Chapter Twenty-One
Gabriel
I lean forward and drop my mouth to hers, working the rest of the tiny buttons free until her shirt is sliding down her arms and her skin is glowing porcelain in the muted light that pours in through the small window.
“If I do something you don’t like, just tell me.”
She nods, hesitant, her knees hugging my hips where she’s perched on my desk. I slip two fingers into the top of her jeans and rub my thumb over the button.
“And if I do something you do like, you can tell me that, too.”
She huffs, her shoulders relaxing, her lips quirking in a small smile. I can’t see much of her, but I can see enough. The rise and fall of her chest and the smooth lines of her body. Her dark eyes, right on me.
I undo the button on her fly, then work the zipper. Her underwear is the same soft black material as her bra, and my knuckles rub against the front of it as I grip the top of her jeans and pull.
“Lift your— Yeah. Just like that. Good.”
She’s suspiciously agreeable. I narrow my eyes, and her head tips to the side.
“What?” she asks.
“I don’t know what to do with you like this.”
At her raised eyebrow, I elaborate.
“When you’re docile.”
She snorts. “I’m sure you can think of something.”
I drop her jeans behind me, and she crosses her legs at the ankle. There are so many things I want to do—so many things I’ve thought about doing, when I shouldn’t have been thinking about them at all.
I crowd closer and inch her legs wider. Her breath hitches when I press my hand to the small of her back and arch her backward across my desk, the ends of her hair tickling at my forearm where I keep us balanced.
I bend my head to hers and kiss her slowly, working her mouth open.
She’s restless, dragging her half-naked body against me, moving in time with the rhythm of my mouth.
“Gabriel,” she pants, and I drift my mouth lower, my teeth on the strap of her bra.
I cup her breast and thumb at her nipple, but the material is flimsy.
Frustrating. I can’t feel her the way I want.
Impatient, I reach behind her for the clasp, flicking it open with my fingers.
The soft material slips off her with a whisper, bare skin in the moonlight.
I lean my forehead against hers and look down.
I like the way we look together. My hands, scarred and calloused and covered with ink, curled around the top of her rib cage.
My thumbs between her breasts. With every rough exhale, her chest rises and falls, her rosy nipples pebbled tight.
I drop down to my knees so I can suck one in my mouth.
Her back bows, and her hands rise to thread through my hair. “Gabriel,” she says again.
My eyes pinch closed. My cock is throbbing beneath the fly of my jeans. We’ve hardly done anything at all and I’m already desperate for her. I’ve been desperate for her. Since I had my first taste, all those weeks ago.
I drop my forehead against her belly and try to collect myself. “What do you want?” I rasp.
She doesn’t answer. I clap the palm of my hand lightly against the curve of her hip, and her body jolts.
“Darcy. Tell me how I give you what you need.”
“I told you, I don’t—”
I growl, frustrated, and slip my hand over the damp material of her underwear. I press my thumb where she’s warmest and wettest. “Does it ache? Right here?”
She drops her head back and pants, open mouthed at the ceiling. “Yes,” she whispers.
“Do you want me to make it go away?”
“Yes.” She nods, her bottom lip between her teeth. “Please,” she breathes.
I rock my forehead back and forth against hers.
“Fuck,” I whisper. I underestimated how much I’d like hearing that word fall out of her mouth.
Darcy, who never asks for anything. Darcy, who is stubborn to a fault.
Darcy, who buries all her hurts and writes down her wishes on a shitty piece of faded notebook paper to carry with her.
She never asks for anything, but she’s asking me for this.
I lean back and consider her. Her knees are tipped wide, her hair wild, her silk shirt and her bra hanging from the crook of her elbows.
“Tell me to stop,” I warn, my fingers digging against her thighs.
One last attempt at holding myself in check.
“If you don’t, I’m going to be selfish with you.
There won’t be anything left for anyone else.
