by Ophelia Bell
He grabbed her hands and put them around his neck while he lifted her up, burying his face in her neck and inhaling the scent of her. She still smelled like that spring day when they’d met in Central Park, of fresh azaleas carried on a crisp March breeze. He moved the few quick strides it took to reach her cot, and set her down, cupping her face in his hands and slowly savoring the taste of her mouth while she let out urgent little whimpers.
“Marcus, I need you,” she whispered when he drifted his lips over her jaw and proceeded down the side of her neck. Sweet Jesus how he needed her. His cock had never been so hard, but he warded off her hands again.
“Just let me have this first,” he murmured. “Let me experience you without distractions.”
She let out a frustrated laugh when he pushed his hand beneath her knit tank top and teased the underside of her breast.
“I don’t know if I can keep from reacting. I need an outlet, too. It’s been so long … do you have any idea how long?”
“Fifty years, six months, nineteen days, ten hours…” He hazarded a glance at her and smiled at the surprise there. “Fine, sing if you need an outlet, but let me focus on loving you one last time.”
Evie stiffened under his touch, her wide eyes flashing with fear for the briefest second before understanding made her relax again. The acceptance was accompanied by a look of sadness that made him pause, and he realized what he’d said.
“I found him…” he began, but she surged at him, her lips slamming against his in a desperate kiss that took his breath away.
“I don’t want to know… not yet,” she said when she pulled away.
Marcus nodded. Words would only be a waste of time between them now, so he chose actions instead. He pushed insistently at her top, and Evie raised her arms allowing him to strip it off her. He pushed her down onto her cot and she raised her hips so he could strip her of her drawstring pants.
Slow down, he told himself, overeager to delve into the fragrant, juicy core of her but needing to make sure he let every moment of this experience sink in. Then she started singing, the bittersweet tune setting the exact tempo he needed.
He rested back on his heels between her ankles, gazing down at her creamy skin. Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears, her emotions making the song rougher as the lyrics flowed from her lips. He didn’t understand the words, but had the feeling he knew exactly what the song meant, and it was perfect for the moment.
Evie cupped her breasts and spread her thighs, opening herself for him. Marcus bent and slid one hand beneath her knee, down the back of her thigh and up her hip until his elbow rested on the bed. He kissed the inside of her other knee, brushing his lips along her inner thigh, breathing her in as he went as though her scent sustained him.
He paused with his lips close enough to her core to feel the tickle of feather-soft fringe that covered her folds. The scent of March blooms was ever prevalent, and even more earthy here, and brought back the early memory of his wish to fill her with his child, to marry her and keep her close forever.
She’d told him the child couldn’t happen, and she’d been right, but every time he thought of her he still had the same wish. He’d been ready to propose the day they came to this place fifty years ago. He still carried the engagement ring with him wherever he went even now, despite knowing a marriage to her was out of the question.
With a groan to dispel the foolish fantasy, he pressed his mouth to her and kissed, using his lips to part her flesh while his tongue dipped between. He tasted her in one long, slow sweep, from the bottom of her opening all the way to the stiff, throbbing nub of her clit. He pressed the tip of his tongue there and teased, flicking gently up and down until her hips rose up with urgency.
His mouth watered at the tangy flavor of her and he drank her in, plunging his tongue deep into her channel to taste as much as he could before sweeping upward again and sucking that delicious bundle between his lips again.
Evie’s song continued, the shifting tempo enough to signal her state and urge him on. He devoured her over and over, hearing the need from her voice as much as sensing it from her body. When her pitch changed and her body tensed, he was right there with her, ready to carry her over and eagerly lapping up every drop of her essence when she collapsed to the bed.
She only paused for a breath before she was on him, pushing him back in a daze and ripping at his shirt and belt.
“My turn,” she growled and Marcus was too buzzed from the power of her orgasm to object. All he could do was kick off his boots in time for her to push his cargo pants to his ankles, the gear attached to his belt clattering onto the floor in a heap. Then she was on him, her lips tangled with his as she straddled him, wasting no time before sinking down on his stiff, throbbing shaft.
They let out simultaneous gasps of pleasure at the tight friction and he reveled in her control, letting her ride him for a moment before forcing her to slow down. He dug his fingers into her hips and held her against him, breathing deeply to try to fend off the release that rapidly threatened to overtake him. He planned to come as many times as possible while he was with her, but wanted to make sure the first time didn’t catch him off guard.
“Baby, please. Slow down. Let me have this.”
Evie pushed her fingers through his hair and bent to kiss him again, more slowly and tenderly this time.
“All right, but you’d better tell me this big secret of yours while we’re doing it. I heard a hint of a time limit in your voice. How much time do we have and what’s going to happen at the end of it? You can’t lie to me and you know it.”
He slid his hands up her narrow waist to tease his thumbs over the tips of her breasts. She took advantage of the freedom and rose up his length, hovering with her folds just encompassing the aching tip of his cock.
Her stormy eyes flickered with sparks of lightning, expectant and clearly willing to torture him if he failed to deliver.
