Page 73 of Ash and Feather

Our hearts pounded from the fall. Our bodies shivered. The pulse of our magic was wild, heating the space around us to a point that made it ours and only ours. We were the only two who could have withstood this burning—set apart from the rest of the world and its problems, if only for a moment.

I stopped trying to keep my strands of magic separate from hers, instead taking the full heat of her in, letting all her breaths and beats tangle up with mine.

“I’m going to seriously injure you one of these days,” she mused, lips still hovering close, “if you have to keep breaking my fall like this.”

“You’re easy enough to catch.”

“One misstep and…” She shrugged, and then her forehead wrinkled with thought. “Can gods break their bones?”

“Whatever corporeal forms we take are susceptible to all kinds of injuries, yes. But you’ve seen how fast we heal other injuries. Bones aren’t much different, and they’re stronger, harder to break in the first place compared to mortals. So it’s unlikely you’re going to shatter me beyond repair.”

“But it’s possible.”

“So little faith in my abilities,” I laughed, sitting upright, shifting my grip to her hips and repositioning her with enough quick, easy strength to make her gasp.

She settled into my lap, hooking her arms around my neck for balance. “More like ‘so little faith’ in my own coordination.”

“For a first flight, that could have gone much worse,” I pointed out.

She lifted her gaze to the sky, to the remnants of her wings drifting over us as ash and glowing-edged feathers. Her mind was racing along with her heartbeat.

I shouldn’t have intruded on those racing thoughts, but it was nearly impossible not to in moments like this—when she was so maddeningly close and so much of her was wrapped around so much of me, physically and otherwise.

She wore a knowing look as she lowered her eyes back to mine. “You hear what I’m thinking, don’t you?”

“Not anything specific.”

Her hands roamed over my chest, fingers smoothing my shirt before hooking around the collar of it and using it to pull my lips toward hers again. Her kiss was soft, a brush of velvet and fire. I felt the smile curving her mouth when I tried to deepen it.

“Impatient,” she chided, teasingly.

“No one has ever mistaken me for the God of Patience,” I countered, sliding a hand against the back of her neck, holding her in place as I leaned more fully into her.

As my tongue slipped into her mouth, her grip on me tightened. The harder I kissed, the more fiercely she held, and the bolder the fire inside of her blazed. The strength of her hands, the heat of her waking magic…I could have gotten drunk off the sensation of these things alone—and yet I found myself craving more.

When I finally drew back for breath, her hands roamed a bit longer before slipping under my shirt and settling against my back. As her fingers dug into burning hot skin, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining them in other places. Around other things.

I drew back to find a faint hint of red spreading over her cheeks. Could she hear my thoughts as clearly as I could hear hers?

Likelymoreclearly, I realized—she didn’t have enough control over her new powers to be as selective about what was slipping its way in.

I lightly gripped her chin and tilted her face so our eyes met. “Blushing?” I murmured, trailing my fingertips down her throat. “Now I’mverycurious about the specific things racing through that mind of yours.”

Her lips parted, a soft little noise escaping them. The muscles in my stomach flexed. My fingers moved to her face, running along her lower lip, pulling her mouth open wider; I wanted to hear her make that sound again.

She shuffled in my lap, repositioning her knees on either side of my hips and settling her weight more completely onto me.

I inhaled sharply as her lips closed around the tips of my fingers in a slow, sucking kiss—a wickedly deliberate kiss that sent a shock of desire through my core.

I slid my other hand to the small of her back, firmly holding her in place because…fuck,she felt good sitting on me like this.

I swallowed down both the groan and the curse rising in my throat and, as calmly as I could, I said, “No more magic practice, then? Seems like you’ve gotten distracted.”

“It’s not my fault my teacher has been trying his best to seduce me.”

“I’ve hardly been trying,” I informed her with a smile. “I think you just want to be seduced.”

She scoffed playfully at this, but the sound gave way to a gasp as I took hold of her hips, digging my fingers in.

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