by Alisa Woods
He didn’t understand half of what just happened, but they weren’t going anywhere. He would wait until she was ready to explain.
His brothers and Tajael would have to figure out their next move.
Leksander had conjured a bed for her.
Before, the roughness of the walls and the floor didn’t inhibit the gritty urgency of their lovemaking. He took her standing, from the front and behind, kneeling as well, and even suspended in the air that one time when the soft ribbons of his love bound her. But now, after they had eaten and drunk their fill from the crates, after they’d washed and refreshed with the towels and wipes from their small mountain of supplies, Leksander had made her a bed with white satin sheets and gauzy netting and thick wooden posts at every corner.
As if now she needed comfort.
He was right.
“Are you sure you don’t want one of these chocolate croissants?” Leksander was busy stacking and organizing the supplies. He’d just cleaned up from their meal.
She was curled on the bed, arms wrapped around her knees, wings hidden magically inside her back. “I think I’ve eaten enough for the entire pregnancy.” And she had—cheeses and bread and fruit, plus pastries and chocolate and some delicate shaved ham. Her angel nature lived off magic, and her human side was buoyed by that. She was half human, but she required far less than half the normal amount of food and rest.
Leksander just nodded and continued his organizing.
Erelah stared at her toes, quietly digging into the fine white satin that covered their bed.
Her heart had turned inside out. What if Tajael was right? What if the birth of her child meant every True Angel with a weakness in Pride would want to build an army of angelings… not by rescuing the fallen’s offspring, bringing them back to the light, but by creating new angelings themselves? By mating with humans? Angelings of the light, too—they might dare to mate with the humans they were supposed to protect, just as she had. Surely many would Fall. But what if some succeeded? Would they all keep trying? Would it spiral out of control and usher in the End? None knew God’s plans, but the End had clearly been spoken of throughout time, by angelkind and humankind both, even from the beginning—from the very first Fall. And it was a simple logic. Every Beginning must have an End.
But how cursed were those who brought it?
A shudder went through her with that thought. She searched inside for the joy that had beamed so effortlessly from her before—when she first knew their love had created this child within her. Now, her chest literally hurt with the heartache that somehow their child might not save the world but bring horrors to it. The child itself, of course, was pure of heart, innocent of all things—it was the world which would go mad when he was born.
“Hey,” Leksander said softly, appearing at the side of the bed.
She hadn’t even heard his approach.
“Did the food help?” The tension on his face pulled at her heart, too. It felt fragile as if even that small tug might shatter it.
“It has eased my hunger.” But she knew he meant the dark mood that had taken hold of her.
He frowned. “Well, that’s something, I guess.” He eased onto the bed with her, climbing around to stretch his body out, full length, then snuggling his head under her arm. His focus was on her belly, a hand resting on the tight wrappings of her training toga, his lips stealing a light kiss on top. “All right, baby dragon. You got your food. Now let your mama rest.”
Her smile didn’t quite make it out to her lips, but she felt it inside. She trailed her fingers through his hair. Only a few days ago, it would have been a wonder to touch him like this, much less all the other ways he had touched her. She’d crossed over into another world, and at the same time, it had narrowed to this one tiny cave, her and her beloved. Their child. And the fate of the world.
Leksander leaned back and propped up to sitting next to her. His hand drifted up from her belly and played with the fastenings on her toga, just above her breast. It was held on primarily by magic, but a couple knots also bound it in place. “I might have to figure out how this comes off.”
“You created it,” she said, dully. “You can magic it away.”
“Yeah?” He slid his gaze from her breast up to her eyes, but the interest there died when her expression said not interested.
She frowned. This lack of interest bothered her. As if everything good and bright had been extinguished by her fears, even sapping away this brimming heat she seemed to always have with him.
“It’s what Tajael said, isn’t it?” Leksander moved his hand back to her belly. “About the True Angels Falling and creating havoc.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“You know that’s not your fault, right?” There was a little more fire in his eyes now. He’d been carefully tiptoeing around the cave, allowing her the sour mood that had gripped her, but now it seemed he wished a fight.
But she had no fight in her. “It matters not. What matters is the harm that will come of it. A harm I am powerless to prevent. And yet I’m the cause.” The grief of that welled up a literal blackness in her soul. Even when she was fighting the demon she’d called out of Leksander’s body, she’d never felt this true darkness. It was one reason she had stowed her wings. She didn’t want to see if they had returned to shadow.
Although maybe that was the answer.
As that idea sparked a morbid fascination in her mind, Leksander was moving on the bed to more fully face her. “You are not the cause of anything.” He was almost angry, but it didn’t stir her heart, not the way this idea of returning to shadow did. “What these fucking angels decide to do,” he continued, “is completely on them. All right? You are doing something… amazing. You believed in me. You loved me. You took a leap of faith that our love was even possible when no one in their right mind would have thought so.”
“You believed,” she pointed out. “It was your belief—your goodness—that made it possible.”
He gave her a crooked look. “You mean my stubbornness.”
“That as well.” The need to smile tugged at her heart, but it wasn’t strong enough to lift it.
