Chapter 27 #2
“What? Wha—” My words were cut off as he did so many things, so fast, and all at the same time, my mind couldn’t keep up.
Lifting himself up, he pressed the tip of his thick cock to my entrance, grasping my wings in his hands firmly but carefully.
A spiral of energy from his center shot out, not toward my clit, but the mating feather on my chest. At the same time, he opened his mouth and sang a note I had never heard before.
It was twelve tones, all at once, the sound coming from his mouth, his chest, even the air around him.
There was a bubble of pure power, pure pleasure, that formed in between one heartbeat and the next.
Then it exploded.
The note he sang caused all the stored-up sensation he’d denied me to burst forth in a blaze of ecstasy.
I arched up off the bed, tethered only by his hands and the strand of power that he’d flung out and into me, as an orgasm unlike anything I’d ever felt possessed my body.
It spiraled up and kept building, like a whirlpool that had caught me.
A hurricane, tearing me away from everything I had ever known about sexual pleasure, showing me a world where I could exist inside a climax.
My body felt as if it were shredding into tiny, glittering shards of pure feeling, for so long that it didn’t feel like I’d ever existed in any other state.
He held the note as he fucked me, thrusting not only into my body with his cock, but penetrating my soul with the song he’d created.
It was bliss. Not an hour of delayed climax, but four centuries of it.
He wrapped all his years of longing and all his wild-eyed, fierce joy at finally merging with his soulmate, into the song and the fucking, both of which grew more and more intense until I wasn’t sure if I was in danger of being unmade.
I wasn’t sure if I cared.
Across the room, I felt Rumple reach his peak, heard his soft laughter and cursing. Still coming, I reached up and held Gavriel’s cheek with one hand. I was beyond speech, but I sang back to him, harmonizing with his incredible voice, showing him that he was welcome in my heart. He was home.
And when his note finally softened, coming to a long, slow close, I felt the echo of that promise in his voice. My heart is yours. Your home.
You’re home.
He was my home, and had always been. And I loved him.
I opened my soul wider, and let that certainty flow into our merged bond. Gavriel’s eyes welled with tears, and he muttered in a broken voice, “I would give my wings up again and again for you.”
I love you, Gavriel. I rocked my hips gently up to meet his final thrusts.
The pleasure now was deep and slow, like a distant tide rolling in.
Like a sunrise appearing in increments, stretching warm fingers of light across us both, through our blended souls.
And when at last he lowered himself into my arms, and pressed a fierce kiss against the feather on my chest, I knew.
This was only the beginning. I would never, ever let this end.
A short while later, Rumple met my eyes across Gavriel’s sleeping form. Are you okay? I asked. With this?
More than okay, little one. His smile echoed his tone. My heart dances with joy to see my dearest friend and my heart, complete with one another. I know you will be happy together.
And with you, I replied, a sharp bolt of anger ripping through my thoughts when he refused to answer.
Gavriel gave up his wings to make swords. We all make the sacrifices we must, he thought, then shut his mind to me.
I took a steadying breath. This was not the time to argue.
We needed them to fight our way out? My eyes landed on the doors.
They shuddered with the force of the pounding shadows.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d reformed the enormous snake beast and were going at it together, like a battering ram.
I will fight alongside my brother Gavriel and you, my beloved, to the Great Gate and as far beyond as we can go. But I will admit… He broke off, then squared his shoulders and continued, I do not see how we can even make it to Revel’s side.
“Do we have to fight?” I asked aloud, though I knew the answer. This shadow creature outside wasn’t like the one I’d tied up. It wasn’t malleable, willing to listen. I could sense its malevolence even through the door. It wanted nothing but to destroy us, and blot out our light.
A wry smile was all the answer Rumple gave.
I let my gaze land on all the things in the room. There was one crystal and gold feather and one small knife, no larger than a letter opener, next to it. How deeply had I been sleeping? “Where did the knife come from?”
As Rumple explained, he carried the small, glasslike blade over to me. It was wickedly sharp, cutting though the edge of the sheet with the merest touch, but when I tested my finger against the point, it didn’t dig in at all. I blinked at Rumple, confused.
