Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

A day after they’d spoken to Tanika’s parents, Aodhan walked toward Illium’s Tower suite as the smudged curtain of night settled over the city. He felt as if he was stuck in mud as far as the case went, his body and mind grimy from even this tangential association with a being who thought they could own another, treat them as an object.

You are mine, pretty one. Always mine. Only mine. I have branded you.

He’d never told Illium about Sachieri holding a glowing red iron to his chest, searing her motif of ownership into it in an agony of scalding flame that burned his nerves and slapped blackness over his vision.

Not just once.

Over and over again, each time his immortal cells healed the scar. She either hadn’t been clever enough to learn the technique that gave Jason his permanent tattoo, or she’d just enjoyed hurting Aodhan because he refused to say what she wanted to hear, refused to give her words of love and devotion.

Say it! Say it! You are mine! That is your only future. Confess your love, my pretty one, and I’ll make it nice for you here, gilded with your every desire.

The only desire Aodhan had had was for freedom.

The sire knew about the brandings—he’d torn open Sachieri’s and Bathar’s minds, uncovered every horrific detail, and then he’d punished the two until there could be no more punishment. But he’d never told Illium of that horror, as aware as Aodhan that their Bluebell’s heart could take no more.

The last brand had already healed by the time he was found—and even Sachieri had begun to realize that she was pushing him closer and closer to true death. Only…in his mind, the torture hadn’t stopped after his rescue; he’d woken up screaming to the burn of a searing brand day after day in the Medica.

The irony was that he’d refused to scream for Sachieri. Weak, starved of light, his wings useless, and his strength stolen, his reactions had been all he could control in that hellhole. He’d gone inside his head, to a place where no one could hurt him.

And he’d stayed there after his period of pain madness in the Medica.

But there was to be no more retreating for him—he’d made that decision after he finally realized the damage he’d done to himself and to others around him. Most of all to Illium, the man who had loved him even when Aodhan hadn’t loved himself.

Wanting to see his best friend and lover, he opened Illium’s door and called out his name.

Silence greeted him, no Smoke bounding over to examine him and decide if his presence was acceptable.

Shoulders dropping, he closed the door and went to his apartment instead. Illium wouldn’t mind if Aodhan waited in his suite, but Aodhan would only miss him more if surrounded by his things, his scent embedded into the walls.

The door opened to the low murmur of music and the golden glow of candlelight. It sparked off him with a muted softness that was sunlight turned liquid. He’d liked the time of candlelight, appreciated its gentleness, and now his entire living area—which flowed into an open-plan kitchen—glowed with it.

“Blue,” he murmured when Illium moved out of the candlelight clad in a simple cream tunic open at the neck, and jeans, his feet bare. “What are you up to?”

Instead of answering, Illium cupped one side of his face and nuzzled him. The other man’s hair was soft against Aodhan’s cheek, the scent of him so familiar that it made a sob catch in Aodhan’s throat at the sense of coming home. “You look tired, Adi.”

“Body and heart,” he admitted, because this was Illium. “I also need a shower.” Turning his face into Illium’s palm as he put his own hand on the other man’s hip to hold him close, he pressed a kiss to it.

“I’ve already prepared everything for you.” His fingers wove through Aodhan’s hair, his gaze tender. “I had my spy watching for you, so the water should already be at the perfect scalding temperature you like.”

“Really?” Once, Aodhan would’ve been annoyed; now he felt caressed by the love that Illium gave so generously. “You asked Vivek to track me?”

“Only when you were within visual sight.” Taking his hand, Illium tugged him to the bathing chamber. “He’s always keeping everything in sight anyway. He thinks I’m playing a prank on you.”noveldrama

“Where’s your little shadow?” Aodhan had become used to Smoke pouncing at him in welcome.

“Hanging out with Vivek while he does night shift. I figured Smoke and candles weren’t a good mix.” A brush of fingers against Aodhan’s jaw. “Tonight, we play, Adi. I didn’t think you’d feel like flying to the Catskills, so I brought the picnic to you.”

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.

