Chapter 30 #2
Croesus makes a sound that's almost a laugh. "She called you mediocre?"
"It was contextual," I say.
"It was devastating," Seraph corrects. He reaches for the buttons of his shirt.
Undoes them slowly. Not with Croesus's efficient practicality, but with intention.
Every button a choice. Every inch of revealed skin a concession.
"No one has ever called me mediocre. I found it unacceptable.
And then I found it intoxicating. And then I found myself replaying the moment, and I realized I'd lost a game I didn't know I was playing. "
The shirt falls open. His chest is pale as the marble that surrounds us.
Lean, defined, the musculature of a swordsman.
Not an ounce of excess. His skin is flawless, unmarked, as though three millennia of existence left no trace.
The perfection should be cold. Clinical.
But combined with the words he just said, the raw honesty of them, it's anything but.
He shrugs the shirt off. His wings shift behind him, the glamour solid but the movement visible, white-gold feathers catching the light.
"Take the glamour down," I say.
He freezes.
"Raven." Croesus's voice is a warning. Gentle but clear.
"I've seen them. I know what's underneath." I sit up on the bed, facing Seraph, who has gone very still. His eyes are locked on me, and in them I see my own reflection, fierce and steady. "If we're doing this, we're doing it honestly. All three of us. No masks."
The silence lasts long enough that I think he's going to refuse. That the pride will win, the way it always wins, the way it's kept him armored and untouchable for so, so many years.
Then the glamour drops.
The wings unfurl behind him. All six of them, and they're just as I remember. Scarred. Broken. Feathers blackened and bent, primaries missing, the left wing drooping where the joint healed wrong. Burn scars trace silver lines across what remains.
He stands there, shirtless and exposed, with his ruined wings spread behind him and his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping.
"Satisfied?" he asks. The word is blade-thin.
I reach for him. Take his hand. Pull him toward the bed.
"Come here," I say.
He comes.
He kneels on the mattress, and I pull him down to me, and when I kiss him this time it's different. Slower. His lips part against mine, and I feel the tremor in him that his voice won't show. I kiss the corner of his mouth. His jaw. The pale line of his throat.
"You're beautiful," I tell him.
"Don't patronize me."
"I'm not. You're beautiful and you're broken and I want you. All of it. Every ruined feather." I press my mouth to his collarbone. "Every scar you hide."
Something snaps.
Not his composure. Something deeper. Something behind it, the thing he's been holding in place with sheer force of will since the moment he walked into that hallway and felt what Croesus and I did.
He pushes me down onto the silk. His body covers mine, and he's all lean angles and cool skin and controlled strength, his hips settling between my thighs with a precision that's almost choreographed.
His mouth finds my throat, and unlike Croesus's heated, consuming kisses, Seraph's mouth is surgical.
Deliberate. He finds the spot below my ear that makes me gasp and works it with his lips and tongue and the barest edge of teeth until I'm arching underneath him.
"I've been thinking about this since training," he says against my skin.
His voice has changed. Still formal. Still measured.
But there's a grit to it now, a roughness underneath the polish, and the combination of his precise diction and the raw need bleeding through it is obscene.
"Since I watched you channel six bonds and glow like a sun.
Since you stood in my arena and became something more than human and I thought, I want to take her apart and memorize what sounds she makes when she isn't holding the world together. "
"God," I breathe.
"Not quite. But close enough."
The mattress shifts. Croesus.
He moves onto the bed behind Seraph, and the angel of pride goes rigid for a fraction of a second. Just a flash. An instinctive response to being flanked, to having someone at his back, someone he's considered a friend and an enemy.
But he doesn't pull away. And when Croesus's hand settles on his shoulder, warm bronze against cool marble, Seraph exhales. Slowly. As though something he's been bracing against has suddenly become something he can lean into.
"Still here," Croesus says.
"Still annoying," Seraph replies. But he turns his head, just slightly, and for one heartbeat their faces are inches apart. Gold eyes and silver eyes. Greed and Pride.
Croesus closes the distance.
The kiss is brief. Barely a brush of mouths. But I feel it through both bonds simultaneously, a shock of contact that resonates like a struck bell. Old recognition. Not romantic. Not tender. Something more fundamental than either.
