Nalini Singh: Angels' Flight

Jessamy had never dealt much with men on an intimate level. The past two seasons had been a revelation. She’d been flirted with, courted, and even kissed. None of it by this infuriating wall of a man who thought he had the right to yell at her. “If anyone should be complaining about being unnoticed,” she said, “it should be me.”

“Leave me alone with Trace for just a moment,” Galen said, the heated words in no way quiet or contained. “I’d pin him to the ground with my sword, rip his skinny limbs off.”

“Very romantic.” She resisted the urge to kick at him. “I am so angry at you.” For teaching her about passion, only to leave her to starve, for showing her the sky, only to use those skies to avoid her, for being so stubborn and so male ! “You shouldn’t be here. Go away.”

A rustle of wings, that big body suddenly closer. “You’re angry with me?”

The heat of him seeped into her bones, threatened to melt her anger to molten desire, but she mustered up the strength to stand firm. “Very.”

“Good.”

Her mouth dropped open… and he took it, took advantage, his tongue licking intimately against her own as he ignored the preliminaries to demand a raw, wet, openmouthed kiss. Legs about to buckle, she gripped at the thickness of his arms in an effort to stay upright. Galen made a low, deep sound in his chest at the contact, and slipped one arm around her waist, pinning her to him as he marauded. This was no tender caress, no gentle loverlike touch. It was a primal assault on her senses, a rough need that would only be satisfied with her utter surrender.

Gripping the side of his neck with one hand, she flattened the other over the thudding beat of his heart, the rapid pace a tattoo that matched her own. And below… The hardness of him jutted demandingly against her abdomen, barely constrained by his pants and her gown. Gasping again, she found her mouth taken even more thoroughly. More out of passion-drenched desperation than technique, she stroked her tongue into his own mouth.

A sudden, absolute motionlessness.

And then she was being crushed and lifted until her mouth was even with his and he was devouring her like she was a delicacy he’d waited a lifetime to taste. A woman would have had to be stone of heart to remain unaffected, and Jessamy was nothing close to stone when it came to Galen. She sucked on his tongue, licked over his lips, used her teeth in playful bites that made his chest rumble against her breasts, her nipples tight, hard points.

One arm locked around her waist, Galen moved his other hand down to sit proprietarily on the curve of her hip, before shifting down to stroke her lower curves, his touch firm, utterly possessive. Gasping, she broke the kiss to stare into eyes gone a deep, smoky emerald. His lips were bruised from her ravaging kisses, his skin flushed with heat. And his hand… “Galen.”

He nuzzled at her throat, continuing to shape and pet her with scandalizing thoroughness. “Let’s fly.”

“Yes.” She wanted to be alone with her barbarian.

The air was crisp against her skin, the night silent, but she didn’t make the mistake of thinking they were the solitary beings out here, not until Galen had flown them far beyond the Tower and toward the mountains in the distance, the world hushed around them. Landing in a small grassy clearing surrounded by trees majestic and huge, he slid her down his body with erotic deliberation, her gown whipping around to tangle with his legs as her body demanded she rub harder against him.

She went to pull away the strands of hair that had licked across her face, but he was already doing it, his skin rough against her own. Turning her face, she pressed her lips to his palm. “If you disappear like that again, I’ll beat you with your own leg.”

“You’re a terrifying woman, Jessamy.”

Shoving gently at him for the tease, she stood on tiptoe and spoke against his dangerous, passionate mouth. “You, Galen. I want you. Only you.” It didn’t matter if she hadn’t had a hundred different lovers, she knew what he was to her— everything . If she’d met him at the dawn of her existence, or at the end, it would not have changed that simple, immutable fact.

Moving both hands down to her hips, he aligned them chest to toe. “I should wait, I know.”

Her breath locked in her throat, her heart clenched.

“But I can’t.” A primal confession.

A single beat later and she was arching into his kiss once more, arms rock-hard with muscle clasping her close, her breasts crushed against his bare chest, his thighs set wide until she was nestled between.

Possessed.

Seduced.

Cherished.

If any part of her hadn’t already belonged to him, it became his when he cradled her face in his hands, and whispered, “Tell me to stop, Jessamy.” It was the plea of a man who had lost control.

It wrecked her that the weapons-master known for his calm under the most brutal pressure felt such hunger for her. “I don’t want you to stop.” Weaving her fingers into the liquid fire of his hair, she tugged his head back down.

When he said they should return to the Tower, so that she wouldn’t have to lie in the grass, she stroked her hand down the ridged lines of his chest and over the proud hardness that thrust against her abdomen. Only with Galen could she be this bold, this shameless. He made a low, rumbling sound that made her thighs clench, and then there was no more talk of delaying. Her clothing all but torn off her, she found herself spread out on the grass like some pagan sacrifice while he looked down at her as he undid the closure on his pants, a big man who should’ve scared her.

She parted her legs. “Galen.” Maybe she’d been sheltered, but she was a woman grown, a woman who had found her passionate lover.

His hand was gentle on her thigh when he came down over her, the touch of his blunt fingers even gentler as he worked her until she was whimpering and so needy it hurt. Chest heaving, he said, “Jessamy?”

Wrapping her legs around his waist, she rubbed the pulsing slickness between her thighs against him in answer. He gave a shuddering groan, and then he was pushing inside her. She’d heard the stories other women told, but nothing could describe this wild, beautiful sensation of being possessed and possessing at the same time. Crying out at the burning pain as her tissues struggled to accommodate him, she twined her arms around the man who loved her, and breathed in the dark musk of his scent, her wings shifting restlessly against the cool blades of grass.

A callused hand stroked her leg off his waist, spreading and bending it at the knee. The act opened her wider, Galen’s hardness settling deeper inside her. It tore a gasp out of her, but when he hesitated, she kissed and caressed him until he moved again. Shallow and slow, allowing her to get used to the weight and power of him.

“Jess.” Muscles strained taut, lips against her ear. “Is it too much?”

Yes. Gloriously, wonderfully too much. “Don’t stop.” Arching up beneath him with a sumptuous roll of her hips, she welcomed his strokes. He continued to slide in and out so very slowly, but went deeper with each stroke, his mouth claiming hers at the same time—in a kiss that mimicked the carnal ecstasy of their mating.

The shock of her body coming apart without warning had her breaking the kiss, her head thrown back, the dark beauty of Galen’s wings spread in powerful silhouette above them. He rode her through the clenching pleasure, one big hand squeezing and shaping the slight but exquisitely sensitive mounds of her breasts as he laved kisses down the line of her throat, the other fisted in her hair to arch her neck for him.