An Angel All His Own (The Gifted Realm Book 5)

by Jillian Neal

  With his left, he allowed himself a few luscious squeezes of that pert, round ass that drove him wild.

  His mother had been correct, damn her for mentioning it. Fionna had put on just a little weight in the last few weeks, but Dan had never seen anything more intoxicating. He hoped she’d gain a little more. He imagined her round, full hips with another few pounds and her breasts just slightly heavier.

  If he’d thought she was gorgeous a month before, now she was absolute perfection. The last thing he wanted her thinking was that she needed to lose weight. Those curves made him drunk with desire every time his eyes feasted on the magnificent landscape that was Fionna.

  He wiped his mother from his mind and concentrated on proving to her that she was devastatingly beautiful, a celestial star that danced only for him. Her light was the only guiding force in his life, the only thing that had ever made sense.

  Their tongues moved in heated accord. He consumed her slowly, until he paused to lift the sweater from her curves. Quickly, he tossed it away. He wanted her flesh. He dug deeper. Releasing her breasts of their lacey enclosure took but one flick of his wrist.

  As if driven by a magnetic force, his hands moved to her large, swollen, breasts, heaving in their need. He lifted their weight and groaned from the sensation.

  “So beautiful, baby, and all for me,” he leaned and tempted her nipples with his tongue until they drew into eager peaks, and he rewarded their effort. Anxious and yearning, he began to suck her right nipple while he caressed her left between his fingers. She trembled against him, and let her head fall back as she gave herself over to his hunger.

  “Yes,” echoed from her in a breathless whisper as he drew her into his mouth with more force. His resolve slipped with her every panted breath. He pulled her body closer and gave himself a modicum of relief as he pressed his tightened strain against her abdomen. With a groan of need, he throbbed fiercely against her.

  She jerked his belt from his pants, pausing to run her hand up and down his zipper line, until she finally worked the trousers apart and revealed him. Her hand sought his cock and a guttural groan tore from his lungs.

  But a moment later, she lost a little of her desperate drive and allowed the worry back in. Dan drew her back to his chest. He dispensed with their pants and then braided his right hand in her hair and kept his left roving her body.

  “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

  She shuddered in his arms and began to rock her body against the steel-hard strain pressed against her. He could feel the wet heat that gathered in the cotton thong.

  His eyes closed as he ordered himself to take his time. The way she came for him, fevered and rhythmic, drove him wild. He knew if he allowed himself to cup his hand against that beautiful flower, so ripe for him, he could make her bloom. He could coax out the tension with virtually no effort. The way she melted for him was automatic.

  He knew how to touch her, where to seek the liquid heat that burned so copiously within her, how to hold her, what to do to make her unravel like spools of ribbon in his hands.

  Lifting her into his arms, he laid her tenderly in their bed and tracked his fingertips from her shoulders over her collarbone. He spun them around her nipples, darkening and beaded tightly, down her taut abdomen, drawn in anticipation, until he slid the panties down her long legs and stared at her throbbing lips. They were flushed and full, just waiting to drown him completely. He finished stripping before cupping his hand and summoning the erotic energy surging within her. He sealed her closed before moving on.

  She pitched and bucked as he allowed his inquisitive fingertips to stroke over her slit and up to the tender rise of nerve endings pulsating under her mound. Her eyes watched him intently as he separated her and gathered the dew seeping from her. He gently circled her opening until she began to beg.

  He wanted more. He needed more. He brought his fingers to his mouth and tasted the nectar of her. It wasn’t enough. Her eyes widened in their elation, and her back arched as he fell to his knees. He lifted her thighs over his shoulders and continued his feast.

  “So damn sweet,” he grunted as he stabbed his tongue into her, then softened and spun it up to her now distended, pulsing clitoris. Her inner lips were swollen tight. Nice. If he’d ever just given her a little time, he could have seen this incredible show before. He’d always been too frantic to own her, too desperate to allow himself to arouse her slowly.

