Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  Perhaps leaving this world wasn’t such a bad thing.

  “Now that we’re friends, why don’t you tell me the truth about why your skin lights up?”

  I swallowed and backed up a step. “I’d really rather not.”

  He took a step forward. I backed up again. We performed this little dance until my tailbone met solid wood, and I was trapped.

  “Would you rather I guess?”

  “Nope.”

  “I have a very pertinent deduction.”

  “Keep it to yourself.”

  His eyes glittered fiercely, but how much of that was my skin and how much of that was his perverse glee to embarrass me?

  “I believe you glitter when you’re turned on.”

  “Nope.” Please, please, Ishim, don’t steal a feather from my wings.

  Jarod lowered his gaze to the floor. No feather had fallen, and this obviously baffled him, because the little customary dip materialized between his eyebrows.

  Had he said smoldered, and I’d refuted his claim, would I be down another feather?

  His eyebrows drew so close together they almost touched.

  He was disappointed. Was it because he hadn’t guessed right or because he’d wanted to be right?

  Desirous to put a smile back on that stupidly gorgeous face of his, even at my expense, I explained, “It’s called smoldering. Only women of our kind do it. Males extend their wings, which is called winging.”

  He waited in silence for me to elucidate further.

  I licked my lips before I confessed, “It happens when we want to attract someone.”

  Chapter 35

  “You want to attract me, Feather?” His voice sounded like crushed velvet, and it did all sorts of improper things to my body.

  I rolled my eyes, trying to play the smoldering off as an unfortunate mishap. “I don’t do it on purpose.”

  He frowned.

  “I don’t tell my body to shine to get you to look at me. It just happens.” Twice. It’s happened twice. Once was a mishap, but twice?

  “So, your subconscious wants to attract me?”

  “Exactly.” On the plus side, sparkling like a disco ball hid my mortifying blush.

  He tipped his head to the side. “So subconsciously you really want me.”

  “Exactly,” I said again but then realized how that sounded and squeaked like the time I’d walked through a dark alley in New York and came upon a rodent the size of a minx. “No. I mean, yes.” Ugh.

  His forehead smoothed, and his cocky grin returned.

  I shifted my gaze to the horse painting. “Can you stop looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’ve just faceplanted into a lamppost.”

  “If that’s your interpretation of my stare, then I really have to work on it.”

  I could tell his smile had increased from the lilt in his voice.

  “Feather?”

  I tugged my lip into my mouth and gnawed on it.

  “Look at me.”

  “I’d rather not,” I mumbled over a mouthful of flesh.

  “Please?”

  Still not freeing my lip, I pressed the back of my skull into the wood, wishing its grainy surface could dip and swallow me whole.

  He raised his thumb and freed my lip from my teeth. “If I had wings,” he said huskily, “they’d be stretched from one wall of this office to the other.”

  My heart froze, then turned liquid, melting into every extremity in my body.

  He stroked the edge of my lip, then leaned over, and pressed his mouth to mine, and I swear I no longer smoldered, I burned, a hot, hungry flame that he’d stoked with all his dark smiles and sultry words.

  I was so stunned that I didn’t kiss him back, the same way I didn’t close my eyes. Wasn’t I supposed to close my eyes? What did the heroines in my books do? They wrapped their hands around the necks of the person kissing them. I could start there.

  As my hands rose, they bumped the drink he was still clutching, sloshing the contents on his pants.

  Oh . . . crap.

  Jarod jerked away.

  “I’m s-s-sorry,” I stammered. “I was trying t-to—”

  “Cool me off?” His curved lips glistened.

  “No. I was—ugh—” I suddenly wished I could be struck down with angel-fire. “Trying to do something with my hands.”

  His smile turned so wicked I regretted explaining my clumsiness. “And what were you trying to do with your hands?” His brazen timbre covered my smoldering skin in goose bumps.

  I shut my eyes, wishing that because I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me, but I’d learned during a long-ago game of hide-and-seek with Eve that disappearing didn’t work like that.

  The heat from his body vanished, and then something clinked—glass against wood? I didn’t peek to find out, still dying of mortification. Suddenly, the air’s temperature swelled again, and fingers laced around my wrists, towing them gently upward, setting them around his neck.

  I still didn’t look, and the anticipation of his next move had my heartbeat radiating, making every inch of me vibrate with its wild tempo. His fingers stroked up the silk of my camisole, tracing the indents of my waist, the outer swells of my breasts, the bare skin right below my armpits, the crests of my shoulders, the dips around my neck.

  Where one hand sank over my shoulder and traced a line down my spine, the other combed through my hair until it cupped the back of my head. I held my breath as sensations undulated through me, each one more debilitating and delectable than the last.

  I gripped Jarod’s neck, and the sinews tautened like stretched twine. I dipped the fingers of one hand below his shirt collar and speared the fingers of the other through his stiffened locks.

  His spicy breath warmed my forehead, then the tip of my nose, and finally my parted lips. “Ready to try this again?” he murmured.

  Keeping my lids clasped shut, I nodded.

  His nose brushed mine before pressing into my cheek, and then his lips closed over mine, stealing my breath and making it his.

