Page 44 of Angel's Temper

He risked a step toward her, his breaths easing and lifting in time with hers. “I can’t take your eyes with me where I go, because even that feels like a damn betrayal of your trust, like just another thing stolen from you. I can’t be the one to indulge in your sweet scent, even though it’s the only thing on the planet that has arrested my senses so completely, it’s prevented me from agonizing over what’s to come.”

Molly didn’t retreat from him, but neither did her subtle veneer of protection crack against his onslaught. The only hint that he was getting through at all was the small quiver in her bottom lip. That mouth drew all his attention, and he called on the strength of his memory of her lips on his to see him through.

“But I can’t do it anymore, Molly.” The admission was the first one he’d said out loud, and it stung not only his ears but his soul. “There are so many things that are not in the cards for me,” he whispered, extending his hands, palms up, out to his sides. “Forgiveness is one. I won’t risk you tarnishing your integrity by even asking it of you.”

“Brass, you don’t have to say?—”

“You’re damn right I don’t have to say anything,” he seethed. “Words are wasted breaths, and I’ve never been a fan of speaking for the sake of doing so. But in my foolishness, I’ve learned that not speaking has failed me just as much as running off at the mouth.”

A confused wrinkle marred her smooth complexion, and it was all he could do not to reach for her and polish it away with a kiss.

Instead, he braved a different action. “Let me show you. Please.”

Never, in all the eons he’d been alive, had he begged for anything. He was the one charmers begged for their lives when the muzzle of his gun was at their temples and his fire was licking a deadly path up their skin.

But with her, he would beg. He would roar and slay and sacrifice the skies and seas if she’d asked him to.

Brass didn’t wait for a nod of approval. He wasn’t likely to get it anyway. So he shucked off his trench coat, grabbed a bunch of hotel pans of varying sizes, and started arranging them into overlapping structures.

“The bread pudding can be served here, high on the top shelf. I’ll build a plexiglass cage around the sides, but leave the top open. Customers won’t be able to touch it, but it’ll be easily accessible for you. Plus, that smell is money. I don’t need to tell you how leading with carbs and sugar is a surefire way to get ‘em in the door and hungry for more.” Brass upturned one of the medium-sized pans, which was longer than it was wide, and sidled it up to the larger display. “Simmer extra sauce here, and don’t even deal with those garbage canned heat gel fuel things. I’ve got something better and more easily adjustable so the sugar in the bourbon sauce doesn’t burn. I’ll build out a frame for ramekin holsters as well, all heated off one source. I don’t want you fiddling with fire. Leave that to me.” He quickly paused for a moment, then looked at her. “Unless you want to,” he amended.

Molly stepped forward, eyeing the mess of steel pans that had begun to take shape into a building project any LEGO fanatic would be proud of. “What are you talking about? What is all this?”

“For your vendor booth at the Winter Whimsy Festival. Caterers live and die by product delivery. No point in making the best brats this side of Lake Champlain if your setup’s not optimized for heat retention, aboveboard searing capabilities, and distribution efficiency. Leave the subpar stations for funnel cake and twelve-dollar caramel apples. You think restaurant groups and food industry professionals are going to want to invest in a chef asking top dollar for dried-out bread pudding and scorched beans, all because she couldn’t get her heat right?”

Once he’d settled the pans in place, adjusting things here and there, he stepped back and swung his arms wide, offering his chest and every shriveled, damaged thing caged within it to her. “I’m all in. For you, for your dream, for whatever the next week and a half brings, I’m here.” Then he walked around the counter with steps far surer than he felt, until only a few feet separated his breaths from hers. His soul immediately relaxed under her aura in a cloud of exuberant relief. He didn’t want to examine that too closely, or why a different heat had begun to lift the hairs at the back of his neck.

“Please say something,” he pleaded.

Molly stared at him for a time, her eyes giving nothing away. It was a habit he’d noticed when customers would come to her with initial complaints. She’d entertain them, hear their gripe, and then, as was so often required in the service industry, give them what they wanted regardless of everything, always with a smile on her face.

How he wished she would smile now. Even just one corner, a quirk, a tilt, fucking anything to hint at her true thoughts. Instead, she volleyed that icy gaze back and forth between him and the countertop display he’d built. When she finally settled on his features once more, the expression she wore had changed from unreadable to unmistakable.

It was heat, not anger, that simmered between them, touching and licking at the small spaces on their bodies only greedy grasps remembered. He noticed it the instant it fell upon them both. Her perfect nipples tightened beneath her thin sweater, forming delectable beads his mouth watered with the memory of. That bottom lip of hers fell open, releasing a soft gasp that wrapped around his thickening cock.

Brass gritted his teeth against the pleasurable pain that held him immobile. He wouldn’t touch her like this, not as the raging, rutting animal within surged to the?—

A different flare of power lashed through his senses, one both foreign and familiar. He frantically searched his mind for any memories of what it could mean, what he was feeling.

Then he stilled as the answer punched through his core, emboldening his limbs with a celestial power he’d not known since he fell from the Empyrean.

My full angel fire. The thought was a hymn to his heart and something he’d never truly thought he’d feel again. His complete celestial fire coursed through him, unlimited and unrestricted by what he could charge into it from the earth each night.

I am as I was before?—

As soon as the hesitant joy settled into his bones, a dark pall swept in on its heels.

I’m not commanding this. I have no control. It’s Mol?—

Molly silenced his racing mind with a mouth so sweet, not even his memories could do its flavor justice, and damn it all to hell, he fucking let her. Slim arms snaked around his neck moments before her intoxicating scent invaded his senses. With limbs far greedier than his worried mind could control, he moved with her, gathering her close to his chest and infusing his kisses with every word he never said. He could bathe in her brown sugar and bourbon flavor, score it into his skin and bake it onto his body, and it’d never be enough to last him the handful of days he had left with her.

“Molly,” he groaned in supplication against her seeking lips. “I need to taste you.”

She didn’t reply, apparently taking a page out of his playbook. Instead, she simply dug her nails into the meat of his shoulders, widened her mouth against his, and breached his lips with a sweep of her seductive tongue.

Booming rattles sputtered through the wall moments before a sharp metallic clang pierced the kitchen. The baseboard heating pipes exploded at their feet, releasing a torrent of boiling water right at them.

Chapter 21

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