The ghost of a smile touched her face and pain speared through his chest. He didn’t try to analyze it. No point. Somehow, Isabella had carved through his amor and the damage was done.
She didn’t remind him she was half-demon, or she possessed powers that would, at least, give her a fleeting chance. They both knew that, and it wouldn’t change his mind. Instead, she slid her hands around the back of his neck and linked her fingers together.
He drew in a deep breath, savoring the elusive hint of her perfume in the air, and attempted to pull back. But his good intentions dissolved before they even took form, and he remained locked in place, her delectable curves a tantalizing promise of eternity against his body.
Her lips parted, so close to his. This wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the place, and now he knew of her heritage, how could he even think of taking her again?
She rolled onto her toes and captured his mouth. His groan of defeat echoed in his ears and throbbed through his mind, as he cupped her ass and tugged her closer. Her kiss was desperate, savage, an affirmation of life and even as the knowledge pounded through him, he discarded it.
He didn’t care why she wanted this. Only that she did. And if this was the last time they’d ever be together, he was going to take every last damn thing she offered.
As she feverishly tugged his shirt from his pants and shoved them down his thighs, he unzipped her dress and trailed his fingertips over her naked back. She sighed, the sound reverberating inside his mouth, before she pushed the sparkling material to the floor and kicked it aside.
Her exploring fingers found his wings, and her touch was exquisite fire. She wasn’t the first to caress his wings, but it had never been like this before. Protectively, he wrapped them around her, and she broke their kiss to lean back, cushioning her head against his feathers.
A dark, damning wave of possessiveness gripped him. Her tangled blonde hair spread against his silver-gray wings and the guileless blue of her eyes gave her such a vulnerable air. He knew it was an illusion. But it didn’t change the truth.
He’d protect her with his life.
“Stop thinking.” Her husky whisper stoked the lust in his blood but a question he couldn’t ignore gnawed through his brain. And not for the first time. No matter how impossible it should be.
“Are you reading my mind?” Did he care if she could? His wings shifted, tightening around her, inexorably pulling her closer until their breath mingled.
“I don’t need to. I can see it in your eyes. We don’t need anything else, Nate. Just this.”
She cradled his jaw, her deceptively fragile fingers branding his flesh. But even as he hoisted her in his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, discordance prickled along the edges of his mind.
I want more than this.
The revelation flared through his brain, a supernova brightness, and for an eternal moment paralysis held him in a punishing grip. When it came to sex, he never wanted more than this moment in time. Never looked ahead or thought about the woman in question when they weren’t together.
What the fuck am I doing?
Isabella dug her nails into his jaw. “Stop,” she whispered, her lips brushing his and their kiss was hungry and wild.
He backed up to the bed and sat on the edge, Isabella straddling him. Her curves pressed against his chest, exquisite torture, and his groan echoed in his ears as she tore his shirt from him before pushing him onto his back.
Her hair was a silken caress against his burning flesh as her mouth and teeth engulfed his senses with primal fire. His fingers explored the warm satin of her skin, and the sound of harsh breaths and beating hearts filled the heated air. There was nothing beyond this primitive room, nothing except Isabella and the promise of forever glowing in her eyes. It was an illusion. He didn’t care. All he wanted was here, now, and he’d take it, savor it, damn well inhale it, without analyzing the why.
She gripped his shoulders, bracing her weight, and slowly glided her wet slit across the length of his cock. His thumbs played with her nipples and her sigh touched a hidden sliver of his soul that he had never known existed before today. Infinity beckoned as finally she sank onto him, and her addictive heat embraced him with mind shattering passion.
Her nails scored his skin and he reared off the bed, gripping her hips. She arched her back, and her gorgeous breasts were a visual feast, a temptation he couldn’t resist. He cupped her breast, relishing how she filled his palm, and sucked her luscious nipple into his mouth.
“Harder,” she breathed. A command he was powerless to resist.
She rode him, pounding him into the bed, and the scent of sex and need swirled with reckless abandon. He stroked the tips of his feathers along her back and she shuddered, her eyelashes flickering in ecstasy. Her tight sheath convulsed around him, a glorious cocoon of pure sensation and wordless content, and he fell. Ama-gi.
Home.
Chapter 22
Bella
Enveloped within Nate’s wing, Bella didn’t want to move. His feathers were soft, silken, warm with life and so breathtakingly powerful she could barely imagine it.
The steady beat of his heart beneath her hand was hypnotic. So was the sound of his breathing, and the way his fingers idly traced patterns across her shoulder.
She could stay here forever, her body entwined with his. If only it could be this easy.
Reluctantly, she forced open her eyes and drank in the magnificent vision of his naked chest. The fragile world she had built for herself had been destroyed in one vindictive swoop. But she hadn’t fallen into his arms through shock. She’d wanted him. Needed him. And had used the only way she knew how to have him one last time.
She wasn’t proud of it. But she didn’t regret it. Unable to stop herself she pressed her body against him, a final, lingering touch before this moment out of time shattered.
