Her hands moved down to where his arms wrapped around her waist and she grasped the back of his hands, sliding them up to cup her small firm breasts over the thin fabric of her tank top.
Seth’s breath caught in his throat and his body immediately responded, his cock going stiff against the leather of his pants. There was really no mistaking that action, but it was so unexpected he still had to ask. “Lily?”
“Just touch me,” she whispered, resting her head against his shoulders. Her eyes fluttered shut. “I need to feel. To know I’m alive.”
Only a fool would question any further, so he did as she asked, kneading her round breasts before rubbing his thumbs over the tips.
She gasped and slid her bottom back and forth against him in pure invitation.
A groan tore from his throat as he tugged the fabric of her top up to free her breasts. The light from the moon reflected off the icy waters, casting shimmers along her soft skin. He traced them with his fingers, then thumbed her nipples once more, working them into stiff little buds.
“Seth,” she whispered, her voice low and breathy. “Undo my pants.”
He stifled a curse as excitement raged within him. With his hands over her breasts, he propelled them both toward the nearest tree, which lay at an angle on the icy bank. She lifted her palms to grasp hold of the icy trunk and arched her back so that her luscious bottom pressed invitingly into him.
Heavens, but she was delicious.
There were so many things he wanted to say to her, so many apologies resting on his tongue, but he feared if he spoke it would break this spell that had somehow been cast over them. So instead, he focused on giving her pleasure, pressing soft kisses to her shoulder and spine as his hands kneaded her breasts.
“Seth,” she gasped, a note of pleading drifting from her.
Knowing what she wanted, he brought his fingers down to the button of her black cargo pants. After undoing it and the zipper, he tugged her pants down to reveal the curves of her firm round ass. Stepping back, he allowed himself a moment to memorize the curves of her body in the shimmering moonlight.
Lily had always been a stunner. The years had done nothing to mar her beauty.
“Gorgeous, my love,” he whispered in a voice full of awe. “Always so gorgeous.”
“Seth.” Her face turned toward him and she wiggled her ass. “Please, fill me.”
Her words all but undid him.
Their lovemaking had always been spectacular. Over the years, he’d wondered so many times why, given the strength of their relationship, he’d developed feelings for Isabelle. Perhaps it was that she, with her human frailty, had made him feel needed in a way Lily never had. Perhaps it was just fate. He didn’t know, but he had come to one glaring conclusion: He’d been an idiot to take Lily’s love for granted.
Never again.
He would take every little morsel of attention she deemed to give him from here until eternity. And if scraps were all he got, then he would content himself with that. Because the alternative, living without her, was unthinkable.
When she repeated his name, he gave in to the need burning inside him and dropped to his knees behind her.
Her breath gave an audible catch, but then he brought his hands to the curves of her ass, spreading her to his gaze. She arched back further and widened her stance so that the flower of her femininity unfurled before him. Pink and slick with her desire, it all but made him lose control.
A growl purred in his throat as he brought his mouth to her, spearing the seam of her entrance with a long slow lick. She cried out and jerked against him, and he did it again, sliding his tongue along her clitoris.
“Oh, yes, Seth,” she whispered. “Like that.”
Rumbling out his satisfaction, he stroked her several more times before sliding his tongue into her tight wet heat. When she whimpered and started undulating her hips, he continued dipping his tongue in and out, lapping up her delicious honeyed taste.
Finally, when her legs began to shake, he could take no more.
He rose to his feet, freeing his erection from the confines of the leather, and then pressed the tip at the seam of her entrance.
“Yes, Seth.” She arched her back so that he slid in a few more inches.
Grasping her hips, he grit his teeth and thrust in all the way.
Crying out, she pressed back against him. “Yes. Like that. Hard.”
“As you wish,” he said through gritted teeth. Keeping a tight hold of her hips, he splayed his legs and slid partway out, and then rammed in deep again. When she let out a cry and urged him on, he did it again and again, quickening the pace and fury of his thrusts until he had her pinned to the tree as he pounded into her.
“Oh yes. Yes.” One of her trembling hands moved off the tree and she slid it between her legs, rubbing her fingers against her clitoris. The movement caused her to tighten around him in clamping pulses.
He cried out, plunging into her harder. He was almost there, and he desperately wanted her to go over the edge with him.
When his hand joined hers, stroking at her desire-slickened bud, she tensed and cried out hard. “Yes, Gods. Yes!”
Her inner walls quivered, closing around him so tightly that he jerked against her with a muffled yell. He kept pumping, even as his release tore from his body and a whooshing sound rushed in his ears.
He kept going until her body collapsed against the tree and her muscles loosened. Only then did he allow himself to press his front into her back, crushing her to him while he rode out the aftermath of his fierce orgasm.
“Mmm,” she said, the sound almost a purr from her throat.
He couldn’t agree more.
A long time passed before she stirred and pushed back slightly against him.
