Wings of Fire (Guardians of Ascension #3)(121)
Author: Caris Roane

“Oh, God, you are so right. We should plan a bonfire ceremony before we even leave. Why don’t you hire a contractor to build a pyre near the pool?”

He chuckled and pulled her into his arms.

Parisa now stood on the purple robes but she didn’t care. She pressed her nose into his neck and sniffed long and loud. He smelled sooo good, sage and earth and man all in one. Certain unfortunate thoughts began swirling through her mind. She felt him tense.

“Stop that,” he whispered. “The scent of tangerines is so thick in my brain right now I can hardly think.”

He pressed his hips against her and let her feel his response, but she already had. One of the results of the breh-hedden was the strange way in which she could feel his physical body, in an external sense. She could feel what her hips felt like pressing back at him, the pleasure she gave. She could feel from his perspective what it was like to have her large br**sts smashed against his chest. She could feel his body respond, his c**k thicken, lengthen, harden.

Shivers chased over her body in response, and in further response, his own body quivered. It was such a hot, dangerous back-and-forth. Oh, yeah.

She drew back and looked up at him, but didn’t break contact. “So how much time do we have?”

He growled. “We are not due at the palace for Endelle’s costume approval for half an hour.”

She shivered, he quivered. She started to fold off the clothes but he stopped her and laughed. “Allow me, please.”

She giggled. They so did not have time for her to practice more of her folding skills, which still sucked.

Within a split second she was flush against him flesh-to-flesh. She sighed and melted into his arms. The breh-hedden lit her up, and he was fire on her skin. The apertures down her back wept, and her fingers felt the ridges of his wing-locks. She flicked them gently and he writhed heavily against her. He turned her in the direction of the bed. She heard the swish of the comforter and top sheet. The next moment she was flat on her back and he was entering her, all those weighty inches of him, pushing into her, making her back arch, her wing-locks seep and make a mess of their bed. The silk sheets would have to go. Silk didn’t like moisture. Maybe a terry-cloth sheet … at least for times like these.

***

An hour after the meeting with Endelle, Medichi had his woman under the curve of his arm. He stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon, in about the same spot he’d been more than two weeks ago when he’d chased a rogue death vampire down, down, down to the raging river below, when he’d flipped him into the water then hauled him onto the rock that had broken him, when he’d pierced the bastard’s mind and taken the one piece of information he’d needed to find Parisa.

Now he was back, to look, to remember, to ponder.

Parisa shuddered. “Why did you bring me here?”

The recent battle was still fresh, for both of them.

But so was the miracle that had followed, their miracle, which had emerged because they’d each had the courage to swallow their fears and to complete the breh-hedden.

“We were born here,” he said, not looking at her. His mind was fixed in the distance, the vastness of the canyon, the beauty, the impossibility of it all, the breadth of time that had carved out the abyss, and his wings that could breach it all.

“Yes,” she whispered. “We were born here, that part of you and me that became an us. You’re right, we were.”

He felt how solemn she was. He knew her mind now, all of her intricacies, her fears, her shames, her triumphs, her loves, and just how much she admired him. He thrived on that, her respect for him, her willingness to stand beside him because she believed in him.

He held her closer. Fear rode him for a brief arctic moment. A shiver passed through him. Bad things were coming, terrible things for the Warriors of the Blood, for those women bonded to them. He knew it in the hard hateful way that he had started knowing things.

But at the same time, peace descended.

This was life, ascended life, good, bad, indifferent, terrifying.

But it was also grand, huge, magnificent, full of unbelievable joys and, yes, on occasion triumphs.

He let these pleasures flow through him. He looked at Parisa, and she turned from admiring the beauty in front of her to meeting his gaze. Her smile reached her beautiful amethyst eyes, so much the color of the banding on their shared wings.

“I love you so much,” she whispered.

He drew her into his arms. He kissed her, his tongue plunging and savoring. He loved all the connections he had to her, his tongue, his cock, his fingers, his arms wrapped around her, his body pressed to her, his wings, tip-to-tip, his fangs, but mostly his mind. God, yes his mind.

He felt her chest rise and fall in a deeply drawn breath and sigh. He felt her pleasure that he held her.

He pulled back from her then kissed her. “I love you more than I can say.”

Her smile, always her smile.

He stroked her cheek with his finger. He was blessed, so very blessed.

“Do you know what I want right this moment?”

He smiled, and the smile crept over his face. Of course he knew, and that knowledge delighted him. “You mean besides my fearsome body?”

She giggled against him. “Yes, besides your fearsome body.”

He kissed her again, then, without needing her to explain the desire of her heart, he stepped away from her. With an incredibly quicksilver movement he had not known before the breh-hedden, very much a third dimension ability, he released his wings as swift as lightning. She followed suit equally fast.

“Let’s fly,” he cried.

Yes, Antony, she laid over his mind.

Yes, he returned.

A most perfect word.