Archangel's Storm

slid across his arm and shoulder at the same instant, one of her wings half on, half off his body as he lay on his back, both hands under his head.
    “How long did I sleep?” she asked without lifting her head from his shoulder, her voice husky.
    He glanced at the moonlight filtering through the high lattice window and said, “Not long. Perhaps an hour.” An hour as he listened to her breathe, as he traced quiet patterns on her skin and felt his heartbeat slow, lulled by the rhythm of hers. It had been an unexpected thing, and it had caused a violent response in him, a raw urging to get out, to get free.
    But Jason was almost seven hundred years old, understood what drove him—he’d looked into the abyss of his soul, seen the lonely, forgotten boy looking back at him. He knew that boy trusted no one and nothing, knew he looked upon any kind of an emotional bond with suspicion, expected nothing but pain from any such relationship.
    That boy, he was so
afraid
.
    It was a truth about himself Jason had come to terms with long ago. That scared boy didn’t rule his conscious mind, but was so embedded in his subconscious that he often didn’t know why he acted as he did until the deed was done and his mind cleared again. Tonight, he’d fought the urge to leave when it hit him, because being in bed with a sleeping Mahiya was a pleasure all its own.
    He liked that her scent warmed and seemed to soak into his own skin, liked that he could twine her hair lazily around his fingers and play with it as he thought, liked that she made tiny little noises and burrowed deeper into him every so often—as if she adored being with him. He almost felt real, as if he was a normal man, one capable of loving a woman and holding her close.
    It was an illusion, but it was an illusion he was willing to believe in for this night.
    “Hmm.” Reaching down, Mahiya tugged up the sheet tangled around her thighs to her waist, before placing her hand over his heartbeat again. Her wing rose a fraction as her mouth and jaw moved against his skin in a yawn, and the silver light of the moon kissed the feathers to jewel brightness.
    Before she’d fallen asleep, those wings had shimmered in his vision as she spent an hour touching and kissing his body with unhidden pleasure. Drunk on the tactile sensations, he’d had to coax her to straddle him, his shy Mahiya, but once there, she’d used her position to caress him with sweet feminine delight.
    Living in the illusion, he moved one hand to run his fingers over the sensitive arch. She shivered, her wing floating down to lie across his body once more. “You could make me agree to commit a great many sins with those fingers, Jason.”
    “There are no sins in pleasure.” It was something Dmitri had once said to him, a sardonic twist to his mouth, the mockery directed inward.
    Mahiya’s soft laugh changed the words, turned them sensual and playful. “I think I shall make that my motto when I am free, and live the life of an unabashed hedonist.”
    Images of her clothed in raw silks and exquisite cashmere, her body petted and smoothed with exotic creams, her lips closing over a delicious morsel as she lay on satin sheets flashed through his mind. Sliding a fingertip down her spine, he spread his hand on her lower back, his fingers just brushing the curves below. “I would be happy to massage you with scented oils.” Until her skin gleamed and she lay boneless beneath his touch.
    Her laugh was startled this time, huskier. Rubbing her cheek against his skin, she said, “Dangerous man—I’m not certain I’d survive the pleasure.” Pushing up against his chest, she looked down at him, her hair tumbling over one smooth shoulder, her breasts hidden by the sheet she’d pulled up to hold against her chest. Always so modest, though as a lover, she gainsaid nothing he demanded.
    “Vanhi,” she said, expression becoming solemn, “said something else important. I forgot to tell you with everything else. She thought she might have seen the vampire with bone-pale skin and scarlet hair once. Long ago.”
    Jason listened, added that fact to the information he already had.
    “So?” she prompted when he didn’t respond. “I know you were out doing what you do earlier. What did you learn?” A scowl. “Do not think to keep me in the dark, Jason.”
    He should’ve reminded her she held no cards to play, but he knew that would hurt her, and he didn’t want to hurt this princess with her heart