“If Hannah should prove a threat to me or the others you love, yes.” A faint smile, his kiss a flagrantly sexual branding, his fingers thrusting into her hair to send pins scattering to the grass, his body all hard ridges and heat against her own. “Your love is a fierce thing, Elena, a thing with claws and teeth when it comes to protecting those you claim.”
He was right; she’d take on that batshit crazy Lijuan herself if it meant saving the lives of the people she loved. “Does that bother you? That I’m so bloodthirsty?”
Laughing, he reached down and swung her into his arms with an easy strength that made her feel like a gently reared Southern belle out of a period drama. “I’ll answer that upstairs. After I see your knife sheath.”
Oh, God, he sounded like he was purring. “Sleep is overrated,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing the delicious slope of it. “I’d much rather get na**d with my man.”
The instant they were behind the closed doors of their bedroom, he threw her on the bed and divested her of her dress and shoes, leaving her wearing only the slim knife strapped to her thigh. When she reached down to get rid of it, he shook his head and, holding her gaze, stripped off his own formal clothes to reveal a body that made her whimper before he got on top of her.
A kiss to her hip, his tongue flicking out to taste her skin; his fingers tracing the strap of the sheath; his wings spreading; the exotic, erotic taste of angel dust on her lips; her breath locked in her throat.
Then his mouth was a heated dampness on her navel.
“Raphael.” His name came out a caress as she tangled her hands in the midnight silk of his hair to hold him to her, her love for him a huge thing inside her.
He kissed her hip again, licking out at the bone in a light flick that made her tremble. A very male, very Raphael smile against her skin. When he shifted up over her, she was ready for his kiss . . . but she was never truly ready for Raphael’s kiss. He made her burn, the pleasure a hot, liquid burst that shimmered over her skin in rolling waves. “I could kiss you forever,” she murmured against his lips, sucking at the lower one, playing with the upper, his body weight a luscious pressure. “I love feeling you against me.”
“You say such things, Elena. You will make me your slave.” Wings spreading wider above her, he cupped the side of her face and leaned into the kiss, deepening it until their tongues tangled in sweet, hot battle, Elena’s breath lost. Gasping in just enough air to continue, she stroked her hands against the taut muscle of him, and returned to the kiss.
More? It was an intimate question between lovers.
“Yes,” she whispered. “More.”
One arm braced above her head, he gave her what she wanted, continuing to kiss her while caressing the highly sensitive upper arch of her wing with his free hand. She shivered, sliding her own hands to his nape, then down, her fingers brushing his wings. He loved it when she kissed her way down the inner arches where his wings grew out of his back, and she loved that she knew that about him, about her lover.
“Stop that, hbeebti,” he said, their lips parting on a wet kiss of sound.
She smiled, her ni**les flush against the hard wall of his chest. “You like it.”
“Too much. And today, I wish to pleasure my consort.” Pressing his thumb down on her jaw to part her lips, he kissed her again, angel dust glittering in the air.
“Mmm.” She rubbed against him. “Did you make a change to your special blend?” Angel dust, he’d told her, was normally rich and exquisite, but not sexual. Elena had only ever tasted Raphael’s blend, and it was always oh-so-sexual—today, it also held a dangerous bite.
Kisses down her throat. “I wouldn’t wish my consort to suffer ennui.”
“Oh!” It took some time for her brain cells to unscramble after he took one of her ni**les into his mouth, rolling it over on his tongue like it was a plump berry, then turning his attention to the other. Chest heaving when he lifted his head to lave a kiss just below her br**sts, she managed to say, “Ennui, yes, that’s exactly what I feel right now.”
His eyes glinted. “So, my consort challenges me. Very well.”
Shivering, because his voice . . . it was fur over her senses, across her tight, damp ni**les, along her lips, she watched him dip his head, place a wet kiss on her navel. He blew a breath over the wet, kept going past her renewed shiver. “Now,” he purred, “it is my turn to be intoxicated.”
Her spine curved off the bed at the first touch of his mouth on her most private flesh. As she knew her lover, he knew her. Every tiny, nerve-laden curve. Now, lifting her thighs up over the wide breadth of his shoulders, he cupped her bu**ocks in his hands and kissed her with an intimacy that stole her senses, making her feel delicious, decadent, beautiful.
Hands buried in his hair, she held on to him as her body shuddered again and again, the orgasm a slow, exquisite ride. He licked her to the end, stroking his hands over her thighs to shift her legs to either side of his body, his fingers lingering on the strap that held the knife to her thigh. “My warrior.” Another kiss to her navel before he rose up over her again, his arousal nudging at her pleasure-swollen dampness.
She gripped at his upper arms, muscle and tendon flexing under her touch as he clamped one hand over her hip, the other braced on her wing—an added pleasure—and thrust his c**k inside her. Moaning at the erotic storm of sensation and needing him even closer, she drew him down to her mouth. He came, his hand sliding up her body to mold her breast as he stroked in and out of her in a deep, lazy rhythm that said he had nowhere else to be, his attention only and absolutely on her.