Page 7 of By An Angel's Grace

“Fear not, Adelaide. If the standards of then were applied to now, you and I would be safe from our Father’s wrath.”

“Because we both love and respect one another.”

“Undoubtedly.”

The rest of the meal passed swiftly; a weight I hadn’t realized I carried lifted from my shoulders. When dessert was done, Tab wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin in his lap and set it to the side of his plate. He rose from his seat and with an elegant bow from a bygone era held out a hand to me. Laughing lightly, I took it and let him draw me to my feet.

I had expected to go back to the bed-and-breakfast the same way we’d arrived, but apparently Tab wasn’t quite ready for the evening to end. He drew me close to him and gaze locked to mine, we swayed. I went along with it, unsure what it was he wanted from me in the beginning, but then the music started and I had to smile. I tucked my body close to his, arms around his neck as his arms twined about my waist, drawing me into him. The plunging backline of the dress, less fashion statement and more to accommodate wings that I would never possess, put his hands in contact with my skin.

I couldn’t help it. My eyes drifted shut as I relished the little touch, my back and arms breaking out in a sweep of gooseflesh. We danced, slowly, like a couple of teenagers in the slow moments of the spring formal, and it was so nice.

I cuddled into him, and he held me sweetly. It felt safe and right. I hadn’t realized the old stories had weighed on me so much… and truthfully, even though I didn’t want children, accidents happened and there was no way I would ever do anything to harm an innocent life. It wasn’t a change from who I’d been before, I had definitive proof that the divine was real. I’d never believed in abortion, but that didn’t mean I’d disbelieved in contraception like condoms or the pill.

I wasn’t a completely awful Catholic, I just didn’t believe in going to church and followed my heart more than doctrine the older I got. Okay, okay, that made me a bad Catholic, but it didn’t make me a bad person.

Tab’s fingertips brushed my cheek, and I startled. I pulled away just enough to look Tab in the eye and he smiled gently.

“You are thinking far too much,” he murmured.

“It’s like I can’t turn it off anymore, you know?”

He looked solemn and nodded, closing his eyes in an attempt to hide the regret from me, but failing pretty miserably at it. “I do,” he said gently. He opened his eyes and our swaying to the hidden music source slowed.

I closed my eyes and tipped my head back slightly as he bowed his head, mouth hovering over mine for a fraction of a second, warm breath fanning my lips before his softly made contact. It was the spark that ignited the fire; the final crack in the dam. I molded myself to him, wrapping my arms tightly around him even as his arms wrapped like iron around my waist.

Even with my eyes closed, the many splendorous lights played out in a kaleidoscope of color against my closed lids, bursting across my limited vision in hues warmed by the love and desire I felt for the man that held me close.

When I opened my eyes, it was to Tab tearing his mouth from mine. He dropped onto the edge of the bed, back in our room at the bed-and-breakfast, the night pressing against the glass of the converted sunroom. His gaze was heavy lidded with passion and I felt my throat tighten with so many emotions, I couldn’t begin to parse them all out, but then again, they were all good and I didn’t have to analyze everything to death, not now, not with Tab.

His hands roamed over the silk encasing my body, smoothing over it, the light material catching on the calluses on his palms from millennia of sword work and battle. He grazed his fingertips across my collarbone, exposed by the low neckline of the dress, exploring the sweep of them, starting at my suprasternal notch to glide along the line of them out to my shoulders.

My mind raced and all I could think was suprasternal notch, jugular notch. What a weird thing to remember! The actual, anatomically correct name for such an obscure body part. I can’t remember where I learned that… did Iaoel tell me? No… no, I remember now! It was that antique, super early twentieth-century medical text that came through the shop. The one Piorre had me put in the case by the…

Tab’s eyes locked on mine as his fingertips hooked into the straps of my dress at the back of my shoulders. My breath stilled, and I swallowed so hard it gave a very audible click. I was nervous, incredibly nervous all of a sudden about Tab seeing me nude. I went very, very, still and made no move to stop him as he drew the airy fabric, weighted with its amethyst accents, away from my chest and down my arms.

