Archangel's Storm

29

Mahiya blinked away her tears, her world a kaleidoscope. “I was not ripped from my mother’s womb?”

“No, no.” Vanhi’s distress grew. “I made sure Nivriti’s birthing was as easy as it could be for a woman who lay in a cell.” Fingers trembling, she brushed back Mahiya’s hair. “It was after the birth, when you’d been taken from her that I was alone in the room with your mother for a bare few moments. She whispered to me that she would leave her child a gift, and she made me promise to give you that gift at the right time.”

“What is it?” she asked, trembling at the idea of a link to her mother.

Vanhi’s laugh was waterlogged. “Mahiya, such a beautiful name, don’t you think? One I suggested to Neha.”

Mahiya had always taken her name to be a cruel joke on Neha’s part, for it meant happiness, joy . . . and sometimes, beloved. “My mother gave me my name?” It was a gift no one could ever take away from her.

“Yes, but the second part, I had to keep secret for Neha would not have permitted it.” The anguish of a woman who loved the archangel but saw the lack in her.

Mahiya leaned forward, a hundred butterflies in her blood. “What is the second part?”

“Geet,” Vanhi whispered. “Your name is Mahiya Geet.”

Joyous song . . . beloved song.

Her heart shattered from the inside out. Far from being a mockery, her name was a treasure, a last gift from a mother who hadn’t, she knew without asking, been allowed to hold her newborn daughter. “Thank you,” she whispered to Vanhi through a throat swollen with emotion.

“I thought to tell you earlier . . . but you weren’t ready,” Vanhi said, taking her into her arms. “Now you are. I think the world will tremble to hear your song, sweet girl.”

Beloved song.

Mahiya squeezed the railing of the balcony and turned to look at the man who was the only one other than Vanhi who knew her true name. She’d had to tell someone, and Jason . . . he would keep her secrets.

Close to midnight, the skies were empty aside from the sweep of the outer sentries. Here, within the walls of the fort, it was quiet but for the night insects, the wind still as a glassy pond, the air cool but not cold. The man beside her was a part of the night, his wings near indistinguishable from the shadows.

“It suits you,” he said, one of those wings brushing her own as he spread them behind her.

Biting back a responsive shiver, she laughed, the sound soft and intimate in the dark. “I am not the most gifted of singers, but I don’t care.”

A tug in her hair, Jason’s fingers unraveling the neat knot at her nape with exquisite patience, each golden pin put on the railing in order, until they shimmered in the dark and her hair tumbled down her back and over her wings. Mahiya trembled. She had been born in a time when a woman did not put down her hair in front of anyone but her lover, and some part of her was that girl still.

It was an intimacy they shared beneath the starlit sky.

When he slid his hand under her hair to close over her nape from behind, she expected him to tug her back for a kiss, but he just rubbed his thumb over her skin before running his knuckles down the centerline of her back and returning to lean on the balcony on his forearms, his wing lying heavily against her own. “I can sing.”

It was the last thing she’d expected to hear from him, this man who threatened to splinter her defenses until she repeated her mother’s tale of love unrequited. Yet now that he’d spoken, her mind whispered with half-remembered fragments of conversations overheard.

“A voice more beautiful than Caliane’s they say.”

“. . . made my heart break.”

“Purity, that is Jason’s voice.”

The speakers had all been more than four hundred years old. “I would hear you,” she whispered.

“I have not sung for many years.”

“Did something happen to still your song?” she asked, unwilling to back away when this was the first time he’d spontaneously offered her a glimpse into the mystery of him.

His reply was slow in coming, but she didn’t take his silence for anger, knowing Jason was a man who felt no need to clutter the air with words. Instead, tempted by the way his head was below her own as he leaned down, she reached out to undo the tie that held his hair in its usual queue. It fell like black water around his face, and he didn’t stop her when she began to smooth it back to lie over his shoulders. “You have such beautiful hair.”

“I prefer yours.”

His hand fisted in her hair, his lips on her throat.

Thighs clenching, she ran her fingers over his scalp. “Then we are well matched.”

He arched a little into her touch. “The only songs in my heart were ones that made the Refuge drown in tears. So I stopped.”

Having not expected such an unvarnished answer, she was momentarily thrown, her fingers going motionless. She had the panicked feeling of a chance slipping through her fingertips, an opportunity forever lost. “Did it hurt you to stop?” she asked, grabbing at that chance with grim determination.

“Yes,” he said at last. “It was akin to cutting off a limb, but such song was not good for me.”

Frowning, she parted her lips to ask why, then stopped. Jason was a man draped in shadows—to give voice to the darkness within . . . yes, it would not be good for him to drench himself in it. “If you ever find something worth singing for again,” she said, a silent, fierce hope in her heart for his song, “I hope you will invite me to listen.”

Jason pushed off the railing to stand at his full height, folding his wings to his back at the same time. Already, she missed the warm weight against her, but then he dipped his head and the warmth turned into a black fire that kissed her bloodstream and spread into every cell of her body.

There would be no forgetting Jason.

He’d led her into the bedroom, but when he stopped at the foot of the bed, she raised her fingers to the buttons of his shirt after undoing the strap of the sword harness across his chest. The way he’d taken control the previous night, she worried he wouldn’t accept her desire to discover what pleased him, but he played with her hair as she unbuttoned the shirt to display the beauty of his body.

