Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“So we’ll sleep.”
“What about Smoke? I can go pick her up.” Not wanting Smoke alone so soon after his return home, Illium had asked Izak to cat-sit—and for the young angel to bring her up to the party during a period of mellow music. After she’d been petted and gushed over to her heart’s content, Izak had taken both himself and a sleepy Smoke back to his quarters.
“Izzy dropped her off not long ago—he has an early shift. She’ll be lazing on the bed if I know Smoke.”
“He’s building her a cat maze, you know.” Aodhan pushed back strands of Illium’s hair. “He’s the reason she can sneak out of anywhere.”
“No, my cat child is just a prodigy.”
Amused and awash in affection, Aodhan didn’t resist when Illium pulled him into the suite and shut the door.
Illium happy and in a playful mood was a delight.
Aodhan allowed the blue-winged angel to push him up against the back of the door, his hands on either side of Aodhan’s head, and his body all muscled heat layered with the faint scent of sweat from the dancing. It altered his natural scent, turned it more raw, making Aodhan want to lick it up off his skin.
When he kissed Aodhan, it was all light brushes and little bites. The embers in Aodhan’s blood heated, his hands going to Illium’s waist to pull him closer, their bodies hard up against each other in a way that was unmistakably erotic. He could feel Illium’s desire, his own a rigid pulse low in his body.
“You’re too thin,” he said to the softness of Illium’s lips, before taking a nip of his own. “You didn’t eat enough tonight to make up for what you burned flying home.” Angelic flight burned an intense number of calories, and Illium had been battling storm winds on top of that.
“I ate every single alfajor in your last package.” Kisses along Aodhan’s jawline by the only person in all the world that he’d not only allow this close—but adore this close. “Didn’t even share one. In my defense, they arrived at night. Smoke ate seven treats and went into a food coma, and I did the same with the cookies. It was one hell of a party of two.”
Chuckling, Aodhan fisted his hand in the blue-black silk of Illium’s hair and tugged his head up for a full kiss, slow and deep and luxurious, as he drew in the wild and primal scent that was Illium. Because he and his Blue? They did have all the time in the world now that they’d taken the first step, made the first decision.
Illium groaned as Aodhan massaged his nape, their bodies rubbing up against each other in a visceral hunger born of their love—a love that had worn the name of friendship for centuries and always would. Because before being lovers, they were and would always be friends, loyal to the bone.
Illium’s clever fingers on Aodhan’s white tunic with detailing in a glittering pearlescent white, his breath hot against Aodhan’s jaw. Reaching around, he began to undo the buttons that kept the tunic snug around Aodhan’s wings. Soon as he’d succeeded, Aodhan lifted the tunic from the bottom and peeled it off.
When Illium shuddered out a breath, Aodhan went to tease him that it wasn’t as if he’d never seen Aodhan bare-chested before…but it hadn’t been this way, he realized. Their decision to become lovers had altered a fundamental aspect of their universe, until this, too, was new.
Illium’s fingers landed as light as butterfly wings on skin that suddenly had a million nerve endings, all of them erotic in ways unknown to him until this instant. Aodhan had always been annoyed by the shimmer that dusted his skin, the shimmer that made him so dazzlingly bright in the sunlight.
Today, that same shimmer reflected back on Illium, creating their own private sun.
“You are so beautiful, Adi.”
A roar of ice smashing into Aodhan, sucking out his warmth as his mind disgorged a memory he’d done his best to bury and forget.
So beautiful, so unlike any other in our kind. My beautiful, precious prize.
He fought the spiraling panic with desperate fury, needing to be what Illium needed, to be the giver, not the taker. To be present in the here and now. But his body locked up, his breath shallow and fast as his heart galloped.
“Aodhan.” Illium’s hands leaving his body.
Another kind of panic fluttering inside him, Aodhan tried to push words out past a throat gone gritty and dry.
But Illium hadn’t left him, was just moving his hands to cup Aodhan’s face. “Focus on me, Adi,” he said, his tone firm. “Listen to my voice, and to nothing else. It’s me and you in this room, trying to figure us out, and I’m maybe a little drunk on that moonshine for which I gave Venom the recipe and with which he spiked the punch, but I mean, it isn’t that strong.”