“Why?” Seemed like a stupid bet for an immortal to make. Never was a long, long time.
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “You’d think he’d want me to tattoo it somewhere everyone would see it.”
“Not the tattoo,” she said impatiently. “The bet. Why did you say you wouldn’t take a mate?”
One massive shoulder rolled in a lazy shrug. “At the time, I was Unfallen. I had no future. I wasn’t going to enter Sheoul to complete my fall, and the likelihood of earning my wings back was pretty much nil. Who would want me?”
Was he fucking kidding? Who
Even Harvester, who had hated him for years, could see that.
“And now?” she asked quietly. “Do you think you’ll find a mate now that you’re a halo-fied angel again?” She didn’t know why she was asking. Wasn’t even sure she wanted an answer.
His sapphire eyes locked onto hers, and her heart did a crazy flip. “Assuming I don’t get stripped of my wings or executed for rescuing you… maybe.”
The way he said it, low and rough, was downright erotic, as if he was right now picturing his mate. Naked.
Harvester’s body went all kinds of hot.
“Harvester,” he said, in that rough voice that made her sex throb.
“What?” she found herself leaning toward him, heard her pulse pounding in her ears and felt her lungs struggle for oxygen.
“Lift up your shirt.”
She sucked in a hot breath. “My shirt?” Her hands were already on the bottom hem.
“I’ll do it.” Very gently, he gripped her shoulders and turned her. “I want to see how your wings are healing.”
“Oh.” She went utterly cold with disappointment. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, a dry teasing note in his voice, “I’m not a doctor, but I played one for years.”
“Yes,” she drawled, “that’s much better.” She wondered if he’d enjoyed working at Underworld General. She’d never thought of him as the doctorly type, but as he peeled her tank top up and smoothed his warm hands up her back, she decided she liked his bedside manner.
“Your scars are gone,” he murmured, and she swore she heard his heartbeat pound a little harder, a little faster. So did hers.
His touch was tender as he probed the aching area near her shoulder blades. “Can you extend your wings yet?”
“I’ll try.” She hoped the slight breathlessness in her words came across as pain and not a reaction to his hands on her body.
Then the pain definitely came through as she tried to bring her wings out. Bone erupted from the slits in her back, and by some miracle she didn’t cry out.
“That’s good,” he said. “You’ve got about two feet of framework. All bone, but once you feed, you can probably double that and add some tissue.”
Retracting her unformed wings, she jerked away from him and yanked her top down. “Not from you.”
“Are we really doing this again? You,” he growled, “are the most stubborn, difficult, infuriating person I have
“Aw.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “You say the sweetest things.”
He shook his head as if she were a lost cause, and maybe she was. “We need you to be able to sense Harrowgates. It’s only a matter of time before your father’s forces find us, and if darkmen are on our trail, we need to get out of Sheoul. Now.”
“No.” This time her refusal carried less resolve, and even as she formed an argument—a pathetic one—her fangs lengthened and throbbed, and all the starved cells in her body started to quiver. “Feeding does strange things to me.”
He barked out a husky laugh. “It does strange things to me, too. You need this, angel.” Casually, gracefully, he relaxed his long body and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Come on. I’m right here. It’s just blood. No big deal. Just like last time.”
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. Warmth spread through her and emotion she couldn’t identify bubbled up inside her. It overflowed from the sealed container she’d kept all her touchy-feely feelings inside since she’d fallen, and while her inner demon wanted to blow her stack and rip Reaver apart for being nice and tapping into that container, she couldn’t.
She needed to feed, she needed to build her strength, and as much as she hated to admit it, she needed Reaver. Like it or not, he was her lifeline, and she had to grab hold and not let go. Otherwise, if they got caught, his sacrifice would have been for naught.
“Seriously?” he asked, in a gravelly voice that told her how tired he was. “Do I have to force you?”
She snorted. “As if you could.”
With a flick of his fingernail, he opened a vein in his throat the way he had last time. The heady, intoxicating scent of blood hit her like a blow, short-circuiting every thought that didn’t revolve around feeding.
She locked on to the crimson stream dripping down his neck, following the tendons that stood out starkly under his bronzed, perfect skin.
“Take it.” His eyes were heavy lidded now, his body relaxed, and her mouth watered.
He didn’t have to tell her again. In a heartbeat she was on him. Straddling his thighs, she opened her mouth over the cut. She wasn’t going to use her fangs, not this time. With her fangs, blood flowed too fast. She took too much. If she could drink slowly and limit her intake, she should be able to control her renegade Satanic DNA.
The first drops of blood hit her tongue, and she gasped as the sensation of grabbing a live wire ripped through her. She could feel the bones in her back begin to knit and form more framework for her wings and the ecstasy of angelic sex made her writhe. Images flashed in her head. Erotic images of Reaver slipping his hand under her shirt and sliding his palm up her thigh. Of him kissing her breasts, tonguing her nipples. Of him licking his way down her naked body to her sex.
“Verrine,” he whispered. “I want you. Damn… I remember you.”
And Reaver definitely wasn’t the angel who had made her come three times
That son of a bitch. Leave it to him to interrupt her time with Reaver.
She jerked upright, so startled by that thought that she couldn’t focus on feeding. Reaver was breathing hard and staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost, but if anything, she’d seen a phantom. A phantom lover.
The memories of her night with Yenrieth had been with her for thousands of years, and other than the fact that she couldn’t remember what he looked like, they had never altered or dimmed. But somehow, today, they’d not just changed; they’d gotten better.
Or maybe Reaver’s blood running through her veins was messing with her head.
“Why did you stop feeding?” His voice carried a strange hitch to it, but as he threaded his fingers through her hair, his touch was astonishingly tender. “What’s the matter?”