  Reading the cues her body offered, he brushed his tongue over that beautiful, throbbing, pink flesh that hid her pearl. His five-o’clock shadow chafed her inner thighs as he allowed himself to devour her. She groaned from the conflicting sensations.

  She shook, and her legs tightened against his jaw. Oh, hell yeah. Her breaths were short and seemed to elude her body. He pulled her apart gently, granting himself access to the elusive white pearl that belonged only to him. He continued to torture her with his tongue. A longing, evulsed moan lit through the air from deep within her. Her abdomen trembled. Perfect.

  “Let me drink you, sweetheart.” The verbal coaxing sent her over. He covered her clit with his mouth and sucked until she dissolved. When he’d drunk her dry, he moved up her body to build her again.

  Her right hand located the trail of dark hair that would ultimately lead her precisely where he wanted her touch. She traced her index finger along the path and then splayed her hand over the patch of coiled fur at the base of his shaft.

  A searing growl thundered from him as she flipped her hand and caressed him. He was trying to keep everything soft and gentle that night, trying to care for her and tend to her slowly, but his cock was seven shades of hard. He throbbed in her hand, fierce and demanding. Dan’s baser nature threatened to slice his resolve to shreds.

  His eyes rolled back as her fingers slipped through the pearly liquid that leaked from his head. He tried to channel his patience, by clenching his jaw and grunting out his desperation. She lifted her head and proceeded to lick him clean.

  Certain he was going to lose it, he grasped her waist and forced her back. “I’m trying to go slow, baby, and you’re not helping,” he informed her as he plunged two fingers deep within her, simply unable to wait. The delighted grin over his predicament did nothing to strengthen his discipline.

  Closing his eyes seemed to help him, if only for a moment, to gather his wits. Watching her hot, writhing, and hungry, fragmented him completely.

  Her inner lips throbbed. Her muscles tugged his fingers. She wanted more. She tightened around his hand, and the knowledge of what that felt like against his cock sent fire surging through his veins.

  The air was perfumed with her scent and her heat. He filled his lungs on the vanilla and coconut musk of her and of sex. The ragged need only intensified with every breath. She held the only antidote to his exquisite pain.

  “I need you, baby. I need to be inside you. Look at me.” He gathered her hands, pinned them to the bed above her head, positioned himself between her legs, pausing to force himself to be gentle, and then he pushed into her.

  “Wrap your legs over me,” he released one of her hands long enough to secure her legs over his back before he rocked forward and felt her encase him completely.

  With every slow, deep thrust, she met him. His body shuddered as he felt that lush ass tease his sac where they joined.

  Her eyes closed in the ecstasy between them as he forced his rhythmic pounding to a slow, thorough cadence. He felt her tremble. Her muscles cinched around him, tugging rhythmically at his resolve. Her temperature shot upwards, and the heat radiated through every ounce of chiseled muscle in his body. He pushed harder.

  “When you come, I’m gonna lose it, baby. Look at me when I bring you.”

  Her eyes flashed open as a moan of elation shook from the quivering muscles within her. Her body pulled him deeper. He pushed past his hilt, burying himself inside her and, as she unfurled, he lost it all. He lost everything inside the only woman who could ever have made him whole.

 
She collapsed under him into a pile of soft, sexy skin and weakened, trembling muscle. All signs of tension and stress evaporated into the thick air around them. Feeling quite pleased with himself, Dan eased from her and guided her up onto his chest. He tried to hide his pompous smirk. He never left a job unfinished.

  “I had a whole outfit to wear for you tonight, Officer Vindico.” She looped her right leg over his.

  “Mmm, well, Miss Styler, you can wear it for me when we get back from Vegas, but I just got everything I could ever have wanted.”

  “It had pasties,” her satisfied tone completed the perfection they’d just shared.

  “Pasties are great, baby, but they make it hard to suck you, and I think that’s way better,” Dan gently rolled her right nipple between his fingers. She shivered beside him.