” It’s the most possessive I’ve ever let myself be, and I’m almost ashamed of it.
But a switch was flipped when that Ferryman came looking.
No one is taking her from me, I tell myself. Not now.
Magic fills the space between us, and her eyelids grow heavy.
“No,” she whispers. Her voice echoes and rolls, like storm clouds over water. “Don’t stop. That’s what I want.”
“You want me to be greedy?”
She nods, reaching for me. Her fingertips trace the lines of my face. “When’s the last time you took what you needed, Gabriel, hm?” She tips forward, her mouth barely brushing mine. “Let me give you what you need.”
My eyes flutter shut with a broken sound. With everyone else, I have to be temperate. In control. Polite and well-behaved.
But not with Darcy.
Darcy wants me exactly as I am. She wants the rough and broken pieces as much as the shiny, perfect ones. In fact, I think she likes those pieces better.
Grateful, I drop to my knees, yanking her legs even wider. When I dip my head between her thighs, there’s a small wet patch on the front of her underwear. I start there first, pressing the flat of my tongue against it and making it wetter.
Darcy gasps. “I—” She doesn’t seem to know where she wants the rest of that sentence to go. “I—”
“This is how I want it,” I tell her, keeping one hand on the inside of her thigh, the other going to work at my belt. “I want you just like this.”
I’m so fucking hard and all I’ve done is breathe against her. I pull myself out and give my cock a firm, slow stroke. Her breath shudders, and her eyes slip shut.
“No,” I say, and I drag another slow kiss against the front of her underwear. “Eyes on me, sweetheart.”
She’s frustrated, I can tell, but I hold myself exactly where I am until her eyes open.
“Good,” I tell her, my hand still working lazily between my legs. “Stay just like that.”
Her chin dips once in acknowledgment. I dip my chin, too, and bring my mouth back against the damp material. I kiss her through it the same way I’ve been kissing her mouth. Slow and steady. Deep and wet. I want her to come this way first, and then I’ll let myself feel her.
I stay patient. I go slow. I let her hand in my hair guide me where she wants me, and then I hold myself there, working my mouth against her until she’s squirming. Darcy is responsive and vocal and both of those things have me rolling my hips into my hand, chasing relief.
“I’m—” Another hiccupping sigh that lodges itself under my skin. In that place where my magic seems to come from, glowing and warm. “I’m really close, I think, and I—”
“If you have to think about it, I’m doing something wrong.”
I wrench her legs wider and drag her closer. I’m rougher than I should be, but Darcy lets out a wild, wanting sound.
A fingertip glides along the back of my neck, and I flick my eyes up, watching Darcy over the rise of her bare tits.
One of her hands is in my hair and the other is clinging to the edge of the desk.
Neither are on my neck, but her eyes are pitch black, lashes fluttering against the tops of her cheeks.
That prickly, tight sensation curls over my shoulder, slipping down my chest to brush against my hip where I’ve tugged down my jeans.
It’s her magic, I realize. Black, whispery shadows that coil around us both. They curl over her legs and slip around my fingers where I’m still gripping her tight.
“Stop teasing me,” she demands. Her voice seems to echo with the promise of her magic, each of her nine lives demanding I get to work.
I grin, abandoning my cock to roll my thumb against her instead. “No.”
She groans and rolls her head back. The shadows expand and contact, brushing against me like silk ribbon. Her underwear is so wet I can see the shape of her through it. I tap her clit, then slide my thumb down and put pressure right where she needs it.
Her hips wiggle.
“I’m going to—” she chokes out, and I keep my touch firm and steady, letting her work herself against me the way she needs. It only takes a few rolls of her hips before her long legs are hugging at my sides, her body trembling as she comes.
“Gabriel.”
She chokes on my name, and my magic flares hot, burning in the middle of my chest and out across my arms. My wings explode out of me in a rush, and then I’m standing.
Scooping her off the edge of the desk, arranging her until her back is pressed to my chest and my hand is down the front of her underwear.
