Chapter 24
N o amount of water could have extinguished the inferno boiling Rhode’s blood as Neela spilled every torturous detail of her existence. Rage would have been an easier thing to rein in. Rage had boundaries, clearly delineated borders that one knew what they were getting into once they’d crossed them. A short burst of fury, a roaring tidal wave of temper, and then it was expended as soon as it came on. Calm shores returned. Trees stood upright again. Life went on.
But not for him. Never for him.
He’d have ashes before he’d have her doubt or her fear.
Every word she said was another nail ripped up from a coffin he’d fabricated with sheer force of will. How she managed to unearth it, let alone find a way to bury him anew with her brazen truths, was a miracle of the mages.
No , he realized. A miracle herself.
One he feared he could no sooner extract from his soul than the Eternal Flame’s spark within him.
Abandonment had been his bedfellow for as long as he could remember, but in actuality, it had been nothing more than an excuse. An excuse to find Neela, only to risk losing her again to a force neither of them was capable of understanding.
What he did understand with absolute fucking certainty was that he needed to have his mouth on her.
The kiss was a thunderclap, an auditory outrage harmonizing with the angel fire singing in his veins whenever his hands were on this woman. He leaned in farther, anchoring his arm at the small of her back and dipping her so far backward that there was no possible way he couldn’t taste all of her. He greedily stole every hyssop-scented sigh and tickling caress that her flaxen tendrils would grace him with. When his lips no longer brought enough of her to him, his tongue took over. Neela’s breath hitched at the sly intrusion, then advanced in another way, with her searching fingers pressing into the sides of his hips.
“Mages, how are you this divine? You’re . . . you’re . . .”
Rhode couldn’t think, couldn’t call forth enough words to string anything together that wasn’t rooted in urgent, primal needs. The need to claim, to capture, to caress, to protect from whatever dared threaten to take her away from him.
“Fuck!” he growled into her mouth before grabbing her ass and spinning her around the room. The edge of the mattress soon bumped his calves and buoyed him with the certainty that there could be no other conclusion for what the fates had planned for them.
But only if she consented to tumble over that precipice with him. And if she didn’t, could he blame her?
The thought was a sobering shock of ice to the fire that threatened to erupt out of him. What if it was too late? What if her presence in his life was some other trick crafted by Cyro to further control and manipulate him? What if the luscious lady who filled his hands and had slowly begun to root out and fill other hollow parts of him could only ever be a carnal fling? A desire exorcized?
The sobering chill snaked down his spine but fell short of invading the rest of his nervous system when Neela bucked her hips forward and knocked them both onto the mattress. When she settled above him, her soft body molding to his and her breasts pressing against the strength of his chest, her might answered what his could not.
Neela lifted off him slightly, then sat up entirely while her thighs cradled his hips. A single palm braced insistently against his sternum, impressing upon him more words than he’d ever thought to say. “I’m so done with being afraid, Rhode. And despite what you may think, the one person I’m not afraid of is also the same person who hasn’t left my thoughts for a second, not even on the day I thought I lost you.” Neela slowly shook her head and smiled sweetly. “Whatever you want this to be, I’m game, because somehow you and I are both still alive to experience it together.” Then she blinked a few times, and something regretful and solemn passed over her expression. “It doesn’t have to be more than that.”
Rhode’s fingers curled along her torso, claiming the negative spaces between her ribs for the handholds he needed, and he had to work really fucking hard not to leave bruises.
Did she just say . . . ? Did she not want . . . ?
He never let himself think of the sheer volume of years lost. If he did, he wasn’t sure he’d ever truly be free. Even if his body was whole and hale, finally fit enough to command the new power that he was just coming to appreciate as a gift instead of the curse it had been for so long, there was something far different about being a prisoner of the mind.
If he knew the exact number of lifetimes he’d never see again, well, madness would be a kindness.
But to realize that he hadn’t been entirely abandoned? That Neela had been in his corner, in his fucking cell , all that time, quietly repairing and cleaning away whatever filth the charmers had forced to leak out of him?
He hadn’t been alone. In his darkest moments, she’d been there, and he wasn’t equipped to deal with the kind of humbling awe that truth draped over him.
But the truth of her draped over his body? Of that connection not needing to be something more?
She was wrong, and he would take no small delight in correcting her.
Rhode reared up and cradled her face inches from his. “The fuck it does.”
He captured her mouth in a kiss so hard, so raw, that it spoke every word of emotion he’d never been able to reach when it came to her. He was a seraphim commander, a master of espionage and coercion, and if he couldn’t figure out how to impress upon her just how vitally his soul craved hers . . . then he didn’t deserve the relief that had somehow only ever found him through her hands.
“Do you know how long,” he murmured into her mouth, “I’ve been waiting to tear this dress from you?”
Neela smiled against his lips. “You know, under normal circumstances, I would never advocate for this, but…”
“But?”
“Do it.”
The finely spun threads gave no resistance as he grabbed the front of her collar and pulled. Her breath hitched but was quickly followed by a sigh that Rhode would happily die listening to.
But he had no plans of dying quite yet.
His knuckles brushed against black lace that expertly curved around breasts his mouth watered to taste. Another package. Another present. Another secret promise.
