Page 86 of Gates of Rapture
But she knew him and she knew that he wasn’t done, even when his movements slowed and he pulled out of her mouth.
“You’re glowing,” he said.
She smiled up at him.“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I mean your skin.You’re glowing.You have a blue aura.”
She rose slowly to her feet and looked at her arm.She laughed.“So I am.It’s almost iridescent.”
He dipped down and kissed her, driving his tongue deep.Her hands found a pair of biceps that were huge.I taste myself in you.
It’s so beautiful, making love like this.
And I’m not repulsive to you in this state?
Sexy, Leto.You’re sexy.She pushed her tongue into his mouth and his heavy arms embraced her, pulling her off her feet and against him.
She worked her arms to slide them around his neck and held him fast.Your hair is moving over my arms.Even his hair was different.
He pulled back and met her gaze.His eyes were so blue, so intense, his black lashes thick.His cheeks were more prominent in this state, and as he held her dangling above the floor, she pressed her forearms into his shoulders to give herself a little leverage.She lifted up just enough to run her tongue across the increased line of his cheek.“You’re bigger everywhere.”
She dropped down that couple of inches and saw that he was smiling, a crooked smile.“Everywhere?”
She nodded.“Oh, yes.”She let her arms fall away and arched her head back so that he was holding her without her help.
He chuckled and swung her in a circle, then another and another.Here was all this man, all this sex, all this enormous body, and she felt light and feminine, all six feet of her in his arms as he continued to swing her.
He stopped and drew her in close once more, pressing her head into his shoulder, still holding her off the floor.“You have made me so happy,” he said.“I didn’t think I could be this happy in this beast-state.I thought it was a curse, but how can it be a curse when you seem to like me like this?”
“Leto, here’s the truth that I know about who you are: You could turn into a raving ghoul, and you would still be the finest man I have ever known.”
He grew very still suddenly, so she continued, “I can remember the first day I met you.Of course, this was so long ago, but I was fighting with Thorne, begging him to be more careful.He had just joined the Warriors of the Blood, and I feared for him every day because he was reckless.He had come home, and just as I punched his arm, you folded into the room, into my home in Rome Two, so many years ago.Do you remember?”
“I do,” he said.“You were so angry and you glared at me.”
“I blamed you for introducing him to Endelle, for making him a Warrior of the Blood.”
“‘So you must be Warrior Leto.’I’ll never forget your icy tone,” he said.
“But you merely smiled and looked at me, and I looked back.I… I’ve never told anyone this, but I had the worst crush on you.”
“You did not.”His eyes were wide, disbelieving.
“I did, and it lasted decades,” Grace said.“I made excuses to be near you.Did you ever think of me—back then, I mean?”
“Yes, I admit I did.Don’t you remember that I would always talk to you?Always ask how you were doing?”
“I thought you were being polite,” she said, smiling.
“I was smitten.You were so beautiful and so compassionate even then.But you were young, so very young.It wasn’t right.By then I was twelve hundred years old.”
And there was another truth of his character as he held her a foot off the floor, his body altered into the beast-state.He hadn’t pursued her because she was young.
With a rueful smile, he added, “And you know Thorne would have taken me apart if I’d courted you.”
She chuckled against his shoulder.“Yes, he would have.He was always very protective of me.Of both Patience and me.”
He held her tight, his arms compressing some of her wing-locks in the nicest way.She felt secure, even safe.Now, there was a novelty—that she felt safe, if for just this moment, in a world at war.
