by Frank, Ella
Viper covered my hands with his as he stared directly into my eyes. “But he’s not the only one who thinks like that.”
“I know.”
“And that—” Viper cut off his words, and I could practically see the wheels turning as he said, “That doesn’t bother you?”
I lowered my eyes to his mouth, and when I gently brushed my thumb along his swollen lip, Viper sucked in a breath. “The only thing that bothers me is that you got hurt because of it. I love you,” I said. “And I don’t give a fuck what anyone has to say about that.”
I pushed up to my feet and held my hand out to him, and when Viper slipped his fingers into mine, I tugged him up and said, “Let me show you.”
Viper said nothing, but when his fingers tightened around mine, I had my answer. Without another word, I led him inside, away from the rest of the world, to a place that was just ours, where I could show him all the different ways I wanted him, and just how much I loved him.
Thirty-Five
Viper
I WASN’T SURE if it was the events of the night, the alcohol, or Halo himself, but as I followed him inside our suite and across the living space to the master bedroom, my hands shook with anticipation of what was to come.
Hell, maybe it was the alcohol—or the bump to the back of my head—making me feel like a virgin again, because I was finding it difficult to speak, not to mention pull out any of my hottest, sexiest moves.
What the hell was going on with me? But as Halo drew me to a stop in the shadow-filled room and turned my way, I knew the answer—I was nervous. Totally fucking nervous.
Tonight, when that motherfucker had been mouthing off to Halo, somewhere in the back of my mind I’d been worried that the angel would agree with him, that he’d suddenly wonder, What the hell am I doing with Viper? and leave me. And that had left me feeling desperate, panicked, and more vulnerable than I cared to admit.
Imagining a life without Halo in it was too damn painful to even think about. It hurt more than the gash on the back of my head, and as the moonlight washed over the angel’s stunning face, I wasn’t at all shocked to feel my hand tremble as I reached for him.
I took a step closer and wrapped one of those perfect curls around my fingers, as Halo placed his palms on my chest and raised his mouth to meet mine. His touch was whisper light, and I automatically opened to him, wanting that sweet, eager tongue deep inside my mouth. Halo didn’t disappoint; he flirted with my top lip, and when a soft growl escaped me, he dove inside for a more thorough taste.
I threaded my fingers through his hair as he slid a hand up over my shoulder and behind my neck, and when he groaned and twisted his other hand into my shirt to haul me closer, I wrapped an arm around his waist and connected us from head to toe.
As the kiss intensified, so did the pressure against my swollen mouth, and when a shot of pain zinged through me, I cursed and yanked my head back.
“Oh shit,” Halo said, and touched his fingertips to my lip. “I’m sorry.”
I kissed his fingers as I smirked. “I’m not. But maybe you can think of another place to kiss me instead?”
Halo chuckled, his sensual smile practically lighting up the room as he reached for the buttons of my shirt and began to undo them. “I bet I can think of somewhere.”
The wicked gleam in his eyes had me sucking in my breath, as he got to the bottom of my shirt and spread it open. “You think so?”
Halo pushed the material off my shoulders, and as it fluttered to the ground, he licked his lower lip and nodded. “I do,” he said, and then bent his head to press a kiss over my heart, trailing his hands down my ribs to the button of my jeans, which he flicked open.
My cock jerked behind the zipper Halo was now drawing down, and when he glanced up at me with heavy-lidded, sex-drunk eyes, I groaned.
“Want you so bad,” he whispered, and then licked a path up the center of my sternum, as he slipped his hand inside my jeans. When he wrapped a tight fist around my aching dick, a guttural groan left me, and Halo straightened to nip at my chin as he stroked his fist up to the wet head of my cock.
“Oh fuck,” I muttered, as my head fell back from the pleasure of having Halo fingering my piercing. But even that wasn’t enough for the angel. It seemed he was hellbent on driving me out of my mind tonight, and as he kissed and licked his way up my neck to my ear, I began to fuck that talented hand of his.
