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)
His kiss was firm, demanding, his hand on the back of Aodhan’s head.
Aodhan sank into it, into Illium, and into the words that Illium spoke into his mind. Of beauty, of adoration, of sensual promise. The things that his abductors had taken from him by making those words things he associated with cruelty and pain.
Today, his Blue rebuilt his entire understanding—with Aodhan’s full cooperation. It was conscious, that cooperation, Aodhan anchoring himself in Illium each time he felt the wolves of darkness begin to gather, to howl.
When Illium put his fingers on Aodhan’s waistband, Aodhan sucked in a quick breath before falling into Illium’s kiss again as Illium tugged on the cord that was all that held up his pants.
The fabric pooled at his feet, Aodhan stepping out of it with conscious will.
No more flinching.
No more.
“My beautiful man,” Illium murmured, his fingers tracing Aodhan’s lips as he kept on rebuilding the joy in the words that had been stolen from him. “Look at all that ridged muscle”—tracing his abdomen—“those powerful thighs.” His gaze dropped.
Aodhan’s throat worked, his shoulders bunching. The thighs Illium had admired grew rigid.
“All for me.” When he looked up, Illium’s eyes glowed with a power they shouldn’t, tiny suns that spoke of cells changing, morphing. “You became this so I’d never be alone on the battlefield. Your body is an act of love, Adi. Don’t you ever forget that.”
More walls cracked, crumbled, vanished into nothing. Because Illium was right. Aodhan had this body, these muscles, this strength for him. He’d never been interested in becoming a warrior, could’ve spent his entire immortal life in a studio or out sketching in a field, his muscles loose and relaxed instead of defined and cut.
But that would’ve meant watching from safe ground while Illium flew out to battle. And that, he could simply never do. So he’d carved out time from his art instruction under Lady Sharine—such precious time—to attend lessons in swordcraft, ground grappling, and winged combat. He’d begun to run to each of his art lessons in order to build up his strength. And he’d taken up flying on long routes with Illium to increase his endurance.
All of it because he loved Illium more than he loved the art that was a constant melody inside him.
None of it had ever been a sacrifice.
How could he have forgotten that? Forgotten that his flesh was a testament to his love and devotion? That his body was a love song to Illium? “I love you,” he rasped. “More than air and sunlight, more than the sky or art.”
“Aodhan.” Another kiss, as fierce as it was tender as Aodhan tugged at the waistband of Illium’s jeans.
The rasp of cloth over skin, the brush of skin on skin, the motion of two bodies in perfect sync.
“Beautiful,” Illium said again in a breathless caress before they fell tangled and naked into bed.
Their aroused bodies pressed into each other, their wings overlapping as their thighs did the same. And Illium’s eyes so full of a violent power that wanted to devour him, they were on Aodhan’s face, his body, as he mapped Aodhan’s love for him with his hands and his lips and his words.
A warrior’s callused hands, but that same warrior had lips that sipped at Aodhan’s and fingers that played over him with delicate grace as he showed Aodhan that his body wasn’t just a vessel for agony, that it could bring pleasure beyond compare—not only physical, but of the heart.
“My beautiful, beautiful Adi with his skin like starlight.” Silken strands of black hair tipped in blue brushing over his chest. “Hold on, mea lux.”
Tears streaked down Aodhan’s face as Illium showed him what it was to trust a lover and have that trust rewarded a million times over.
An erotic kiss made tender.
A primal act laced with love.
A powerful body that treated his own with care, such infinite care.
Light sparked behind his eyes, brighter than sunlight on his skin, then he was breaking apart into endless tiny motes, a constellation of dazzling steel fire.
“I have you, Adi.” Words he heard through his bones, a vibration to his innermost self. “I have you.” Arms that wrapped around him, wings of silver blue that became his world.
He cried into the crook of Illium’s neck, sobbing out the pain held deep inside his soul, until it had taken root, twisting him up in ways he’d thought nothing would heal.
He hadn’t counted on Illium.
Who didn’t tell him that he was ruining the night with his pain. Arms locked around Aodhan, he said, “Cry, Adi. Cry the poison out, every last drop.”
Blue, they hurt me in ways I never told. A confession torn out of him before he allowed the memories to surface, allowed them to fill his mental voice as he told Illium his darkest secret. I was so ashamed at being turned into that, at being unable to stop the degradation.