Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Heart aching with all he felt, Illium finished up, then pressed a kiss to the top of Aodhan’s spine—after deliberately making enough noise that the touch wouldn’t be a surprise. “Out, Adi.” He switched off the water. “Or you’ll turn into a sparkly prune.” Angelic skin didn’t shrivel up at the same speed as mortal skin, but it did eventually do so.
A long sigh, followed by a stretch that would’ve done Smoke proud.
Groaning inwardly at all that muscled glory, Illium got himself and his sodden jeans out of the shower. At which point he stripped while Aodhan was still in the midst of his stretch, then wrapped a towel around his waist. He’d grabbed a big towel for Aodhan by the time the other man turned toward him.
“Fucking marble statue,” Illium muttered. “It’s ridiculous how you’re built.”
Aodhan’s smile was deep, his eyes sleepy. “Ah, such romance.”
Illium scowled. “Out. I slaved over ordering your favorite meal for you and you need to eat.” Aodhan had been running himself ragged for the two victims he’d claimed as his own, and Illium knew he’d continue to do so.
Still smiling, and still proudly naked in a way that would’ve been impossible for him mere decades ago, Aodhan walked straight into the towel Illium held up. He let Illium wrap it around his hips, then stood quiescent while Illium rubbed him dry using another towel.
“I feel like I melted,” he said at one point, draping his arms around Illium’s shoulders and rubbing his nose against Illium’s.
Illium’s damn heart melted at that. Right into goo. He hadn’t known it could do that.
After nuzzling Aodhan back, he used the towel to catch a couple of rogue droplets on the other man’s chest, then deliberately dropped the towel to the floor.
“You know I hate dropped towels in the bathroom,” Aodhan grumbled without removing his arms from around Illium’s shoulders.
“I know.” Illium was unrepentant. “I wanted to wake you up. I’m not letting you sleep until you eat.” With that, and no matter how tempting Aodhan was with his skin warm and dry, his body lax, and his eyes drowsy, he took the other man’s strong, callused hand and dragged him to the bedroom—where he’d set up a picnic on a folding table beside the enormous bed.
Beds made for their kind had to be enormous, especially if they ever intended to share their sleeping space. While Tower staff had sourced the basic furniture for the Seven’s suites, they’d each chosen their mattresses, and mentioned if they’d prefer any changes to the standard building plan—hence Aodhan’s bigger kitchen and custom shower.
All the decorative personalization had been left up to them.
Aodhan’s home was beautiful in its quiet touches—like the bedspread of white on white with just the barest blush of blue rising from the edges, and the elegant water jug on a corner shelf that Aodhan had found in China and asked Suyin if he could keep.
The archangel had looked befuddled, her surprise enough to trump her bone-tired demeanor of moments before; the latter was a face she showed only to her most trusted people. For the rest, those who looked to her for hope, for a reason to go on, she was an archangel without vulnerability.
“Aodhan,” she’d said, while pulling her long ice-white hair back from her face with a tie she’d borrowed from one of her warriors, “you can take buckets of diamonds and rubies should you desire. But are you sure you want to bring this energy into your home? We’re in an area dark with my aunt’s influence.”
“Objects can be cleansed of bad energies.” Solemn words from Aodhan. “This work created by a gifted artisan shouldn’t be abandoned or forsaken because of another’s evil.”
Now here it sat, physically cleansed by a concoction of Aodhan’s designed not to damage the delicate paintings on the jug, and spiritually cleansed by a mortal holy man from China. Angels had no holy men of their own, not in that way. As Illium had told Catalina when she’d asked him, angelkind had no religions—perhaps an inevitable thing in a race of immortals for whom a life beyond this one was an academic thought at best.
The closest they got to it was talking about “the Havens” and life “beyond the veil” but even that was a nebulous concept with no structure behind it. Simply an acknowledgment that perhaps there was another plane of existence; that acknowledgment was enough to offer them a painful comfort when angels died young, as had happened in the war.
Then there were those of their kind who had become…different over time. Wise in a form that was transcendent, their minds and bodies apart from this world in a way that Illium couldn’t explain. But to talk to them was to know you spoke to a being who was so present in the instant as to be a guiding star in your world…and so much in another place that you would never reach them.