I dropped my hands from his shoulders as he gazed up at me, disrobing me sure, but his eyes never left mine, and I realized… Tab was just as nervous as I was about taking this last step. This wasn’t about sex; not for either of us. If it were, it would be easier somehow, I thought. No, this held the weight of intimacy, and that was so much more than insert Tab into slot A.

Wow, I can’t believe my mind went there. It made me smile, and I had to fight down a giggle. The smile brought a reflexive one to Tab’s lips, and I was delighted to realize that when he smiled at me, it reached all the way down to his soul, lighting up those beautiful gray eyes I loved so much with joy from deep, deep, inside.

My breath caught when the material tumbled from my chest cascading down my body, whispering against my skin to the floor, the weight of the natural crystals dragging it along from the top. Tab’s gaze remained affixed to my face, the smile lost and replaced with something I couldn’t define immediately. I groped for a name to what I saw on his face and finally, the closest thing I could come to was wonder.

The rustle of his expensive dress shirt as he moved his hands to my hips was suddenly very loud in the almost deafening silence that had preceded it, and I jumped slightly. His lips twitched in an almost shy, boyish grin and I slid my fingers along his arms, from his wrists, all the way to his shoulders, relishing the feel of hard muscle beneath the crisp cotton.

As my fingertips moved up his arms, they closed around the back of my waist and drew me in. He kept his knees together, which forced me to part mine and straddle his lap if I were to give him the degree of closeness his hands pulling me in demanded. He scooted a little further to the edge of the bed, and just as my body pressed against his, his head craned back to maintain eye contact with me—not that his eyes hadn’t wandered at all in the intervening seconds. They’d flicked from my gaze a time or two, and each time they had, when they returned to mine, they broadcasted volumes about how much he liked what he saw when they’d strayed.

He gathered me close, his arms wrapping tightly around my lower back and guiding me to his lap. I stepped out of the puddle of silk. Right now, with his head tipped back, his chin was even with the notch in my ribs, just between and below my breasts. When I took the invitation and settled myself on top of the very nice slacks covering his thighs, it put me at the unusual vantage point of being a head taller than Tab. It was a strangely powerful feeling, gazing down at him like this, with him looking up at me. It was clearly my move, and so I smoothed my hands over his deltoids.

I loved a good set of shoulders on a man, and Tab had a delicious physique under his typical, unrelieved black clothes. I smoothed my fingers along them, and touched the side of his neck, letting my fingers go to the back of his head, burying them in the satin of his raven dark hair. I pulled myself closer, lowering my mouth slowly, drawing out the anticipation between us both, letting my breath gently fog warm between our lips, the blush of it reflecting back on my own from the scant space I kept between them.

Tab was stalk still, letting me take the lead, letting me show him that yes… I wanted this. That I had wanted this for so long.

“Adelaide… my Addy,” he breathed and a surge of joy, so bright, so perfect, pure, and clean exploded inside of me and filled me up. I closed the millimeter of space between our lips and kissed him hungrily, like I’d never kissed him before. His arms crushed me to his chest and suddenly, the material of his clothing was just gone and it was my skin on his.

The room was cool, but Tabbris was so very warm, so I hardly noticed. His lips traveled from my mouth, along my jaw. One hand migrated from my back to the side of my neck to move my long hair out of his way. He swept it back over my shoulder and my back was suddenly warmer than it had been, the long weight of my hair making it so.

He kissed along my jaw, and I gasped, tipping my head back and arching, not to be provocative, but to place skin that he hadn’t yet touched closer to his mouth. He nipped my collarbone and dragged me tight against his body and I moaned, saying, “I certainly hope Gabriel isn’t watching and wasting divine power on this.”

Tab pulled his mouth from my body with the rich sound only a man’s lips leaving your skin can make and he growled passionately, “That was me.”

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