  This kiss was surely going to cost me a feather. Perhaps, all of them. And yet, when he opened his mouth and dipped his tongue against mine, I welcomed him in, mirroring his pressure and stroke.

  Our mouths moved silently over one another, our tongues exploring and connecting and licking. Celestial arias mingled with the rush of our heartbeats, gorging my ears with rapturous music.

  His stubble roughed up my chin, leaving a titillating burn in its wake. I tightened my hold on his neck to bring him closer even though his nose already dug into my cheek and my hardened nipples gouged his chest. As though we were of one mind, his hand crimped the fabric at my waist and the skin beneath it, blighting every atom of air between us.

  Our bodies fit as though created for one another, my soft curves filling all of his hard dents. As I explored his mouth, a new hunger streaked through my body, made my heart contract and thighs tremble. His kisses became more demanding, and I gave him everything I had to offer, which was probably not very much to a man like him, a man so used to getting all he wanted.

  My lower belly ached from the hard press of his zipper, but there was no pain in that ache. The brandy, which had soaked into the fine wool of his suit, transferred to my skirt, hot and wet and smelling of spice and desire. His scent tormented me almost as much as his taste.

  Panting hard, he broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against mine, a gelled tendril of hair tickling my temple. His palm released the back of my head and pressed into the wall behind me, heaving his body off mine. The distance was unbidden, and I tried to coax him closer, but it was like trying to shift a marble statue.

  “Unless you want me to rob you of the rest of your innocence,” he murmured huskily, “you have to give me a minute.” He pushed a tangled orange lock behind my ear.

  I slid my hand out of his hair and around his corded neck, feeling his pulse drilling his throat. Worried that he might snap out of
whatever spell had made him kiss me, I kept both my hands on his body.

  He might’ve let me go, but I wasn’t ready to let him go.

  My heart shook as a terrible thought coiled through my mind. If Asher amended Jarod’s score, I would have no choice but to let him go. As the selfish thought took root and twined around my lungs like a vine, heat smacked my lids.

  “I don’t want this to be our last kiss,” I croaked, my voice sounding like it was crumbling.

  Jarod swiped my bottom lashes with his thumbs, whisking away the moisture pooling there. “I’m not done with you.”

  When I lowered my lashes to hide my stinging eyes, he wound my hair around his fist and levered my face up.

  His gaze roved over mine, searching for the source of my insecurities. “Will your people try to keep us apart? Is that what’s frightening you, Feather? Because I won’t let them come between us. I won’t let anyone or anything come between us.”

  A sob splintered out of me. “If Asher changes your score”—my voice broke—“I ascend. In the next twenty-four hours, I could be gone.”

  His eyes flicked faster over mine. “But then, you can come back down to me.”

  I swallowed, but it did nothing to quell the lump bloating my throat. “Not in your lifetime, Jarod,” I murmured.

  “What do you mean?”

  “New angels must spend a century in Elysium before they can return, so that all the humans they’ve come in contact with are gone.”

  He didn’t say anything for so long that the vine around my lungs grew thorns.

  Suddenly, he released my hair and began to pace the length of his office. “Call him! Tell him I lied.”

  I gasped. “No, Jarod! For all my selfishness, I want your soul to survive.”

  He wrenched his hand through his hair, shoving the dark waves out of his eyes. “I should have a say in that!”

  “Jarod—”

  He halted and whipped his attention off the rug and onto me. “Can you feel your feathers growing?”

  “No. They’re too light, but you can see . . .” I let my voice trail off before I could utter a suggestion that would surely incense Jarod even further.

  “Your wings. Bring them out.”

  “Jarod . . .”

  He arrowed straight for me. “Do it, Feather. Now.”

  I hesitated, remembering the pain they’d caused him.

  He gripped my chin. “Please.”

  He thought I hadn’t made them materialize because he hadn’t said please? Oh, Great Elysium, this man.

  Heart smarting, I pulled my wings out of hiding and prayed, for the first time in my life, that new feathers hadn’t formed on my wing bones.

  Chapter 36

  I didn’t glance over my shoulder, didn’t extend my wings to test their weight. Since I usually earned so few feathers at a time, I’d never noticed a change, but a hundred feathers . . . I’d surely feel a difference.

  Jarod’s Adam’s apple bobbed as his gaze skirted over the edges of my silver feathers. His hand fell away from my face in slow motion, leaving traces of heat behind. “Where would they—” He swallowed. “Where would the new ones appear?”

  “On the edges,” I whispered.

  Nerves quivered under his skin, and his overly bright eyes spoke of dread. “How can you tell if they’re new?”

  “They’re smaller . . . softer.” I thought of all the feathers I’d earned over the years, of how I’d relished stroking the untainted down. A shudder passed through me at the memory, and it made the silken barbs sway, tickling my bare shoulders and the backs of my arms.

  “I can’t see, Feather,” he said, which made hope spring through me. But then, I understood he couldn’t see because my wings were tucked in too tight. “Stretch them out.”

  My wing bones felt made of rusty steel instead of celestial magic. As I extended the web of sinew and cartilage, a bead of cold sweat formed on the nape of my neck.

