Chapter 31
T he roof of the private parking garage had turned into as much of a winter wonderland as Neela could imagine. The snowfall had gone from a dusting to slightly more serious in under an hour, with a solid two inches already coating the pavement. All the levels below were crammed full of self-important cars in compact spaces, while the roof was unapologetically barren.
Barren save for Rhode, who stood in front of a silver luxury-class SUV, complete with temporary tags and extra shine on the tires.
But the brightest shine was coming off the angel who leaned against it. With his woolen trench coat’s collar popped, fists in his pockets, and blazing eyes on Neela, he looked like a man of many secrets, as well as a man of many regrets.
“Call me if he’s an asshole,” Chrome shouted from the window.
“Um, okay,” Neela murmured absentmindedly while Rhode just nodded to Chrome in a manner that simultaneously said Thanks and Really?
And then they were alone. Nothing between them except for several dozen feet worth of snow-covered asphalt and even more unspoken secrets.
“Hi,” she said, uncertain how to proceed. “So, what’s this?—”
The snow swirled around her in a flurry of confusion. Rhode’s wings arced to the sides as he half flew, half ran toward her. She was yanked up against his chest and absorbing his kiss before the next word even had time to form in her throat.
There was a consuming comfort to being wrapped in his warmth again, as if his touch was the only one capable of chasing away the permanent chill that had followed her around her whole life. And when he opened his coat and held her closer to him with both wool and wings, he claimed the part of her that had always yearned to be truly declared by another.
When the kiss broke, it was with a promise of reckoning, and she truly had no earthly idea which Rhode would speak to her next. The chilly, business-like seraph who looked at her as a means to an end? The sardonic, pained seraph who resented her for the hand she’d had in his torment by virtue of who she was? Or the wicked and wonderful seraph who, in precious private moments, called her his and prized her as one of his family?
Neela wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for the whiplash, but she was most definitely ready for him, and if he thought he was going to call her out there to freeze her butt off, kiss her senseless, and pretend what they shared was only surface level, then he had another thing?—
“Why did I ever think I could keep myself away from you?” he breathed against her mouth before stealing another soft kiss.
“Because men are dumb,” she murmured against his chest. “At least according to mortal TV.”
He huffed out a small laugh. “Mortals are dumb, but they have the benefit of occasionally dying before they’re hit with the consequences of their actions. It’s a bit different when you’re an immortal and time is just another length of rope with which to?—”
Neela leaned back and put her fingers over his mouth. “Can we just not go there with the death analogies?”
Rhode kissed her fingers and curled them close to his chest. “Agreed. But I’d like to ask you something as well.”
“Shoot.”
“Will you forgive me?”
Neela blinked. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“No, let me finish. I must say this.” He took a deep breath and looked back at the car a moment before giving her his full attention. “Chrome helped me buy that. It’s my first purchase as a citizen of the modern world. I meant to surprise you with it.”
“So that’s where you were this week, with Chrome. That’s wonderful.”
Then his gaze darkened and took on that intense look she’d seen from him too often. “It’s all because of you.”
“Me?”
Rhode’s wings shimmered away as he escorted her toward the vehicle. “You made me realize that I can never have a future without letting go of the past.”
“If anyone had a damn good reason for not letting go of their past, it’d be you.”
“No, hear me.” Then he gentled his tone. “Please. I was using what had been done to me as an excuse and was content to allow my fury to burn hot enough to propel me into whatever future I never expected to live long enough to have. Until you came along and made me realize that hot air only lasts for so long.”
Neela shook her head, a bit overwhelmed at his admission. “I didn’t do anything.”
He lifted her chin higher. “Oh, little demon, you know that’s not true. And that is my fault for making you feel that way.” Then he opened the passenger door for her, and the eagerness in his eyes was bright enough to light ten city blocks. “I’d like to share this world with you, to discover it together, if that is what you’d like as well.”
She didn’t know whether it was the temperature outside or the promise of heat inside, but her butt found that leather in a speed that surprised even herself. Then he climbed in the driver’s seat beside her and closed the door. His hands found hers again, and she remembered how much she missed this. How much she missed him .
The smooth plastic shell hitting her palm was a surprise.
“What’s this?”
“Your key.”
“ My key?”
But he was serious. Dead serious. “This vehicle is yours. Not mine. If we’re going to figure this living-life-aboveground thing out together, then I need you right here with me, learning and driving and hopefully not skidding out, as I may have almost done on the way over here.” A gentle tease lifted the corner of his lips, and it made her heart swell.
“You’re really doing this. You’re not kidding, are you? This is really mine?”
Rhode nodded. “Paperwork’s in the glove box. Permanent plates will be available in a few weeks. This private garage is one of many places you can park. Bronze actually owns the property, along with several storage units for his bikes. You need oil changes, tire rotations, or anything so much as a car wash, you let me know and I’ll take care of it. But nothing would make me so happy as to figure this thing out together, not as partners or roommates but as soul bonds. True soul bonds.”
Neela’s throat tightened with a pang that threatened to warn her off what she still needed to do, what she needed to tell him. Her lip quivered beneath the weight of his confession, though, of what the small key fob in her hand not only symbolized but the future it would steer her toward.
A future with Rhode in it, with the angels, the mates, a home, all of it wrapped up neatly beneath the blanket of only her second snowfall ever. And once they finally defeated Cyro and reclaimed the relic, they’d have time to talk about what was to come. Crawling before walking. Parking before racing.