When she arched her back, he took her offering with relish. The lace’s design was like an intricate puzzle box that hid the very treasure he couldn’t go another moment without kissing. Neela’s hands slipped along his scalp as she moved his mouth where she wanted him. When his lips bumped against the little mound of her nipple through the fabric, he nurtured his treasure with undue attention.
“Shit, Rhode. Oh my God.”
Neela’s head fell back as he plumped her breast, coaxing more of her into his mouth, while he plied the other with his fingers.
There was more of her than he could contain with his mouth or hands alone, and his cock fucking knew it. Each mounding caress of her breasts drew an answering throb that beat insistently against his thigh.
“Mages, you’re perfect. You’re everything. I need to see more. I need to see all of you, little demon. Please.”
“Always.”
Always.
The word smoothed over raw wounds with its promise of the future. He sighed an unknown relief against her sternum before placing a kiss there.
The rest of their clothes fell away on that one promise, until he lay bare before her, and she resumed her perch above him, straddling him like Lady Godiva atop her gelding. Her luscious hair fell to the tips of her full breasts, with select tendrils curling around her nipples like golden ribbon adorning a precious package. She smiled at him as she steadied herself below his abdominals, eyes alight with mischief and something that seemed to form a tether inside his chest.
Had he really thrown her into the same lot as the other charmers? In what world could he possibly mistake the golden beauty situated above him as anything other than fate’s excellence?
Rhode reached for her, but instead of lifting her breasts to his mouth again as he longed to do now that they were freed of their bindings, he stopped and instead skated his fingers along the smooth undercurve of each globe.
Damn, he loved her body. Loved how full and heavy her breasts were, how they settled over the top of her rounded abdomen, adding more allure to the curvature of her waist where his hands itched to settle.
There was nothing harsh about her. He could see that now. No evil magic or vile intentions. Only pure, shining perfection. The finest threads could never do her skin justice.
He sat up and pressed a kiss to her stomach, holding it there for several heartbeats. “You are far softer than any garment.”
Her lilting chuckle pushed her farther against him, and his abs curled in response. “Not too soft, I hope.”
A wicked gleam lit her eyes, and then, mages damn him, she took his cock in hand.
“Fuck, Neela.” Rhode’s head hit the mattress as she squeezed the base with a devilish insistence that belied the tenderness she gazed down at him with.
Then that hand slowly drew down to the base of him, taking special care to ensure her thumb’s knuckle pressed against the bulging vein beneath his shaft. The move expertly elicited the groan from him she was no doubt searching for, along with a pearly drop of arousal that was only the beginning of what he hoped she’d claim from him.
He wanted to give her everything—his secrets, his sorrows, his fucking sanity. All of it was hers if he could continue to lose himself in the embrace of this woman.
But her stroking was relentless and pulled sounds from him that would threaten to tear down the mountain if he didn’t get inside her soon.
Rhode lifted his head and looked down the plane of his torso at his cock’s glistening tip, at the woman who had, mages almighty, bent forward to place a gentle kiss on the weeping head before she lifted up and angled him toward her slick entrance.
His answering thrust was rough and unexpected but controlled enough to ensure she felt only pleasure. Her powerful thighs became the anchors beneath his hands as he pistoned his greedy hips into her over and over again, rocking in time to her swaying breasts. Every so often, he curled forward, capturing a taunting nipple in his mouth and tugging just to hear the hiss through her smiling teeth.
Her core was a tight sanctuary that welcomed him home with each plunge, a salvation that, little by little, chipped away at the tight coil of tension that had been permanently placed on his body. Always on alert. Always ready to strike, to kill. A fire never to be released.
Until now.
Her soft moans coaxed him higher, hotter. Fuck, he’d chase those sounds anywhere they’d take him, if only for the privilege to combust beneath her once he’d found them.
“Neela . . . Oh, God . . .”
She answered his benediction with a prayer pose of her own, arching her back and slamming her hands down on his thighs. Her breasts quivered in time with the tightening fist of her body as it dragged his orgasm from him while riding out her own. Rhode shot up and clutched her to his chest, holding on as he cradled the very life he held impossibly dear. Her heart shuddered against his, pulsing in time to the waves of passion that had begun to lick up his spine.
Whatever barriers he’d carefully constructed around Neela had exploded into tiny shards as his angel fire flared to life, burning off the fumes of his ecstasy.
Rhode cried out when the power of his soul finally burst through its cage, instantly dissolving the shards of its previous confinement. His full angel fire, unrestrained with the complete strength of the soul bond, roared into existence, set free like a phoenix?—
A phoenix that was about to light the damn sheets on fire.
“Shit!”
He grabbed Neela quickly before any bedding could be singed and settled on the floor with his back to the stone wall, her panting body still clinging to him as she laughed into his neck. That glorious hair, slick with sweat, stuck to his forearms and biceps as his fire finally started to die down, claiming her as his own just as her soul had claimed him.
Gingerly, with more care than he’d ever been taught to wield, he lifted her hair from her neck to kiss her pulse point and froze.
“Rhode?” Neela asked, still trying to get her breathing under control. But when she tried to push away from him to see what he was looking at, he kept her close.
“Stay still.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
Rhode stared at the small iridescent symbol tattooed behind her earlobe, which, if it weren’t for his angel fire illuminating it briefly before the flames extinguished fully, he would have never seen.
Did Neela even know it was there?
And more importantly, if she did know it was there, did she understand whose name she bore on her body?