Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

The party went on longer than anyone had expected—because none of them wanted it to end, it was so rare for them to all be together. When they did finally call it a night, it was closer to dawn than to midnight, and Illium yawned the entire way down to their suites.

“Get in bed before you fall asleep standing up.” Aodhan nudged the other man toward his room.

As he went to head to his own, Illium closed that strong warrior’s hand over his wrist, tugged.

Though his skin grew tight, his body aching with a need too long unfulfilled, he said, “You’re so exhausted, you look drunk. And ridiculously adorable.” He wanted to run his fingers through Illium’s hair, nuzzle his cheek, just hold him tight.

“So we’ll sleep.”

“What about Smoke? I can go pick her up.” Not wanting Smoke alone so soon after his return home, Illium had asked Izak to cat-sit—and for the young angel to bring her up to the party during a period of mellow music. After she’d been petted and gushed over to her heart’s content, Izak had taken both himself and a sleepy Smoke back to his quarters.

“Izzy dropped her off not long ago—he has an early shift. She’ll be lazing on the bed if I know Smoke.”

“He’s building her a cat maze, you know.” Aodhan pushed back strands of Illium’s hair. “He’s the reason she can sneak out of anywhere.”

“No, my cat child is just a prodigy.”

Amused and awash in affection, Aodhan didn’t resist when Illium pulled him into the suite and shut the door.

Illium happy and in a playful mood was a delight.

Aodhan allowed the blue-winged angel to push him up against the back of the door, his hands on either side of Aodhan’s head, and his body all muscled heat layered with the faint scent of sweat from the dancing. It altered his natural scent, turned it more raw, making Aodhan want to lick it up off his skin.

When he kissed Aodhan, it was all light brushes and little bites. The embers in Aodhan’s blood heated, his hands going to Illium’s waist to pull him closer, their bodies hard up against each other in a way that was unmistakably erotic. He could feel Illium’s desire, his own a rigid pulse low in his body.

“You’re too thin,” he said to the softness of Illium’s lips, before taking a nip of his own. “You didn’t eat enough tonight to make up for what you burned flying home.” Angelic flight burned an intense number of calories, and Illium had been battling storm winds on top of that.

“I ate every single alfajor in your last package.” Kisses along Aodhan’s jawline by the only person in all the world that he’d not only allow this close—but adore this close. “Didn’t even share one. In my defense, they arrived at night. Smoke ate seven treats and went into a food coma, and I did the same with the cookies. It was one hell of a party of two.”

Chuckling, Aodhan fisted his hand in the blue-black silk of Illium’s hair and tugged his head up for a full kiss, slow and deep and luxurious, as he drew in the wild and primal scent that was Illium. Because he and his Blue? They did have all the time in the world now that they’d taken the first step, made the first decision.

Illium groaned as Aodhan massaged his nape, their bodies rubbing up against each other in a visceral hunger born of their love—a love that had worn the name of friendship for centuries and always would. Because before being lovers, they were and would always be friends, loyal to the bone.

Illium’s clever fingers on Aodhan’s white tunic with detailing in a glittering pearlescent white, his breath hot against Aodhan’s jaw. Reaching around, he began to undo the buttons that kept the tunic snug around Aodhan’s wings. Soon as he’d succeeded, Aodhan lifted the tunic from the bottom and peeled it off.

When Illium shuddered out a breath, Aodhan went to tease him that it wasn’t as if he’d never seen Aodhan bare-chested before…but it hadn’t been this way, he realized. Their decision to become lovers had altered a fundamental aspect of their universe, until this, too, was new.

Illium’s fingers landed as light as butterfly wings on skin that suddenly had a million nerve endings, all of them erotic in ways unknown to him until this instant. Aodhan had always been annoyed by the shimmer that dusted his skin, the shimmer that made him so dazzlingly bright in the sunlight.

Today, that same shimmer reflected back on Illium, creating their own private sun.

“You are so beautiful, Adi.”

A roar of ice smashing into Aodhan, sucking out his warmth as his mind disgorged a memory he’d done his best to bury and forget.