Each soft tug on her scalp as he twisted a loose, heavy curl around his finger, released it, made her heart skip a beat. But it was the ridges and valleys of his body that had her sighing in feminine pleasure as she pulled the sides of the shirt apart to splay her fingers over his skin. His hand fisted in her hair, but he didn’t call a halt to her exploration.

Delighted, she shaped the heated steel of him, caressing the heavy muscle that spoke to his strength and speed. It was a quirk of angelic biology that the incredibly powerful muscles needed to support flight didn’t overwhelm the upper body. Instead they lay subtle and fiercely strong beneath the skin.

But Jason’s body, it told a different story, that of a warrior who needed to do maneuvers in the sky flight muscles alone wouldn’t accommodate. “Can you use your sword in flight?”

“I’d be useless as a fighter otherwise,” he murmured, lifting her fingers to the straps on his shoulders that helped hold the sword harness to his back.

Taking the silent instruction, she undid the sleek but strong buckle, repeated the act on the other side, the leather soft from use. “Are you ever without your sword?”

“No.” Removing harness and sword, he placed them beside the bed.

Within arm’s reach.

“It’s my primary weapon.”

“Yes, I understand.” Pushing aside his shirt, she rubbed her fingers over the light red marks created by the leather. Such a thing would be nothing to an angel of Jason’s strength, but she did not like seeing his body abused in even so small a way.

Having kicked off her sandals in the living area, where Jason had left his boots, she rose on bare toes to press her lips to one of the marks. Jason’s free arm came around her waist, but he didn’t halt her movements when she kissed her way across to the other marks. “I could do this for hours,” she said, addicted to the feel of him, the taste of him.

Jason’s response was again unexpected. “If that’s your wish.”

It made her shiver, the idea of having this man in her bed, hers to explore. Dropping down flat on her feet again, she didn’t give him time to change his mind and walked around to undo the plain buttons that held the wing slits closed. His shirt fell to the floor seconds later, his wings stunning arcs of heavy black.

She ran her fingers over the shadowy perfection of his feathers, suddenly shy. But he was already unbuckling his belt, the metallic sounds harsh, intimate in the quiet of the bedroom. Breathing ragged, she walked around to take over the task, her fingers brushing his. “I’ll do it.” It was a whisper, but Jason’s hand fell away . . . to rise, undo the buttons on the shoulders of her tunic.

Sliding his belt out of the loops, she dropped it to the floor, cooperated with him to strip away her tunic. Her breasts, small as they were, didn’t need support, and she wore only a camisole beneath. It took Jason but a moment to remove that from her body, run the back of his hand over one taut mound. “Beautiful.”

A tremor rippling over her skin at the low murmur, she undid the button of his jeans, ran her fingers along his navel. His muscles contracted. It intoxicated her, his response, and she had the craving to know every touch, every caress that made this strong, sensual man shudder in pleasure. Swallowing at the enthralling thought, she brushed her fingers over his zipper and the hard ridge beneath.

Jason’s demanding mouth was suddenly on her own, his grip on her hair holding her in place. She didn’t know how it happened, but her pants were stripped from her seconds later, and she found herself lying on her back on the bed with Jason between her legs, the heavy denim of his jeans rubbing against her skin as he devoured her mouth.

She hooked one leg around his hip, opened her mouth to the wet seduction of his kiss, licked her tongue against his in molten desire. Groaning, he settled more heavily against her, the cold metal of his zipper pressing into the skin of her abdomen as his wings spread above her in a caress of midnight.

“Later.” A husky word against her lips. “You can touch all you wish later.”

The rough promise made her melt. “I intend to.”

His hand on her breast, squeezing a fraction too softly. Perhaps it was shameless, but she put her hand over his, increased the pressure. Her reward for such brazenness was piercing pleasure, his lips hot and damp on her neck as he petted her breast, rubbed her nipple. Holding his head to her, she twisted against him, frustrated by the fabric that separated them. “Jason, your jeans.”

A sudden chill as he rose to get rid of his remaining clothing. The sight of him in the faint moonlight that entered the room through a high window, formed of fine designs cut into the stone itself, stole her very breath. He was a work of art, every part of him honed to a deadly edge. Raising her arm, she held out her hand, calling him back to bed.

He returned in a primal wave of heat that took her over. Kissing his way down her body, he hooked his fingers into the satin and lace of her panties to tug them off, throw them aside.

A wet, suckling kiss pressed just above her mound before he spread her thighs . . .

Mahiya arched off the bed under the stark intimacy of his next caress, his mouth tasting her most delicate flesh with lush eroticism as his hands held her open for his—their—pleasure. Her hands gripped at the sheets, her wings fluttering like creatures trapped, and her breath, it became a sob.

He deepened the kiss, one of his fingers sliding into her sheath.

The sensual intrusion tipped her over, the pleasure so intense, it stole her voice.

Moving up her quivering body with a slow attention to detail that left no inch of her skin untouched, untasted, her nipples hard little berries for him to roll against his tongue, her breasts left slick and wet to rub against the muscled beauty of his chest as he reached her lips at last.

First, he kissed the corners of her eyes, tasting the salt of the pleasure that shimmered over her skin still. But when she turned her lips to his, he accepted the invitation with raw hunger, one of his hands running down her waist to grip her thigh, bring it over his hip, opening her for him.

And then he was pushing into her, slow and insistent. She gasped, her flesh swollen, but there was no hurt. Only a near-painful need to have him inside her. Wrapping her other leg around his body, she pressed, urging him deeper.

“Mahiya.”

Her spymaster’s control fractured.