“Hours maybe,” he said, relenting. “Sayid is usually inside my head so I couldn’t get away with seeing you like this before.”
“But he’s not now? Where is he?”
“Distracted… probably just the way we are right now. But he’ll be back and when he comes, he won’t be happy with me.”
“So, you don’t let him find out.”
“My love, I am pretty sure your absence will not go unnoticed. And I fully expect he’ll take out his anger on me.”
She sank down onto his cock suddenly, the sharp, exquisite sensation making his vision blur and his breath leave his lungs in a rush.
“How…?” she asked, not moving again, though the heat of her sank into him in a way that made him regret the distracting conversation.
But he had to tell her the truth.
“Baby, I know why you look at me the way you do. You didn’t love me like this when we met, and I remember distinctly the day when that changed. I hated that it didn’t happen until there was a goddamn cell door between us, but when I understood why, I admit I was a little grateful for it.”
The tears were back in her eyes, and he hated himself for causing them to return. “Why…” she began shakily. “Why do you think it changed?”
“I didn’t put it all together until last night. All I knew was that angels like you don’t just fall in love. There was someone out there for you already, and it wasn’t me. Calder… the satyr down the hall… a while back he told me how your kind works. How seeing your one true love is all it takes to know they’re the one. And that something wasn’t right if you didn’t look at me that way from the start. It didn’t happen until after we came here—after that bastard fucked with my blood, filled me with an infusion of some other creature’s blood—that was when it changed.”
Evie began shaking her head, her tears flowing freely now. “You are mine, Marcus. I don’t care if you weren’t to start with. I wanted you to be. I wished for it every day
we were together for the first year after we met. Because if you were, then that meant I could choose who I loved. I don’t give a fuck how you wound up with his blood inside you. We belong together.”
She clung to him, wrapped her arms around his neck. Her elbows dug into his shoulders as she kissed him with wet, tear-coated lips, and began moving her hips again in earnest.
Marcus groaned, his own hips rising to meet her, thrusting deep as she came down on him. His head spun from the emotional weight of it on top of the long needed physical connection with her. He gripped her arms and pulled her away, made her sit back and look at him.
“Evie, you don’t understand. I’ve loved you since the second I laid eyes on you, but you were never mine. Last night I understood for the first time why. I saw the Void—the dragon whose blood is the root of my power…”
Evie began shaking her head, chanting, “no, no, no” under her breath as though she didn’t want to hear what he was saying—couldn’t bear to know the truth.
“He is the one, Evie. Your one. He knows you are his.” Marcus closed his eyes, swallowing his own grief to get the rest of the words out. “He knows, and he is coming for you. And as God is my witness, I want him to have you because I never deserved you.”
“You always did,” she said, holding his face in her hands. “I don’t want to leave you, Marcus. Don’t you get it? You may not have belonged to me when we met, but you do now, and that’s all that matters. If he comes and takes me away, I’ll lose you. Nikhil will kill you for letting me go and I’ll lose you.”
The emotion he’d struggled to keep at bay broke through. Marcus let out an anguished groan and wrapped her in his arms. He hated that this would be the last time for them, but he needed her like he’d never needed anything in his life. Evie seemed to sense that the conversation was over at least, and they continued making love until Marcus lost himself in her heat, her scent, and the beautiful sound of her voice as she sang him to completion.
Chapter Two
Marcus
They lay curled snugly on her narrow cot. Despite the uncomfortable bed, Marcus had never been as comfortable as he was when Evie was in his arms after making love. She was tucked against him, halfway on top of him with one leg slung over his hips and her cheek against his chest. Her cell was warm enough that they didn’t need covers.
Marcus stroked his fingertips over her shoulder, reveling in the silken feel of her skin and the weight and press of her breasts against his side. The longer he lay there with her, the more the sense of urgency tightened his gut. He could only savor her for so long. He needed to be well clear of her cell before Nikhil returned, and he certainly didn’t want to be here when the Void came to claim her.
“I don’t think you need to be frightened of him,” he said, flattening his palm against her back and rubbing in a slow circle. “When I saw him last night, he looked…” He paused, trying to find the right words for what he’d seen in the Void’s eyes while he secretly observed the huge black dragon and his sister discussing the plights of their respective mates. “He looked how I feel all the time. Desperate to keep you safe.”
“I’m not frightened of him,” she said. “If I’d met him in the middle of a crowd the way I met you, nothing could have kept me from going to him, being with him. I know nothing can keep that from happening now, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give you up to have it.”
“Evie, I can’t go with you when he comes. Nikhil’s out of my head for the moment, but I know it’s only temporary. Not that the Void would want an old boyfriend of yours tagging along, anyway.”
She raised her head and rested her chin on his chest. Her gray eyes were calm, sated, but determined. “If you won’t find a way to join me, at least give me one gift.”
She trailed off, dropping her eyes so her dark lashes cast shadows on her pink cheeks. Opening her mouth as if to speak again she stopped, licking her lips and stalling as she toyed with the copper hairs around one of his nipples. Marcus’s cock twitched, rousing again in response to the teasing touch.
“What is it?” he asked. “If I can give it, I will.”
