Chapter 11 #3
Her gaze narrowed. “Any truth to the rumor that lust is beneath you?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I want to be beneath you. And I thought we were headed there—eventually—but I’m sensing there’s a whole lot going on I don’t know about.”
His tongue slid along his bottom lip, making her as damp as if he’d licked her with it. “Let’s head there now.”
Lindsay wiped her mouth with the napkin in her lap, then pushed back from the table.
She moved toward him with a deliberately slow and sultry stride.
Her hands went to the belt of her robe, her fingers sliding through the silken knot and loosening it.
Reaching the coffee table, she allowed the robe to slide to the floor.
She smiled when Adrian’s breath hitched.
He straightened, planting his feet wide on the floor and revealing the thick length of his aroused cock. The act of the tease was enticing on its own, but his physical response took her quickening hunger to another level.
She was yanking an edgy tiger by the tail, and from the sharp, rapacious hunger in his gaze, Adrian was getting ready to pounce. And bite.
Leaning over him, Lindsay balanced herself with one hand on the back of the couch and allowed her camisole top to gape open. When his gaze slid to the view, she used his distraction as an opportunity to snatch his tablet.
Straightening, she returned to the table.
She resumed eating while using the browser to Google some choice keyword phrases.
Like “angel sex” and “sentinel angels,” and finally, “watcher angels vampires.” She was briefly distracted by an article speculating that male Watcher angels had been capable of endless erections, but the deeper import of what she discovered was what, exactly, the Watcher angels had done to get damned with vampirism—they’d lusted after and fucked mortals.
While she read, Adrian sat on the couch, still and silent.
She didn’t look his way, but she sensed the coiled expectancy in him and heard it in the rumble of thunder outside.
Inside the air-conditioned suite, it felt like the hour before a heat wave broke with a summer storm—unbearably hot and humid, crackling with bated energy.
All the turbulence inside him was primed to explode. She knew he needed the release, just as she instinctively knew she could take him to that point of exposure. But at what cost?
She forked the remnants of her hash browns into her mouth, then sat back, chewing thoughtfully. Their gazes met and held.
“As I suspected, I didn’t ask the right question,” she said, after finishing off the orange juice.
Now fed, her body was recharging so swiftly she felt lightheaded.
“Are you forbidden to have sex? Is that the sin you were talking about the other night? Not the lust itself, but the culmination of it?”
Adrian set his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers together. “I don’t suppose my telling you to leave the consequences to me will satisfy you?”
What would satisfy her was him, hot and hard and deep inside her. But there were consequences, and then there were consequences. “Could you lose your wings and soul and become a vampire?”
“I could lose my mind wanting you.”
“You can’t be serious.” He was killing her.
“I can’t?” He set his chin atop his fingers.
“No. You can’t. And I’d be an idiot to think I’d get away scot-free.
My life doesn’t work that way. I pay for everything.
In fact, I might have been paying for this”—she gestured between them with an impatient flick of her wrist—“my whole life. I mean, who has the shit happen to them that’s happened to me?
When I was born, maybe someone said, ‘Yep, that’s the one who’s going to fuck with Adrian’s perfection. ’”
He straightened abruptly, his gaze haunted. “Lindsay—”
“You’re the most powerful warrior in the highest rank of angels.
I’ve seen how the others look at you. They trust you.
Admire you. To have the power you do, and to look like you do…
someone up there loves you madly. I’m not going to be the one who screws you up.
” Pushing back from the table, she stood, feeling agitated enough to run five miles just to burn energy.
Adrian stood, too. “The decision belongs to both of us. There’s something between us. Something precious and powerful. I want it. I want you.”
His wings materialized, fanning wide. The pearlescent expanse shimmered so beautifully that it made her eyes sting.
She hadn’t cried since her mother died, but Adrian had brought her close to tears more than once since she’d met him.
The way he made her feel important and valuable, the ease with which he accepted her just the way she was…
For his tenderness alone, she couldn’t allow him to take the fall for her.
He made her feel human; he made her feel—period.
She was so vibrantly alive when she was with him, as if she’d been half asleep her whole life and was finally stirring.
But the humanity he’d returned to her was forbidden to him, and she couldn’t afford to forget that. He couldn’t afford for her to forget.
“I like sex as much as the next gal,” she said, beginning to pace.
Adrian was a seraph, just like the Watchers.
Same class of angels, same offense—same punishment?
She had no reason to believe Adrian wouldn’t suffer the same fate, and he apparently wasn’t going to give her one.
“It can be a lot of fun and a great stress reliever. In a twisted way, I’m flattered to get you so hot and bothered.
But it’s not worth sucking blood over. It’s not worth losing those gorgeous wings.
Trust me—the buildup is the best part. You’re not missing anything. ”
He moved, traversing the space between them in the blink of an eye and blocking the path of her pacing, forcing her to confront him directly. She stumbled to a halt just before she ran into him. Thunder boomed directly overhead, rattling the silverware on the table.
His arms crossed his powerful chest; his irises glowed with pure blue flames. He bared his teeth in a predatory smile. “Prove it.”