Chapter 6
The sun angles across the bed as Gareth rides me hard. I’m sprawled across tangled sheets, my legs shoved wide by the spread of his thighs, my fingers whitened by the grip of his hands linked with mine.
I can’t hold back the moans of delight spilling from me. His cock plunges deep into my slick sex, his chest heaving against my back as he drives us both to orgasm. The rhythmic pumping of his penis through sensitive tissues is delicious. I’m addicted to the feel of it. Addicted to him.
The slap of his testicles against my swollen clit is maddening, the pounding of the headboard marking the desperate need between us.
As the hours pass, we’ve grown greedier.
He woke me twice with pleasure, once with his tongue and again with coaxing fingers.
I woke him once with the ravenous pull of my mouth, taking him over the edge before he could deny me the taste of him.
“I’m coming,” I gasp, my sex spasming in ecstasy.
Gareth growls like an animal and fucks harder, his cock thickening as I ripple along his length, begging for his climax. I’m drenched with him and still want more, but he holds back until I’m limp and unresisting, too drunk with pleasure to do more than lie there and take him.
I feel him stiffen and arch. His wings spread wide, flaring in passionate abandon, the iridescent feathers shutting out the world.
He explodes inside me in a heated rush. His hands tighten painfully on mine and he shoves deep, over and over, massaging the farthest reaches of my sex with the broad crest of his magnificent cock.
I tremble in bliss, my mouth open in a silent cry, my heart bleeding from the breadth of love he’s shown me.
From the basest pleasures to the loftiest of emotions, I am all things to him and he gives his all to me.
When he’s drained, he rolls to the side and takes me with him, our bodies still joined and his wings a silky cocoon.
I’ve learned he can’t stop touching me. He’s held me throughout the long night, whispering love words and sex words, telling me how good it feels inside me and how he’s felt being with me.
I can’t reconcile the lover with the teacher; they’re two different men.
One so remote as to be unreachable, and the other so intimate I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.
“This is only the beginning,” he insists with his hand clasped over my wildly racing heart.
“I can’t keep you.”
“You don’t have a choice. I’m already yours.”
I stare out the massive windows and dream of waking every morning just like this. I should have gone home before sunrise, before I’d be missed. But I don’t regret the hours I’ve stolen, knowing how few and how precious they will be.
“Annalise,” he prods, rubbing his cheek against the curve of my wing. “Can you live without this? I can’t.”
“You’ll have to,” I say flatly. “You’ll wake up alone more often than not, until you resent me enough to take another woman to bed.”
“I don’t need to fuck. I need you.”
“I don’t know why.”
I feel his smile. “And that’s why you’re afraid.
You don’t see how you inspire me. I’d reached the point where I believed violence and death were my only reasons for existing.
And then I found you, and I knew what I was created for.
Didn’t you feel it when you first saw me?
Didn’t something tell you that I belonged to you? ”
Turning in his arms, I face him. The evidence of his pleasure seeps from me, a primitive claiming that even now could be creating a new life. Had he thought of that during the night? Had he hoped?
I brush the sweat-slicked hair back from his proud forehead, reveling in my right to touch him so intimately. “Yes, I felt it.”
His brilliant eyes glow with satisfaction. “So we’ll make it work.”
“How?”
“If the archangels want us badly enough, they’ll take us on our terms.”
Fear chills my skin. There is only one set of rules, and the archangels write them.
“You have to trust me, sweetheart.” He rubs the tip of his nose against mine. “I’ll never do anything that puts you at risk.”
Chimes ring out, and I jerk in surprise. “What’s that?”
“A visitor.” His chest expands slowly, and I watch a change come over him as the lover gives way to the warrior. “Sooner than expected, but I’m not sorry about that.”
“Gareth—” Of course he’d be pursued. He was too valuable to just walk away.
He slides from my arms, pressing kisses over my heart, tummy, and the pout of my sex before he leaves the bed. I watch him pull on his jeans, his skin still glistening with sweat. He smells like sex and me, and doesn’t care. The pride in his bearing is evident, his eyes hard with determination.
I realize he’d take on the world for me.
He pauses at the foot of the bed. “Stay here.”
The next moment I’m alone and he’s gone downstairs. I hear voices as I dress quickly; his low and deep, and another that’s higher-pitched and clearly female. I’m heading down before I can think better of it, my bare feet silent on the cold stone floor.
“She’ll have to graduate before I can turn this coast over to her. You know that.”
I stumble to a halt as I recognize my mother’s voice.
“I’m not holding her back,” Gareth replies. “When it’s time for her to return to the academy, I’ll see her there myself.”
“And what about you? Will you return to duty with her?”
“I could be persuaded.”
Peeking around the corner, I see my mother standing just inside the sliding glass partition leading outside to the second landing tier.
She’s dressed in her uniform, the gold stripes of her rank not too dissimilar from the color of her wings.
Her blond hair is pulled back in a neat chignon, and her sea-colored eyes remain fixed on the angel who holds my heart in his hands.
“What do you want, Commander?” she asks.
“As I told you years ago, I want your daughter. And she wants me nearby. If she’s going to be here, here is where I need to be.”
My knees weaken. I sit down on the step. There’s been speculation for years about my mother. She’s in a prime position for advancement and has been long overdue for one. But she’d have to serve some time at court, and to do that, she needed a second to hold her interests here.
“My children will defend this coast,” my mother says icily. “Binding with my daughter won’t secure it for you.”
I push to my feet.
“He wants to train here,” I interject, entering the room. My eyes are only on him. “That’s what you’re suggesting, isn’t it, Gareth? A satellite academy.”
The fierce look of love he gives me tells me I’m right. “It’s a prime location for marine aerial training.”
My mother glares at me while she takes in my ravished appearance, but there’s love there, too. “I expected a binding first, Annalise.”
“He gave me his vows.”
“And you gave him everything.”
I glance at Gareth and see warm amusement in his eyes. He is cocky and shameless, and I fall a little more in love with him. “Did you know what my mother wanted?”
He must have suspected I’d be assigned a tour of duty here. I hadn’t factored in my mother’s career—and influence—but he would have. Gareth was, after all, a widely admired strategist.
He shrugs. “I hoped. Planned to make the suggestion, if necessary.”
My mother makes an exasperated noise. “There’s no guarantee my requests will be honored.”
“You’re overdue many favors, General,” Gareth says, coming to my side. “I think you’ll manage well when you call them in.”
“And your terms,” she queries, “are nonnegotiable?”
I take his hand and smile. “They are.”