Yet he smiled for her and went back to toying with the shoulder knot on her toga. “You know, I really had no idea whether you could love me. All I knew was that I was obsessed. Every night, you were part of my dreams. My fantasies.” He gave her a wicked smile and loosened the knot that held her toga firm to her breast.
“So, you were taken with Lust.” She could understand it now—the feeling of sexual attraction was bound up with her love for him, but had he Lusted for her before he loved her? That didn’t even make sense to her.
“I was so taken with Lust.” He rumbled that growling sound he often made in the throes of their lovemaking and slipped a hand under her loosened toga to cup her breast.
He teased her nipple with his fingers, but it felt… wrong. She moved away from his touch, and he immediately drew his hand back.
“Erelah, my love.” He seemed pained, like her heart.
Her shoulders dropped. “I feel a great darkness inside. My love for you is still True, Leksander, but I cannot even picture the act of love right now. Have I broken it? This desire I had for you before… it seems broken.”
He seemed to be holding back a smile, which annoyed her. But then he sat up, folded his legs, and scooped her bottom off the bed and into his lap. “You are not broken, my love.” He held her cheek and gently kissed her forehead. “You’re merely sad. It will pass.”
“It doesn’t feel like it is passing,” she complained.
“Then we shall have to make it pass.” He lowered his kiss to her cheek.
“But that is the broken part,” she insisted. Then she gestured to the white linen curtain he had conjured across the mouth of the cave to give them privacy. It fluttered lightly in the breeze coming in from outside, and she could hear the screeches and rustlings of the dragons out there. “Tajael is right now working on safeguarding our
transit back to the keep. He’s pledged his life to protect the baby and me. But what if everything he says comes true? How can I have joy now, if that is where the future leads? How can I make love as if the world isn’t in danger because of it?”
Leksander let her vent, and it felt good to get the words out of where they bashed around in her chest. But the look blazing in his eyes said he didn’t agree, not in the slightest.
“First of all, forget the outside world.” Leksander waved his hand and conjured a rock wall much like the one he used to “hide” her when the wards were down. “This is our mating time, and the world is not invited.”
She took a fresh look at the wall—the whisper of wind and distant call of dragons was muted, blocked by the magic and rock of the wall. The silence felt like a cocoon as if they were truly insulated from the world now. It was just her, Leksander, and the baby.
“Second of all,” Leksander continued, brushing his thumb along her cheek, “you have only one mission for the next six weeks. To grow a dragonling. Forget the treaty and the world… this is my child, Erelah. It is literally my life you hold within you.”
In all the drama, she had forgotten that part—that Leksander’s magic would only renew, his life extending for another five hundred years, if he successfully spawned a dragonling. It was how all dragons worked, but the House of Smoke was most cursed of all, requiring a mate in True Love with them.
Her love would literally save his life.
A spark of joy returned to the darkness inside her. “I wish for you to live, dragon prince.” She gave him an earnest look.
“As do I,” he said with a smirk. “Not least because I’ve got decades of fantasies I’ve yet to play out with you, angel girl.”
The joy inside her grew.
He gently kissed her forehead again. Then he pulled back and said in a stern voice, “Lie down, face on the bed.”
Her smile finally broke out. “Is this one of your fantasies?”
“No,” he said firmly, although there was a glimmer of mischief in his eye. “But you need to relax and put all these thoughts out of your head. I’m going to give you a massage.”
“A massage?” She frowned. What kind of thing was this?
“It’s where I rub your body all up and down.” His brow scrunched up like he wasn’t sure if he was explaining it right. “It’s to relax your muscles.”
“But this is not a fantasy? Not a sexual thing?” She truly didn’t understand how this was supposed to work.
“Well, it is, but… no, that’s not why I’m doing it.” He seemed resolute about this, so she didn’t argue. She climbed out of his lap and lay face down on the bed.
He moved on top of her, straddling her legs, his hands hovering over her bottom.
She lifted her head to peer back at him. “Are you certain this isn’t a kind of sex?”
He growled and leaned forward, pressing his hands into her shoulders and forcing her flat again. “Yes, I’m certain.” But there was a scowl in his voice.
Then he moved his hands over her back, pressing in with his fingers in a rhythmic motion. Her back seemed to rebel at the onslaught, bunching up her shoulders and twitching as he touched her. Her toga moved across her skin, loose from the knot he’d undone in front, so it heated her skin with a kind of friction.
“Relax, angel girl,” Leksander whispered into her ear, but his voice was laced with frustration.
If this was supposed to relax her, it was doing a terrible job. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect. But she tolerated it as a Penance—Leksander was trying to comfort her, and that she appreciated, but it was more like a very still form of wrestling. Her body fought every movement Leksander’s hands wanted to coax out of it.
He leaned back, still perched on the backs of her legs, and sighed. “The toga’s getting in the way,” he declared. “I’m going to magick it away.”
She refrained from asking whether this made it sexual. It honestly didn’t matter, as that desire which flowed so freely before was still absent.
Her toga disappeared, leaving her naked against the cool fabric of the bed. She glanced back, but she could feel Leksander still had his clothes, as the rough fabric of his jeans brushed against her skin.
