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)
Body and spirit sighing at the pleasure of being here, with this man, Aodhan let his lover draw him to the bathing chamber he’d bedecked with candles, in the center of which would normally sit an enormous tub designed for a being with wings. But Aodhan hadn’t been able to bear baths since his abduction.
He didn’t mind diving into ponds and lakes and the ocean, even enjoyed it. But a tub…a bath was too small, too tight, the walls too close even when he knew he could stand up at any time. He’d tried over and over again, hated it each and every time.
As a result, his bathing chamber was a huge space without any internal walls and with multiple jets of water directed to a central point, below which the floor curved gently down to allow the water to drain away. As promised, that water was steaming, the jets creating a heated rain that floated tiny water particles into the air. Those particles caught the candlelight in luminous beads that turned into a froth of sparkle.
A scent that he couldn’t quite pin down, delicate and light, floated among the beads, brushed his skin, was a luxury of kisses on his senses.
Aodhan groaned. “I can’t wait to get into that.”
Dropping Illium’s hand, he reached down to pull off his tunic and throw it aside.
* * *
* * *
He was beautiful.
Illium had seen Aodhan shirtless and even naked many times over the years. The exigencies of war and battle—and a lifetime of friendship—meant that none of it had ever really registered. They’d just been wild youths going skinny-dipping, or warriors dousing themselves with water between battles.
Just bodies that fought together, bodies as tools, nothing remarkable.
But this…
The candlelight caressed Aodhan’s skin to a shimmering softness, his hair sending a kaleidoscope of light around the room. His wings intensified the effect, until Illium stood in the middle of a rain of light born of Aodhan.
But when he spoke, he didn’t use the word beautiful. Would never again in the intimate space between them until Aodhan told him it didn’t hurt him any longer. “You were made for candlelight, Adi.”
Aodhan glanced over one muscled shoulder and his smile…it was one Illium hadn’t seen since they were those wild youths. Before Illium’s entanglement with a mortal and resulting punishment, before Aodhan’s kidnapping, before the years of silence. “Are you seducing me, Blue?” He shifted so that they faced each other.
Illium’s toes threatened to curl at the tone of Aodhan’s voice, so low it was near to a purr. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
Eyes of shattered glass bright with fires intimate, Aodhan dropped his hands to the waistband of the rough brown pants of the kind he tended to wear for everyday things. They hugged his thighs before going down to be tucked into combat boots. Plain, unadorned, like most of what Aodhan chose to wear.
He’d been trying not to draw attention to himself for a lifetime, and that was part of it, but it was also just Aodhan. Even when they’d been young enough that Aodhan hadn’t realized what his looks did to others, he’d preferred the simple over the ornate, had found as much pleasure in a smooth rock that he’d scavenged as another child might in a toy created by a master crafter.
Illium’s eyes fell to Aodhan’s hands, his heart kicking.
“I forgot my boots,” Aodhan said, and—that wicked smile still on his face—twisted to sit on a bench built into the wall, above which was a shelf that held several folded towels.
“You’re in a mood.” Illium grinned, loving that this side of Aodhan was stirring to the surface—the side that held as much playfulness as Illium.
There was a reason they’d been friends since childhood.
After setting his boots and socks under the bench, Aodhan frowned before turning to look at the shower. “Rose petals, that’s it. That’s what I can smell.” The words were startled, a hint of color on his cheekbones. “Really?”
“You deserve rose petals.” He deserved every softness, every tenderness. “I saved the actual petals for the bed, found scented candles for here.”
“I’m a warrior,” Aodhan muttered, but he rose and moved to play his hand through the steamy fall of water.
“You’re also an artist,” Illium said. “I can’t paint you, Adi, and I can’t make you things like this belt buckle of mine.” He touched the quiet emblem of Aodhan’s love. “But I can give you rose petals and candlelight, and I can take you dancing on rooftops—or over a desert rave if you feel like it.”
Aodhan’s expression was difficult to read at that moment as he looked at Illium. But then he turned and, their eyes still locked, took off his pants.
Illium’s heart was a drum by now, but he never broke the eye contact, never allowed his eyes to go south. He let Aodhan see that much as he wanted to dance with him in the intimate way of angelkind, what he wanted most was to just be with him.