Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  The bearded bodyguard was obviously not on Jarod’s payroll, because he blocked our exit.

  “With all due respect, Jarod,” the minister said, “I’m perfectly capable of making informed decisions when it comes to my sexual health.”

  “With all due respect,” Jarod gritted out, “the girl’s not on the menu today.”

  The minister finally turned his deep-set eyes on Jarod. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d venture she’s not on my menu, but perhaps, on yours? Which is all the more intriguing. You usually have no problem sharing les bons coups.”

  I gulped, because that last expression could mean one of two things: profitable business ventures or good lays.

  “If you want my help eliminating your problem, tell your fucking guard to step away from the fucking door.”

  “Hmm.” The man stroked his weak chin. “I won’t touch her, but I’d really like a better look before she leaves.”

  Jarod climbed out of the pool in one fell swoop, not a stitch of clothing on his body. As he pounded toward us, panic seized my chest.

  “What the fuck got into you to bring her here?” he growled, several degrees past anger.

  Tristan stood his ground calmly. “She wanted to talk to you. Said it was urgent.”

  Jarod skewered Tristan with his black gaze before setting it on me.

  “Get me my clothes,” he barked.

  I scanned the room for them.

  “Not you,” he said, his voice low but in no way calm.

  Tristan unhanded me and moved away, then tossed Jarod a small white towel to sop up the water ribboning down his arms and legs, matting the dark hairs to his taut skin.

  “Leaving already, Monsieur Adler?” the minister asked.

  Without turning, Jarod said, “We’re done here. I’ll let you discuss the finer points with Tristan.”

  He tossed the towel aside, then took the clothes Tristan tendered, yanking on each item with a ferocity that belied the extent of anger brewing beneath that steady, fearsome body of his.

  As he belted his pants, he shot his gaze to the bearded guard and hissed, “Out of my fucking way, or I’ll have your pregnant girlfriend stop by your wife’s Zumba class and introduce herself.”

  Anger and fear made the bodyguard’s bald head sweat. Without consulting his boss, he unbolted the door.

  “Go!” Jarod’s order set me in motion.

  I marched down the blue-tiled hallway, heart banging in time with Jarod’s footfalls.

  The scantily clad woman, who’d greeted us, scurried out from behind her welcome desk. “Is everything okay, Monsieur Adler?”

  Even though it wasn’t her fault, he glared at her, which made her shrink back. Without answering, he stepped past the lattice doors and into the courtyard, matching my rapid strides.

  He didn’t speak a word to me the entire way back to his house. Barely even glanced my way. Not wanting to make a scene in front of his driver, I didn’t say anything, but my own anger rose steadily as the car bumped over the cobbled street of the graying city.

  Chapter 44

  When we got back to his house, Jarod ordered me into his bedroom, and even though I wanted to tell him that intruding on his meeting hadn’t been my idea, I sealed my lips and climbed his stairs.

  The sound of his voice must’ve alerted Muriel he was home, because she popped out of the pantry. When she caught sight of me, she blinked. I cut my eyes to the bedroom door and shoved it wide.

  Jarod marched in behind me, then slammed the door shut. “What the fuck, Leigh?”

  “I thought you were getting a massage!” I growled right back.

  “Did my line of work slip your mind?” He plowed his hands through his damp locks. “The prime minister is a wormy sleazebag. Want to know what his last assignment was? Make his mistress vanish after he strangled her to death!”

  A gasp burst out of me. I didn’t ask whether he’d made the corpse disappear. I doubted he’d have had a second meeting with the man if he’d failed that first job. I also didn’t ask why he was still conducting business with a murderer, because his line of business hadn’t slipped my mind.

  “Those are the types of people I deal with, and you just walk in like I’m at a fucking tea party! Fuck!” Jarod’s voice clanged over the panes of glass that glowed cerulean from the dwindling daylight.

  “I’m sorry, but Tristan told me you were at a spa. He didn’t mention anything about a business meeting.”