His arm tightened around her, and his wing flexed, drawing her closer in his feathered embrace. He wasn’t making this easy. But nothing with Nate was easy.
Except for how I fell for him.
A ragged sigh hitched through her as she finally faced the truth. A truth she’d known almost from the moment she’d met him. She’d sworn off love so long ago. Never wanting to go through the heartrending agony of watching the man she loved grow old and die.
The irony was great. If anything, she was the one who would grow old and die, long before Nate.
Obviously, this was the bitch of the universe letting her know there was more than one way to break a heart.
“You okay?” His deep voice vibrated through his chest, tingling her fingers, and it took every shred of willpower she possessed not to simply crawl on top of him and lose herself once again.
She’d indulged enough. But real life still waited out there, and she had to face it.
“Yes.” Her lips brushed his skin. It would be so easy to press a kiss on his beautiful flesh, but it felt too intimate. As though by doing such a simple thing she’d give herself away.
Stupid thing to think, after the way she’d practically devoured him just now. But that was different. Because that was just sex.
She squeezed her eyes shut. There was no distinction, except inside her messed-up head. And that was where it was going to stay.
Her interlude was over. And so was her self-indulgent grief. There would be plenty of time to mourn her broken home when Dagan was dealt with.
And not just my home…
Gently, she eased out of Nate’s embrace. He didn’t try and stop her. Had she expected him to? She refused to think about it, and instead reached across the bed and picked up his discarded shirt. He sat up and leaned against the timber wall but didn’t take his steady gaze from her as she pulled his shirt on. It was miles too big for her, and his scent clung to the cotton, like an ethereal caress.
She concentrated on doing up the buttons, so she didn’t have to look at him. Just in case he saw more in her eyes than she wanted. After everything they’d been through
together it was ridiculous that she didn’t know what to say to him and she glanced around the place for inspiration.
It was certainly impressive. Some sort of treehouse, by the way the view through the many windows gave a fabulous view of exotic treetops. As inspiration went, it worked.
“This is amazing.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the view, but still couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “Did you build this yourself?”
“A long time ago. Although I freely admit I cheated with the glass. I imported that from off-planet.”
Her suspicion had been right. They were no longer on Earth and despite the circumstances, excitement flared through her. “Where are we?”
“The far side of Andromeda.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. For some reason, that now she thought about it didn’t even make sense, she’d assumed they were still within the Milky Way. “Wow. Okay, then. I didn’t expect that.”
“I found this planet soon after the exodus from Earth. It’s in the backwaters of the Galaxy. I’d be surprised if anyone else even knows it exists.”
The exodus from Earth? She knew the historical story, of course. How archangels had abandoned their own half-blood descendants in the chaos of floods and earthquakes that had hit the planet when Earth reset her celestial clock. But over the last couple of days she’d questioned the truth of it.
It didn’t fit what she knew of Nate. He’d never leave the vulnerable behind, no matter what other archangels might have done. And she’d found proof in the archives that the Watchers taught one version of history while they concealed another.
Yet he’d just confirmed that he had, indeed, been part of the exodus.
“Really?” She turned to him, but her questions dried in her throat. His hair hung over his shoulder in thick ropes of gorgeousness, and his dark eyes were fixed on her, a smoky gaze that caused sharp ripples of need deep inside.
“When I say it’s primitive, I’m not joking.” He gave a faint smile, which didn’t help settle the plague of butterflies currently invading her stomach. “But it suited me at the time.”
Stop gawping at him. She wasn’t a starstruck mortal, and she wasn’t going to behave like one. Frantically, she clawed through her mind because there was something she needed to ask him. And it had nothing to do with how advanced or otherwise the indigenous people of this planet were.
“Why did you leave Earth?” She couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe he’d left the vulnerable to perish.
“There wasn’t much left of the Earth we’d known once we escaped.” His voice turned grim. “Also, it was the one thing our damn goddess didn’t want us to do.”
Enthralled, she gazed at him. Questions tumbled through her mind, demanding answers that only he could give.
“What do you mean, after you escaped? What happened?” There had never been a whisper of such things in the histories. Were they another secret buried in the Forbidden Archives?
“Don’t you know? I’d have thought the Watchers reveled in our downfall.”
“Archangels’ downfall? I don’t know anything about that. It was the demons who were banished. Are you telling me that’s not true?”
“The demons were banished before archangels were created.”
She wrapped her arms around her knees as shreds of information she’d picked up over the years twisted through her mind. Humans had their own fables of archangels and demons, but the informed had assumed that they were nothing more than fairy stories.
But just how informed were the Earth-born descendants of demons? It seemed truth was an elusive concept when it came to the immortals of antiquity.
The knowledge she and her kind had been lied to burned through her chest like acid. But after all that had happened over the last day or so, she wasn’t surprised.
Just disappointed. And in the distant shadows of her mind, a familiar sensation of once again being adrift in an alien world crawled from its tenuous slumber.
