Chapter 45
“I have only been able to bring half my army, my friend.”
“That you have come, it is an act of friendship I will never forget.”
—Conversation between Elijah and Raphael (War of the Death Cascade)
Elijah continued to speak. Please watch over my people should they have need of it, for as long as it takes.
Consider it done, Raphael said, well aware that angelic birthings could take days. Good luck, Eli.
“It’s Hannah’s time,” he said to Elena the instant the conversation was over. “Her mother is already here?”
“Yes.” Fisting her hands on her thighs, she lifted her shoulders to her ears and beamed. “I can’t wait to see the baby! Hannah’s mother has dimples.” A whisper. “If the baby has dimples, it will be criminally cute.”
Raphael’s own response was of a different timbre; his heart thudded in sympathy for what Elijah had to be going through now, but he stuffed his own fear deep inside and smiled along with her. He would make this a happy time for his Elena, not one shaded by madness and fear.
Breaking off a piece of his chocolate, he held it out to her.
She scrunched up her nose. “No thanks, you eat your so-dark-it’s-not-chocolate chocolate, and I’ll eat my peanut butter. I just need a spoon.”
Getting up after throwing his rejected chocolate into his mouth, Raphael grabbed a spoon and walked back around to face her while holding the spoon out of reach. “I require a bribe.”
She kissed his chest, her fingers tiptoeing down his torso…and her tongue licking out at him. “Mmm.”
The sound made him groan, put the spoon down by her jar of peanut butter.
But his consort was no longer interested in the food item she seemed determined to consider a delicacy, her mouth far more interested in his body.
He was terrified of hurting her this far into her pregnancy, but Keir had made it clear that he wouldn’t…
and that women sometimes became more aroused at this stage.
That could’ve been one hell of an awkward conversation, but Keir was their chief healer for a reason. He made even the most intimate topic seem factual and reasonable to discuss.
Throwing glamour around them as a matter of course in case one of the stronghold staff decided to raid the kitchen, he stroked her sweatshirt off her body to reveal the rounded mounds of her breasts.
They’d become larger and almost painfully sensitive through the pregnancy, so he kept his caresses light and his mouth away from them.
The last time they’d tried the latter, she’d almost elbowed off his head with her instinctive jerk, while nearly unmanning him at the same time. So no, he wasn’t going anywhere near there until he was certain it wouldn’t put her into an accidentally murderous mood.
Instead, he skimmed his hands down the sides of her body, humbled by how it had changed during this terrifying, beautiful journey.
And he bent to kiss her slow and deep and lazy while she played with his chest, then tucked her hands into his lower back before sliding them under the drawstring band of the loose linen pants he’d thrown on so as not to scandalize anyone who might be in the kitchen when they came down.
Her fingers were knowing, her smile in her kiss. That’s one nice butt, Archangel. Can I swat it with a towel?
He nipped at her lower lip. If I can bite yours.
Laughter, the glow of his wings around them.
He glowed a lot around her these days, even when there was no threat, his body in constant protective mode.
Breaking the kiss, she reached out to brush her fingers on the underside of his wings, then scowled. “I can’t reach in this position.”
So he shifted back, then scooped her into his arms. “No, wait!” She reached back. “My pickles! The jar’s open!”
Laughing so hard that his entire body shook, he kissed her. “I love you, Elena-mine.”
“I love you, too, you sex god.”
He held her in position while she closed up both jars.
“And my sweatshirt!” she said after that was done. “Or else I won’t be able to face anyone tomorrow.”
“They won’t know you were naked under it,” he said even as he used archangelic power to support her while he reached out to grab it and give it to her to hold.
“I’ll know. The secret knowledge will gnaw at me.” She took bites of his jaw, her hands stroking his pectoral muscles. “But I’m going to smile every single time I walk into this kitchen now.”
He stole kisses all the way up to their bed, where he laid his consort down on the soft white sheets, then tugged off her sweatpants before ridding himself of his own single item of clothing.
* * *
Elena’s entire body just whooshed at the sheer perfection of an aroused, smiling Raphael in the moonlight that speared through the sheer curtains. Her core clenched, slick and hot, parts of her body that shouldn’t have pulses becoming possessed of one. “You are way too hot.”
His smile grew deeper, creasing his cheeks—and making him impossibly more attractive. “Move over.”
After he came down on the bed on his back, she immediately shifted to sit astride him, so she could tease and play with him as he did the same to her.
They’d discovered that with her breasts so sensitive, it was far better if she was on top, so he didn’t put too much pressure on her taut flesh.
The worst thing about it was that her breasts ached for that pressure, wanted his touch, but were far too sensitive to take it.
After so long together, they were still each other’s fire—but more than that, they were still each other’s love, still each other’s favorite person.
He groaned as she pretended to bite his nipples, but got his revenge back by inserting his hand between their bodies and teasing the plump flesh between her thighs.
Shuddering, she ran her lips over his chest, tasting him, then lifted her face to demand a kiss.
Which he gave her while stroking her back and every other part of her he could reach—but for the forbidden zone of her breasts.
She sat up, touched them herself instead, her eyes locked to his as the hunger between them began to build to a fever pitch. But interwoven with the carnal heat was a love that had knit itself into their bones with the passing of the years, until she knew him as well as she knew herself.
So she knew he remained afraid for her and their child, but was determined to hide it from her.
Fear for the people you loved wasn’t a rational thing.
He loved her so much, her Raphael. And she loved him just as much. Enough to pretend that she didn’t sense his fear, and enough to make sure that when the time came, he wouldn’t be alone.
She’d spoken to Dmitri, made a plan. Raphael’s second—and best friend—would slip away from New York on the eve of her due date, with Trace and Naasir slipping in to cover his position.
As she shared pleasure with her archangel this night, her back arching on ripples of ecstasy as she took him inside her, she was glad that they, both of them, had people who would watch their backs no matter what.