Chapter 12
T here were a lot more words Rhode wanted to say, should have said, but those were robbed from him as he melded his trembling lips with hers. It wasn’t a sweet meeting of mouths or a passionate tangle, nor was it a curious wonder, with trails traversed and layouts learned.
No, it was a violent mashing that had a job to do. One very singular, very fucking important job.
And by the mages, it worked.
Rhode’s body responded instantly as the fire within his core received the kickstart it needed. Rolling waves of power spread through every muscle in his body, blooming them to capacities he’d not known before. His already taxed muscles strained inexplicably further with each lick of electric blue flames that consumed him.
Dammit all, but Neela was right. He wouldn’t have been able to risk a shift.
So it had to be this. Her. Against him. Touching him.
The scope of his new reality was the final spark of ignition his power needed. Flames erupted all around them, lashing out to the tips of his wings and curling around the branch like the legs of a black widow’s deadly embrace. Cracks and pops hissed above him, followed by the acrid smell of charred wood. The load lightened bit by bit, but each sway of relief his muscles adapted to brought more comfort and reassurance than he’d ever imagined. Soon, his flames began to lessen, and nothing was kissing his shoulders except the delicate sprinkles of ash.
Which was a massive fucking problem because it left him with no other recourse but to address the softness beneath him.
And what softness it was.
He hadn’t known what to brace himself for, not really. He never truly did. But something about this, about her, was so entirely different, he almost didn’t know what to do with the shock of it all.
Everything, from her mouth to her middle to where her thighs cushioned the strength of his, was an assault on senses that had only ever known just that. But this? This was . . .
A respite.
His muscles slackened into the sensation before his mind could think better of it. Rhode’s elbows met the ground and accidentally tipped his mouth farther against Neela’s, unintentionally shifting his bottom lip in the process to taste more of hers.
The sensation seized his body.
Holy mages, she was sweet.
A sugared decadence moved across his mouth and arrested him in a way he’d never thought possible. Owing to no logic whatsoever, he brushed his lips against hers once more, savoring the pillowy enchantment that was both a distraction and the focus of whatever mess he’d found himself in.
Rhode dimly recalled what he’d tried to fortify himself against when he’d told Neela that it had to be a kiss. Even as taxed as he was, the bulk of him had known the fucking drill by that point and tensed as needed in miserable anticipation.
But Rhode had known misery. Holy hell, had he known it. And this . . .
Only in the quiet recesses of his mind could he admit to himself that kissing Neela was unimaginable bliss. A bliss he had no right seeking out, but damned if he could ignore what he’d so long been denied.
And it wasn’t just her mouth that tempted him to seek out more. It was every aching curve that met his muscled ridges. Her lush body was a welcome cradle to all he had suffered, and his brain was threatening to short-circuit with the reconciliation of it. She was a charmer. A get of his tormentor. A soul bond by circumstance.
But beneath him, with his eyes closed and no one but his mind’s eye to judge or blame him, she was wholly and completely female.
The flames around him had yet to douse fully, and he welcomed the strange sensation with a need just as alien as his situation. Adrenaline that wasn’t ordinarily there controlled his maneuvers. And as long as the flames still simmered down their bodies, a part of him could make the argument that his actions were not truly his own. In the quiet cocoon of the steps needed to ensure their survival, Rhode wasn’t entirely in the driver’s seat, and neither was Neela. They were yet again victims of celestial circumstance, though this time a circumstance that came with far more intrigue than injury.
And that was when the moan reverberated through his lungs and pushed past his claimed lips into hers. It stunned him before it slayed him, and he couldn’t for the life of him name the flavors bursting across his senses that had dragged the unexpected sound out of him. They were far more than his escaping vocabulary could describe and entirely nothing like what he’d ever associate with a charmer. Still, he couldn’t help but try to name them for fear that, when it was all over, he’d never recall the delights of such a cocktail ever again.
By the mages, she tasted like life, like some vital indulgence his tongue couldn’t help but dart out to steal more of. The impulse curled his gut, but not in the way he’d planned when he resigned himself to letting a charmer get so close to him again. With Neela, it was as if every muscle and tendon in his frame, despite being as strung out as they were, had somehow found a gear they’d not been able to access before.
A very greedy, impatient gear.
His breath hitched when her lithe fingers tightened at his waist before falling lower to claim his hips in a bracketing embrace that only fused them impossibly closer.
Was she . . . Did she actually like this? His mouth exploring hers? His body providing a shell of protection that, for any sane female, should have been viewed more as a cell than a sanctuary?
But those questing fingers traveled lower still, curiously circling the outside of his thighs. Then, they froze, as if they’d forgotten their place, and quickly spirited away back to their normal handholds.
And he’d never regretted the retreat more in his life.
“No,” he growled into her mouth. “More.”
Rhode had no earthly idea what to do with his hands, but he sure as hell couldn’t keep them fisted at the sides of Neela’s head any longer. Missing the feel of her on his thighs, he grabbed one of hers and settled it on the outside of his hip, anchoring it there with his large hand.
It was all the encouragement both of them needed to bask in whatever reprieve the mages were offering them for a little while longer. Once the flames died out and Rhode had to open his eyes to the carnage that was and always would be his reality, this wouldn’t be allowed to happen again.