Seraph pulls back first. His eyes are too bright.
"Don't read into that," he says.
"Wouldn't dream of it." But Croesus's voice is thick, and his hand stays on Seraph's shoulder.
They both look at me.
I'm lying beneath Seraph, naked on white silk, watching two fallen angels process something they haven't let themselves feel in millennia.
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, and both bonds are singing in my chest, gold and silver woven together, and I want them so badly it's a physical ache.
"If you two are done having a moment," I say, "I believe someone was taking me apart."
Seraph's focus snaps back to me. The vulnerability vanishes, replaced by something altogether more dangerous.
He braces himself above me on one arm, and his free hand traces a line from my jaw to my sternum.
Slow. Watching my face as his fingers trail between my breasts, over my stomach, across the sensitive skin below my navel.
"You're very demanding for someone pinned beneath an angel of pride," he murmurs.
"You like it."
"I find it tolerable." His fingers drift lower. Trace the crease of my thigh. My hips lift involuntarily, and his mouth curves. "Patience is a virtue."
"You fell from Heaven. You don't get to lecture me about virtue."
Something flickers across his face. Almost a real smile. He looks over his shoulder at Croesus. "She's always like this during sex?"
"Worse, usually. So demanding. It’s unnervingly sexy."
"Delightful." Seraph's hand moves between my thighs, and his fingers slide through the wetness there with a slowness that makes me want to scream.
"You're soaked. Already. Still." He brings his fingers to his mouth.
Tastes them. He holds my gaze while he does it, and the deliberateness of the act, the unapologetic sensuality from someone who carries himself like a marble saint, makes my whole body clench. "From him, or from wanting me?"
"Both," I admit. Because I'm done lying to either of them.
"Good." He slides his fingers back between my thighs. Parts me. Finds my clit with unerring accuracy and circles it with a featherlight touch that's so precise it's almost maddening. Not enough pressure. Not enough speed. Exactly enough to keep me on the edge of what I need without tipping me over.
"You're doing that on purpose," I gasp.
"I do everything on purpose. Have you not noticed?" He increases the pressure by a fraction. My back arches. "I have spent thousands of years perfecting every skill I possess. Do you honestly think I neglected this one?"
"Seraph, I swear to God, if you don't..."
"Don't what? Give you what you want?" Another fraction of pressure. His fingers are slick with me, moving in slow circles that wind the tension tighter with every pass. "I will. Eventually. When I've decided you've earned it."
Croesus moves. He stretches out beside me, propped on one elbow, and his mouth finds my breast. Hot, hungry, none of Seraph's calculated restraint.
He pulls my nipple into his mouth and sucks hard enough that I cry out, my hand flying to the back of his head, fingers tangling in dark hair streaked with gold.
The contrast is staggering. Seraph's precise, controlled fingers between my thighs and Croesus's demanding mouth on my breast and I'm caught between them again, pulled in two directions, each of them stoking a different kind of fire.
"That's it," Seraph says, watching Croesus's mouth on me with a focus that borders on predatory. "Make her louder. I want to hear the sounds like when she's not trying to be brave."
Croesus responds by switching to my other breast. His teeth graze my nipple, then bite down, and the sharp edge of pain mixed with the pleasure of Seraph's fingers sends a jolt through me that rips a moan from somewhere deep in my chest.
"There." Seraph's voice drops lower. Rougher. "That sound. Again."
He presses harder on my clit. Two fingers slide inside me, curving forward, finding the spot that Croesus knows by heart and Seraph has just discovered with surgical precision. His thumb replaces his fingertips on my clit, and the dual sensation of being filled and stroked makes my vision blur.
"You're close already," Seraph observes.
His fingers move inside me with a rhythm that's perfectly calibrated, each stroke hitting exactly where I need it.
"I can feel it. Your body is telling me everything, Raven.
Every flutter, every clench, every spike in your pulse.
I know exactly what to do to push you over. Shall I?"
"Yes. God, yes."
"Ask properly."
The audacity of that. The sheer, breathtaking arrogance of the angel of pride demanding manners while his fingers are inside me.
But his eyes are locked on mine, and the flush has spread from his cheekbones to his chest, and I can feel his arousal, a tightly wound coil of need that he's controlling with a discipline that must be excruciating.