“I didn’t know that.” By rights, she should hate admitting that to Nate, the enemy of her people. But she didn’t. Because right now, she didn’t have any people. No allegiances, no loyalty. The eerie sense of disconnectedness snaked like corrosive lava through her brain and she forcibly shut it down. She’d deal with it later. When she was alone. Nate had seen her fall apart once. She’d never let him witness such weakness again. “Our histories tell us that archangels were instrumental in having demons sent into exile.”
“That’s creative. But untrue.”
“So you didn’t poison the great goddess’ mind against demons?” She already knew the answer. But wanted to hear him confirm it.
“Her mind was poisoned long before she started her damn experiments.” Bitterness threaded through the words. “Demons were her first experiment. When they didn’t turn out the way she wanted, she started over. With archangels.”
How easily truth could be manipulated. In her version, demons had been created from divine love. But she guessed experiment worked just as well. There was every possibility that Nate was lying but, in her heart, she knew he wasn’t.
“You said you escaped. I still don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you know of Ama-gi?”
She’d only heard the word once before, when Nate had spoken it in the guesthouse in Romania, yet it whispered through her, evocative and oddly comforting, as though it called her to a long-forgotten home.
“A place you knew long ago.” She gave him a sad smile as she repeated his words from Romania back to him.
“It’s been given many names throughout history.” There was a brooding, faraway look in his eyes that inexplicably made her heart ache. “Somehow, its essence survived in the genetic memory of humanity. It was the true cradle of civilization on Earth and the place we lived for almost a thousand years.”
The glorious paradise, before the demonic fall from grace. Which, despite the propaganda, hadn’t been due to an almighty battle between the great goddess’ two opposing creations.
“Why are we even enemies, then?” If there had been no epic battle, and if the archangels hadn’t persuaded their great goddess to disown her first beloved children, what the hell was the problem?
“Archangels and demons aren’t the same, Isabella.”
“It seems we’ve more in common than not.”
“Only superficially.”
He was deliberately searching for reasons why their two races were incompatible. It shouldn’t hurt. But it did. It was almost as though he was trying to tell her why they could never have anything more than this fleeting moment together.
But she already knew that. He didn’t have to shove it down her throat.
“I don’t agree,” she said. He obviously believed in the superiority of his race, but she wasn’t going to agree with him. Especially when she now doubted demons were the ones who deserved that distinction, either. “I think there’s nothing to choose between us.”
His beautiful wing curled around her, the tips of his feathers dusting her cheek in a tender caress.
“I’m not talking about you. You’re different. But demons are fundamentally flawed. They can’t be trusted. They’ve wanted nothing more than our destruction from the moment of our creation.”
How could his touch be so gentle, when his words were weapons, ripping her apart?
“I’m not different, Nate. I’m not just some human with a trace of immortal blood. I’m half-demon and I don’t believe we’re all flawed, or that all archangels are so damn perfect.”
“I never said we’re perfect.” His feathers trailed over her arm and across her back. She willed herself not to react, but treacherous need shimmered through her body regardless. “And you’re not flawed.”
She let out a ragged sigh. They were going in circles. He’d never acknowledge his prejudice. Did she really want to spend this time debating the finer points with him? There was no point. In her heart she wanted him to remember her as someone different.
No
t flawed.
Pathetic. But she wasn’t going to analyze it. Because she didn’t want her own memories of Nate tarnished by a useless argument based only on her gut feelings, and no hard facts, when the outcome wouldn’t even change anything.
Real life couldn’t be ignored forever. At least Octavia had been warned, and she had every faith Nico would do all in his power to protect his Echelon.
But now she needed to get to Eblis and find out the truth. Why had he wanted her to reveal her powers to the Elite? Did he know about Dagan? It was time to find out what, exactly, Eblis’ agenda was.
She reached out and touched Nate’s hand. It was meant to be nothing but a brief stroke across his knuckles, but he caught her fingers and for endless seconds she remained a willing captive within his smoldering gaze.
“I need clothes,” she said at last, breaking the spell, and regret squeezed her heart as he reluctantly released her. She left the bed and glanced at the windows. They needed to find Dagan, but right now she was on an alien planet. How could she leave without taking a quick look outside?
He reached her side, magnificently naked, and opened the door that led directly onto a deck that wrapped around the outside of the treehouse. Remember which view I’m supposed to be admiring. It was hard to tear her bewitched gaze from his spectacular pecs.
She gripped the wooden handrail, so she wasn’t tempted to grip him instead, and focused on the view. Birdsong filled the air, and flashes of metallic blue and bright red-orange wings flashed through the leaves. They were on an island in the middle of an archipelago, surrounded by sunlit-glinting aquamarine water. The mainland wasn’t far away and looked like it was mostly forest with a wide sandy beach.
Movement rustled the trees on the mainland, and she stared, transfixed, as a massive creature emerged from the forest. Its long neck was thick and tinged with green while its elongated jaw snapped at the branches.
“Oh, my gods.” She couldn’t tear her gaze away. “It’s a dinosaur.” Not like any she’d seen in museums, but there was no mistaking the genus.
Salvation: A Realm of Flame and Shadow Novel Page 20