Page 71

JUDE

Angel’s fingers tangled in my hair, gripping but not pulling, like he was afraid I’d disappear if he held too tight. I understood. I’d spent weeks as a ghost, watching him grieve, unable to touch. Now I had him in my mouth, and in my hands.

I looked up at him as he came apart, body quaking as his release hit the back of my throat, hot and overwhelming, and I swallowed it all, working him through every pulse, every gasp, every desperate sound that fell from his lips. His grip on my hair tightened, holding me there, and I let him. Wanted him to. Needed him to know I wasn’t going anywhere. Not by choice.

His eyes were blown wide, pupils dark, chest heaving. He stared down at me, the curve of a smile touching his lips even as he panted. When he finally stopped trembling, I pulled back slowly, licking my lips, savoring the taste of him.

“Hi.” The word came out again. Stupid. Inadequate. My cock was throbbing, begging for attention, and all I could manage was “hi” like a teenager on a first date.

Angel stared down at me, still half-hard, chest heaving, looking absolutely ruined in the best possible way.

“Holy fuck,” he grumbled.

I grinned up at him, aiming for sexy and landing somewhere around awkward. “I missed you.”

Something in his expression shifted. Sharpening.

Shadows flickered across his face, a predator’s awareness. The slight narrowing of his jaw as his cat bled through the human façade, reading me, testing me, searching for any sign of fear or reason to retreat. Shifters didn’t normally have half shifted forms. They were human or animal, but since my clumsily woven protection spell, he’d had something other, that only now had a definition and a goal. Bastion.

And I had no hesitation or anxiety over his other self. I wanted him in every way possible. Had tied my soul to his in ways the universe itself seemed determined to unravel. If he was worried about pushing too far, too fast, he could save that energy for literally anyone else.

He dropped to his knees on the cushy rug in front of me, the flit of shadows dancing behind his eyes.

Then his hands caught my face, pulled me forward, and his mouth slammed onto mine, claiming, and hungry. No hesitation despite his cum tainting my lips. Just Angel, pouring weeks of fear and longing into a kiss that stole my breath and my sense and anything else that might have mattered.

He ravaged my mouth, took everything I had and demanded more. I gave it. Gladly. Desperately. My fingers tangled in his hair, holding him to me, and the sounds he made were barely human, growls low in his chest, breaths hot and uneven against my lips. He tasted like want. Like weeks of separation poured into every slide of his tongue.

Then he picked me up and spun me, flipping me over, until I was on my hands and knees, cushy bathroom rug soft under my palms, and my knees spread wide on the plush fibers. The bathmat smelled faintly of lavender and damp. Cold air hit my skin, raised goosebumps along my thighs, my ass, everywhere I was exposed and waiting.

He could have slammed into me with no prep and I’d have taken it. Welcomed it. Pain or not, I wanted him that badly. My cock hung heavy between my thighs, aching, leaking, untouched. The rug fibers brushed against the sensitive tip with every tiny shift, and I had to clench my jaw to keep from begging.

But Angel settled behind me, knees pressing into the rug on either side of mine. I felt the heat of him radiating off his skin, warming the cold places the air had touched. Then his hands, gripping my hips, thumbs pressing into the dimples just above my ass. Firm. Anchoring, almost admiring?

His breath ghosted over my skin, and I shuddered, feeling exposed and desperate all at once.

Then his mouth found me.

Hot and wet.

His tongue traced a line from the base of my spine down, until it reached the place I’d been aching for him to touch. He circled my rim, teasing with fast flicks of his tongue, before gliding lower and sucking at my taint, face burrowed deep in the crevice of me, then back up to tease my hole again.

My forehead dropped to my forearms. My hips pressed back against him without permission, seeking more, and he answered with a growl that vibrated through my entire body, arms wrapping around my hips to hold me tight to his wandering lips.

His tongue pushed deeper, slipping inside, and I saw stars. He worked me open with that clever tongue, tasting, teasing, driving me slowly out of my mind.

“Angel,” I groaned, barely able to breathe.

Then I felt the press of a finger.

Just one, circling, spreading the wetness he’d left behind. He pushed in slowly, agonizingly slowly, and I gasped against the bathmat. The sensation was overwhelming, too much and not nearly enough, and I pushed back against him without meaning to.

Angel growled his approval, the sound more feral cat than man.

His tongue returned, laving at me while his finger crooked, searching, finding. When he hit that spot, teasing my prostate, and my whole body jerked, a choked sound tore from my throat.

“Mine,” he murmured against my skin, the vibration traveling through me. “Mine. Do you understand?”

That I was his, absolutely. “Yes.”