When morning seeped around the edges of his curtains, I stopped trying to fight wakefulness and reveled in the unspoiled peacefulness of dawn, turning onto my side to study Jarod’s profile, the dense swoop of lashes brushing his bladed cheekbones, the burnt-coffee locks falling arbitrarily over his forehead, the cracked seam of his full lips parted in tranquility.
I wanted to wake up to this sight every day of my immortal life, but that was an impossible dream.
How. Unfair.
A thought skated into my mind, blasting away my little misery-party. If he could see inside the guild, then he could enter it. It was far from ideal, but if I ascended, maybe I could convince the archangels to bend their hundred-year rule of no traveling out of Elysium. Within the confines of the guilds, I would raise no mortal eyebrows. Excitement began to plug all the little fissures loitering in my heart.
“Jarod,” I murmured.
He stirred, but his eyes didn’t open.
“Jarod?” I tried again.
“Mmm.” His lashes still didn’t rise, but his arm reached over and curled around my waist.
“Did you enter the guild?”
This time, his lids lifted, and he stared.
“I just had this idea. It’d solve our dilemma, but it’s not ideal. I was hoping that if you could see inside the guild, then you could maybe step inside, too.”
His mouth thinned. “I couldn’t get over the threshold.”
My fragile dream popped like a champagne bubble, and my heart crackled all over again.
“I’m pleased to hear you’re considering completing your wings, though,” he murmured.
“I’m not considering or completing them if it means they’ll take me away from you.” My words clattered, heavy like stones.
“Feather . . .”
“Don’t.”
He sighed.
“We’re never having this conversation again, all right?” I croaked.
It took a long time for his mouth to form an answer, but in the end, I got the one I wanted: “Okay.”
He pulled me close, and then closer—first, his tongue slid inside of me, and then, his rigid length. Raising my leg to rest over his thigh, he drove in deeper, establishing a measured rhythm that amplified the thumping inside my chest.
Heat built and curled like glittery smoke throughout my body. I looked at him, and he looked right back, and this contact became more intimate than any other place connecting in our bodies. The black of his pupils and the brown of his irises seemed to merge and swirl as he impelled himself deeper, drew back, and thrust again. The chasm of pleasure grew near, and I crushed the rumpled sheets with my fingers, twisting the silk to hold on until he was ready to fall inside with me.
“Feather,” he rasped.
My fingers sprang open, and I dove.
And he dove in after me.
We didn’t climb out of our silken nest for almost an hour, and I would’ve stayed all day had Jarod not reminded me of his meetings and my private tour of Versailles.
“I wish you could come with me,” I said, donning a pair of fluid black pants that skimmed the glossy floorboards of his walk-in closet in spite of my four-inch heels. The effect made my legs look almost as long as Petra’s.
How I wished I could forget about her . . .
After fastening my emerald earrings, I smoothed out the simple white T-shirt I’d tucked into the pants. I so rarely wore pants, convinced skirts were best for my shape, but these were making me rethink my wardrobe preferences.
Jarod walked up from behind and laced his arms around my torso. Even though my heels were high, he still loomed over me. As he took in our reflections in the full-length mirror propped against the wall of his enormous closet, he said, “I can’t let you leave the house looking like this.” When I frowned, he added, “French men are not to be trusted.”
I shook my head, and the spotlight showering us made my hair shine like a sunset—orange and pink and gold. “I look like I’m going to work.”
“Actually, you look like you’re going back inside my bed.”
Before I could roll my eyes, he flung me over his shoulder.
Laughing, I smacked his back. “Put me down, you sex fiend.”
He did put me down. On his bed. And then he stripped everything from my body except for his earrings.
Chapter 54
Several hours later, I was walking across a room festooned in mirrors designed to match the vaulted French doors set across from them. The echoed light lent la Galerie des Glaces a brightness rivaling the Channels’.
Celeste clomped in her black boots beside me, alternately eyeing our tour guide—a historian with a puff of gray hair and a plethora of fascinating accounts about the palace—Amir who walked behind us like an overstretched shadow, and the opulent murals adorning the ceiling.
When I’d stopped by the guild to ask if she was free, Celeste had groused and slapped her pillow over her head, insisting she needed more sleep. But then, I’d mentioned it would be just the two of us, and she’d hopped out of bed like a kernel of corn in a hot pan.
“Asher told me one of the Seven had lived here,” she whispered, as we trailed after the tour guide. “Before the Revolution. I’m not sure which one, though.”
Even though I’d grown up around immortals—Ophan Mira had been born at the time of the Renaissance, and Ophan Greer in a wagon heading west on the Oregon Trail—it never ceased to amaze me that someone who looked youthful was in fact ancient.
“Do you ever wonder how different the world will be when you’ll return in a century?” I murmured to Celeste.
She sighed. “Yeah, but then I bring these out”—her purple wings spilled from the back of her white ribbed tank top—“take a good look at them, and realize I should stick to thinking in decades instead of centuries.”
“Celeste,” I chided her softly. “Get rid of your pessimism. If you want this, you’ll get it.”
