Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

“Showing off?” Aodhan teased, even as the blue flames altered to a more prosaic yellow-orange.

“I think it was just my pissed-offness coming out,” Illium muttered, circling the bonfire to ensure it ate up every tiny fragment of every canvas.

Aodhan let him circle, let him pace, his own presence peaceful as he told Illium more stories of Eh-ma, of how she’d chided him for covering the canvases in black without thought to how much depth he’d need for the images hidden within, and how she’d once argued with him that he hadn’t been that thin when he came back.

Aodhan laughed, a glittering candle set incandescently alight by the flames. “I was healed enough by then that I argued back that I most definitely was that thin, and we quibbled until she drifted away into the fog of her mind. But she always came back, always found me at the times I needed her most.” His voice grew thick. “We should go see her.”

Illium fell in love all over again with this warrior artist with all his shades of being. Looking up at the sky as fine motes of ash floated up against the pitch dark, he recalled all the technical data in his head. “Adi, there are no satellites passing overhead. No security cameras in any direction.” A rasp of sound. “There are no people living nearby, and even if someone has chosen to wander the wild…there’s no light. No moon. No city bright. Stars hidden by heavy cloud cover. You don’t sparkle in pure darkness.”

Aodhan looked at the skin of his hands. It glittered in the firelight, but should he step back into the heavy shadows of the trees, he’d become just another shadow. His skin needed light for life, drew it to him, but it couldn’t draw what wasn’t there.

“Then,” he said, “let’s hope this fire burns fast.”

Illium immediately threw more power at it, sending the flames ten feet high.

Laughing, Aodhan went to drag him close, but Illium resisted. “No, I have to see this through.”

Aodhan had already made his peace with what burned in front of them, but he understood his lover, so he let Illium babysit the fire until the last ember had cooled. Then he lit up the space using his own power, so that Illium could poke about with a stick to ensure nothing of any canvas had survived. It’d be a miracle given the intensity of the fire caused by Illium’s dangerous energy, but Aodhan accepted Illium’s need.

“It’s all gone,” the other man said a good ten minutes later, then blasted the earth with another strike of power just in case.

Aodhan allowed his light to go out when the earth stopped glowing red.

Allowed himself to be cloaked in the lush black wings of the night.noveldrama

Illium shot up into the sky.

Aodhan rose behind him after a short delay, the game one of reading air currents, of listening for Illium, because neither of them could see each other in this utter lack of light. When they met midair, they kissed by feel, their wings threatening to tangle as they spun in the sky.

I would know you by your kiss, Illium.

Dropping his head to the curve of his lover’s neck…he brought Illium’s hand to his bare hip. Because before joining his best friend and heart’s mirror in the sky, Aodhan had removed his clothing and laid it in a spot he could find again in the night.

Illium’s gasp was a whisper in the air, his other hand tangling in Aodhan’s hair as they both held the hover with the skill of warriors honed. “Mea lux?” A question in the endearment.

“I’ve never been more sure.” Aodhan had shed the chains that had weighed him down for too long, would brook no interference from the past. “And you, my darling Blue? Do you wish this?” He kissed his way back up Illium’s neck and along his jaw, until their lips were a hairsbreadth apart. “It must be a symphony of two. I’m ready to wait as long as you need for your song to join mine.” This dance of angelkind was the ultimate intimacy—and between them, a declaration undying.

Illium’s kiss held his entire huge heart, those strong hands cupping Aodhan’s face as his lover’s wings shifted the air currents so that they spun faster and faster. Without warning, Illium shot up into the sky, but this time he took Aodhan with him.

Releasing a shout of glee such as he hadn’t in eons, Aodhan folded back his own wings, giving control to his wild and nimble lover. Who took them so high that the air turned thin and ice-cold, and they were hidden in the thick mist at that extreme elevation.

Ice crystals formed on the blue-tipped black of Illium’s lashes, a delicacy of fragile diamonds.

“Ready, Adi?” A wicked question, Illium’s lips against his ear, his breath hot, licking heat up the shell of it.

“Always, Blue.”

They fell at reckless speed, the rushing air a frigid counterpoint to the heat between them. As reckless as his fall, Illium tore off his clothes and threw them about without losing contact with Aodhan.

“We are never going to find them again!” Aodhan was laughing as he said that, even as he took over the fall while Illium undressed.

“I’ll fly back naked! Imagine the headlines! Finally, everyone will have the answer to the question of whether my cock is blue!” With that laughing statement, Illium snapped out his wings again and Aodhan closed his.

This was who they’d always been—equals. Control flowing back and forth. No leader. No follower.

Just Illium and Aodhan.

Sparkle and Bluebell.

Adi and Blue.

They shot up again, but this time, their bodies were aligned, the heat between them a tactile creature aching and wanting. Ripe, full, a promise of limitless pleasure. Interlocked, their lips voracious, they flew higher and higher.

When they fell, it was locked in a kiss, their legs tangled with carnal intent.

Powerful thighs pushed against powerful thighs as Aodhan’s hands, then Illium’s, clenched on flesh taut with muscle. Neither one of them felt any need to temper their strength. Two warriors whose bodies were strong and whose trust in each other was absolute, their dance was no delicate ballet but a hotly desired clash, rough and hard and raw.

They fell and rose and fell again.

Until their skin was slick with sweat, their pulses aligned in a staccato beat.

And though they hadn’t prepared for this, it didn’t matter. Pleasure came in many forms, and this night, they found the pleasure available only to two winged beings who knew each other’s most sensitive spots, two combat-ready fighters who understood their own bodies inside out, two lovers who were ready to touch and adore and learn, two aroused men who had no limits with each other, two friends who loved above all else.

It was love, and it was transcendent.

Aodhan lay spent and sweat-damp on the soft grass, while Illium leaned over him, stroking his chest and dropping an occasional kiss on his jaw or lips. One of Aodhan’s wings was pinned under his best friend and lover…and Aodhan didn’t care. There was trust, and then there was what he felt for and with Illium.

“You feel like Smoke right now,” Illium said, a smile in his voice. “All drowsy and relaxed.”

Aodhan ran his fingers lazily over Illium’s wing. “She’s going to be mad we didn’t pick her up from Izzy.” Having realized early on what their day was going to entail, they’d asked the young angel to collect her from tech command at the end of the day and make sure she got her dinner.

Izzy had promptly stated his goal of “catnapping” Smoke for the night.

“I’ll buy my way back into her good graces with the special treats I ordered for just such an emergency.” A kiss pressed to Aodhan’s pectoral, Illium’s other wing sweeping over him in a silken blanket before Illium laid his head against Aodhan’s shoulder, turning so that he lay on his back, too.

As they lay there, sated and happy, the dark clouds above began to move.

A cool wind whispered through the trees at the same moment.

The storm was coming, but its leading edge pushed the clouds aside to reveal the stars.

Aodhan smiled even as his body began to glimmer at that far-off hint of light. It felt right, that they should lie here under the stars on this stormy night when his life had begun again in all its facets wild and astonishing.