  Jarod halted his mad pacing, but his wild pulse kept gorging the artery in his neck. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense. Why would he do that?” Even though I wished he’d trusted my word, he scanned the air around my hips for a tumbling feather.

  My annoyance turned to disappointment. “Probably so I would catch you with another woman and leave once and for all.”

  Jarod’s lashes hit his browbone. I locked my hands at my sides and squashed my lips together before I shared Tristan’s warning, the one about leeches. I was afraid it would be the drop that made Jarod’s anger boil over, but not at his friend.

  At me.

  After several long minutes, he exhaled wearily, the fight draining from him. “Why did you come back, Feather?”

  His broken tone pitched away my disappointment and fear. “Did you really think I’d leave?” I hated how accustomed he was to being abandoned.

  “I hoped you would. This world—my world—it’s not for you.”

  “How about you let me decide where I want to go.” I walked over to him. “Where I want to be.”

  His features contorted. “You didn’t tell me you’d lose your wings if you didn’t complete them.”

  I laid my hand on his bristly jaw, and he shuddered.

  The scene at the spa played out again in my mind, making my wings feel of little importance. “Were you . . . were you with one of the women this afternoon?”

  His eyebrows shot up, vanishing behind his tumble of unruly locks. “Of course not.”

  “I thought—”

  “That I fornicated with women in front of clients? I get paid to fix problems, not to screw around.”

  “You were naked.”

  His lips relaxed a fraction. “The prime minister—like many people I deal with—are concerned about wires, and I’m concerned about concealed weapons. Conducting business in our birthday suits is a win-win.” I must’ve wrinkled my nose, because he added, “Didn’t like my full frontal, Feather?”

  “I was a tad too stressed out by your murderous glare to concentrate on much else.”

  “Murderous glare.” He snorted. “Wasn’t you I wanted to murder; it was everyone else.” He leaned his forehead against mine. “I don’t like that the prime minister saw you. That any of them saw you. That bodyguard of his is a real asshole.”

  “Thank Elysium, I’m immortal.”

  He straightened his neck, putting space between our heads. “I thought . . .”

  “As long as I have wings, I can bleed, but I can’t die, so you have nothing to worry about.”

  He looked at my shoulders even though my wings weren’t on display. “One more reason you need to complete them.”

  I slid my hand down to his neck, capturing his heartbeats in my palm. “Let that be my choice, Jarod.”

  “Fuck, you’re stubborn.” He sighed.

  “And it paid off.” I looked into his obsidian eyes. “You’re no longer a Triple.”

  “So, my soul isn’t doomed after all . . .”

  “As long as you keep on doing good deeds, but you need to get your rank under fifty.”

  “Why?”

  I snagged my lip and slid it between my teeth. “Anything above a fifty, and you end up in Abaddon.”

  “Hell?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It really exists?”

  I nodded. “But there’s no devil. It’s run by Erelim—celestial sentinels. They also run Elysium. My parents are both Erelim in Abaddon. I think.”

  Something gleamed on his shelf. When I r
ealized it was the letter opener, a chill fluttered over my skin. Was it the same one that had stopped his mother’s heart? And if it was, why did he keep it?

  “I’m imagining it’s not all licentious raves and lava-filled Jacuzzis down there.”

  “No.” I licked my lips. “It’s like a prison . . . except the cells are magicked to make you relive your worst nightmares over and over.”

  “My version sounded way more fun.”

  “If you stop trying to push me away, I can help get your score down.”

  “If I keep you close, Feather”—he linked his arms behind my waist—“my score’s not going to go down, because I’ll be dismembering anyone who so much as looks in your direction. Not to mention all the sinful things I’ll be doing to your body.” The reverberation of his voice combined with his words made me shiver.

  “The dismembering part is unnecessary since I’m immortal,” I said a little breezily.

  “I’m glad you have no objections to my second point.”

  I swallowed. “Might cost me feathers.”

  “Also, might not.” His thumbs stroked the base of my spine. “We’ll have to test it out.”