“Do you believe there is any part of me that would see you hurt, little love?” he said, chucking me under the chin. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I may be a monster—but I’m your monster, through and through.”
A wave of dizziness rushed through me, and Gavriel sat up. “What was that?”
Rumple raised one eyebrow, then plunged himself into my mind. I felt his energy move from my chest up to my nape. “That, my lovely ones, was Mikhail needing his soulmate.” Fear shone in his whirling eyes before he looked away.
I sucked in a breath and was on my feet, grabbing my clothing, dizziness be damned. “Right. Time to go.”
In a few minutes, Gavriel was up and dressed in Mikhail’s clothing, and I was wrapped in a spare toga I’d kept here.
Rumple had also grabbed a pair of Mikhail’s pants to replace his loincloth, though they were far too short on him.
The thought of having a mate even larger than Mikhail made me want to laugh.
“They’re at both doors,” Rumple said. “The secret hallway is completely filled with them, pressing the door shut. We can’t even try to go out that way.”
Gavriel was unsteady on his feet as he grabbed a sword and gave it a few unsteady swings.
“Harder than it should be,” he muttered.
“Center of balance has changed significantly.” He made a few more practice thrusts and strikes, a pattern I vaguely recognized.
By the end of the kata, he looked as if he’d been fighting without wings for centuries.
Apparently satisfied, he ran his eyes over me, and shook his head. “We need some sort of armor for you.”
“I don’t need armor,” I argued while he started flinging things off tables, as if a set of Celestial armor might be lying around somewhere.
Honestly, knowing how much Mikhail hoarded his creations, it wasn’t a completely ridiculous thought.
But I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry the weight of anything heavier than a feather.
My limbs now felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each, and it was growing worse by the second.
I sent my consciousness within, to examine the pools of energy at my mate marks.
The power was gone, the threads unraveled.
No, it can’t be. I reached deeper, seeking the ends of the tethers that connected me to my mates, but finding only the deeply buried well of energy that was my Celestial key.
It was untouched, sealed in my core, a frigid, heavy lump that couldn’t be opened—at least not by me.
Imriel had said only the Celestial gate could unseal it.
But maybe Rumple could crack it open if I needed the juice.
For all I knew, he’d built the ugly fire-door gate, too.
I saved that thought for later, turning my attention to my chest and my embedded feather. A mating feather now, for real.
The connection with Gavriel remained, but I was siphoning energy from it almost too fast to register. And Gavriel… I peered into his spiritual vessel. Holy crap. He was drawing energy directly from Sanctuary so fast, it seared him.
But Sanctuary normally took power from the High Angeli. I noted that it wasn’t pulling anything from me. That was a relief. I guess you can’t get blood from a stone, I thought. But how is Gavriel forcing the realm to give him this much, this fast?
He’s much more experienced with juggling the lines of power, Rumple supplied. He’s been taking it at this rate for hours now to keep you both on your feet. But he won’t be able to sustain that while he’s fighting, he thought quietly, as Gavriel strode over to the giant bag of glitter.
“Is there any way to change it back to armor?” he wondered aloud.
“No.” Rumple raced to my side, catching me just as I began to stumble.
“Whoa, feels like being drunk,” I said, my speech slurring. “Just like it.”
“Feather, we have to move now, but I need to know. The tether between you and your mates. Is it breaking?”
I closed my eyes and focused on the energy that connected me to Mikhail and Righteous, but it was like trying to see through overly strong glasses.
The blue thread wasn’t a thread anymore, only a smudge against the darkness of my thoughts.
It was hazy, knotted strangely in places, and so thin in others it almost disappeared. “I see it, but…”
Suddenly, even speaking was too much. My jaw turned to stone, my wings anvils. My eyelids flickered open, the last of the muscles I could move, and even those felt like lead curtains. I stared up at Rumple, my body frozen.
“Gavriel, I think—” Rumple’s voice cracked. “I think we waited too long.”