Evie swallowed, seemingly distracted by her fingers tracing soft lines up and down his torso now, straying ever lower. She shifted her knee away from his hips and his cock sprang up, fully erect now. She gripped his length and stroked him slowly, then looked into his eyes again.
“It’s a little thing…”
Marcus raised an eyebrow, darting a glance to where she held his cock, fingers not quite able to meet around his girth.
“That’s not what I mean!” Evie blushed and laughed, then slid on top of him. “What I want is just a gesture, really. Something my kind does when we share a deep connection with a lover and want to show each other how deep it really is. We share breath. It’s intimate and powerful, and—” Her eyes grew glassy with fresh tears and she took a deep, shaky breath. “—and a way for me to carry something of you with me if I have to leave you behind.”
He bent his knees and sat up, cradling her against his pelvis and wrapping her in his arms. “Anything that keeps you close to me after tonight is worth it. Just tell me what to do.”
Evie settled closer, her warm folds pressed against his cock as she wrapped her legs around him and rested her hands on his shoulders. “Just follow my lead. When I exhale, you inhale, and then we switch. My power will fill your lungs. You might get a little high from it, and feel light-headed, but it’ll feel good—like you’re flying.”
“Mmm, that sounds nice.” He slid his hands down her back and cupped her buttocks, but Evie reached back and grabbed both his hands, placing them gently on her shoulders.
“No fooling around until we have a rhythm. You’ll know when.”
Marcus nodded and relaxed as she placed her hands back on his shoulders. Their gazes held and Evie leaned in, tilting her head slightly. Her breath tickled his lips, faint words audible to his ears—Boreas lélegzik nekünk, amit belélegzünk egymást. Words in the old language of the songs she sang that he still never knew the meaning of, but considered beautiful nonetheless.
At the last second, Marcus exhaled and then opened for Evie’s mouth as she pressed her lips to his. She was warm and sweet, her kiss light, but sure. When the first wisps of warm air hit his tongue, he closed his eyes and inhaled, breathing her in until he could take no more. His lungs burned and his eyes teared up from the astonishing power that filled him. The sensation was close to what he’d felt the first time he’d regained consciousness after the blood infusion that had given him his Ultiori Elite powers. Evie’s breath filled him, the magic seeping into him, making his blood sing for her.
He sensed her slight mental shift as their balance tilted and the breath was pulled back the other way. Marcus caught on immediately and took control, exhaling slowly past his lips, into her body.
Then he was inhaling her again. Somewhere in the middle of the next exhale, as she was breathing him in, her hips moved and he was inside her warm, wet depths, her body taking him in twofold.
When they began to move together, Marcus lost track of where he ended and Evie began. Her breath filled him repeatedly until his consciousness was in the clouds, and it seemed like the most natural thing when her beautiful dove-gray wings unfurled and spread behind her, blocking his view of the rest of the room. But Marcus didn’t care about anything but this little bubble they had created for themselves, and when they reached their pinnacle at the same time, it was as if they’d both launched into the heavens as one.
In that moment he knew he would always love her, and would never forget the sacrifice she’d made to be with him. But an angel like her should be free to fly, and he would let her go.
He pressed his forehead to hers when their shared breathing ceased, struggling to catch his breath on his own again. This was the moment when he should say goodbye but he dreaded having to say the words out loud. Her wings
were still gloriously outstretched and he reached a hand up to delicately trace the edge of her feathers.
“My God how I love you, Evie North.”
Evie shivered and smiled, then stiffened at the sound of her cell door opening.
Marcus frowned. It wasn’t like his brother Elites to interrupt—not with the close mental connection they had.
But then the shadow of another teased at the edge of his mind, familiar, and more dreaded than the thought of leaving his lover.
His master had come too soon.
A guttural roar reverberated through the room, loud enough to make Marcus’s ears ring. He started to push Evie away, move in front of her to protect her, but he was too slow to react, still buzzed from their lovemaking.
A large hand wrapped around Evie’s throat, lifting her off of Marcus like she weighed nothing. She was a light little thing, lithe and warm. She’d always had a buoyant personality before he brought her here.
She dangled in Nikhil’s grip like a rag doll, clawing at the fingers gripping her neck before he tossed her across the room. Her shoulder hit the wall and she crumpled to the floor shaking her head and struggling to get up.
Marcus cried out and lunged at Nikhil, nearly reached him before agony split his skull, forcing him to his knees. He could only watch, half paralyzed with the pain of the presence in his mind as Nikhil turned his black gaze back to Evie.
“This is payment for what your brothers took from me,” he said, his voice icy. He reached for her beautiful wings.
Evie let out a heartbreaking cry when the first wing came clear of its socket, and the other wing followed. Blood and feathers flew around the room and Marcus struggled to push himself into motion again.
Nikhil’s shirtless back streamed red with blood from fresh wounds that had just appeared above his shoulderblades. Evie’s blood flowed down her back from identical wounds. It made no sense to Marcus, though he was sure he should understand.
The pain in his head was too much, yet he managed to crawl across the floor toward his lover, calling her name and reaching for her.
