Chapter 12 Feather
Feather
My dreams were filled with earthquakes, screaming, falling gates, and dissolving feathers. Finally, the nightmares gave way to fantasies. To the shock and titillation of my dream self, Righteous played the first starring role.
I walked into the Assembly Hall looking for Gavriel, but the room was empty. Except all the golden cushions were in the center of the space, piled up like an enormous nest.
“Hello?” I called out. No one answered, but a deep, rich chuckle rose up from the nest. As I approached, I saw two golden legs draped over the edge, wrapped in golden gladiator sandals, and white feathers framing the back cushions. His wings, outstretched. “Righteous?”
He lifted his head and smiled. Not a smirk or a preening expression, but a true smile, his eyes heavy lidded and gleaming.
Like he’d been waiting for me for hours, and planning all the best ways to welcome me home.
“Come in, Tili,” he crooned, trailing his fingertips over his neck and down his bare chest. The dark hairs in the center of his sculpted pecs glimmered in the low light.
I tiptoed closer and saw that he wasn’t wearing a robe or a toga, just… a pair of cut-off gray sweatpants? With what looked like a significant portion of an anaconda curled up right beneath the drawstring. An anaconda that had recently eaten an ostrich egg.
“Come in. Your alpha has prepared a nest for you. It’s time for your heat, my sweet omega.”
Aw, yeah. This was that dream.
I dove into the nest, laughing and tangling myself up in his arms and legs. In a flash, his hands were on my cheeks as he kissed me, and then on my breasts as he lifted them to his mouth, tasting them, licking, nibbling.
“Fucking delicious,” he murmured as he moved between them, like he couldn’t decide which nipple was his favorite. “Gonna suck these little cherries until you beg me to slide my tongue into your pussy.”
Holy dirty talker! “Righteous?” I gasped as his wide hands spanned my waist and he lifted me up, drawing a winding trail on my abdomen with his tongue, teasing me.
“Can’t wait, precious. Got to taste you, suck that little clit until you sing for me.
Come for me, until all you can remember is the feel of my mouth on you, the slide of my lips, my hands holding you wide open so I can feast.” He hummed against my lower belly, the vibrations moving through me, into my core.
“I’m going to devour this pretty little pussy.
Get you so wet you’ll slide around my cock.
” He growled. “Get you ready to take my knot.”
Then he turned us, and those strong hands were parting my thighs, his dark hair falling over my stomach as his tongue found my clit and circled it, gently at first, then harder.
His wings extended over us as he learned what gave me pleasure, finding the patterns and rhythms with his hands and tongue, and—oh my gumdrops!
—teeth. He kept on, drawing me closer and closer to an invisible peak…
I held my breath and came, arching up against his mouth as his wings fluttered overhead.
The world exploded into a golden shower of sparks behind my eyelids as he kept licking, while I shuddered under his tongue.
I heard him move away, and when I opened my eyes, Righteous was nowhere to be seen.
Now, Gavriel and Mikhail stood side by side on the edge of the nest…
which had become a pirate ship. Mikhail growled, “I’ve been wanting to swab your lower decks all day, Feather,” while Gavriel held out a steaming, fresh-baked pie and purred, “But first, dessert.”
Dang, I was good at dreaming. It would all be perfect, if only one more dream lover showed up. The first sexy voice I’d ever known; the one I’d desired for centuries.
I guess someone decided I needed a perfect night for a change. Because when morning was almost there, the gravelly voice I’d missed since I’d left Earth came to keep me company.
“Little one?”
My heart thudded. “Hey, Rumple. You interrupted a really good fantasy. I should make you walk a dream plank.” He’d usually only spoken to me when I was hesitating to do what needed to be done on Earth, or when I’d tried to get out of adding more smut to my soul.
To be fair, he’d also hung around afterward, keeping me company between lives on Earth, when I was floating in the void or whatever.
Getting used to the new weight I carried, waiting to be plunked down into my next body.
I didn’t know his real name. But he didn’t know mine either, so that was fair.
There was silence, but a sensation like muffled laughter, a vibration deep in my bones. “The one about the pies and the pirates?”
“You know it. And not the dirty pirates. These ones were clean, not a single case of pox or syphilis on the whole ship.”
I almost felt a low growl. “What flavor pies this time?”
“Apple, unfortunately.”
“Ah, a substandard imaginary pie. I’m glad I interrupted then.”