“I want to feel it,” I grind out. She’s so wet. So soft. I curl my other arm around her middle and hitch her tighter to me. “Can I—”
“Yes,” she interrupts. Her hands grip my forearms, her nails digging half-moons against my skin.
I nuzzle my nose under her ear. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
She laughs. “Gabriel, I can’t feel my legs. You can do whatever you want with me.”
She’s a mess beneath her underwear. I paint sloppy circles against her skin with it. Over and over until she wiggles and whines.
“God,” she breathes. “Why didn’t we do this from the start?”
I rock my hips against the curve of her ass. It’s not enough friction, not even close, but I can’t pull myself away from her. I drop a kiss against her bare shoulder. “Because one of us was trying to kill the other.”
“Oh, is that what happened?” She turns her head to the side, her nose grazing my neck, her hips rocking against my hand. “You were the one with the sword.”
But you’re the one that got me on my knees, I think hazily.
I pull her tighter against my body and bury my face in her shoulder. She smells so good. Like sweat and sex and cherries and the pineapple drink she’s been sipping on all night. I want to take a bite right out of her. I swear, no one has driven me half as crazy as Darcy does.
“Gabriel,” she whispers as she reaches for me, her knuckles brushing against my cock. My teeth snap together. “I told you to take what you need, and I meant it. I want that with you.”
I pull my hand away from her and press my knees to the back of hers, guiding her forward until she can put her palms on the desk. I keep my chest to her back. “Like this,” I tell her.
A breath shudders out of her. I trace the line of her underwear at her hip, down over the curve of her thigh.
“I just want to feel you,” I mumble, drunk off the feel of her.
It’s like I’m eight bottles of wine deep again. I press her thighs together, then nudge my cock between them, rocking against her slick, warm skin. Darcy gasps and tosses her head back against my shoulder.
“You could have more,” she whispers.
I shake my head and roll my body against hers, smooth easy strokes that nudge against her with each thrust. “Want to feel you like this,” I rumble. “Love knowing that I made a mess out of you.”
“Or maybe you just love torturing yourself. It’s that—ah”—her breath hiccups—“Guardian complex of yours.”
I slide my palm up her chest and cup her breast. “We’re not talking about that right now.”
“Yeah, okay,” she laughs. “Sounds good.”
We dissolve into frantic touches and muffled sounds.
I bury my face in her hair and groan, abandoning finesse for what feels good, chasing down my pleasure and hers with every rough thrust of my hips.
The desk rattles and the metal legs screech across the floor.
Darcy grinds herself back on me, and it’s unbearable, how good it feels.
To have her like this. To hold her and feel her and fuck myself against her.
She’s more divine than any magic I’ve ever had.
“Gonna keep you close,” I mutter against her ear. I press a distracted kiss beneath it, drag my mouth against her skin to the top of her spine. “Gonna keep you safe.”
Her fingers lace through mine. “I know you will,” she whispers. “I’ll keep you safe, too.”
I come with a broken sound from somewhere deep in my chest, my fingers tangled with hers and my face pressed against her shoulder. My wings beat once, then wrap around us, sheltering us from everything outside this room.
Darcy strokes her fingertips over my forearm, tracing a tattoo of a swallow.
I press a kiss to the back of her head, then pull away and tuck myself back into my jeans.
Her underwear is crooked around her hips, displaced from where I was moving against her.
I smooth it back into place, making no move to clean her up.
I like the idea of her going back into the bar with the both of us worked into her skin.
She huffs and tosses an amused look over her shoulder, and I grin in response. Lazy and satisfied as I hand over her jeans.
“What happens now?” she asks, slipping one leg in, then the other.
I barely wait for her to finish doing up the zipper before I tug her into me. I stamp a kiss to her forehead, then lean down and kiss her mouth.
“Now I do exactly as I said. I keep you close,” I promise. “I keep you safe.”