Biting back his groan of disappointment, he slid from her body and stepped backward. But he couldn’t take his eyes off Lily as she turned and righted her clothing. She looked glorious: flushed and well-loved and full of life.
Deep, overwhelming emotions threatened to crush his chest. Though he and Lily had made love hundreds of times before, each one was a new, exciting experience.
Each time he fell in love with her all over again.
But when she lifted her eyes to his, they were guarded once more.
His heart fell at the realization that this wasn’t the breakthrough he’d longed for in their relationship. She was going to push him away again.
Weariness melded with resignation. It didn’t matter how many times she pulled away from him. He would still be here, waiting for her, letting her know he realized his mistakes and would never, ever repeat them.
He would wait as long as it took.
*****
Lily fought to calm the tide of feelings swelling over her. For a moment there, in the throes of passion, she’d fooled herself into believing things could change, that they could be different.
That she could trust him again.
But then the lust had faded, leaving behind only truth. There would always be another woman who wanted him. Perhaps it would have been easier back on their world, where the entire population numbered around two hundred, but there were millions of women in this world. No doubt, a great deal of them would fall over themselves for a chance at such a jaw-dropping male specimen.
Who was she kidding? Even though the oppressing weight of his emotions told her he desperately wanted things to work between them, this was just too hard.
Emotions couldn’t be trusted. Because even if he loved her… well, he’d still been able to fall in love with someone else, hadn’t he?
She summoned the courage to meet Seth’s gaze and gave him a trembling smile. “That took some of the stress off.”
He frowned. “Lily—”
“We’d better get back to training. I’ll see you there.”
With those words, she grew her wings and took off into the night sky.
Chapter Seven
Several nights later, Seth flew north of the city on re
connaissance. One of the cameras Ruby had strategically implanted throughout the city had caught a glimpse of a white-winged angel flying in this direction. The rebel manning the control room had raced to inform the first angel he saw, which had happened to be him. From the rebel’s description of the facial features, Seth thought it might just be Remiel, one of the members of the Tribunal.
Since the rest of the team had headed out before him for more covert training sessions with the humans, Seth had decided to check it out. As long as Remiel was on his own and not with another group of angels, Seth felt reasonably certain he could take the other angel if he had to.
Except he’d been flying for close to an hour now and had yet to see or sense another angel in the distance.
It wasn’t wholly unexpected, given that angels could only sense the presence of other angels from a few miles away. The skies were vast, and Remiel could have headed in any direction. Yet the knowledge of that did nothing to ease his frustration.
He wanted this to end. Now. He and his fellow Fallen had been hunted for too long. Human existence had been threatened for no other reason than that they existed on the world the angels wanted for themselves.
Focused on his search for white-wings, he barely noted the shift in air pressure. It momentarily grazed his wings, then disappeared.
Seth kept flying for a moment, kept scanning on the horizon, but something about that pressure shift grated at his memory. It was familiar, somehow.
Frowning, he at last gave into impulse and made an arching turn in the sky. He headed back toward that same spot, once again feeling the odd tug against his wings.
Odd. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the feeling was not foreign to him.
Gut instinct propelled him to turn around again, to explore further. He flew back to the same spot and tested the air, searching for the spots where it grew thicker and heavier.
He flew a bit higher, and a sudden, strange sensation overcame him, as if he was being pulled in two different directions. A strange pop sounded in his ears, and a gush of wind shoved at his back, propelling him forward.
Shock coursed through Seth’s veins. He beat his wings hard to slow his movement and blinked to dispel the blurriness in his vision. That, at least, was unmistakable. He’d experienced it before, but not for quite some time.
“Oh my Gods,” he whispered. His heart thrummed furiously against his ribcage, making him fear he was about to hyperventilate. Shaking in disbelief, he scanned the horizon.
A purplish blue hue had overtaken the pure black of the night sky. Its tint was unmistakable.
Blood roared in his ears as he flew to the nearest ice-laden peak of land and touched down. He glanced around, taking in every last detail of the scenery before him.
Unbelievable. Inconceivable.
If he hadn’t been seeing it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it. Part of him refused to believe it now, and he had to resist the urge to pinch himself to ensure he wasn’t dreaming.
How or why this was happening was beyond him. And why now?
He didn’t know, but he did know one thing: What he’d just discovered was going to change everything.
*****
With an unlit flame torch in her hand, Lily flew alone through the night sky, headed back toward the rebel base. She’d been out helping Ruby and Jason conduct yet another training session, this one just a few miles from the base, but the nonstop battle preparation of the past few weeks had left her feeling strangely fatigued. At Jason’s urging, she’d decided to head back to the base a bit early for some rest.
She was just a few miles from the base when she sensed the disturbance in the air that announced other angels were nearby.
Her back stiffened in auto response, but then she remembered Michael and Eva were scheduled to lead a training session in the area tonight.