So beautiful, so unlike any other in our kind. My beautiful, precious prize.

He fought the spiraling panic with desperate fury, needing to be what Illium needed, to be the giver, not the taker. To be present in the here and now. But his body locked up, his breath shallow and fast as his heart galloped.

“Aodhan.” Illium’s hands leaving his body.

Another kind of panic fluttering inside him, Aodhan tried to push words out past a throat gone gritty and dry.

But Illium hadn’t left him, was just moving his hands to cup Aodhan’s face. “Focus on me, Adi,” he said, his tone firm. “Listen to my voice, and to nothing else. It’s me and you in this room, trying to figure us out, and I’m maybe a little drunk on that moonshine for which I gave Venom the recipe and with which he spiked the punch, but I mean, it isn’t that strong.”

Aodhan wanted to laugh at the confession, but his voice was strangled, a dark hand squeezing his throat. Blue. A fraught mental cry.

I have you, Adi. No one will ever fucking touch you without your consent again. I’ll chop off their hands, and then I’ll string up their bones in a necklace I’ll wear like some barbarian out of myth, until they call me Illium of the Bones.

A splutter of laughter did leave Aodhan’s lips then, summoned by Illium’s unrelenting determination not to leave him in a lightless box, hostage to his nightmares.

There you go. Illium continued to speak into his mind. That’s my Adi. Keep on walking back to me, even if I’m drunk and might wear a necklace of bones, and may possibly have promised Smoke she could sleep cuddled up on my chest if she’d stop sulking.

Aodhan’s laugh was a deeper sound this time, the hands with which he clutched at Illium urgent. Gathering him close, Illium wrapped his wings around him and stroked his back while rubbing his cheek against Aodhan’s own.

Around Aodhan’s ankles twined a body soft and small, Smoke making little sounds that seemed to be an attempt to calm and soothe.

Even your cat knows I’m having a breakdown.

You are not having a breakdown—you’re having a breakthrough. There’s a difference.

A long squeeze, the hug held until Aodhan’s muscles were no longer locked in stone, and he could breathe again, speak again. “I conquered this,” he gritted through clenched teeth, breaking out of Illium’s hold to stride to the huge living room windows that overlooked their glittering city. “I worked with healers to make sure I conquered this!”

Smoke at his feet again, the sounds she was making more impatient now.

He picked her up out of habit and she cuddled into him, once again a purring machine. He couldn’t yell now that he was stroking her, so his next words were low and hoarse. “I conquered this,” he repeated, and beneath the anger was a plea.

Illium’s heart twisted.

Aodhan was the strongest angel he knew—and that included the entire Cadre. None of them had survived what had been done to Aodhan, come out compassionate and free of cruelty. Aodhan could’ve turned twisted in the aftermath of his kidnapping and torture—instead, he made artworks of transcendent beauty, and he created small things designed specially for children’s soft hands.

“Mea lux,” Illium murmured, calling Aodhan his light in a language that had been ancient even when they were children; but it was no comment on Aodhan’s skin or hair. No, it was an endearment that encapsulated Adi’s heart—and who he was to Illium. “You beat those bastards a long time ago.” Walking over to stand next to Aodhan, he spread his wing over the other man’s back and wings.

“Not if I’m falling into the abyss at having you touch me. You, Blue.” His voice cracked, shattered, splintered glass at their feet. “The one person I would lie down and allow to put a blade to my throat if you asked.”

“I didn’t realize you were into that type of kink.” Illium rubbed his thumb absently over his belt buckle. “To be honest, I don’t know if I’m into knives. Not in bed anyway.”

“Illium.”

Lips kicking up on one side at his best friend’s exasperated tone, he reached out to delicately stroke the arches of Aodhan’s wings…and saw it, the shiver that turned into a shudder, the weakened and aged tendrils of darkness attempting to take root once more.

But it was the lost look in Aodhan’s eyes that cut him off at the knees. Since the day they’d crossed the boundary from friends alone to lovers, too—in heart if not body—Aodhan had been the stronger one, while Illium hesitated, scared in a way he couldn’t explain. He’d loved that strange imbalance for what it meant for his friend’s healing.

