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)
Felt right.
Felt like exactly where he was meant to be.
* * *
* * *
Aodhan wondered what it said about him that Illium’s befuddlement restored something fractured inside him. He’d been off-balance since he’d frozen that first night, had felt as if no matter how far he came, he’d always be the one at a loss.
When he’d reached for Illium, it hadn’t been with any conscious forethought. He’d just wanted to touch him, love him in the physical way that he knew was important to his Blue. Illium would never say it, never push Aodhan, but where Aodhan had become so familiar with physical aloneness that it had become a way of life, Illium had always been a creature of touch. The boy who’d hugged his friends and who’d cuddled into his mother’s side, then Raphael’s, while they read him stories.
“What are you thinking?” Illium asked, the aged gold of his eyes searching Aodhan’s face. “I can almost see the gears turning.”
Aodhan could’ve obfuscated it, hidden what must surely be a selfishness, but that wasn’t who he and Illium were to each other—who they’d ever been to each other. So he told him. “Not with intent,” he said afterward. “My only intent was to touch you, pleasure you, possess you.”
Because it turned out that Aodhan had a deep streak of possessiveness when it came to Illium, this angel who had a thousand people—more—who all adored him and thought they had some private relationship with him.
“You’ve always worried too much,” Illium said with a lazy smile. “It’s fine. I had the same thought before—that between us, power has always ebbed and flowed. Sometimes one stronger, sometimes the other. It all equalizes in the end.”
Aodhan shifted to lean on his elbow, his wing lying even more heavily against Illium—who began to play his fingers through the feathers as candlelight glittered on the blue tips of his eyelashes. And Aodhan knew he’d paint his lover this way, boneless and pleasured and with a smile flirting with his lips.
He fell asleep while planning out the brushstrokes, his head tucked against the side of Illium’s neck, and his arm over Illium’s chest, the two of them still crosswise on the bed, which was just big enough to provide them a comfortable sleep in even that position.
He didn’t feel the kiss Illium pressed to his hair, or hear the emotion-drenched words the other man whispered in the candlelit glow. “I’m so glad you’ve come back to me.”
* * *
* * *
They spent the entirety of the next day going through Marco’s belongings.
Illium had already managed to access and read through the files on Marco’s laptop—with no useful results. They’d set today aside for examining the other items, hoping for a better outcome.
The task was as grim as Aodhan had mentally predicted, but he felt more centered today than he had the entire time since the beginning of this investigation…the beginning of his decision to consciously confront the phantoms of his past. He’d woken up warm and rested, with his wing thrown over Illium as the other man lay flat on his front. Somehow, they’d moved ninety degrees on the bed during the night—probably due to Illium.
The other man had a gift for movement in his sleep.
But Aodhan hadn’t woken at any point before morning, had apparently just gone with him—much as he’d done when they’d been children who’d fallen asleep together.
“Flying together even in sleep,” Eh-ma used to say when she woke them of a morning after Aodhan had stayed over. “My two peas in a pod.”
This morning, he’d woken with his face tucked into the crook of Illium’s neck, his hand on his lover’s rib cage, and his breath full of the scent of Illium. A scent that was home to him in ways beyond explanation; he just knew he could spend countless immortal lifetimes waking with his face nuzzled against Illium.
The other man had been over his shyness by the morning, had grinned and kissed Aodhan, called him “my adorable cuddle bug,” then told him that, at one point, he’d had to “snake shimmy” his way out from under Aodhan to douse the candles and put away the food. “Then I slid back into bed, and you threw your wing right over me, and mumbled something about ‘perfect shade of blue’ and went back to sleep.”
A smug grin. “Of course, then I knew you were dreaming about me.”
No one else in existence would dare call Aodhan a cuddle bug, but from Illium when he was so happy and vibrant and full of unbounded affection…Aodhan kind of liked it.
He wanted to smile even now at the memory of Illium’s infectious joy, but he’d just picked up a photo frame that held an image of Marco with his mother. The smile whispered away before it could form.
It was one of those images mortals got in their malls. A few of the angels and vampires in the Tower had them as fun souvenirs…but this was no joking souvenir. It was an artifact of love: a teenage Marco in his high school graduation cap and gown, his mother in what had to be her best clothes.