Pride washed over her at the thought of how well Michael had been handling everything these past few weeks. Though she knew he grieved his sister’s death, he’d put those feelings on the backburner, focusing with single-minded determination on bringing down the Tribunal.
He was strong, and with him on their side, their chances of success were infinitely better.
She decided to circle back around and pop in on their training session. A few minutes, and then she would get the rest her body told her she needed.
But when she touched down at the parking lot of the abandoned building where Eva had told her they would be training, a glimmer of unease swept through her spine. Something was off.
Lily was headed toward the crumbling brick building when the muted sound of screams floated to her ears.
Those weren’t normal training sounds, not by far.
Panic set in, and her desire to see what was wrong warred with the instinct to fly away. But before she could decide on a course of action, a figure went tumbling through one of the broken out windows on the ground level. The remaining bit of glass shattered beneath him. He moaned and tried to rise as another figure stepped through the window and marched toward him.
She recognized several things at once. The man on the ground was Adam, and from the blood streaming down his face and hands, he was in bad shape. And the figure striding toward him was none other than Hekam, an angel she’d once known and always hated—the bastard.
If she didn’t intercede now, he would kill Adam.
Her heart wrenched at the thought. No, she couldn’t let that happen.
Without pausing to think another moment, she let her wings loose and turned the flame torch into its on position. She screamed out Hekam’s name as she zipped through the air, and he stopped short, his shocked gaze meeting hers.
He saw what she held in her hand, and his eyes went wide. His hands rose to automatically block his face, but that was no match for what she held.
She took great care in aiming the torch at him, lest she accidentally hit Adam, and pressed the button to shoot a lick of white-hot flame right at his face. It caught him on the arms.
An ear-piercing shriek tore from him as his body lit up like a pack of fireworks.
Hekam’s body incinerated almost instantly, and Adam quickly rolled out of the way of the falling ash that served as his remains.
Lily landed right at Adam’s side and knelt to examine his bruised, bloodied face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he panted. Wincing, he pointed inside the building. “Attacked.”
Lily looked up toward the hole where the window used to be. It now gave her a clear view of the empty ground floor of the building, where a battle, of sorts, was currently being waged. Michael and Eva against four angels.
They were hopelessly outnumbered, and somehow the white-wings had taken advantage of that by divesting them of their flame torches and forcing them to kneel on the ground.
One of the angels now held two in his hand. He carelessly lifted one and aimed it at a human who scrambled by, instantly smothering the human in fire. The other was pointed right at Michael.
“No!” Mindless panic propelled her into flight. She went up and through the window, shooting her torch right at the angel. He exploded into flames, the two torches in his hand dropping to the ground.
Her gaze collided with Michael’s, and time seemed to slow. She could practically see the pulse beating in his throat as he worked out how to act next. Then his gaze lowered to the two torches on the ground, and she could see the moment he decided to go for them.
But then, before he could act, Eva screamed at Lily. “Another one, behind you.”
Everything happened so quickly then that she could barely process it. A body rammed into Lily from behind, knocking her down. The torch flew from her hand as she fell.
At the same exact time, Michael dove for one of the torches on the ground. Before he could reach it, one of the other angels slammed his fist into Michael’s temple. His head hit the ground hard, and his eyes rolled backward.
Eva’s scream echoed through the empty space. “Noooo!”
The angel at her back snatched her ponytail and drove her face to the ground. Her nose broke with a sickening crunch. Blood coated her mouth, and the pain from her face melded with that at her back.
Her vision went black, and through the ringing in her ears, she heard one of the angels say. “Should we kill them?”
“Just the humans,” said another voice. “Ezekiel wants the Fallen and the nephilim.”
She groaned and tried to rise, but a booted foot pressed down on her injured back, sparking a trail of agony through her spine. Then, mercifully, she knew no more.
Chapter Eight
Seth soared back to the rebel base as fast as his wings could carry him. His heart was currently lodged somewhere near his throat, and his body was numb with disbelief. He could hardly wait to inform his fellow Fallen of what he’d found. They would have to discuss the implications, strategize their next move. Either way, it would be a big one.
His mind racing with possibilities, he touched down in front of the abandoned Brooklyn warehouse and made his way down into the tunnel.
The moment he opened the iron door into the hideout, he was smacked in the face by an avalanche of emotions: fear, panic, and despair all coalescing into one giant mass of energy.
“What the hell?”
He stepped into the control room to see Ethan striding toward him, his face set into a grim mask. Though he held tight control of his emotions, it didn’t take a genius to sense that something was wrong. Very wrong.
“What’s happened?” he asked Ethan.
His fellow Fallen gave him a look that told him to prepare himself. “Michael and Eva were leading a training session nearby when they were attacked by a group of angels. Ruby’s cameras caught much of the incident.”
Seth’s throat tightened as the fear that echoed off every corner of the room gripped him as well. “Are they—”
Angel's Redemption Page 5