  “When you said the only thing you wanted for Christmas was me, naked in your bed, I guess you meant that.”

  He chuckled with her, certain that some kind of egregious mistake had been made, because he could never deserve everything he had lying in the bed beside him. “You are amazing. That was amazing, and I’m overwhelmed. You are perfect, Fionna, with lingerie or without.”

  Words

  “Dan?” she whispered solemnly.

  “Fi?” he responded, while trying to read her. He felt her smile against him.

  “Can we talk for a little while?”

  Though he was tired from his all-encompassing release, there was nothing else he wanted to do.

  “Of course, honey. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I was just kind of curious….”

  Dan cradled her closer. “About what?”

  “Your mom, mostly.”

  Dan couldn’t help but laugh. “Baby doll, we can talk as long as you want, but if you want me to make my mother easier to understand then we may still be lying here next Christmas.”

  She giggled hysterically, but then seemed to command herself to calm. “I’m serious,” she finally pled.

  Drawing a deep breath, Dan awaited the incoming questions.

  “So… your mom is kind of…” she paused to search for a word.

  “Insane,” he supplied for her.

  She giggled again but shook her head. “Let’s go with relentless,” she decided tactfully. “About you getting married, having kids, carrying on the name and all that.” Dan nodded with a sigh. “I guess I’m just kind of confused.”

  She sounded like his mother’s insanity was a fault on her part.

  “We’re all confused, baby.”

  “Dan, be serious!” she demanded, though she was sporting a broad grin.

  “Sorry,” he ordered himself to focus on what she wanted to know.

  “At dinner, she was wanting to ripen my uterus for your seed.” She shuddered through hysterically-abashed laughter. Dan cringed at the very idea and the embarrassment it had caused.

  “But then, when we were in your room alone, she kind of got all mad. Wouldn’t that be what she wanted?”

  “Ah.” Dan understood her confusion. “My mother is a Vis Virres Predilect, so when she wants something done, woe be unto anyone who stands in her way. But there is a way things are done, and there is only one way things are done; the Marion Vindico way.

  “She is very adamant that the Vindico name not end with me; doesn’t matter what the hell I want. But one of the most important things in the world, to my mom, is what other people in the Realm think of her and of our entire family.”

  Fionna listened intently.

  “Especially since Dad’s a Governor, so what would make my mother elated is if I proposed to you right now, we let her plan an extremely elaborate ceremony that the entire Realm would be invited to see, where she would be showcased, and then I knocked you up on our wedding night.”

  “But one can’t come before the other, because that might tarnish her reputation. So, the baby better not show up one day before the nine month anniversary of our wedding.” The longer he spoke, the more furious he became. Who the hell did his mother think she was, to make Fionna feel this way or to try to plan their life?

  “Gotcha.” Fionna carefully considered everything Dan had informed her of. She wanted to ask more. He could feel the curiosity swirl in her energy.

  “What, baby? Just ask me.”

  She bit her lip, studying him closely. “What happens, if way, way off in the future you do decide to get married?”

  “Or in the relatively near future,” he stared down into her eyes to see what she thought of that idea. She couldn’t quite hide the delighted grin that formed on her face. Warmth flooded through him. Love filled him. Determination found its rooting again in his heart. He couldn’t have one without ending the other. He had to end Wretchkinsides. He refocused as he heard her next question.

  “Well, whenever that happens, if you get married and then decide to have kids but you have girls, what will happen then?” she pointed out the one failure in his mother’s elaborate plan for his life.

  Dan chuckled as he rubbed her back and kissed her forehead, making her grin. “Since I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to irritate my mother, that would be perfect,” Dan admitted, making her laugh heartily. “So, I’d say it serves her right, but truthfully I don’t know.

  “I really never thought about having kids, even with Amelia,” he choked on her name and tensed slightly, but her energy moved through him again, and she soothed him.

