It was the last thing she’d expected to hear from him, this man who threatened to splinter her defenses until she repeated her mother’s tale of love unrequited. Yet now that he’d spoken, her mind whispered with half-remembered fragments of conversations overheard.
“A voice more beautiful than Caliane’s they say.”
“. . . made my heart break.”
“Purity, that is Jason’s voice.”
The speakers had all been more than four hundred years old. “I would hear you,” she whispered.
“I have not sung for many years.”
“Did something happen to still your song?” she asked, unwilling to back away when this was the first time he’d spontaneously offered her a glimpse into the mystery of him.
His reply was slow in coming, but she didn’t take his silence for anger, knowing Jason was a man who felt no need to clutter the air with words. Instead, tempted by the way his head was below her own as he leaned down, she reached out to undo the tie that held his hair in its usual queue. It fell like black water around his face, and he didn’t stop her when she began to smooth it back to lie over his shoulders. “You have such beautiful hair.”
“I prefer yours.”
His hand fisted in her hair, his lips on her throat.
Thighs clenching, she ran her fingers over his scalp. “Then we are well matched.”
He arched a little into her touch. “The only songs in my heart were ones that made the Refuge drown in tears. So I stopped.”
Having not expected such an unvarnished answer, she was momentarily thrown, her fingers going motionless. She had the panicked feeling of a chance slipping through her fingertips, an opportunity forever lost. “Did it hurt you to stop?” she asked, grabbing at that chance with grim determination.
“Yes,” he said at last. “It was akin to cutting off a limb, but such song was not good for me.”
Frowning, she parted her lips to ask why, then stopped. Jason was a man draped in shadows—to give voice to the darkness within . . . yes, it would not be good for him to drench himself in it. “If you ever find something worth singing for again,” she said, a silent, fierce hope in her heart for his song, “I hope you will invite me to listen.”
Jason pushed off the railing to stand at his full height, folding his wings to his back at the same time. Already, she missed the warm weight against her, but then he dipped his head and the warmth turned into a black fire that kissed her bloodstream and spread into every cell of her body.
There would be no forgetting Jason.
* * *
He’d led her into the bedroom, but when he stopped at the foot of the bed, she raised her fingers to the buttons of his shirt after undoing the strap of the sword harness across his chest. The way he’d taken control the previous night, she worried he wouldn’t accept her desire to discover what pleased him, but he played with her hair as she unbuttoned the shirt to display the beauty of his body.
Each soft tug on her scalp as he twisted a loose, heavy curl around his finger, released it, made her heart skip a beat. But it was the ridges and valleys of his body that had her sighing in feminine pleasure as she pulled the sides of the shirt apart to splay her fingers over his skin. His hand fisted in her hair, but he didn’t call a halt to her exploration.
Delighted, she shaped the heated steel of him, caressing the heavy muscle that spoke to his strength and speed. It was a quirk of angelic biology that the incredibly powerful muscles needed to support flight didn’t overwhelm the upper body. Instead they lay subtle and fiercely strong beneath the skin.
But Jason’s body, it told a different story, that of a warrior who needed to do maneuvers in the sky flight muscles alone wouldn’t accommodate. “Can you use your sword in flight?”
“I’d be useless as a fighter otherwise,” he murmured, lifting her fingers to the straps on his shoulders that helped hold the sword harness to his back.
Taking the silent instruction, she undid the sleek but strong buckle, repeated the act on the other side, the leather soft from use. “Are you ever without your sword?”
“No.” Removing harness and sword, he placed them beside the bed.
Within arm’s reach.
“It’s my primary weapon.”
“Yes, I understand.” Pushing aside his shirt, she rubbed her fingers over the light red marks created by the leather. Such a thing would be nothing to an angel of Jason’s strength, but she did not like seeing his body abused in even so small a way.
Having kicked off her sandals in the living area, where Jason had left his boots, she rose on bare toes to press her lips to one of the marks. Jason’s free arm came around her waist, but he didn’t halt her movements when she kissed her way across to the other marks. “I could do this for hours,” she said, addicted to the feel of him, the taste of him.
Jason’s response was again unexpected. “If that’s your wish.”
It made her shiver, the idea of having this man in her bed, hers to explore. Dropping down flat on her feet again, she didn’t give him time to change his mind and walked around to undo the plain buttons that held the wing slits closed. His shirt fell to the floor seconds later, his wings stunning arcs of heavy black.
She ran her fingers over the shadowy perfection of his feathers, suddenly shy. But he was already unbuckling his belt, the metallic sounds harsh, intimate in the quiet of the bedroom. Breathing ragged, she walked around to take over the task, her fingers brushing his. “I’ll do it.” It was a whisper, but Jason’s hand fell away . . . to rise, undo the buttons on the shoulders of her tunic.
Sliding his belt out of the loops, she dropped it to the floor, cooperated with him to strip away her tunic. Her br**sts, small as they were, didn’t need support, and she wore only a camisole beneath. It took Jason but a moment to remove that from her body, run the back of his hand over one taut mound. “Beautiful.”
A tremor rippling over her skin at the low murmur, she undid the button of his jeans, ran her fingers along his navel. His muscles contracted. It intoxicated her, his response, and she had the craving to know every touch, every caress that made this strong, sensual man shudder in pleasure. Swallowing at the enthralling thought, she brushed her fingers over his zipper and the hard ridge beneath.
Jason’s demanding mouth was suddenly on her own, his grip on her hair holding her in place. She didn’t know how it happened, but her pants were stripped from her seconds later, and she found herself lying on her back on the bed with Jason between her legs, the heavy denim of his jeans rubbing against her skin as he devoured her mouth.