Page 54 of Vanish Into Light

“Fold up your wings. I don’t want to hurt them.”

They mantled and settled, flat down Beck’s back in their cloak shape. His eyes were wide, questioning – no longer smug, no longer in control.

Lance gripped his waist, and flipped them.

Beck landed with a quietoof, staring, plainly surprised.

Time seemed to halt, in the handful of seconds before lightning flared, and thunder crashed, and in the midst of gripping desire, Lance had a moment of intense clarity. With his face wiped blank by shock, the tables turned on him, it was easy to see past the horns, and the fangs; past the superior air, and the superficial malice. Easy to see that, at some point, long in the past, Beck had been a very beautiful, very frightened boy – one who’d had to claw, and scrape, and stab, and kill to get to where he was now. He’d turned himself into the man who’d survived hell, and been dragged out a brand-new creature.

Ithurt, that realization, seared like a brand, one that threatened to turn Lance soft and too-feeling.

Beck could talk about being inhuman, about how he was a killer, the polar opposite of Lance’sgoodanddecent. But in this moment, pinned beneath him, filled and still hungry, his gaze searching, he was as human, as frail, as susceptible as any of them.

As the best of them.

Lance pulled his thighs up around his waist, leaned down, and whispered, “Good boy,” against his lips, before he kissed him, before he started moving.

“Oh,” Beck murmured, and then his mouth was full of Lance’s tongue, and he was opening, yielding. His thighs closed tight, and his claws raked down Lance’s back, and Lance fucked him, and fucked him, and it was nothing short of exquisite.

~*~

Rose woke to the steady drumming of rain overhead, and Lance’s even snores against the back of her neck. The lamps were still on, and the sky beyond the window was black; some sense told her it was early rather than late. The sun would begin its sad, silver rise soon.

Beck lay on his stomach in front of her, arms beneath the pillow, covers pooled around his thighs so the lean, marble lines of his back were visible beneath half-cocked wings, the smooth swell of his ass. He was awake, his tail swishing slowly back and forth, rustling against the sheets. And he was looking at her, chin pressed into the pillow, eyes luminous against the soft, buttery glow of the room.

His tail reached over and stroked her hip, once, in acknowledgement of her waking.

She reached to pluck a stray lock of hair from his horn and tucked it behind his ear. “Are you okay?”

His brows jumped in clear surprise. He lifted his head enough to say, softly, “Of course.”

She didn’t press, but studied him, waiting.

Finally, with a sigh, he shifted onto his side, temple propped on his fist. A single notch appeared between his brows. He didn’t seem troubled, exactly; more contemplative.

Behind her, Lance shifted with a snort, but then continued snoring.

Beck’s glaze flicked over her shoulder, briefly; touched him and then returned to her face. In a small, very un-Beck-like voice, he said, “It’s been a long time since I…” He trailed off, throat jerking as he swallowed. His gaze dropped to his hand, where it lay spread on the sheets between them, the tips of his claws a stark black against the white cotton.

Rose laid her hand over his, thumb tracing the tight line of a tendon down its back. “That’s why I asked if you were okay.”

He looked up at her through the screen of his lashes – and the hair that slid from behind his ear. One corner of his mouth plucked upward in a smirk. “Afraid your little soldier boy broke me?”

“No,” she said, simply, and his smirk fell away.

He let out another deep breath; turned his hand so he could lace his fingers with hers. A gust of wind splashed the window with raindrops. “We’ve a hard task ahead of us.”

“Yeah.”

He squeezed her hand. “At least we have each other.”

It was the most uncertain she’d ever seen him, and she squeezed his hand in return, hoping it conveyed all the things she’d already said, and which she hoped that he would hold onto to as they faced what was to come.

ELEVEN

“How’s my patient?” Beck asked, as he swept into the room, dressed in black, wings cape-shaped, the lamplight carving his face with sharp lines and shadows. He was the last to come down to breakfast – Rose was already seated beside a quiet, but not seemingly-traumatized Lance at the kitchen island – and gone was the frowning, uncertain man from upstairs a few hours ago, replaced by an imperious, hell-crafted king. Rose wondered if Lance was beginning to be able to read what lay beneath his outward façade, because he paused with his fork suspended in the air, frowning as his gaze landed on Beck.

Or maybe he’d just been slapped with a mental image of last night, the way she had.

---