And he hated that the pathetic fuckers who’d taken advantage of Aodhan’s inherent sense of honor had dared reach out of the past and hurt him again by making him question his own strength. Moving his hand to lie flat on Aodhan’s wing, on those soft feathers that glittered as bright as diamonds, he said, “I spoke to Keir. While he was in China to work with Jinhai.”

Aodhan’s expression was a study in confusion at this apparent change in subject, but the compassion in him—sweet, haunting, a fucking testament to his refusal to bow down to evil—won over his pain. “How is Jinhai? I wanted to visit him, but both Keir and Suyin suggested it was better I wait, so that he bonds more tightly to Suyin and those others of her court who are looking after him.”

“Yes, they told me the same.” Illium continued to hold the shattered glass of Aodhan’s gaze. “Keir says the boy came close to imprinting on us, like a lost chick.” Because they were the only people in his shrunken world who’d not only seen him, but who’d treated him with kindness. “Better that he imprints on Suyin, so she can control him as he grows into his power.”

Aodhan’s expression turned stark. “He has so many strikes against him. What are the chances he’ll make it?”

“At least now he has the opportunity to try.” Illium moved his fingers on Aodhan’s feathers with careful gentleness. “I spoke to Keir because he knows all of what happened to you—I thought you wouldn’t mind. I didn’t ask him about your private conversations,” he clarified. “I wouldn’t cross that boundary.”

“I know.” Aodhan stroked Smoke. “What did you ask him?”noveldrama

“Well, while I was out there all alone obsessing about you, I realized that you haven’t physically been with anyone for over two hundred years.” Not since the rotting dead couple for whom no one mourned and even fewer remembered had taken that which was not theirs to take. “I asked Keir for general advice on how to do things right, so I didn’t hurt you.”

“There you go, looking after me again.” A hard line to Aodhan’s jaw.

Illium threw up his hands, not about to bend on this integral aspect of his personality. “You agreed I could.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Aodhan exhaled, then opened them again. “Yes, I did. I’m just angry and not at you. What did Keir say?”

“Nothing. He said he needed to speak to the two of us together so as not to betray any confidences.” Frustrated as he’d been by that answer, Illium’s respect for the healer had grown ever deeper. “But he gave me a book.”

Going to his bedroom, he retrieved a small book bound in leather, its pages browned, and took it to the living area, where Aodhan yet stood. “It’s old, from Keir’s private collection. He lent it to me for as long as we need it.” Throat dry, he said the most important words. “It’s healers’ wisdom from long ago, about how a person can reclaim their body after an experience where the choice to share that body was taken from them.”

He held his breath when Aodhan went motionless. Never did he want to hurt this man who was his forever, but they had to talk about this. Illium had hoped all his preparation was for naught, that their kisses and touches in China evidenced that Aodhan was no longer in pain from the wounds that had stolen his light from the world for centuries…but China had been the beginning, hadn’t it? Small, snatched glimpses of what could be.

Tonight was the first time Illium had touched Aodhan’s bare skin with carnal intent. And while Aodhan’s female abductor might have tried for kisses, Illium knew Aodhan had never given them to her. Her pressing her lips forcefully against his mouth didn’t count, would never count. So Aodhan could kiss Illium, could hold Illium.

But the rest? Being touched in intimate ways that were only ever meant to be a gift given?

That had been stolen from him while he lay broken, having been made too weak to fight back, his psyche debased as his physical being was violated over and over again.

“I conquered the monsters who took me,” Aodhan said softly, his eyes on the brilliant night of their beloved city, “but no, I haven’t shared my body with anyone since. Before you, Sachieri and Bathar were my last experience of touch beyond that of polite contact or of healing.”

Shifting to lean one shoulder against the window, Illium reached out to scratch Smoke on the head in the spot she liked. Her eyes went heavy-lidded, the rhythm of her purr that of a small engine. “The book says that often, such trauma only rears its head in an analogous situation.”

“Blue, the one thing I can say for certain is that there is nothing in your touch that is like theirs.” Pure anger in the hard glint of Aodhan’s eyes.