Moving with the muscled fluidity of the warrior he was, his wings white fire in the candlelight, Aodhan walked into the fall of water. His sigh made Illium’s entire body throb, but he stayed in place, just watching as Aodhan allowed the water to drench his hair before sleeking the strands back as he shifted to look once more at Illium.

The water turned the strands dark, cut back their shimmer, but only by a fraction. Aodhan was still Aodhan, the droplets on his eyelashes tiny diamonds.

“Are you coming in?” A husky question.

“I’ve decided to take the scenic route,” Illium murmured past the stranglehold of desire. “Hold on.”

Ducking out of the room, he went to the kitchen and returned with a tray on which stood a small bottle of champagne, a bottle of honey mead, two glasses, and a plate of sweetmeats: sugared figs, dried apricots, dark chocolate, candied almonds, and slices of mango cured with chili. He’d never in his life understood what Aodhan loved about the snack that burned Illium’s tongue to cinders, but the man could eat a whole box of the stuff.

Aodhan laughed when Illium placed the tray on the simple black counter speckled with gold that was part of the single-piece sink, the dip in it a smooth flow that looked as if it had been created that way. “I see the limits of your love—not even for me will you drink champagne.”

“Some things are a step too far,” he said as he popped the champagne cork, then poured out a flute for Aodhan. “For my warrior artist.”

Again, that hint of pink on Aodhan’s cheekbones as he switched off all the spouts but the two that hit his shoulders and body from either side while leaving his head in clear air. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s exactly how you like me.” Putting down the bottle after handing Aodhan his champagne, he poured the mead into a matching flute, then picked up a sugared fig and walked to the edge of the spray.

When he held it to Aodhan’s lips, the other man’s pupils expanded, the dark pinpricks shockingly visible against the shattered blue and green glass of his irises. His lips parted, his lower lip soft and plump under the pad of Illium’s thumb as he drew it out after feeding him the sweet morsel.

“I want to bite your lips,” Illium murmured, feeling his way, watching Aodhan to see what would trigger bad memories.

Aodhan’s breath caught, his pulse fluttering in his throat.

So Illium used his thumb to trace the curves of Aodhan’s lips all over again before he drew back and picked up a candied almond to put to those same lips. He’d been so close to Aodhan all his life that he took the other man’s looks for granted. All he saw was his Adi.

But today, he also saw how striking his eyes appeared when his lashes were dark with water, how candlelight made his irises less shattered glass and more a lazy river of refracted light. He saw the way his lover’s biceps pushed up against the glory of his skin, and the way his wings had a powerful arch even when he was relaxed.

Teeth scraped his thumb when he withdrew it this time.

His own breath shallow, and his pupils no doubt as dilated as Aodhan’s, he put his fingers under Aodhan’s jaw and leaned across and just a hint up to sip a kiss from those lips dusted with sugar from the candied almond.

It was a kiss unlike any other they’d shared, soft and sweet with an edge of delicious anticipation. It felt like a first kiss in many ways, the two of them finding out who they were in this private space different from any they’d ever before experienced.

They parted on a hushed lick of sound.

Aodhan’s eyes were closed, his eyelashes throwing shadows onto his cheeks, his skin flushed…and his entire body languorous in a way that made the possessive, protective core of Illium’s nature happy.

He liked knowing he was looking after his people as they needed. And Aodhan? He wasn’t just one of Illium’s people, he was Illium’s person, his everything, the being without whom nothing would work quite right.

Those exquisite lashes rose. “What are you doing, Blue?” A rough whisper.

Illium ran his knuckles over Aodhan’s cheek. “Courting you, Adi.” He leaned in till their foreheads touched and the water hit his body from either side. “Let me.”

Let me.

Aodhan’s skin was too tight and yet relaxed at the same time, his entire body dreamy with pleasure. No one had ever touched him like this, ever treated him as infinitely precious in a way that wasn’t about ownership, but about devotion.

Not the slavish devotion of those who wanted to worship him—he’d kept a wide berth from those so inclined over the years—but the passionate devotion of a warrior as powerful as Aodhan who had both stood with him and taken him to task when required.

Equals. They were equals here, as they’d always been in every other aspect of their lives.

“Shower with me,” he whispered.