  “Can I ask you something else? You really don’t have to answer this.”

  “Ask me, Fionna.”

  She shrank into his side as he tightened his arms around her. “Did your mom like Amelia?” She cringed as she asked the question.

  Dan considered the question and her insistence that he didn’t have to answer it. “Kind of.” He wanted her to know everything about him and, as she’d reminded him not so many weeks ago, Amelia was a big part of who he was.

  “I can’t really figure out if she likes me or not,” Fionna tried to explain her question.

  “Amelia fit well into my mother’s plan for my life. She was there. We were in love, and she wanted to have kids. She always had. She came from a family that my mother considered to be her equal socio-economically. She would have vastly preferred it if Amelia had been Gifted.” He tried not to feel the fury that always brewed within him, whenever he thought about his mother’s prejudices.

  “You don’t have to tell me anymore.”

  Dan went on, “As for you, my mother loves you, which is a double-edged blade; trust me.”

  “I don’t really think she likes me.”

  Dan felt her sorrow as she stated this out loud. “Honey, what makes you say that?”

  Fionna shrugged, “I don’t know. She told me I was fat, and then got mad that we were up in your room. I never feel like I answer her questions correctly.”

  “Hey.” Dan rolled to his side. He wanted to look into her eyes. “I don’t give a damn what my mother thinks. You are everything to me. You are the first person in ten long years who’s made me think life was worth living, Fionna; so my mother can stuff it, because you’re it for me. And you are not fat! I told you she’s insane.”

  “I just love you so much,” she confessed as Dan’s heart stuttered momentarily. “I want your mom to like me.”

  Although the relationship between Dan and his mother had often been tenuous, it certainly hadn’t improved in the last few years. But he’d never been so furious with the woman who had given him life as he was in that moment; seeing what her nonsensical drivel had done to the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

  “Fionna,” Dan whispered, “someday, I swear to you I’m going to be able to say the words, but all I can do is pray that somehow you understand what you mean to me. I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks, especially my mother.”

  She smiled against his chest. “You don’t ever have to say it. I can feel it, and it’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever felt. No one has ever loved me like t
his.”

  Though it was shocking to hear her confirm that, he knew what she was saying was true. He could feel it in her as well, and no one had ever loved and accepted him the way that she did. It was truly incredible.

  Storms

  Thunder echoed in the distance and the house shuddered in the howling winds. Dan tried desperately not to think of Lindley as Fionna tensed. Her fingernails bit into his sides.

  “Hey, shh,” he soothed, “I’m right here.” He wrapped her up in his long, overly muscled embrace. She buried her face in his chest as he wrapped the sheets and blankets around them.

  “I don’t like storms. I know it’s stupid. I’m not a little girl.”

  “Most Receivers don’t like storms,” Dan uttered. He wasn’t certain why he remembered that particular bit of information from his Energies of the Earth classes at the Academy, but it stuck out in his mind.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I don’t really know.” He truthfully couldn’t recall why they didn’t, or anything more than that particular part of the notes he’d taken so many years before.

  “There’s a lot of energy in a storm. It’s all so volatile. Besides all of the electrical energy, there’s the atmospheric energy as well. We have a hard time reading through it all. It makes me uneasy. It makes Emily nervous, too.”

  It seemed Emily, an extremely powerful Receiver herself, had become Fionna’s own personal barometer. Fionna had felt alone in the abundance of her abilities. They’d left her feeling like no one else understood what she was feeling or seeing, until she’d met and befriended Emily. That was probably the reason they’d become so close, despite their age difference.

  “Actually, storms are the one thing that Emily feels more strongly than I do,” Fionna explained hesitantly. She looked to Dan for reassurance.

  “Why?” Dan wanted to know more. He wanted to know everything about her.

  “Emily has associated storms with all of the bad parts of her life. She’s become more attuned to them, because of the emotion she associates with them. She kind of freaks out, but don’t ever tell her I told you that. It embarrasses her.”