t disturb the owl.
Then, despite his annoyance with Cassandra’s meddling in their lives, he said, “I thank you, Lady Cassandra, that you give me knowledge that permits me to enjoy this time with my consort without worrying about the future to come.”
The owl blinked its huge golden eyes before lifting off in a sweep of snowy wings.
“Did she stir awake relatively fast?” Raphael murmured as they watched the owl soar out the open balcony doors to vanish into the pink-blushed blue of the dawn.
“She’s not awake—she told me that she and Qin have managed to hold on to each other this time. They live together in dreams.” It made her heart ache with happiness for the pair who had never been able to hold on to each other in life…not after the waking of Cassandra’s gift.
Raphael exhaled. “As an archangel, I remain annoyed with Qin for the stunt he pulled going into Sleep. But”—he gently brushed a strand of hair off her cheek—“as the man who loves you with all I am, I can be nothing but happy for him that he and Cassandra have found a way to be together.”
She spread her fingers over his heartbeat. “They’re not permitting themselves to go down all the way, are they? Hovering just on the verge where they can meet in dreams?”
“We’re all taught that Sleep is an either-or proposition. It takes time to fall into it, and once down, we stay down. But”—Raphael spread his wing over her again—“they’re both Ancients, each with unique abilities of their own.”
He’d never forget the breathtaking beauty of the statue of Cassandra that had been Qin’s parting gift to the world, the way his colors lingered in the elements of himself he’d left in the world when he said goodbye.
“I think Qin is the dreamer,” he said at last. “It seems as if such would fit his gift—there was always a sense of the dreamlike about him, as if he were not quite part of this world.”
“Yes.” Elena swallowed hard. “She said she was going to meet him in the world he’d built for them. She isn’t haunted by her visions in dreams—she seems young, carefree.”
“I’m glad,” Raphael said, and meant it. No matter any annoyance Cassandra had been to him, she’d risen to help them beat Lijuan, even if such a rising was a thing of pain and a direct threat to her sanity. “I hope they’re able to spend eternity together in their dreamscape.”
Elena brushed her fingers through his hair and down to stroke the upper edges of his wings.
Smiling as his body stirred to full hardness, he ran his own fingers down her shoulder and along her collarbone. “Are you sure you’re quite pregnant enough?”
Her answer was to throw one leg over his hip and tug him close, her lips curved and her eyes lazy with desire.
Bracing himself on one arm, he kissed his consort before making his way down her jaw, between the curves of breasts that had become swollen and sensitive in the past months, and to the slight curve of her belly.
He left kisses on every inch, astonished by her all over again.
Her fingers clenched in his hair as he kept on going, kiss after kiss after kiss…until the scent of her musk was in his nose and her back was arching off the bed and she was groaning. “So, so pregnant.”
Chuckling, he loved her to a slow, luxuriant dive over the edge and back down, before he kissed his way back up her body and settled himself in between her thighs.
She stroked his chest, nuzzled his neck, did that thing she did with his wings that made him suck in a breath and tighten his entire body against the urge to just thrust into her.
“You’re so gentle with me these days,” she murmured, but it wasn’t a complaint. “I feel…tended.”
He nuzzled the side of her face, his heart expanding a thousand times over at the way she gave him what he needed to know that he was doing this right. Stroking his hand down her body and to the back of one sleek thigh, he pulled it over his hip, his body cradled between her legs.
Their kiss was love, their breaths one. As he pushed into her with the slow care of a man to whom she was the reason for existence, she held him close, her body undulating with his and her words of need gasps in his ears.
He drank them in, gave her his own in a voice rough and unsteady. “Elena-mine. You undo me.”
Then there was only the soft, deep pleasure that came from people who loved all the pieces of one another.