Things always looked different in daylight, didn’t they? Even being starved of the stuff for so long, he knew what the illumination always revealed. Ugly cracks and raw crevices that made perfect homes for any manner of nightmares to settle in and fester.
Terrors didn’t need spacious living accommodations, after all. They only needed one single opening.
But not here. Not now.
Neela shifted her head and, to Rhode’s great delight, sheepishly searched out more of him with her tongue, embarking on a quiet answering expedition. Somewhere beneath the fire, their unspoken dance had flourished beneath a grand orchestration. There was a hesitant intent, a slow and steady drip that harmonized their movements.
A marvel, really, considering that Neela was engulfed by his fire as well. That was what happened among soul-bonded pairs in the beginning, before the fire was firmly under the sole control of the angel wielding it.
The mate was the one who had to first ignite it, and the experience was far different for mortals than other beings, as he’d been told. Human central nervous systems initially used their pain receptors to conceptualize the fire around them, even though they were never actually being burned. It was a shock type reaction.
Not so with others. Still, the possibility of Neela in pain, however unlikely, snuck its way into their intimacy and stung him with a brutal sharpness. Was she hurt? Was he harming her? Why he cared at all was a question that had been drowned out by action.
Rhode lifted off her with a growl. But as soon as he flung his eyes wide, a different sort of worried wonder greeted him.
A halo.
Neela lay beneath him, her lips kiss-swollen and her eyes bright with a pleased shock that he had put there. But beyond her brilliant eyes was another sort of brilliance. All that finely coiled hair that seemed to claim everything it touched was adorned with the final wisps of angel fire. His angel fire. A gift that their oddity of a connection had, for reasons he had yet to discover, made him the only seraph able to command the power.
Able to command it because of her and only once she called it forth.
“Are you all right?” His eyes thirsted over her, timing each flutter of her lashes to the dying licks of the flames that had begun to extinguish.
“I’m breathing. That’s a plus.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged.
She cleared her throat but made no move to rise. “I think I was on fire.”
“You called it forth. Of course you were on fire.”
“You told me to.”
Yes, he had told her to do that, hadn’t he? The words made sense in so much as they didn’t.
“You should get up,” he said, still focusing on the flames.
“Um. You need to get off me first.”
Rhode blinked, barely hearing her words. He was far too busy tracking the last line of blue embers as they outlined the farthest tendrils above her head. Mages, her hair was lovely, adorned in a fire he had no claim to, which was already receding within him, despite how urgently he tried to tug it back. Not yet at full strength, then.
Oh, what he wouldn’t give to experience it again with this woman. It was a power unlike any he’d ever known. One that offered not only immense protection and offensive might but privacy as well.
Privacy that allowed him to kiss Neela and not hate himself for the betrayal of his body. To, dare he say, enjoy the touch of another. Of her touch.
“Uh-huh,” he remarked, enraptured by the final flame as it flickered out, taking all it represented with it. But beyond the arc of her hair, a strange shadow on the snow in the distance caught his eye.
An odd figure draped in suited finery stood at the edge of the tree line. The cut of the individual’s sharp jacket mimicked the crease in the front of its slacks, which was visible even at that distance. The being wore no overcoat, nor were there any footprints marking its trail through the snow.
No, it only wore a single smile that flashed colder than any New England winter. Sharp teeth a hair shy of animalistic broadcasted the warning message, but Rhode didn’t need to examine it. Oh, he knew exactly what had been watching him.
Who had been watching him.
And it should have been fucking impossible in broad daylight.
Rhode’s celestial senses sharpened, twisting the knife in his gut further as the picture before him came into focus. A male who was a good head and shoulders taller than the rest of the charmers leered back at him, his flattened nose and eyes upturned at the corners marking exactly who had witnessed Rhode’s little fire show.
Cyro. The demon ruler.
Rhode leaped to his feet and let his rhodium skin ripple over every inch of him. Before the last of the armor could snap into place, however, Cyro offered up a smug little wave from across the way and vanished into the wind.
“Rhode? What’s happening?” Neela lifted herself up on her elbows. Her voice brought him back to the present, to what they had just done. To who he had just done it with, and who had seen it all.
“Did you call him here?” he snarled, his hand itching for the weapons at his back.
“What? Call who? There’s no one here.”
“Don’t ask me who. You fucking know who.”
“Rhode, there’s no one here. No one.”
He blinked again, then cast his senses far and wide throughout the arboretum. At the gate, two sets of people had just entered. Mortals. One couple were retirees, the other two arboretum workers returning from lunch. In front of him, he frantically pushed his powers out, scanning the grounds.
No hint of charmers. Aside from Neela, there was not a single marker of the shadow realm anywhere for miles. Had he really imagined it?
Rhode gripped his head. “Fuck!”
“Rhode? Talk to me. What’s going on?” Neela offered her hand, but he refused to look at her, refused to examine too closely how his first taste of intimacy since his capture had somehow been caressed by the demon ruler’s talons.
Mages, he was going to be sick. Or savage.
His head spun violently until he could no longer delineate his metal from Neela’s white coat or the snow around him. It was all, and always had been, one giant cage. So he did the only thing his panicked mind could do to escape.
He left her there.
With wings spread wide, he leaped into the air and took to the skies.