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)
He was close enough to hear their delighted shouts.
Rising again, he caught up to Aodhan with ease now that the wind had dropped. His heart thudded as he flew almost wingtip to wingtip with the other man. He had no idea what Aodhan was thinking, but given their playful midfight conversation…
His mouth dried up. Where are we going?
Angling his wings left, Aodhan turned toward the endless horizon. We’re just flying. A wicked glance. I am way too big a sparkling target to dance that dance anywhere but in the protected skies above the Refuge.
Illium found himself saying, I swear I’ll black out every single recording system in the entire region. Strange, inexplicable failure, so sorry.
Laughter in his mind, the Aodhan of yesterday a bright echo in the Aodhan of today. For this man, Illium would do anything. Even just fly wild and free…until they dove into the ocean far from land and from any oceangoing vessels.
It was under the waves that Aodhan took his face and kissed him with a raw passion that had him groaning and wrapping himself around his half-naked lover…as his wings created a glow around them that he ignored with every fiber of his being.
The Cascade was over, ascension no longer a possibility.
Their upper bodies collided, hard muscle to hard muscle, firm lips to firm lips, hands in hair and wings working to keep them under. Because angels could go without air much longer than mortals.
And this kiss…it was a kiss that spoke of a dance hundreds of years in the making.
They parted only when their lungs hurt from the lack of air, and even then, they lingered, looking at each other in the glowing blue-green of the ocean, the merest handspan of water between them.
When they erupted out of the waves, it was as a pair.
There could be no dance here, not without protections in place to shield an act Illium would not have visible to the world…but when they tumbled into bed together after drying off, they did so skin to skin.
Mea lux? Are you sure?
I changed inside today, Illium. I understood my power for the first time and it is a dividing line between past and present.
Illium had no more questions, not when he saw the determination in his lover’s eyes. From that point on, there was only them and this joyous moment in time.
Hot breath against the curve of a neck.
A callused hand skimming down a flank.
Fine strands of hair against a ridged abdomen.
Knowing caresses at the arches of wings held with precision.
Kisses raw and untamed as perspiration broke out over their bodies, arousal a pumping beat in the blood.
“You taste of salt and want.” Words that only amped up the need thick and humid in the air.
Gasps, tugs on hair, and the taut strength of one flipping the other, the chest of one pressed to the bed as his lover took control. Thighs thick with muscle pushed apart in a tussle that had no loser. Bodies rubbing together with a roughness that was natural for two warriors.
Wrists grasped. Demands made.
Laughter deep and intimate wrapped in love endless, kisses that were never enough…and wings that arched open until they became a feathered sky.
24
Isiel, Illium’s jeweler contact, came through the next morning. At least two of the pieces in the collection of images you sent belong to an angel named Lailah out of Northern Africa, he messaged. Last anyone saw them was on her at least. They’re of a caliber that word would’ve got out if they’d changed hands.
“Why do I know that name?” Aodhan murmured as they lay naked and warm in bed, Illium’s head pillowed on Aodhan’s shoulder as the blue-winged angel looked at the message while Smoke dozed curled up in a patch of sun lower down the bed.
Aodhan couldn’t imagine a more perfect moment.
“Lailah is Andi’s mother.”
Aodhan blew out a quiet breath. “I keep forgetting her bloodline.” He stroked the fingers of his free hand over Illium’s chest, his other arm folded behind his head. “She’s so unlike anyone I could imagine coming from Charisemnon in any form.”
“Lailah used to be part of Charisemnon’s court but I have no idea of her current whereabouts.” Frowning, Illium put his phone aside. “Titus doesn’t keep that style of court—and even if he did, I can’t see him trusting Charisemnon’s daughter.”
“No. Even without the problematic blood connection, she’s not the type of person Titus would consider for a position.”
Aodhan had enough memories of Lailah—now that he’d placed her—to know that she was a beautiful dissolute, an angel who’d been powerful and dangerous in defense of the part of the territory she’d once held on behalf of her father, but who’d otherwise lived a life of…nothingness. His memories brightened as he continued to focus, until Lailah emerged full-fledged, the images from the rare times he’d run across her.