  My breath caught on its way in, which made my lungs convulse, which in turn made me wheeze and hack like the time I choked on a mangosteen pit and Eve went pro wrestler on my chest. I slid my hand off his face and thwacked my chest until my coughing quieted.

  How I wished I could thwack Eve’s face out of my mind the same way . . .

  I’d spent years with her, so I supposed it would take years for her not to surface before everyone else.

  Jarod traced the downward bow of my mouth, picking up on my suddenly somber mood. “Am I scaring you?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not you. I just had a visitor today, and seeing her didn’t make me very happy.” I tried to smile, but my lips were so tense it probably looked like I was sucking on sour candy. “Her visit even cost me a feather.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t want to talk about Eve, but I also didn’t want her hanging over Jarod and me like a dark cloud. So, I told him how she’d dropped by the guild to congratulate me on reforming him, and I told him I’d called her something not very nice because she’d insulted Celeste’s wings, which led me to tell him how worried I was that Celeste was missing so many feathers.

  “My little fixer.” He stamped a long kiss on my forehead.

  “I try, but I can’t fix everything.”

  Against my brow, he said, “I have an idea. Celeste should sign on to me. I’ll find something nice to do, so she can fluff up her little wings.”

  My eyes slicked with tears. I wanted to say yes and cover his face with kisses for having suggested it, but signing off from him would make my residential status even more precarious. If I couldn’t find a low-ranking sinner in Paris, I’d have to leave. And if I didn’t sign on to anyone else and inadvertently helped someone out, I’d win one feather for every kind act.

  Jarod slid his index fingers along my lower lash line. “What is it, Feather?”

  I explained the complexity of my situation.

  “Then you’re not signing off from me.” He kissed my eyelid, then the other. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t help Celeste. How about she signs on to Tristan? I bet he’s worth his weight in feathers.”

  The suggestion locked up my bones. I didn’t want Celeste anywhere near Tristan. “I—um. Once she’s done with her current mission, we can explore that possibility.”

  Jarod frowned. “I’ll keep him in line, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m already planning on giving him a good tongue-lashing when he gets back from the meeting.”

  “You realize it’ll just make him hate me more, right?”

  “Leigh, he doesn’t hate you. He just feels threatened. A woman other than Muriel sticking around is new to him. New to me, too.”

  “So, you do want me to stick around?”

  He bumped my nose with his. “I was trying to do the selfless thing, which is completely out of character for me, so it might’ve come out a tad harshly.”

  If I’d learned anything in the past few days, it was that Jarod Adler didn’t possess a selfish bone in his entire body.

  “If I was a better man, I’d call Asher and make him take you away from me. And keep you away.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered harshly, winding my fingers through his damp locks and capturing his lips before he could spout any more ghastly ideas.

  His warm skin smelled of eucalyptus and orange blossom, and it reminded me of where he’d been, which intensified the storm raging through me. I wanted to replace every trace of that pool and of those other bodies with my scent.

  “What am I going to do with you?” His raucous voice thrummed my already fierce pulse.

  “Not push me away.”

  “Fine.” Foreheads still touching, he backed me up, and up, until the backs of my knees hit the edge of his canopy bed.

  I sank onto the mattress.

  “Lay down, Feather.”

  Although the good girl in me, the one who’d grown up abiding to the Ophanim’s strict teachings, became a little flustered, the other girl, the one who’d devoured romance novels like sweets, complied. I scooted farther back before uncoiling my spine.

  He watched me, and my already sensitive nerves jangled. In slow motion, he climbed my body, then slid the thin straps of my dress off my shoulders. He lowered his mouth to my neck and scorched kisses over my collarbone, shoving the silky fabric aside until my breasts met cool air, then put a little distance between our bodies to take in my exposed flesh.

  “I would ask if all angels are as beautiful as you are, but I’ve seen them, and fuck if any hold a single feather to you.”