  Jarod paled.

  The bead rolled down my spine, tunneling between my contracted shoulder blades. “Are they—do you see something?” I finally twisted my neck as far as it would turn. When that didn’t help, I curled my wings until their outer edges touched in front of me.

  Jarod stepped back, and I wasn’t sure if he’d added the space because he was horrified or needed some distance to examine them. I traced the outermost fringe, Jarod’s keen eyes shadowing my fingertips’ path. I didn’t think my heart had thumped once since I’d made my wings appear. When I’d probed every rachis and vane, I shook my head.

  His eyebrows lurched up. “No?”

  I kept shaking my head. All at once, blood gorged my veins, air expanded my lungs, and my heart revved up. The lump in my throat took more time to recede, but once it did, I managed to croak, “No.”

  Color slowly leached back into Jarod’s face. “No?” he repeated, as though he hadn’t heard me.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I took his hand and ran it over the rim of my right wing. “You see? No fluffy ones.”

  He sucked in a breath, which he held until I towed his fingers away from my feathers and released his wrist.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what, Feather?”

  “For having made you . . . touch them. I know how much you loathe them.”

  A beat passed. “I do loathe them, but for an entirely different reason tonight.” He reached up and glided his palm over the silver vanes. When his hand curved and stroked the underside, a full body shudder went through me. “Tonight, I hate them because they could take you away from me.”

  I gasped at his confession.

  “Tonight, I hate them because they’re the fucking most beautiful things I’ve ever laid eyes on, and yet I have this violent urge to cleave them from your body.” He glided his hand back up with a gentleness that didn’t match the tone of his voice or the fire in his eyes. When he stroked his way back down, and my teeth knocked together from the pleasure that shot through the barbed shafts, he snatched his hand back.

  “Am I hurting you?” Genuine worry crimped his features.

  “No, Jarod. You’re not hurting me.”

  “Then why—why did your body shake?”

  I smiled at how innocent he suddenly looked, like a boy who’d never touched someone else’s flesh. How I wished that were the case. Just the way he kissed told me I wasn’t the first woman he’d used his lips on. Before the thought could fill me with jealousy, I pushed it away.

  Far. Away.

  “How about you take a wild guess?” I said. “You’re good at guessing.”

  His pupils eclipsed his irises, and then both his hands flexed open and settled with no restraint on the underside of my wings.

  I gasped from the almost brutal impact and shivered so hard Jarod banded one arm around my waist and dropped the other away from my body. “No pain. I promise.”

  He searched my eyes.

  I let my head loll against his neck and asked something of him that would surely cost me a feather. “Again. Do it again.”

  I heard him swallow. Without removing his arm from my waist, he lifted his other hand and drew it achingly slowly over the downy curve. My spine spasmed as a bolt of pleasure electrified the web of cartilage holding my feathers together. I understood then why it was forbidden to touch another angel’s wings without their consent.

  I nestled my head into the crook of Jarod’s neck as he tracked his fingers slowly up and then back down. My knees softened until all that was holding me up was his rigid arm. I moaned against his neck, inhaling his scent.

  “Feather?”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “Faster? Slower?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never . . . no one’s ever . . . touched my wings.” A soft whimper escaped my lips. I tried to muffle it against his skin, but considering how he seemed to grow a whole foot taller, I imagined he’d caught the sound.

  He trailed his palm leisurely, and even though it was the sweetest form of torture, I gro
wled, “Faster.”

  A slow chuckle rumbled through his chest. For a long second, I didn’t think he’d listen to me, but his strokes sped up and pressure built inside my body and sizzled against my skin, and my heart . . . my heart distended, as though trying to break free from my rib cage to penetrate Jarod’s.

  I panted against his neck, then alternately nipped the taut flesh and moaned against it, rendering his breathing as patchy as my own.

  The world suddenly stilled, then exploded. The floor, the ceiling, and the walls of Jarod’s house fell away. Only glittery starlight and my dark sinner remained.

  Jarod’s fingers came to rest on my hip, supporting me as the sparkle faded and the study’s walls closed back around us. Then he pressed his lips to my temple, stamping their shape into my skin.

  A long, long time later, he murmured, “Lie to me, Feather.”

  “Wh-what?” I stuttered back to reality.

  “Lie to me.”

  I pulled away from him.

  “How many feathers did I make you lose? Three, four?”

  My eyes widened.

  “How many do you still need to earn?”

  The fog of my orgasm—or was there another name for what I’d just experienced?—cleared. “Eighty-six. I think.”

  “Lie to me twenty times,” he said, cradling my face between his palms. “I know it’ll hurt, but speak them so that if Asher lowers my score tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, it doesn’t rip you from my arms.” He touched his mouth to my parted lips. “Please . . .”

  My chest cracked right open. “I hated the feel of your hands on my wings.”

  My wing bones tensed, and then a feather drifted down like a clump of dawn-lit snow.

  “Again,” Jarod said. “Please, baby, again.”

  I told him how I’d hated kissing him.

  I told him how I thought he was as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside.

  I told him so many lies that when I was done, a sparkling silver heap littered his rug, and my cheeks were wet from my pain and his kisses.