Archangel’s Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(63)
Author: Nalini Singh

Every tiny inch of her skin crawling with sensation, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her br**sts to the muscled plane of his chest as he propelled them ever higher. “Kiss me, Archangel.”

Later.

Too hungry to listen to the order, she nipped at his throat, sucked and kissed until the hands on her waist squeezed, his erection a pulsing brand between them. Not yet, Elena. There was a hoarse quality to his mental tone, the glow coming off his wings sparking electric blue.

The sight threw a switch inside her—she wrapped her legs around Raphael’s waist, her wings tight to her back as she trusted him to hold her up. Then she concentrated on getting him to lower his head.

Bites along his jaw, nips over his throat, suckling kisses on his pulse. When that didn’t work, she ran a hand down to circle one flat male nipple. He gripped her hand, his hold shifting to her lower back, and for a moment, she thought she had him. Then his jaw firmed.

And he flew higher.

Higher.

Until they were well above the cloud layer, at an altitude where it should’ve been freezing cold. Except that the blaze coming off Raphael seemed to have created a cocoon around her—not that she needed the heat, not with angel-dust in every pore and every cell. She could feel herself lushly damp against his abdomen, wanted only to ride him until he begged for surrender.

“Raphael. Now.” It was a demand fueled by near-painful need.

He stopped.

High, high, high above the earth. Then, his mouth was on her own, stealing her breath. Ready?

Yes!

Clamping his arms tight around her, he angled them so they faced down toward the water, and then he . . . dropped.

She screamed into the kiss even as she felt an electric burn of heat against her and then the warm muscle of his suddenly unclothed body. He tumbled them over and over as they fell, and she would’ve been lost at the first tumble, but he held her in unyielding arms until there was no fear … only the feel of him—hard and demanding sliding into the melting heat of her body.

Tiny shocks of pleasure radiated out from that most intimate of joinings.

Breaking the kiss to gasp in a breath, she saw the water coming at them at overwhelming speed. “Raphael!” A single pulse of fear before he executed a turn so sharp it thrust him soul-deep inside of her.

An overload of sensation. Crackling electricity across her skin.

Not fighting the agonizing bite of pleasure, she reclaimed his lips as he pushed them both through the clouds again, his body shifting with each wingbeat to caress her with excruciating intimacy. Clenching her fingers in his hair, she rubbed herself against the solid heat of his chest, needing, wanting, hungering.

Dance with me, Elena.

He bit at her lips when she squeezed her inner muscles in a sexual caress, kissing his way across her cheek and down her neck before he took her mouth again.

Then they fell once more.

She came apart on a scream halfway through the dive, every nerve in her body igniting with pleasure, with sensation, with the wild exhilaration of dancing with an archangel. Lights exploded behind her eyes, blue and gold and filled with the wicked, wicked glimmer of angel-dust. And all around her, she felt sleek, warm muscle, until she didn’t know where she ended and he began. With me, Archangel. A demand saturated in pleasure.

But I am not finished with you, Hunter.

He rose again, skimming so close to the water that she felt the spray cool and wet against her overheated skin.

Thigh muscles quivering like jelly, she locked her ankles at his lower back, resting her head in the curve of his neck. Too bad. I think I’m dead.

A laugh, husky and male in a way that shouted sex. It did something to her, that sound, blew air onto the embers of a passion so recently satisfied. Her skin stretched taut in anticipation, and she found herself kissing his neck again, caressing him every way she could. With her mouth, with her fingers, with the most secret parts of her body.

Elena. His hold tightened. Once more.

“Once more.” With that, she locked her mouth to his as they plummeted in a dizzying spiral awash in the erotic gold of angel-dust.

She was so focused on the male who owned her heart, her soul, that she didn’t see the sea rushing up at them until it was too late. Raphael! she screamed as they hit … except there was no pain, and she was tumbling, tumbling down with her archangel, the water held at bay by a shield of shimmering light streaked with blue.

Heart thudding triple-time, she gripped his face. “Scaring me out of my wits is not good foreplay.”

Reaching between them as they came to a lazy stop, he touched the hot, slick bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs . . . and she threatened to fracture. Clenching her inner muscles, she met those eyes so much bluer than the Atlantic. Move.

One hand under her butt, the other on her back, the archangel decided to obey an order for once.

Then there was no more thought.

Raphael leaned on his forearm the next morning as he lay watching his consort sleep. Exhaustion had her limp, her arms curled around her pillow as she lay on her front. He smiled, running a single finger down the centerline of her back.

She made a sound, but it wasn’t a complaint, so he continued to explore.

Last night … She’d been magnificent. Stronger, faster, more willing than he’d ever expected. He hadn’t meant for her introduction to that most intimate of dances to be so sensually rough, but when she’d ridden every wave with him without flinching, he’d given in to temptation and taken her in a way he’d never have chanced with another woman.

Because immortal or not, they would’ve been terrified.

“Hey.” A sleepy grumble as she shifted closer to him, until his knee brushed against her body, her wings spreading till one lay across his hip and thighs.

He ran a hand over the sleek indigo of her primary covert feathers with proprietary pleasure. “Good morning.”

Her hand came to rest on his thigh below the sheets, perilously close to the part of him that had the most unquenchable hunger for her. “Careful, Guild Hunter.”

A drowsy curve of her lips, but her eyes were very much alert. “So, you going to tell me what happened last night?”

He’d known she’d push. That was who she was. As he’d said, it would have been easier were she malleable—but he’d never have taken her for his consort then. “I told you my mother and I always shared a strong mental bond.” He fought the pull of memory, of a time when Caliane had been exactly that—his mother. “It seems that bond did survive. She can reach me even through the vestiges of Sleep.”