Page 58 of Angel's Temper

Brass hated the skepticism invading his thoughts. It shamed him, even as her smile, and the fact that she hadn’t run from him this time, brightened his soul. And yet he couldn’t help it. Life lessons were harder to learn when one was immortal. One act of fury followed by a single spell from a scorned goddess and his very existence had warped under her evil magic.

Was Molly capable of the same?

Even now, the most she’d alluded to their soul bond was an innocuous raise of her wrist. She hadn’t mentioned it by name, hadn’t mentioned him or even yet questioned the significance of what now lay between them.

Yes . . . she has doubts, secrets of her own. Magic she keeps from you . . .

The cackling feminine voice blazed across his consciousness, stirring the silt floor of his fury’s cage until the monster banged against its bars with hastening force. Brass’s fire answered instantly, beating back the beast with a quickness he hadn’t been able to manage in millennia.

She mustn’t know, he decided grimly, not willing to risk the opportunity before him. Not yet, but soon.

Soon, if the mages willed it, they’d be able to have a very different conversation. Until then, he’d focus on the here and now, on what he could manage.

Fighting Ragana. Tempering his rage. Welcoming his mate into his world.

“Yes,” he lied to her. “From what my brothers’ mates have said, there are new sensations that arise from being soul bound.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she conceded, rubbing her shoulders for warmth or comfort, he couldn’t tell which.

It didn’t matter. Brass was intent on providing her with both.

He clutched her by the shoulders and welcomed her against the wall of his chest, wrapping her in his arms and warming them both with the banked heat of his core’s fire.

Molly sighed against his neck, sending shivers along his spine. “That feels sooo good.”

“Let me put you to bed,” he whispered against her temple, nuzzling some of her bangs aside to take in more of her natural scent.

“I have had quite the day,” she murmured, already half asleep. “I’m pretty sure my brain’s about to go on strike and make demands I’m not prepared to defend against at the negotiating table.”

“Best not have that, then.” Brass swept Molly into his arms and carried her to his suite, wondering how much time they had left together and whether his fire would be enough to keep her with him.

Chapter 26

It was a strange thing to sleep surrounded by stone. In Molly’s thirty-one years on the planet, she’d had some stellar opportunities to spend time in numerous hotels, visit countless old-timey bed-and-breakfasts, and even endure all New Hampshire had to throw at her on a camping trip or two.

Shudder.

None of them, however, compared to sleeping in a king-sized four-poster wrought-iron canopy bed next to a fallen angel whose scent she’d give her good cast-iron pans for to bake into everything she cooked from now to eternity. There was something about the minerals and metals around her, even the dormant ones that lived in Brass, that calmed her to a point of deep tranquility. At home, when her mind couldn’t settle, she’d give in to her compulsive urges and trace her fingers along wallpaper seams or rearrange the pleats in her curtains so the billowing gauze all hung at even intervals and widths.

Here, the stone took all that away. Though there was no mistaking the walls for anything other than what they were—craggy rock slabs carved out by means she couldn’t imagine—they were perfect in their imperfections. While her OCD would normally have jumped off a cliff at the incongruity of it all, it was oddly comforting. It was an impossible task to try and smooth out the stone. Within its walls, all secrets were safe, protected. Perhaps it had something to do with the lack of windows, but she had a feeling that, were she so inclined, she could scream her concerns to the top of the arched ceiling and the mountain would instantly know to hold them close, rather than fire her fears back at her in a stream of echoes.

And oh boy, did she have a lot of fears.

The hands on the bronze ormolu clock that gilded Brass’s mahogany dresser had just passed midnight. Indiscriminate shivers that had pricked along her body ever since her sweat session with Brass decided to be relentless in their attention, regardless of the hour.

How frickin’ courteous.

While Molly had hoped to tumble into an exhaustive state of deep sleep only night workers and sleep apnea sufferers ever fantasized about, her feat ultimately alluded her.

Was it possible for one’s mind to shiver? Was that a thing? It certainly felt like a thing and had been the driving catalyst pulling Molly away from Brass’s deliciously warm embrace. The soft hem of his borrowed T-shirt brushed against the tops of her thighs as she meandered through his spacious suite of rooms.

If she could say one thing about the man who lived there, it was that he had a taste for the fancy. Four-poster bed aside—because who even had one of those?—the space was decked out in more bright and shiny than a pharaoh’s tomb. Rows of golden trinkets anointed stone shelves like a glittering jeweled tiara topped off a royal. Hanging—though she hadn’t yet figured out how—on the wall behind the dresser was a massive antique arched mirror that would have looked right at home during the Baroque era.

Knowing how old all of them were, she probably wasn’t far off with that assessment.

Molly wandered in front of the thing and admired the sleeping giant reflected in its depths. Behind her, Brass’s resplendent body was laid out like a Greek god of carnal sin, if one had ever existed. He’d slept shirtless. Of course he did. After all their earlier exertions, it was kind of silly to stand on a ceremony neither of them particularly cared about. But the fact remained that she was never comfortable sleeping naked, and he was apparently all about her comfort. Hence the sleepwear compromise. Flannel pajama bottoms for him, and a T-shirt and underwear for her.

Amicable sleeping arrangements aside, it didn’t stop her wrist from warming just at the mere sight of all that bronzed flesh on display. At some point in the night, he’d rolled onto his back, leaving his beautifully sculpted chest uncovered by the comforter. Taut muscles stretched across pectorals that, even in sleep, seemed to house an inner reservoir of strength always at the ready. Then her greedy gaze slid to his abdominals, which were a corrugated and dangerous terrain all their own, one she’d hoped to map the topography of very shortly.

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