The Sweetest Burn

Then he picked me up, holding my hips against his while he leaned back until I was half straddling him. The change in position caused him to penetrate so deep, I could barely stand it, yet I cried out with pleasure so intense that it brought me over the edge. As I came, he moved even faster, his thrusts rougher, until I felt his climax in the fierce way his grip tightened and the deep, wet spasms within me.

He fell back against the bed, taking me with him, which was good since I’d suddenly lost the ability to move. I was vibrating with pleasure and so worn-out that I was dizzy; a unique experience for me. When Adrian brushed his lips across mine, I was too tired to kiss him back, but I did smile. Right before I gave into that anesthetic mixture of afterglow and exhaustion, I whispered the words I hadn’t told him since that night all those months ago when I’d pulled him out from under a pile of demon ashes.

“I love you, too, Adrian.”

Then, at last, I fell asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I WOKE UP to the unfamiliar weight of a heavy arm draped across my body. It made me smile as I rolled over into Adrian’s embrace. Yeah, I could definitely get used to this.

“Hey,” I murmured, opening my eyes.

Adrian’s eyes were open, too. In fact, he looked like he’d been awake for a while. “Hey, yourself,” he said, and kissed me.

I kissed him back, but pushed him away when he began to deepen the kiss in a more serious way.

“Wait,” I said, rolling away. I might be in a romantic mood, but my bladder wasn’t. His shirt was on the floor, and I pulled it on before I hurried into the bathroom.

When I came out, Adrian was still stretched out on the bed, his muscled arms over his head and the sheets tangled around his hips. I enjoyed the sight of that so much, it took me several seconds to register the numbers on the clock behind him.

“I slept for ten hours?” I asked in disbelief.

His smile held a hint of wickedness. “You were tired. I can’t take all the credit for that, but I’ll take some.”

Being up over thirty hours while bouncing back and forth between realms and time zones might have resulted in a lot of my tiredness, but Adrian definitely was responsible for some of it. And he was responsible for all my aches in very intimate places.

“Zach’ll be here in about two hours,” I said, mentally calculating when dusk was.

Adrian’s smile grew. “That gives you only an hour to eat, shower and get dressed.”

“An hour?” I teased, coming closer.

He lunged, using his incredible speed to grab me and throw me onto the bed before my next breath.

“Probably less,” he murmured, giving me a scorching kiss.

In the end, I had just over thirty minutes to get ready. At some point while I’d been sleeping, Adrian had ordered room service, so I scarfed the sandwich, fries and iced tea he’d gotten for me as soon as I came out of the shower. Then I got dressed in the new clothes Adrian had managed to get, too.

I’d just finished putting on my jeans and lavender top when Zach appeared in the bedroom doorway. To his credit, he didn’t so much as wink at the messy bed or clothes strewn on the floor.

“Time to go,” he stated.

I looked at Adrian. “Do we need to check out?”

He let out an amused snort. “No, Ivy, it’s fine.”

I sighed as I fingered my new shirt, remembering that the nearest gateway was under the Brooklyn Bridge. “Guess all this is about to get wet.”

“Don’t worry,” Adrian replied, going to the closet and pulling out a sealed plastic bag. “We’ve got more clothes.”

“How long were you awake?” I asked in wonder.

He shrugged. “A while. I’m used to all that.”

“Oh, I could tell,” I replied, arching a meaningful brow.

His grin promised things I now knew he could deliver on. “I meant realm-hopping without sleep, but I love your dirty mind.”

The sound Zach made must’ve been Archon for “enough already.” “If you wish to go back to the realm, come with me now.”

“We’re coming,” I said, and Adrian called out, “Brutus!”

The gargoyle came out of his room, giving a wary look at the windows, which still showed the soft light of dusk. Poor boy. Wait until he saw where we were going. But we wouldn’t be staying long. Not when we couldn’t leave unless Zach was there to pull us through the gateway. The Archon tended to disappear a lot, and we still had to search for the staff.

“After you,” I said, sketching a theatric bow at Zach.

His mouth twitched in his usual version of a not-smile. “Marriage seems to agree with you.”

Marriage. The word still felt foreign, as if it couldn’t possibly apply to me, but I didn’t argue. Adrian and I weren’t just bound together by mere human legalities. We’d been soul-tethered. It didn’t get more permanent than that.

When Adrian put his arm around me, his fingers trailing over that stunning, darkly glittering ring, I decided that I loved the word marriage. It meant that we were going to face whatever life or destiny threw at us together.

“Maybe I’ll change my name,” I mused as we left the suite for the elevator. “What’s your last name again, Adrian?”

Something flashed across his face, as if I’d poked at an old wound. “I don’t know,” he replied lightly.

I could have kicked myself. I thought I’d simply forgotten it, but Adrian had been so young when Demetrius had taken him, he hadn’t even known his full name. It’s not as if his mother had been alive to tell him, either. Demetrius had seen to that.

“Well, you can always pick one, although I don’t recommend Iscariot,” I said, attempting to walk back the new, tense mood with my quip about Judas’s last name.

Adrian’s wry smile said he appreciated my stab at humor. “That wouldn’t be my first choice, either.”

“Or, maybe Zach knows what your mother’s last name was?” I said, remembering that he had an encyclopedic knowledge of lineage, not to mention children. But when Zach’s dark gaze landed on me, I knew I’d made a mistake.

“You inquire about Adrian’s real mother, yet you’ve never asked me about yours.”

I used walking through the busy lobby as an excuse not to respond. All my life, I thought I had known the basic story of my biological parents. Due to my mixed coloring, pediatricians had guessed that my father had been Caucasian, and my adoptive parents had believed that my mother had been an undocumented Hispanic immigrant who’d left me on the side of a highway when the tractor trailer she’d been hiding in jackknifed.

I hadn’t hated my bio-mom for abandoning me. The Jenkinses had raised me better than that. Instead, the few times I’d thought about her, I’d pitied her for being desperate enough to give up her month-old newborn so she’d have a better chance at disappearing into this country. Her life in Mexico must have been truly awful. As for my bio-dad, well, I knew nothing about him. No Caucasians had been spotted escaping the tractor trailer the day of the accident, so he’d been gone by the time I was abandoned. Maybe he hadn’t even known that he had a daughter.

That’s what I’d believed, and the Jenkinses had showered me with so much love, I’d been fine with it. Then I’d met Zach and he’d ripped my world apart, first by telling me about my supernatural lineage and unwanted destiny, then by his comment about my birth mother. Your real mother didn’t leave you because she was running from the police. She did it to save you, just as your dreams revealed.

He’d tried to tell me more, and I hadn’t let him. I’d been too overwhelmed after finding out that my adoptive parents had been killed, Archons and demons were real and demons had my sister in one of their realms. Add in the part where my best chance at saving Jasmine involved a lost supernatural slingshot and an arrogant, secretive man who wanted nothing to do with me, and I’d been full up on what I could handle.

But Zach was right, I reflected as I got into the limo while Adrian gave Brutus instructions to follow us by air. I’d had chances since then to ask about my biological parents, and I hadn’t. Why didn’t I want to know? Was I afraid that the reality was worse than the fallacy I’d grown up believing?