We were both silent. Finally, I whispered, “I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear you again, after Lily. I’m not on Earth now. You knew that, right?”
“Of course.” A low hum. His voice sounded clearer, closer than it ever had. “You’re in Sanctuary.”
“You know the place?”
“I might.” Ugh. I knew better than to ask.
More information would come when and if he was ready to spill, which was unlikely.
He never shared anything, any sort of hints or clues as to who he was, where he was located, or what he did with his time—other than chat in the in-between hours with one odd, murderous girl.
So I was beyond surprised when he went on, “I didn’t think anyone did much creating there these days.
They used to do macramé. Hideous things that hung on the walls in the Dining Hall. ”
He had been here? That meant he was like me…
or like Mikhail or Gavriel. Or Righteous.
“Are you from Sanctuary? Wait, are you here now? Please come visit me. I’m on house arrest, more or less, and I don’t have any friends.
” I thought of Sunny and what felt like her unspoken betrayal, and my heart panged.
“If I had a friend, I could probably handle the pain I have to go through here. Although I’ve never felt anything so excruciating in all my years.
I thought taking on smut was awful, but that knife!
It’s so much worse, and no one helps me—”
“What are they doing to you?” His voice thrummed with tension. Or maybe anger? “Are they being cruel?” He muttered something that sounded like, “I knew they were criminally short-sighted, but torture of a shining soul is new.”
I blushed, for some reason. “Um, no. I… I’m really ugly here, Rumple. I mean, you know I didn’t really care how I looked on Earth. But I’m hideous, and I smell foul. I have to cut the smut off with this horrible soul knife.”
“Oh, that’s what it was,” he said, so softly it was almost impossible to hear. “You might need to cut more slowly, beautiful one. I sensed your pain; I wish I could bear it for you. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.”
I hated it when he got moody in Latin. “Hey, at least I get to do arts and crafts. And they’re teaching me to whittle. Whittle myself, that is.” I waited for him to laugh, but the silence thrummed with a deep emotion I couldn’t make out.
I thought he had gone, but then he asked, “Forgive me, little one?”
“For Mr. Wright?”
A hum of agreement filled my mind. “For all of it.”
“Nothing to forgive. I chose, every time.” I tried to picture a face to go with the voice. “Didn’t know I was picking my eternal wardrobe, though. Gray is a terrible color on me. What are you wearing, Rumple?”
“Nothing,” he teased. “Nothing that I’ll tell you, anyway.”
I blew a raspberry into the dark. I’d asked what he looked like dozens of times, nagged and wheedled for any small scrap of description.
He never budged, insisting that I would be disappointed.
I couldn’t imagine that being true. Even if he wasn’t much to look at, his nature was kind and compassionate.
He’d held me so many times in the darkness while I suffered.
Sure, sometimes he disappeared for months, even years at a stretch.
But he always came back, singing to me with his rich baritone when I got really low.
Whenever I was in pain. It was almost like he felt it.
“Forgive me anyway.”
“I do,” I told him. “Sing to me? It was a hell of a day in Heaven.”
“Heaven? Is that what they’re calling Sanctuary now?” Another silent laugh.
“Nah, that’s just me.” I giggled. “But can you believe they call the shadows smut? I keep cracking up. I’m a smutty girl, Rumple.”
“That you are, Feather.” He hummed a little, then stopped, saying, “I’m sorry about the knife. That you must endure that.”
“That’s why you came tonight, though. You knew I was hurting. Thanks.”
He didn’t answer but began to sing a lullaby in Latin. It was the one he’d sung me the very first time he’d come to me, when I was eight years old in my very first life. My favorite song.
“Dina!” My older sister was going to make us late for our evening meal again, and I was so angry I could spit.
The Sisters in the abbey would take it out of both our hides if we weren’t dressed and ready, and I’d already been slapped and sent away from the breakfast table for poor table manners that morning.
I was starving. “Dina!” I yelled, running around the corner of the chapel.
Instead of Dina, though, I found a boy I knew, leaning on an oak tree near the front of the stables. “Ashtad!”
The dark-complexioned boy who had arrived with the mail soldier was one of my only friends.
Letters and packages for the abbey came every two weeks or so, and Ashtad had helped bring it the last few times.
He was twelve, but the first time we’d met, I’d been tangled up in the rose bushes, thorns stuck in my dress, and he’d helped untangle me and rinsed off my scratches.