But this time, when he leaned forward, and his hands met her back, the sensation was entirely different. Skin-to-skin, their magic—dragon and angel—always sparked in a tense interplay. A small skirmish of magic where they touched, electrifying her skin… and warming other parts as well. This time, when his fingers moved rhythmically, coaxing the muscles of her back to give and move, her body responded.
She could hear Leksander’s breath—sharp intakes and long outtakes—but her eyes had fallen shut with the pleasure. And it was pleasure. Along her shoulders, down her back, then up the sides again. But it was a different sort than she’d experienced before with him. It was not unlike being strung up with black satin ribbon. Leksander was completely in control. He pushed and moved; her body followed and responded. His touch was strong, and his fingers worked deep. She could feel that relaxation he wished for steal over her body, releasing cares and worries from every inch, not just the ones he touched. It was as if he possessed a strange magic that pulled concerns out from every part of her via the probing, stroking, pressure points on her back.
A small moan escaped her.
Leksander’s hands became more fervent in their quest.
Her body felt as though it were melting into the bed. She’d never felt such complete and utter loss of tension except… except after Leksander had brought her to a wing-shaking climax that left her limp afterward. Sated. But this was different. She was almost immobilized from the relaxation, yet the sensation of letting go was perversely making her sensitive, sexual parts—between her legs, her breasts mashed into the bed—come alive.
Leksander rumbled a small groan as he moved his attention to her bottom, massaging deep into the rounded flesh. She had no verbal response—she was so captured by the puddle of relaxation she had become—but her body squirmed of its own volition. The ache between her legs was growing, and the wish to have him touch her there was driving her mad.
Leksander sucked in a breath, and it came out as a shudder. She felt it vibrate through his arms and into his hands on her bottom. Then he lifted one hand free. She was about to complain that he shouldn’t stop, when the feeling of rough fabric against her skin disappeared, replaced by the cool press of bare flesh. He leaned forward, covering her body with his.
Leksander was a hard man all over—well-muscled and strong—but there was no mistaking the stiff rod of his cock now pressing into her back.
He brushed her hair away from her face, where it had fallen. “I was wrong,” he whispered hoarsely in his ear. “This is entirely sexual.” He caressed her bottom, no longer kneading it with his massaging touch but enlivening it with his fingertips. “Tell me to stop.” He gripped her bottom, hard.
She could hardly speak, rendered senseless by the relaxation and speechless by the surge in desire flooding every part of her body. She licked her lips, eyes still closed, and managed, “Don’t stop.”
Leksander growled and released his hold on her bottom then slipped his hand between her legs.
She gasped. Sweet angels of light. The mere brush of his fingertips on the wet heat there made her body jolt.
“Oh, fuck, yes.” Leksander’s voice had dropped into a growl that excited her even more. But then he withdrew his hand and slid his body lower on hers. Just as she was trying to form words—any words—to get him to return to the delicate torment between her legs, he reached around instead, slipping his hand between her body and the bed, lifting her slightly. He found her most sensitive spot with expert precision, and his fingers danced across her aching flesh.
She gasped. Then his cock slid deliciously between her legs, somehow finding her entrance and filling her with one long stroke. “Gah,” she cried out as he buried himself inside her.
He held still,
a muffled cry of his own. She was so relaxed and so completely filled, this felt like the perfect state. One she could stay in forever and be utterly satisfied. But then Leksander flicked his fingers on her sensitive spot again, and suddenly she was squirming underneath him, bucking up and craving him to move.
“Hold still,” Leksander commanded, then he pressed his hand to the flat of her back, pushing her deeper into the bed. Once he had her fixed there, he drew back and thrust in deep.
So deep. She cried out again on the second thrust. The third and fourth had her whimpering. Leksander’s grunts and groans and the wild way he pounded just spiked the pleasure running rampant like an electric storm throughout her body. His name escaped her lips, again and again, and he took her, full and deep and powerful. Every stroke had her crying out now, but then he just picked up the pace, possessing her with more fury. A deep and guttural scream finally ripped out of her, turning to angelsong as her body clenched and convulsed and bucked up into him.
He cried out too, then slammed deep and stayed there. She felt his hot seed spilling, the twitching of his cock inside her, and the ripple throughout his whole body, now heavy on top of hers.
“Holy fuck. Holy, holy fuck.” His words were whispers, and he seemed to try to move away from her body but failed. Then he just pushed back the hair that had fallen on her face and kissed her there—cheeks, ear, hair, and down her neck to her shoulder. “Just when I think,” he breathed between kisses, “that sex with you can’t get any hotter, you blow my mind, angel girl.”
She struggled to make her mouth functional again, not just hang open, panting. “Just wait until it’s your turn, dragon prince.”
“Oh, God, yes,” he prayed, his forehead pressed into her back as he seemed to still work on recovering his breath. Then he pulled back, finally leaving her body, and fell breathless on the bed next to her. His hand lingered on her back, just keeping a connection between them, but his eyes were closed, and his breath was ragged.
