That was when she realized she’d dropped her knees. “I guess you think you’ve won.” A husky whisper as he lifted his head and pushed her back onto the bed with a hand splayed on her breastbone. Maybe she should’ve resisted, but she wanted him on top of her, inside her, his c**k parting her wet, passion-swollen tissues in hard demand.
“This round, yes.” Raphael simply stood there for long seconds, indulging in the sight of his consort. She had the body of a warrior. Strong, sleek with muscle. Pleasing to his every sense.
The eyes that watched him were hazy with desire, her lips curved in the slight smile of a woman who knew her lover would satisfy her, one leg cocked up at the knee as she lay languorous and warm and aroused in their bed. When she turned over onto her front, her extraordinary wings spreading out on either side, he didn’t stop her. Instead, climbing onto the mattress, he straddled her on his knees before sweeping the silken threads of her hair off her back, to run his finger down the line of her spine.
She shivered. “Archangel.”
He liked the way she said that, the sound a throaty pleasure on its own. Leaning to place his hands palms down on either side of her head, he kissed the back of her neck, felt her lower body rise toward him. As he continued to lave kisses along her spine, stroking his fingers along the sensitive inner edges of her wings at the same time, her breathing got choppier, the small shifts of her body more and more insistent ... the earthy scent of her arousal infusing the air.
His c**k jerked, but he wasn’t done yet.
Caressing the base of her spine with a swirl of his tongue, he lifted himself up again and said, “It is time for the first wicked thing, Elena.” He slid his hands under her h*ps and pushed upward.
“Not from where I’m lying.” Her voice was breathless but she heeded his silent request to bring herself up onto her knees and elbows, spread her thighs.
Unable to resist, he moved both hands down the sensitive insides of her thighs, heard her make a quintessentially feminine sound of pleasure. In this position, she was open to him—luscious and flushed, her plump folds pure erotic invitation. Not giving her any warning, he put his mouth on her. She would’ve jerked away in sensual shock except that he had a firm grip on her thighs.
A shudder rippled over her as he took his first taste. He needed this, needed her. The day had taken a brutal toll, but here there was only his consort who had not shied at witnessing the ruthless reality of what it took to keep the Hudson from running bloodred, who had come into his arms though her anger at him had been a harsh whip.
“Raphael, please.” A sensual plea.
Lifting his mouth from her, he reached down to tease a single finger through her damp heat. It caused her hand to clench on the sheets, her heartbeat to accelerate . . . but she was a hunter, a warrior. Making an unexpected move, she pulled away and onto her back with a grace that had one of her wings shimmering above him for a single second. The first thing she did was clear away the tangle of her hair. The second was to rise up onto her knees and claim his mouth in a kiss that tasted of a feminine possession he had no intention of denying.
Using the opportunity to caress the lush weight of her br**sts, the sensitive peaks of her ni**les, he halted her when she went to push him to his back. “No, Guild Hunter. Not tonight.” He had never been loved with such fierceness as his hunter lavished on him. But the instant she put her hands, her mouth on him, he would be undone—and tonight, he wanted something else. I would pleasure you.
“Torture me you mean.” In spite of the soft complaint, she lay back, let him come over her, stroke her from shoulder to breast to hip. He plucked at her nipple, rubbed his thumb over her collarbone, ran his lips over the curve of her hip. Started again. Her mouth was a kiss-wet enticement, the pulse in her neck an inducement to suck, to mark, the leg she curled over his hip sleek temptation.
When she rose up toward him, he rocked his clothed lower body against her.
Oh. The friction of Raphael’s pants, the press of the zipper . . . It had Elena digging her nails into his shoulders. “I ache for you,” she whispered, her need a wide-open gash in her heart.
Raphael stopped his languid strokes to reach up and push back the sweat-damp strands of hair off her forehead, cup the side of her face. “You have me, Elena. Always.” His kiss was a dark claiming that had her gasping for breath, the taste of him in her every cell.
“Now.”
“No.” Shifting to slide his fingers between her legs, he pressed down on her clitoris, making her cry out. “Tell me,” he said, gliding his fingers through her quivering flesh to the slick entrance of her body, “if I move too fast.”
“You,” she said, hands clenching on his shoulders as he pushed two of his fingers inside her with blunt deliberation, “are a tease.”
Firmly embedded in her, he began to spread his fingers, causing her inner muscles to spasm ... but he stopped just before she would’ve gone over, keeping her balanced on that finest of edges. “Not a tease”—his fingers coming together, spreading again—“but there is something to be said for patience.” A single hard, fast withdrawal and thrust.
Raphael. Gripping at his biceps, she rolled her h*ps in an attempt to urge him to finish it, but he returned to the tormenting indolence of his movements even as he dipped his head to suck one of her ni**les into his mouth, tasting her with that same leisurely pleasure.
Her entire body hovered on the brink. “You’re in a devil of a mood.”
A smile against her breast as he released her nipple with a wet sound to kiss the skin around it. “I wish to enjoy my consort. You will allow it.”
Thrusting her hand into his hair, she pulled up his head. “This consort has a knife under the mattress that she won’t hesitate to use if you don’t give her an orgasm soon.”
He smiled. A brilliant, blinding thing. So rare were smiles such as these from her archangel that her heart stopped for a second. Mine, she thought, you are mine.
That smile grew wider. Yes.
It was only then that she realized she’d sent the thought to him. That he hadn’t hesitated for an instant . . . it vanquished the ugliness that had awoken in her earlier, the painful echo of rejection and loneliness. She knew it would rise again—the scar was too deep, too vicious not to—but this man, her archangel, he kept hold of his own; his possessive will was her shield.
“Why are you smiling?” Her own lips curving, she stole a kiss.