It dawned on me that by staying I could help both her and Jarod, and excitement teemed within my breastbone.
“I’ll make sure you get there. I’ll find you people to help and work with you on them.” Mortality needn’t equate the end of saving souls. I’d just be doing it without wings, without recompense.
The way it should be done.
“If you stay, I’ll never talk to you again.” Celeste’s eyes blazed like the row of baroque, crystal chandeliers.
I wedged my lips together, hoping she’d said that because she was mad and not because she truly meant it.
The awe, which had filled Celeste when we’d started the tour, dwindled to paltry curiosity, as though the castle had dulled once we’d exited the Hall of Mirrors even though its grimiest nooks had been mesmerizing.
A picnic lunch was set out for us in the manicured gardens of the castle, complete with a white tent, a dressed-up table, and wooden chairs. Even though I was glad to hear more stories about the naughty courtiers of France, I sort of wished the historian would leave so I could speak to Celeste alone.
After coffee and a platter of petits fours ranging from miniature lemon tarts to bite-sized chocolate macarons, the historian finally bade us farewell. Amir peeled a crisp pink bill from a thick wad and handed it to the woman who blinked at it, then at him, then around her. She folded it, then furtively slid it inside the collar of her salmon-colored blouse and traipsed away on her kitten heels.
I sort of wished that Jarod’s bodyguard would leave, too, but imagined he wouldn’t take any orders from me, so I made do with the respectable distance he afforded us, hoping his sense of hearing wasn’t too keen.
“Celeste, you can’t hate me for a decision that affects only me.”
“Only you?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t affect only you. It affects . . . it affects everyone.”
“Really? Name a single other person my not ascending will affect.”
“Asher.”
I sighed. “We’ve talked about this, honey. I’m not interested in Asher, and he
—”
“He unblocked Jarod’s score,” she hissed. “For you! He did it for you.”
“No, he did it for himself, to fix a mistake, and he did it for Jarod. My wings played no role in his decision.”
A brave little sparrow landed on our table, hunting for crumbs.
Celeste peeled the crust off a tartlet and tossed it at the bird’s outsized feet. “You’re missing seven by the way. I checked two days ago. All you need is seven feathers.”
“Eight. I lost another one last night.”
“How? Did Jarod make you lie again?”
“No. And he never made me lie. I chose to do it.”
Another brown sparrow perched on our table, emboldened by his friend, and Celeste fed it too.
“I love him, and if you gave him a chance, you’d understand why.”
She folded her arms and eyed the thin white scar on my neck as though Jarod himself had put it there. “Then I hate him even more.”
“Celeste . . .”
She raised her chin and shifted her gaze to the perpendicular hedges hemming in our tent.
I leaned toward her. “You know what he suggested?”
“That you ask Asher to burn the wings off your back before they fall off?”
I jerked, my spine hitting the wooden rungs of my chair. She really thought the worst of him. Not that I could truly blame her since there had been a time I had, too. “He suggested I sign off from him, so that you could take him on.”
Her eyebrows dipped as she side-eyed me.
“To help you earn ninety-nine feathers, or whatever’s he’s worth these days.” I prayed it wasn’t a hundred.
“Ninety-six. That’s what he was worth yesterday.”
My pulse sprang at that news.
Her arms untightened but didn’t untangle. “That was . . . nice of him, I guess.”
I smiled at her euphemism.
“But I still don’t like him.”
“Your hatred is undeserved and misplaced.” I dragged a fingertip over the condensation beading down my water glass. “He doesn’t want me to stay. He keeps pushing me to earn my last feathers.” I dried my finger on the white tablecloth. “But I don’t want to. It’s hard to explain, but it feels like . . . like my soul is going to rip in half if it leaves his.”
“You’ve known him for two weeks, Leigh.”
“I’m aware of that, but I’m also aware of how special he is and how special he makes me feel. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but until you meet someone who becomes more vital to you than air, I don’t think you’ll understand what I’m feeling. All I’m feeling.”
Celeste finally unbound her arms. “What if in three years from now, or ten, you fall out of love with him. What then?”
“You don’t fall out of love with your soul mate.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“There is. And Jarod is mine.”
Celeste’s eyebrows bunched together. “I love you, Leigh, but I think you’re crazy.”
“Maybe a little.” I smiled. “Can you promise to keep loving me whatever decision I make and however crazy I get?” I was still holding out hope that losing my wings wouldn’t make me lose my sanity. Maybe I could seek out another Nephilim. But how would I find them? The Ophanim would probably blow a gasket and leak angel-smoke if I asked them for a contact.
She puffed air from the corner of her mouth, pushing a glossy chestnut lock off her forehead. “Like I could actually stop.”
The intensity of my smile strengthened, melting her residual annoyance.
“I can’t promise not to give you crap if you’re still around next year, though.”
“I’ll take your crap, as long as it comes with your friendship.”
Finally, she released a breath that seemed too large for her lungs. “I still don’t believe in soul mates, though.”
“Wait till you meet yours.”
“I can’t meet someone who doesn’t exist.” She filched the crustless lemon tartlet and stuffed it inside her mouth.
“He exists.”
