Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 7

my cock against him, reveling in the ridges and dips of his muscular abdomen, in the faint friction of the hairs trailing downward from his navel.
    An angel with a navel, I thought. It seemed so funny I wanted to laugh, but my laughter turned to a moan as he breached me with two fingertips at once. He worked me relentlessly and I opened for him, pushing into the pressure of his touch as my cock throbbed with arousal.
    Sariel slicked my entrance with more oil, and its spices burned as if I'd caught fire, but it was no different than when I'd burned the photograph. I would pay the price. Sacrifice. I surrendered to the pain until it blossomed through me and overtook every aspect of my being. I was nothing but the heat, God's holy fire. It would erase every other man's touch from my body until I was pure and worthy of my angel.
    The third sigil burned red against the blackness inside my eyelids. It radiated power, pulsing with the ebb and flow of Sariel's fingers inside me. Then his fingers left me empty, grasping at nothing as air currents cooled the tingling oil around my opening. I whimpered low in my throat, ashamed at first to sound so needy, so helpless, but he kissed me then, his arms hugging me close, holding me.
    I clamped my legs tighter around his waist and his wings wrapped around my back as solid as a wall. They supported me as his hips shifted, the tip of his cock glided between my cheeks before catching against my hole. It pushed against that tender spot, enormous as a battering ram, hard as the marble from which Sariel seemed carved.
    My hands fisted in his long, silken hair and I breathed out slowly, deliberately. I cried out as he entered me, carving me open and splitting me wide, reigniting the fire of the oil until my spine arched and I threw my head back, trying to escape my own skin.
    It hurt so badly that I began to panic, but he kissed me again. "Be still. I am yours now. We are joined, my Remy Cooper."
    "Mine," I whispered back, hesitant, as though he might take it back.
    "Yours. My oath on it." The way he said it sounded melodic, but his voice seemed less resonant than before. His body felt more alive pressing against mine, less like stone and more like real flesh and blood. Instead of feathers behind my back, I felt flowers and lush grass. Instead of the third sigil blinding me, softer light dappled my closed eyes.
    I opened them to see Sariel's face above my own, illuminated not by some mythic halo but by sunlight streaming through his platinum hair as it fell around his broad, wingless shoulders. The scent of fresh, rich soil mingled with the scent of the oil and Sariel's own ancient, heavenly smell and the musk of precum smearing between our stomachs as he drove against my prostate and forced the waves of pleasure through me.
    "Oh, take me," I breathed against his lips as he leaned down to kiss me again.
    "Mine?" Sariel sounded younger, vulnerable in his humanity but still so strong. I clung to him and nodded, writhing beneath the solid, comforting weight of his body to get him to touch all the right places. He wasn't reading my mind now, but I didn't mind working for it. It was better that way, better to feel like equals, like lovers.
    I reached down his smooth back to grip his ass and pull it closer, guiding his thrusts as we strove together to be closer. I trembled and gasped as I stiffened, as my balls drew up and everything I was before dropped away. As I came for Sariel, I was born again, and as he came inside me, we were bound not by magic or religion but by the profound choice of utter belonging.
    We lay catching our breath in the sunshine not five yards from the underground chapel. My clothes lay just beyond my feet. The ashes of the burned photograph blew in the breeze.
    As Sariel rolled off me onto the grass, I turned onto my side and rested my head against his chest to hear his heart. He stroked back my hair, dark against his pale fingers.
    "So are we consecrated to the service of Love," Sariel murmured. His expression was reverent and tender. "We have made a covenant. There will be no other law for us, my Remy Cooper."
    It was sacrilege, and I knew it, but if I rejected every law but Love, there was no sacrilege any longer, no sins but indifference and hatred.
    In the tent revivals, the evangelist had sprinkled the penitent with cheap olive oil in imitation of the holy oil of anointing and shouted, "Free in the name of Jesus! Be free of your shackles!" I had gone to the altar