For the first time in her existence, time didn’t seem like such a somber sentence, not with Rhode by her side to hold her hand should she stumble.
We have time. He’s giving me time and asking for it in return.
It was a promise she swore she wouldn’t waste. Later, she’d sit him down, hold his hands, and speak the truth her heart needed to tell him. Lift the final weight so they could both soar.
Until then, she’d seize every moment with this angel.
So she chucked the key fob into the console, threw her arms around him, and captured his lips in a searing kiss.
Neela’s weight in his arms was a comfort his body had begged for. He hadn’t known the joys of such tight confines as the front seats of cars until he’d crawled in next to her and was hit with the concentrated scent of hyssop and earthly vitality. It was her scent. A smell that would forever be etched onto his skin and scored into his soul as uniquely hers. It enveloped every part of the car, blanketing his senses and driving him mad. The heat blowing from the vents didn’t help, either. All it did was tease the ends of her hair, offering up her charms like the distracting scarf of a belly dancer.
The entire scenario was a game he’d never learned to play, and he was gambling with something far more precious than money.
Many times, desperation had threatened to get the better of him, but he’d always been able to, if not outsmart, at least outlast it. When it came to Neela, however, he had taken an undue risk, and now that he’d finally gotten his head out of the sand and secured it in the direction of what mattered most, he was worried he might have been too late.
But then his arms were around her again, and he was fervently sipping from her mouth, every logical thought casting itself off to the dancing snowflakes beyond the windows.
The heat of the soul bond flared to life beneath his skin, and the fury of it forced a groan into her mouth.
“You know,” she said, breathless, “remind me to thank Chrome for the extra leg room.”
Rhode unzipped her coat as she helped him shuck out of his. “Remind me to show you what happens when you mention another man’s name while I have my hands on you.”
“Oh, fine. Very well.” Neela leaned back, feigning annoyance with an exasperation that refused to meet her eyes.
He took the opening for what it was and quickly scooped her onto his lap, yelps and all. Her weight was the blanket his soul would never grow tired of. Large thighs filled his palms as he slid her impossibly closer against him, until his straining cock begged to close the few inches separating them. She wore an orange-and-black plaid knee-length skirt that tied at the waist and would have been shreds on the floor if another idea hadn’t occurred to him first.
“I want to see you come apart in this car, little demon. Can you do that for me?”
Neela’s breaths were thick and heated and pulled her delicious breasts higher to the edge of her scoop-neck sweater. “That doesn’t sound like that big of an ask,” she said, undoing the buttons of his silk shirt.
“Hold a moment,” he said, offering a delicate kiss to the tops of her breasts while he stilled her questing fingers. “I want something first.”
Her sly eyebrow lifted. “Yes?”
But the realization soon lit her face when his fingers traced a map of salvation up the inside of her thigh. He held her against him as she squirmed and writhed, but he refused to let her free, no matter how many times she pouted that damn lower lip and tried to shimmy around his arms.
When he found the barrier of fabric guarding his treasure, he slipped one finger beneath it and moaned when it came away slick and weeping.
Then he froze when her hands caged his face and those arresting gold eyes bore into him. “Together,” she breathed.
It was the word that course-corrected his journey onto a path he always needed to follow. With her slim eyebrows raised and that hopeful smile lighting her features, searching for the same in his, he somehow knew this was different.
They found each other’s mouths, not with the ravenous pace of earlier but with the gentle rhythm they’d fall into when they were alone in bed and time was inconsequential. Hours were measured in happiness and hushed breaths instead of their proximity to the approaching sun.
So he slowed his pace. Slowed and savored it, letting her free his arousal while he slid her underwear to the side. Neela sank down on him, and he hissed against her mouth. The prior urgency of harried lovers ebbed away and was replaced by the gentle support of one who’d never let her go. The sensation was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. They kissed as they rocked, moving their tongues in time to the erotic pulls of their bodies, and he, again, saw the genius of their confines. There was no room for questions, no room for elaborate foreplay. There was only room for them and what each could call out of the other while cradling them close.
It was enough to make his chest hurt and his soul cry with the beauty of it all.
Neela quickened her pace, and Rhode encouraged her higher with one hand on her backside while the other cradled her head lest she bump it on the low ceiling. Their kisses grew sloppier, their clothes more wrinkled. Neela’s sweater had fallen low enough to reveal more of the mounded breasts he would close his eyes and dream about long after she’d left him for the day.
“Fuck, Neela,” he groaned, touching his forehead to hers. “Soon, little demon. I fear it’ll be too soon.” Rhode’s balls tightened farther, and he began to lift up into her, chasing the tempo of her rising gasps and quivering thighs.
When Neela didn’t say anything, he pulled back to look at her and nearly came undone. Pleasure painted her features into the shining portrait of the woman who’d have his heart forever. Heart, body, soul, whatever she wanted, it was hers. He was hers, while the rest of the world could fall away beyond the SUV’s foggy windows and the sleepy snowstorm swirling around them.
The realization punched through the base of his spine, and they both cried out as he released into her tightening core. Ripple after ripple sent tremors along the landscapes of both their skins. There was no beginning or end for either of them anymore. What was had finally been put to bed, and what they were would carry him on for as many years as the mages gave him.
When Neela collapsed against him, sated and adding her exhausted breaths to the heated cabin air, he held her more tightly against his chest.
Soul to soul.
Heart to heart.
So close that neither of their pasts could ever pry them apart again.
And come tomorrow, when they finally lured Cyro out of whatever hole he’d been hiding in, Rhode would make damn sure of it.