Chapter 55
After dropping Celeste back off at the guild and making her promise to visit, I headed back to a place that was starting to feel like home, a place with blood-red doors and a dazzlingly dark sinner. When I arrived in the checkered marble foyer, I heard voices in the study. Raised voices. Tristan’s. Jarod’s. But also two unfamiliar gruff ones.
“You can’t be serious, Jarod!” Tristan must’ve yelled at the top of his lungs, because the walls of this house, that usually gulped down all sound, let his words pass through the thick wood without obstruction.
The guard standing in the entryway eyed me as though urging me not to intrude. I wouldn’t, of course, but had he not been there, I might’ve lingered to glean what Jarod “wasn’t serious about.”
Not wanting to be alone, I headed into the kitchen in search of Muriel and found her kneading a big ball of dough—brioche, she told me. As her hands pressed and pulled, I regaled her with stories of Versailles.
“You’ve probably heard them all already,” I said, realizing I might’ve been boring her.
“Non, ma chérie. I didn’t know any of them. Why don’t you tell me more while you help me make dinner?”
I washed my hands, thrilled at the prospect of a cooking lesson. Recounting anecdote after anecdote, I learned how to emulsify egg yolks, softened butter, and lemon juice to make a velvety hollandaise sauce to complement the stalky white asparagus she’d bought at the market.
“Thought I’d find you in here.”
I twirled around at the sound of Jarod’s voice, my heartbeats melting into one another like the butter and egg yolks earlier.
Muriel smiled. “Why do I sense you’re about to steal my sous-chef?”
“Because I’m about to steal your sous-chef,” Jarod said.
Already unknotting the apron tied around my waist, I walked over to where he stood in the entrance of the kitchen, filling the entire frame. “Thank you, Muriel.”
“Thank you. I got a fantastic history lesson and extra help.”
I shot her a grin as I slid my hand into Jarod’s outstretched one.
“How was your tour?” he asked.
“Amazing. Beautiful. Enriching. Did you know that the king had a secret passageway inside his bedroom that led straight into his mistress’s apartment?”
He pushed out of the pantry and tugged me up the stairs. “How convenient.”
“And it took three thousand candles to light up the Hall of Mirrors.”
“That’s a lot of wax.”
“And when there were guests in the palace, they were called in to witness the king’s rising.” Jarod opened his bedroom door. “That’s why Louis the Fourteenth was called the Sun—”
He kissed me, stealing the last word from my mouth, then shut the door, and backed me up against it. “I want to hear all about it, but first”—he dropped to his knees in front of me and unbuttoned my slacks—“first, I want to do something that I’ve been fantasizing about all day.”
When his stubble scraped the inside of my thigh, I flung a hand out to grasp something solid. My fingers closed around the sculpted bronze handle.
Jarod guided my thong down my legs, and every atom in my body contracted, then damn near snapped when his long fingers closed around my calves and tracked over my knees before spiraling up my thighs and easing my legs farther apart. My chest pumped in and out, fluttering the white fabric of my T-shirt.
After swiping one finger over my seam, Jarod’s eyes flared. “Hmm . . . so wet.”
The growl of his voice against my skin was almost enough to make me come; it was most definitely enough to make me begin to tremble.
He gripped my legs again, then dipped his head, and licked over the line he’d traced.
I gasped, clutching the handle tighter. He spread my legs wider and lapped at me again. The hand not keeping me upright came down on his head, my fingers tangling in his gelled locks, creati
ng chaos where there was order.
His knuckles flexed white as he licked harder, quicker, before pulling away to murmur dirty words that sounded sweet against my tensing flesh. His lips closed over me in a languid kiss before his steel and silk tongue took over, lashing violently until it tore a scream from my lungs.
“So. Fucking. Sweet,” he rasped.
He kept licking long after I’d drifted down from my high, as though on a mission to absorb every last ounce of my pleasure. Satisfied, he unfurled his imposing body and brought my eyes to his with the softest brush of his fingers under my chin. He didn’t say anything, didn’t kiss me, just drank from my eyes the same way he’d drank from my body.
Still trying to catch my breath, I murmured, “I’m not sure what I did to deserve that, but thank you. It was . . . extraordinary.”
“First off, that was entirely for me.” He licked his glistening lips, and the air that had been cooling my damp skin gained a dozen degrees. “And secondly, you deserve so much more than that. You deserve so much more than I have the means to give you.”
I cupped his jaw, my heart feeling as though it would balloon right out of my chest. “You’ve already given me everything I want.”
“No. I haven’t.” His pupils shrank, granting his irises more space. The effect lent his eyes an unusual brightness. “I haven’t given you the words you gave me last night.”
I frowned. “Which words?”
“The ones I told you not to feel for me.”
Oh. I combed my hair back, my earring catching in a snarled lock. As I worked on freeing it, I said, “I’m not expecting you to say them back, Jarod. I know I’m important to you—you’ve shown me this in so many ways—and that’s enough for me.”
I climbed onto my tiptoes, needing more inches than my heels afforded to kiss the puckered ridge between his eyebrows.
Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1) Page 32