“Let me take care of you tonight,” Halo said, as he flicked his tongue over my lobe and gave me another firm pull. “I want to show you… Let me show you how much I love you.”
Jesus Christ. Halo wasn’t only stripping me of my clothes, he was tearing down any barrier in his way, including the one some stranger had erected between us for the briefest of moments.
As he let me go to shove my jeans and briefs down, I stepped out of them and waited for his next move, and without a word, Halo removed his clothes until he was as naked as I was.
My heart was pounding so hard that I was surprised the angel didn’t stop and ask what the sound was. Instead, he took one of my hands and pressed a kiss to my palm.
“I want you to listen to me and hear me, okay? I don’t care what others think about us. I don’t care what they write about us, either.” Halo then lowered our hands and tugged me toward the bed, his voice trembling with desire as his eyes roamed over me. “I only care what you and I think, and what we feel when we’re together like this.”
As he placed a knee on the bed and tugged me onto it with him, Halo’s lips curved a little and he glanced down at my hard cock. “You feel good, don’t you?”
That had a chuckle escaping my lips, just as he’d intended. “I think good might be an understatement.”
Halo’s eyes sparked, and he shifted closer on his knees until our erections bumped up against one another. Then he reached between us and wrapped his hand around the two of us.
“Fuck,” I said, and reached out to hold on to his arms, keeping us upright as he began to slowly pump his hand up and down our lengths. “Feels fucking unreal, Angel.”
Halo hummed in agreement, as he leaned forward to kiss along my jaw and down my neck, all the while working us up and down in a sticky slide.
My hips thrust upward as I punched my cock through his fist along the underside of his, and when Halo’s lips found my ear and he said, “Will you let me take you tonight?” I couldn’t stop the low growl that left me.
The only time Halo had ever taken me was that night up on the roof of his apartment, and while it had been hot as fuck, we hadn’t gone back down that road due to the painful reason we had first ended up there.
Tonight, however, things were one hundred percent different, and there was nothing I wanted more than to give the angel what he wanted, and if that was me—all of me—then he could have it.
“Is that a yes?” Halo asked, and when he punctuated his question with a firm tug on the two of us, I cursed and reached down to halt his hands.
“It won’t fucking be if you keep doing that.”
Halo instantly let go, and I groaned at the loss of pressure.
“Sorry,” he said, but then bit down on his lower lip and grinned. “I just really want to—”
“Fuck me?” I interrupted, and when Halo blushed, I couldn’t help the smirk that crossed my mouth. How he could be blushing with what we were about to do was beyond me. But damn if I didn’t love that about him.
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “God. I really want that.”
At that honest reply, I reached down and stroked myself. Halo did too. Then I shifted up the bed, stretched out on my stomach and glanced over my shoulder at the angel where he remained kneeling, staring down at me like I was his very own fantasy come to life.
The cool material of the duvet felt fucking amazing against my throbbing dick, and when I rocked my hips up and down against it, thrusting my ass back toward Halo, a soft groan filled the air.
It didn’t take long after that—the mattress shifted as Halo
climbed off it, and it didn’t take a genius to work out where the hell he’d disappeared to. But I was more than happy to wait for the angel right where I was.
I grabbed one of the twenty pillows on the king-sized bed, plumped it up under my chest, and began to roll my hips over and over against the soft cotton underneath me.
It wasn’t until I heard Halo whisper, “Holy shit,” that I realized he’d re-entered the room, and not a minute or so later he climbed back on the bed and moved up over me.
His lips found my heated skin first, kissing their way up the back of my thigh much the same way he himself liked. Then Halo was flicking his tongue over the curve of my ass and testing the firm skin of my cheek with the scrape of his teeth. But the angel wasn’t in the mood to tease tonight, thank fuck, and before I could tell him I wasn’t either, he dragged his tongue up the line of my spine and planted a kiss at the back of my neck.
