Chapter 43
RAFE’S WINGS BEAT THEM BACK in the cloud, back into the Veil. And then they’re touching down again on the mountaintop where they started, a world away from Odin Day.
“What did you think?” Rafe says.
“You made it seem so peaceful.”
“That’s because you made a perfect film,” he says.
“Where’s Odin going now?” she asks. “After the White Light, on the other side of the Veil?”
“Beyond.”
Dez squints at him. “You don’t know, do you?”
“And I don’t need to know,” Rafe says. “I have a job to do, and I do it to the best of my ability.”
But Dez still wants to know.
“You do this every day,” she says. “All those syringes.”
“One of us does,” Rafe says. “It used to be Sam’s domain, but now the rest of us trade off. The process moves more quickly when I don’t have passengers, but still, we can keep up.”
“Thank you for showing me.”
“You want to know the truth about the scenes that aren’t in the Vault?” Rafe asks.
“Yes,” Dez says quickly.
He takes a breath, seeming to choose his words carefully. “So, you know no mortal gets to live forever.”
“Of course,” Dez says.
“And yet, every mortal has one scene in their life that makes them think they can. Maybe it’s a flash of ecstasy, of hope for the future, whatever.” He purses his lips and looks at Dez. “Or maybe it’s that one missed opportunity. The proverbial almost that mortals go so nuts for.”
Dez’s mind spins. What Rafe is saying is that the day she met Asher is the moment in Asher’s life, so far anyway, that would make him want to …
Live forever.
“You are that scene for Asher,” he says. “I think you sensed that. I think that’s why you went looking for it. And I have to say, the whole situation makes me incredibly jealous.”
“Rafe—”
“I’ve never been threatened by a mortal before. But ever since I met you …” His eyes linger on her lips. “I want you to be mine, Dez. Entirely. And I want to be yours.”
Dez holds her breath, torn inside. Her attraction for Rafe is so intense, and the remarkable future that awaits her if she chooses him, if she chooses all of this—it’s overwhelming.
But there’s also Asher, and what she saw of herself through his eyes. Her intuition tells her she could make a thousand scenes with Asher that would make both of them want to live forever. Not just one. So there’d be no way Acheron could censor half of it. It makes her wonder—
“Rafe,” she says. “What’s wrong with wanting to live forever?”
“Nothing’s wrong with wanting it,” he says, his gaze penetrating hers. “It’s just impossible.”
A whistling sound comes from above, and Dez looks toward the Veil to see a dark mass crash through its surface, tearing a visible hole.
She screams as—
Rafe spins her out from underneath the thing before it teeters over the edge of the cliff and tumbles down the mountain.
“Was that a frag?” Dez gasps.
“Yes,” Rafe says, out of breath.
“They’re falling through the Veil?”
His jaw tenses as he looks up toward it. “The seams are fraying.”
“Oh my god.”
“We don’t understand how they’re breaking through the barbelo. But it’s getting worse.” He pauses. “I don’t know what to do.”
Dez looks up, alarmed. She’s never heard Rafe like this. “What about Moriah? Dr. Ezekiel? Can’t they help?”
He shakes his head, hardly seeming to hear her question. “If the wrong side finds out where they’re falling from, we’ll lose everything—”
“The war?”
“Yes. The war.”
“Who’s fighting this war, Rafe? Are you?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
He meets her eyes. “On you.”
“Why me?”
“I can’t fight without a protégé. And I chose you as my protégé because when I fight, I win. I need you, Dez. I need your power, your grace, your soul. I need you by my side to save the Veil.”
“I don’t know anything about the Veil, or this war.”
“Lucky you have such a good mentor to teach you.”
The way Rafe’s looking at her, like he’s only ever seen her strengths, Dez feels them inside her—creativity and courage, a ferocity in the face of the impossible.
She feels the angel’s respect in his gaze.
“How can I help?” she says.
His gaze softens, focuses on her eyes. “Stay with me.”
Does he mean right now, tonight? Or for longer? She doesn’t ask. She nods.
He lifts her in his arms again and spreads his wings. They rise to the misty edge of the Veil. Rafe reaches up to touch the Veil, then pulls his hand back to shield his eyes.
Dez looks but can’t see any sudden brightness, any reason for Rafe to act this way.
But then—she feels it. Blinding not her eyes but her soul. She hides her face and looks away, afraid to face the awful brightness again.
“I can’t—” Rafe places his hand over the soul-blazing brightness and grits his teeth with exertion.
Dez stares as his hand has the same effect on the Veil as it once had on her.
The night Rafe told her he was an angel.
The night she learned of Mo’s death. The night when, for just a moment, he’d healed her enough to persevere.
Dez can’t see it; she can feel it. He’s trying to knit the Veil back together where it’s torn.
Suddenly he wrenches his hand away. His shoulders sag against hers and he gasps for breath.
“Rafe!”
“I’m all right. But I need to rest.”
Dez helps him over to a flat rock below the Veil.
He staggers to his knees and lies down, his wings a glorious blanket beneath him.
She sinks to her knees and stares at him, how gorgeous he is, eyes closed and catching his breath.
She’s all but forgotten about the threat to send her to Sheol.
Even Asher, his halo, feels so far away it’s like a dream.