  I started to roll my eyes when he swirled his tongue around one of my nipples. My back arched from the jolt of pleasure, and I gasped, “Jarod.”

  Supporting his weight on his forearms, he dragged his mouth to my other breast and laved the pebbling peak.

  Surely, a feather would fall.

  Maybe, one did.

  It wasn’t as though I could feel anything over the intense waves of pleasure coursing through me. He tracked kisses down the seam of my ribs, growling when he encountered resistance. Rising to his knees, he attempted to take off my belt, but his hurried fingers grappled clumsily. I pushed his impatient hands away and accomplished what he couldn’t. The instant the leather unraveled, Jarod hauled it off my waist. Instead of tossing it to the ground, he ran it between his fingers.

  His dark eyes flashed with a look that made my skin pebble over completely. “Do you trust me, Feather?”

  I nodded.

  He took one of my wrists and wound the leather around it, then picked up my other wrist, and proceeded to do the same before pulling the cord taut. I watched him attach it to one of his bed posts before tying a pretty knot, the end of which he placed in my mouth.

  “One tug, and it’ll loosen.” His husky voice made me swallow. He dragged his fingers down my body, curling them into the material pooled around my waist. He eased my violet dress down my legs, his buffed nails caressing the tops of my thighs.

  Only a scrap of lace remained on my body, and from the way he was eyeing it, I suspected it wouldn’t stay there long.

  But I was wrong.

  He didn’t take it off, simply grazed his knuckles over the material. My blood jammed in my veins as he repeated the maddening stroke.

  His gaze sharpened on the lace. He hooked one finger underneath the damp material and pressed it off me. For an interminable moment, he studied my bared body, and panic flared inside my chest.

  But then, his fingers started moving over me, and his head lowered to the apex of my thighs, and my insecurities dissolved like grains of sugar in scalding water. The first flick of his tongue had my hips bucking and my skin lighting up.

  He scooted his tall body down the bed, getting comfortable, then draped my legs over his shoulders, nudged the lace to the s
ide, and pressed a soft kiss to my glittering core.

  I spit out the leather cord so I could catch my breath. But that didn’t help. As I choked on air, my spine arched again, and the leather ties bit into the flesh of my wrists.

  Sweet cherubs . . . The Seven wouldn’t wait for my wings to fall off; they were going to cleave them straight off my back.

  Jarod’s technique turned rougher. Groaning, he plundered what few shreds of innocence I was still clinging to, sawing them with each lash of his skilled tongue.

  “Jarod!” I gasped, as I teetered on the edge of oblivion.

  He slowed, swirling his tongue over me, and looked up, my skin’s light filling his eyes. “Yeah, Feather?”

  I picked my head off the bed and must’ve shot him one heck of a glower, because he chuckled, and the sound almost knocked me over the edge, but it didn’t.

  He hummed against me, and a violent desire to smack him seized me. This was torture, and he knew it. And he was enjoying it.

  “You’re evil,” I mumbled.

  “I’ve been telling you that all along.”

  I shut my eyes, the thrilling sensations cruelly crumbling away. I almost cried out of frustration but shut up when he resumed drawing lazy circles that turned smaller and tighter until they only targeted one tiny knob.

  My orgasm exploded through me, wrenching my lids and lips wide open. I’m not sure if I screamed or only gasped, but if I had only gasped, it was surely the loudest gasp in the history of gasps. So loud it probably pierced the divide between the worlds and filled every Ishim’s ears.

  After the intense pleasure dwindled, and Jarod had rested the lace back against my no longer shiny core, reality and sanity knocked into me. “How many feathers did I lose?”

  Eyebrows knitted, Jarod lifted his head and scanned the rumpled bedsheets, then levered my spine off the mattress and ran one of his hands underneath me.

  The crease on his forehead smoothed, and then his glistening mouth curved with a heartstopping smile. “None.”

  Chapter 45

  My cage had stretched a little wider tonight.

  That was the thought that filled my mind as Jarod loosened the ties around my wrists.