I could feel his heavy, thick erection rubbing back and forth between the crack of my ass, and when Halo planted his hands by my head and lowered himself down over me, I couldn’t stop the ragged moan he pulled from me.
Fuuuck. He wasn’t even inside me yet, but the weight of him on top of me was such a fucking turn-on that I couldn’t help the way my hips canted up into him.
“Damn. Viper.” Halo panted as he rocked his entire body up over mine, wedging his dick between my firm ass cheeks. “You look… I just… Fuck. I just need a second.” Halo put his mouth to my ear and said, “You feel so fucking good.”
I couldn’t stop the arrogant grin that hit my lips. “I’ll feel even better when you get your dick in me.”
A torture-filled moan rumbled out of Halo, and then he was moving. He reached for the bottle of lube he’d grabbed from his bags and flipped open the lid, then he was back, sliding his slippery fingers up and down my crack. Ever so gently, Halo probed for entry, but I wasn’t in the mood for gentle, and when I felt his fingers on me, I widened my legs and shifted up onto my hands and knees so I could shove back onto them.
Halo sucked in a breath at the same time I cursed, and as he began to slowly move his fingers in and out of me, the angel’s arousal finally caught up to mine until he was two fingers deep and stretching me really fucking good.
“Goddamn, Angel,” I said, and dropped my head down as Halo zeroed in on my prostate and gave it one hell of a massage. “You need to get the fuck in me if you don’t want me to finish without you.”
He didn’t need more of an invitation than that. Halo withdrew his fingers, and a few seconds later I heard the sound of a condom packet being torn open. A warm palm smoothed over my ass, and when a second hand moved to my other cheek and spread me open, I squeezed my eyes shut, desperate for what I knew was about to come.
As the wide head of Halo’s cock bumped up against my entrance, my fingers clenched around the pillow under me. I could feel Halo’s fingers digging into my hips, and the ragged breathing that filled the room could’ve been coming from him or me, as he finally began to push forward. A low groan left me as Halo penetrated me one thick inch at a time, and when he finally bottomed out and stilled where he was, my arms shook underneath me.
Halo placed a palm at the base of my tailbone, and as he smoothed it up over my back, I heard him say, “You okay?”
I swallowed, as my body got used to the delicious invasion, and nodded. “I feel fuckin’ amazing, Angel. But you gotta move.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when Halo withdrew and then tunneled back inside me with surprising force. A curse ripped free of my lips, echoing off the walls of the penthouse suite as he did it again, but this time I was right there to meet him. With his hands on my hips, Halo let loose, giving me exactly what I’d asked of him, and I reached down to desperately work myself as the angel set about destroying my body. And when he shifted behind me and placed one of his hands over mine on the pillow to align his front against my back, my entire body shook from the enormity of emotions flooding me.
I lowered myself onto the mattress, and as Halo followed me down and kissed my shoulder, I squeezed my eyes shut as he slowed his movements and began to rock his body into mine.
It was intimate, sensual, and one of the most erotic moments of my life. Halo was loving every single inch of me. The good, the bad, the naked, and the vulnerable, and as that knowledge filled my soul, my climax swept over me with such force that I was shouting out the angel’s name before I could stop myself.
My body clenched around Halo’s, and as my name fell from his lips on a cry, I turned my head to tell him just how much I loved him. No words were needed, though, because the angel was telling me with his eyes, and every move of his body, that I wasn’t alone in what I was feeling. He was telling me, without words, that we would navigate this uncharted, all-consuming new territory together, and that I would never be alone again. And for the first time in my life, I knew what it meant to be truly loved by another as Halo held me there in the safety of his arms—the man, not the rock star—and let me come undone.
Thirty-Six
Halo
MY LIFE IS fucking perfect.
It definitely felt that way as I lay back against Viper’s chest, his legs on either side of me as we lounged on the private terrace. Even in the middle of the night, the Sunset Strip was still wide awake, but the faint sounds of music and traffic that traveled on the warm breeze were like a lullaby. I let out a long exhale and closed my eyes, completely content to stay where I was for the rest of my life, and judging by the lazy way Viper was tracing his fingertips up and down my chest, he felt the exact same way.