This night, the Veil with Rafe, his power and commitment to his cause … it overwhelms her, and it’s all that she can see.
She moves closer to him. He lifts one arm as if to fold her under it. She sinks to the stone beside him and curls her body around his.
Holding her hand, his fingers run across the mottled skin where the scar is on her wrist. He raises it up so he can see it.
“Who hurt you?” he asks, dragging his lips across the sensitive skin. “I’ll kill them.”
“I did it to myself,” she says, feeling his gaze like a warm, bright light. “I was trying to help my mother. But I was too young. Not strong enough.”
“I think you’ve always been strong enough, Dez.”
She draws her wrist away, down to her waist. “Rafe?”
“Mmm?”
“Can I touch you now?” she asks, her voice a whisper.
“Yes,” he says softly.
“Really?” She sits up, her eyes running hungrily over his wings. “Are there … rules?”
“For me. Not you.”
“So, everything but?”
She hears him smile in the darkness. “If that’s what you want, go ahead and take it.”
She climbs atop him, her thighs already quivering with desire. She places her hands first on his shoulders, watching him close his beautiful eyes in anticipation. Then she runs her fingers up his soft, smooth skin until she feels it. The thrilling expanse of Rafe’s wings.
“Dez,” he groans at her touch.
Her name in his throat is so hot she feels a gush of arousal throb out of her, leaking all the way through her pants onto Rafe’s taut stomach.
Now her fingers inch upward, until they find the obscene softness of his feathers.
She’s never felt anything like this, and judging from Rafe’s ecstatic reaction, he likes the way it feels.
“You’re incredible,” Dez tells him breathlessly, wishing his wings could scratch the all-consuming itch of need she feels when she’s with him.
“No one’s ever touched me like this before,” he gasps.
“Let me do it every night. Let me get so good at it.”
“Fuck, Dez,” he says. “I can barely stand it.”
His breathy inhales guide her touch as slowly she gets to know every fiber of his wings, his sensitive folds, his most tender places.
She’s never had so much fun pleasing someone else. She wants to pay him back for all the pleasure he’s given her these past few months.
She lifts one hand off his wings and he gasps, already missing her touch.
“Don’t stop,” he begs.
She laughs under her breath. “Just wait.”
With her free hand, she loosens his belt and undoes his pants.
“I’m going to fuck you with my mouth now,” she warns, her voice urgent, in control. “Don’t you dare stop me.”
“I surrender,” he breathes.
And she smiles. Dez might have thought that next to Rafe’s wings, finally getting her hands on his dick could be a bit of a disappointment. She would have been wrong. Very, very wrong.
She’s felt how big his cock is before. She knows how hard it gets when the two of them have been pressed together, kissing and hungry for more. But she’s never actually laid eyes on the masterpiece. She’s never been called to worship an angel’s dick before.
That changes now. She licks her lips, then slides down his body to take his holy cock in her mouth.
At first, she takes her time, kissing the full, swollen tip, sliding her lips over its ridge.
He writhes in pleasure, then bucks his hips as she swallows his full length, feeling his curve fit the back of her throat.
Once she’s sucking as much of him as she can take, she reaches up with both hands and strokes his wings.
“Desdemona,” he growls. “How are you so good at this? How do you know how to touch an angel’s wings?”
I’ve had a lot of time to practice in my mind, she wants to tell him, but she’s not taking her mouth off his dick until she’s made this angel come.
Someday, he’s going to fuck her with this massive cock. He’s going to do bad things to her with his wings. And she’s going to relish every minute of it. In the meantime, she’s going to give him the deepest orgasm he’s ever known, across all the millennia of his life.
The pledge nearly makes Dez laugh out loud, how egoistical and likely impossible it sounds.
But pleasing Rafe comes so naturally, and the groans coming out of him are sounds she never wants to stop hearing.
It’s like they were both meant to do this with each other. Destined to blow each other’s minds.
“I’m going to come, Dez,” he says, panting, trembling under her touch. “It won’t be like what you expect.”
She looks up and meets his eyes, sees the yearning in them, how much he needs this, almost fears it.
What will it be like? How does an angel come?
“I’m ready,” she says around the big, smooth head of his dick.
“Fuck.” He moans as his whole body, out to the very edges of his wings, undulates in waves of pleasure. She waits for the salty tang of his come to hit her mouth. She’s hungry to swallow him, to feel him sliding down her throat.
What comes is strange and marvelous, like petrichor but for the mouth, a hurricane of star and rain, like tasting the sex of the beginning of the world. Her lips tingle as she swallows what comes out of him, and a deep feeling of carnal bliss spreads suddenly and intensely through her body.
She’d already been so turned on for him, but she didn’t think she would come merely by sucking his dick.
Wrong again.
The orgasm that grips her in the midst of Rafe’s orgasm joins her entire body to his, renders her immobile as it courses through her in long and tender waves.
She moans, unable to do anything else but bow to the feeling as it slowly, very slowly subsides. And then, finally, when it’s over, it’s all Dez can do to crawl up and into Rafe’s arms, warm and heavy as his wings fall like a blanket over her body.
“You’re the best I’ve ever had, Desdemona,” he says, like he’s falling into a dream.
“You can tell me that when you finally fuck me,” she murmurs, relaxing into the deep, blissful embrace of his wings.