Page 40 of Angel's Vengeance

There were reasons they were there, he was sure of it.Sound, logical reasons why he’d unlocked an arcade for the sole purpose of seeing her smile.Because if she was smiling, she wasn’t miserable.If she wasn’t miserable, she could work more adeptly at their reconnaissance mission, so he might finally access the information he needed to bring down Cyro.

All of that had gone right out the fucking window as he possessively groaned into her mouth, his fire beating an insistent rhythm to the pulse of blood thickening his cock.One of his knees dropped to the floor, then the second.He was a beast ruled solely by hunger after humanity had abandoned him long ago.

And then, like any beast, a ferocity took hold, one that a part of him roared to surrender to while the last remaining shred of his decorum shut the door on the scene and turned its back.

Good.

Approving murmurs vibrated through Neela’s mouth and shot straight down his spine, curling his hips against the hard frame of the bench.His hands dropped hers and slid to her hips, eager to grab onto something, to mold his grip to curves that contoured perfectly with his palms.

He dragged his mouth away from hers, tracing a trail of cashmere that ended inches from his lips, which tingled with the anticipation of another heat source entirely.

Neela’s thighs fell apart, and the sly woman grippedhishand, led it beneath her dress, and welcomed the backs of his knuckles to the damp cove hiding behind her underwear.

“Is this what you want, little demon?”he asked as he stroked her desire through the thin fabric.With each caress, his fire answered.An erotic call and response to a passion he never thought he’d experience.

“I want to be happy.Your touch, this ...this ...bond, whatever it is, I think it can do that.Do you want this, too?Would it make you ...happy, as well?Is that what we’re doing here?”

Happiness.What a concept, and not one that had ever applied to him.Before he’d met her, he’d been imprisoned.Before he’d been imprisoned, he’d been at war.There had only ever been orders, schematics, actions, and actualities.Emotions were left for the celestial mages to manage, for the souls who’d entered the Empyrean under the sentinels’ supreme guard, for the mortals to indulge in for the few years they had available to them.

But it was never for him.Happiness had always been a private indifference.Something for others with more frivolous concerns.

Wasn’tthatwhat they were doing, though?Wasn’t happiness the driving force behind this ...carnal act, this tempting tryst?

Would it alter his course in any way if he indulged in the molten heat emanating from her slick desire that was doing a bang-up job of thickening his own?

His hands answered for him, followed by his mouth.Suppressing the harsher edges of a roar Rhode only ever reserved for battlefields, he pulled the drenched fabric aside and slid one finger, then a second into her glistening arousal.

Neela’s hands shot out to the walls at her sides.“Holy shit!”

But those were the last words he was interested in hearing.From there on out, he wanted only moans.

He sank his fingers farther into her, curving them sharply in the direction her soft pants and quivering muscles urged him to go.Mages, she was glorious.Peering over the soft mound of her curves, he smiled at her head thrown back, eyes pinched shut, and breasts heaving against their cashmere prison in time to his ministrations.

But it wasn’t enough.Nowhere near enough.Greedily, he hooked the backs of her knees over his shoulders, spread her even wider, and set his tongue upon her tight nub with a veneration he hadn’t known himself capable of.Neela bucked against him, desperately trying to squeeze her thighs closer together.Such a feat would impede his vision of her coming apart under his mouth, so he used the strength of his shoulders to stretch her legs farther and settled his hand against the delicate softness below her ribcage.

Her panting turned to prayers as he played the secret parts of her like the finest celestial instrument.Every slow crescendo and riveting note wrought by his tongue was mirrored by the desperate grips of her hands anchoring in his hair.The gentler his kisses, the softer her fingers’ caresses.

But he didn’t want gentle.He wanted fierce.He wanted fire.

Rhode added a third finger and sucked her clit until her magnificent hips roiled against his face in great undulating waves.Her cries were a symphonic flood of pleasure that preceded the burst of arousal exploding on his tongue.

Then, to his great surprise, his name came next.It was just one shout, one ecstatic declaration of the lover’s name who happened to negotiate her undoing, but it washisname and damn if he didn’t love how it reverberated through the arcade’s high ceiling, slamming around the building’s cluttered walls until the refrain hit his ears anew.

Neela’s legs gave a final shudder, and he gently lowered them to the floor but not before bestowing several kisses in secret places along the soft flesh of her inner thighs.

Once he’d righted her dress, the sight before him made him want to hike it up all over again.She was just as he thought she should be.High color in her cheeks.Genuine smile lines bracketing her mouth.A hungry fire in her eyes.

All of whichhehad put there.

“Are you happy now?”he asked, clearing the gravel from his throat but having little interest in removing his hands from her hips.“Or do I have more work to do?”

Neela laughed, the sound carefree and jubilant.“Oh, I’m happy.”Then she eyed his tented slacks and made to reach for him.“But I’d be a lot happier if?—”

An explosion shook the meager frame of the photo booth before thick gray smoke funneled into the arcade.

Chapter20

Too many things happened at once for Neela’s mind to make sense of.Whatever heat that had still been swirling around her skin was quickly shown the door by a cloud of acrid black fumes.

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