Not much had been said between exiting our bedroom and settling out here on one of the recliners. But as I lay there, wrapped up in Viper’s arms, the calm that settled around us felt as comforting as the robe I’d slipped on.
Magic. That was what it was like whenever I was with Viper like this. And the crazy part was that even if this all disappeared tomorrow, if all of the glitz and glam that came hand in hand with Fallen Angel faded from view…I’d still feel as though my life was perfect, and that had everything to do with the man I’d fallen so deeply in love with. The man I’d never seen coming.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Viper said, still caressing my skin.
“Hmm.” I ran my hands up and down his robe-covered thighs. “Only a penny? Why not a quarter? Or a dollar?”
I could feel Viper’s rumbling laugh from where my head lay against his chest. “A thousand fucking dollars for your thoughts, Angel.”
I laughed and covered his wandering hand with mine, bringing them up to hold over my heart. As my laughter faded, I looked out at the night sky just in time to see a shooting star streak across the dark expanse. I quickly made a wish and then brought Viper’s hand up to my lips, pressing a kiss against his knuckles.
“Did you make a wish?” I asked.
“A wish?”
“On the shooting star. Didn’t you see it? You’re supposed to make a wish when you see one.”
“I wasn’t looking at anything but you.” Viper’s words made my stomach flip, and when I leaned back to look up at him, he said, “What did you wish for, Angel?”
“This,” I said. “For it to always be this way.”
Viper sat up, forcing me to do the same, and held the back of my neck as he brought me in for a kiss so passionate that it made my whole body feel like a live wire. There was nothing better in the world than when Viper’s lips were on mine. No matter how crazy things got, one kiss from him and I was home.
“You’re happy?” he murmured against my mouth. “With me?”
I pulled back from him just enough so I could look into his eyes. “Happy isn’t a strong enough word for what I am with you.”
Viper’s lips curled, his fingers tightening in my hair. “Such a romantic.”
“Says the man who bought me a piano with angel wings.”
“What can I say? I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
“Mmm. I do like rubbing myself o
ff on you…” I teased, and grazed my lips over his. “And you? Are you happy with me?”
It was crazy, the way nerves suddenly flooded my body then, even though I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what Viper felt for me. I still wanted—needed—to hear him say it. To confirm that what I felt for him was in every way reciprocated. That he couldn’t live without me any more than I could live without him.
Still, it felt like a thousand lifetimes passed until he spoke, and when he did, his voice was low and more serious than I’d ever heard him.
“Angel, if tonight was my last night here on earth, even heaven couldn’t fucking top this.”
My breath caught and my vision blurred, and when Viper cradled my face and brushed a thumb over my cheek, I realized a tear had escaped. My emotions were there on the surface, and so overwhelming that I could no longer keep them inside. Because who could’ve ever imagined that Viper—the bad boy of the rock world—would ever be sitting out here with someone as ordinary as me?
“Angel?”
I blinked, trying to clear my view, and when his beautiful face came back into focus, my eyes blurred all over again, because Viper was looking at me as though I was his everything—and never had I wanted to be anything more.
“Shit, I told you I’m no good at this,” Viper said, and went to lower his arm.
But I quickly reached up to cover his hand, and as I turned my head to press a reverent kiss to his palm, I closed my eyes and swallowed around the lump that had formed in my throat.
When I finally managed to get my feelings under some kind of control, I looked up at him and whispered, “You’re better than good at this, Viper. I never imagined that someone could love me with such passion, such…intensity. You took every idea I had of love, and what it would be like for me, and replaced it with something I could never have even fathomed. How did you do that?”
For the first time since I’d met Viper, a flush stained his cheeks, which made my heart swell close to bursting. God, I loved this side of him, this vulnerability. The trust he so readily handed over to me now, and the ease in which he laid himself bare. It made me want to wrap him in my arms and never let him go.