Guild Hunter 02 - Angels' Flight

and bending it at the knee. The act opened her wider, Galen’s hardness settling deeper inside her. It tore a gasp out of her, but when he hesitated, she kissed and caressed him until he moved again. Shallow and slow, allowing her to get used to the weight and power of him.
     
    “Jess.” Muscles strained taut, lips against her ear. heavC;Is it too much?”
     
    Yes.
Gloriously, wonderfully too much. “Don’t stop.” Arching up beneath him with a sumptuous roll of her hips, she welcomed his strokes. He continued to slide in and out so veryslowly, but went deeper with each stroke, his mouth claiming hers at the same time—in a kiss that mimicked the carnal ecstasy of their mating.
     
    The shock of her body coming apart without warning had her breaking the kiss, her head thrown back, the dark beauty of Galen’s wings spread in powerful silhouette above them. He rode her through the clenching pleasure, one big hand squeezing and shaping the slight but exquisitely sensitive mounds of her breasts as he laved kisses down the line of her throat, the other fisted in her hair to arch her neck for him.
     
    Wrung out, her body feeling hotly, erotically used, she wove her fingers into flame red silk as the final opulent wave of pleasure rippled through her… and held him when he shuddered and spent himself inside her in hard pulses of liquid heat, calling her name at the end, whispering it over and over as his body continued to thrust into hers until he trembled, stilled, burying his face in the curve of her neck.
     
    My man. Mine.
     
    A utumn bled into winter and then into the very heart of snow and ice. As the days shortened and darkened, Jessamy spent her nights tangled in Galen’s arms when he wasn’t on watch or leading a night-training exercise, and reading into the dawn hours when he was. It was a time of discovery and play and joy, but for the quiet, creeping knowledge that her big barbarian was being very, very careful not to break her.
    She hadn’t understood at first, too blinded by the splendor of what they did to each other to realize that loving wasn’t only a slow dance. But now that the naked edge of their hunger had been soothed, now that she’d spent more than one night exploring Galen’s beautiful body while he “suffered” for his lady’s pleasure, she could feel the taut tendons, the rigid muscles as he held himself back from expressing the violent force of his passion.
     
    It hurt her that he never set himself free to take the intensity of pleasure he lavished on her, but she felt no anger. How could she be angry with a man who looked at her as Galendid? He might never say poetic words of love, but she knew what he felt for her in every fiber of her being, felt his devotion in every caress, every new wonder he searched out to show her… every secret he shared.
     
    “My mother has written to me,” he’d said last night as they lay in bed.
     
    Aware of the painful relationship he had with Tanae, she’d placed her hand over his heart and simply listened.
     
    “She tells me to return, says Titus has agreed to give me command over half his forces. Orios will remain weapons-master, but I would be his lieutenant.”
     
    Rising up on one elbow, she’d scowled. “Why would she offer you a lesser position than you have with Raphael?” Perhaps Raphael’s army was not yet as impressive as Titus’s, but it was
Galen’s
to train, to lead. Even Dmitri, Raphael’s second, bowed to Galen’s expertise when it came to their troops.
     
    Galen’s smile had held a bleakness she’d never before seen in herrrior. “Because she knows I have ever striven to please her. As a child, I thought if I was good enough, strong enough, I could earn her love.”
     
    Her smoldering anger at Tanae, having built over the seasons with every small truth Galen betrayed about his barren childhood, had ignited. “You have no need to please anyone, Galen. You are magnificent, and if she can’t see that, then she is a fool.”
     
    A dawning light in the sea green, until it was translucent. “Magnificent?”
     
    Caught by the vulnerability he showed no one else, she’d whispered her answer in a kiss. “Utterly.”
     
    Now, having made her way to her favorite vantage point on the roof, she thought of how much that small conversation had told her about her barbarian. He might be brash and blunt on the surface, but there was a terrible wound on Galen’s heart, one that led him to take such exquisite