Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

Already barefoot and a little damp, Illium stepped back to pull off his tunic, popping the wing closures in the process. He had a habit of doing that—Aodhan had quite the collection of buttons from when those had been the preferred closure. These days, Aodhan’s Blue mostly broke zips, and kept the seamstresses in the city busy with his repairs.

His body was too lean, his muscles stark against the lines of him, and his skin a burnished gold that told Aodhan he’d spent countless hours shirtless while he was in China. Unlike Aodhan’s skin, which might take on a golden kiss at best, Illium could tan to this rich dark gold that made him even more startlingly beautiful.

Those blue wings were an intense pop of color against the glory of his skin, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he threw his tunic aside. Shoving the strands back afterward, he stepped straight into the full path of the jets while still wearing his jeans.

“Illium!” Aodhan laughed as the angle of Illium’s body sprayed water onto his face. “Have you forgotten how to take a shower?”

“No, but this shower is for you. Turn around, lean on the wall, and I’ll clean your wings.”

Angel wings were self-cleaning, but on this romantic night, Aodhan was willing to give Illium anything. He moved to brace himself with his forearms against the back wall, while Illium changed the jets so that they coated him in a gentle spray rather than a torrent.

His best friend and lover shifted so that he was still in Aodhan’s peripheral vision…because he knew that while Aodhan could grit his teeth, bear it, he didn’t like having anyone at his back when he was in such a vulnerable state. Then, jeans still on, he reached into a small alcove in the back shower wall to retrieve a tool, and began to detail Aodhan’s wings in a way Aodhan hadn’t even known was possible.

He hadn’t spotted the array of tools until then, either, now realized they were brushes and combs designed to sleek feathers and separate filaments. It was long, painstaking work—and given the sensitivity in an angel’s wings, it was also the most luxuriant thing Aodhan had ever experienced.

It soon became clear this was meant to be done in a bath, so that the recipient could turn pretty much boneless, but Aodhan was willing to stand there as long as it took. The wall was holding most of his weight at this point anyway.

Eyes heavy-lidded ten blissful minutes into it, he said, “Will I regret asking where you learned to do that?”

“Four-thousand-year-old angel decided to use me as a boy toy one summer when I was about a hundred and seventy. She was terrifying and knew all kinds of things and I barely got out with my life.”

“Why don’t I know about her already?”

“I did probably tell you—but I might’ve left out the more, shall we say”—a pointed cough—“interesting parts. She was an experience for innocent young Bluebell. Half the time, I felt as if I was in danger of being eaten alive, but for some reason, I liked it?”noveldrama

Aodhan’s cheeks creased at the slight shiver-shudder that rippled through Illium’s body. “Is she still awake?”

A shake of Illium’s head that he caught out of the corner of his eye. “I like to think I wore her out. She went into Sleep only a month after that strange and enlightening summer. Or maybe I was her last hurrah.” Illium’s grin was in his voice. “I like that. What shall we do for our last hurrah when we’re old and grouchy and ready for Sleep?”

Aodhan couldn’t imagine a lifetime of such length. “Disgraceful things like gorge dive naked. Set all the proper old angels’ hair on fire.”

“Hah! I told Mother that you came up with our most devious pranks but she refuses to believe me to this day.”

Face aching from smiling and body lazy from the intimate pleasure of having his wings attended to in such exquisite detail, Aodhan dropped all his defenses, stopped thinking, just let his Blue be in charge. He was aware of Illium moving, of the other angel controlling the temperature of the water when the heat became too much for even Aodhan, and he was aware of the candles burning down, but he felt no urgency to be anywhere else or do anything else.

He’d physically and mentally done all he could for Marco and Tanika this day, would start again tomorrow. Tonight was for him and this man who loved him enough to find ways to give him pleasure that no nightmare could touch.

Illium was working on the final of Aodhan’s primaries when he realized his lover was all but asleep despite his upright position. He’d pillowed his head on his crossed forearms, and his wings had lost their warrior arch, his shoulders no longer tense in the way of a man ready to move at any minute.

Heart aching with all he felt, Illium finished up, then pressed a kiss to the top of Aodhan’s spine—after deliberately making enough noise that the touch wouldn’t be a surprise. “Out, Adi.” He switched off the water. “Or you’ll turn into a sparkly prune.” Angelic skin didn’t shrivel up at the same speed as mortal skin, but it did eventually do so.

A long sigh, followed by a stretch that would’ve done Smoke proud.

Groaning inwardly at all that muscled glory, Illium got himself and his sodden jeans out of the shower. At which point he stripped while Aodhan was still in the midst of his stretch, then wrapped a towel around his waist. He’d grabbed a big towel for Aodhan by the time the other man turned toward him.

“Fucking marble statue,” Illium muttered. “It’s ridiculous how you’re built.”

Aodhan’s smile was deep, his eyes sleepy. “Ah, such romance.”

Illium scowled. “Out. I slaved over ordering your favorite meal for you and you need to eat.” Aodhan had been running himself ragged for the two victims he’d claimed as his own, and Illium knew he’d continue to do so.

Still smiling, and still proudly naked in a way that would’ve been impossible for him mere decades ago, Aodhan walked straight into the towel Illium held up. He let Illium wrap it around his hips, then stood quiescent while Illium rubbed him dry using another towel.

“I feel like I melted,” he said at one point, draping his arms around Illium’s shoulders and rubbing his nose against Illium’s.

Illium’s damn heart melted at that. Right into goo. He hadn’t known it could do that.

After nuzzling Aodhan back, he used the towel to catch a couple of rogue droplets on the other man’s chest, then deliberately dropped the towel to the floor.

“You know I hate dropped towels in the bathroom,” Aodhan grumbled without removing his arms from around Illium’s shoulders.

“I know.” Illium was unrepentant. “I wanted to wake you up. I’m not letting you sleep until you eat.” With that, and no matter how tempting Aodhan was with his skin warm and dry, his body lax, and his eyes drowsy, he took the other man’s strong, callused hand and dragged him to the bedroom—where he’d set up a picnic on a folding table beside the enormous bed.

Beds made for their kind had to be enormous, especially if they ever intended to share their sleeping space. While Tower staff had sourced the basic furniture for the Seven’s suites, they’d each chosen their mattresses, and mentioned if they’d prefer any changes to the standard building plan—hence Aodhan’s bigger kitchen and custom shower.

All the decorative personalization had been left up to them.

Aodhan’s home was beautiful in its quiet touches—like the bedspread of white on white with just the barest blush of blue rising from the edges, and the elegant water jug on a corner shelf that Aodhan had found in China and asked Suyin if he could keep.

The archangel had looked befuddled, her surprise enough to trump her bone-tired demeanor of moments before; the latter was a face she showed only to her most trusted people. For the rest, those who looked to her for hope, for a reason to go on, she was an archangel without vulnerability.

“Aodhan,” she’d said, while pulling her long ice-white hair back from her face with a tie she’d borrowed from one of her warriors, “you can take buckets of diamonds and rubies should you desire. But are you sure you want to bring this energy into your home? We’re in an area dark with my aunt’s influence.”

“Objects can be cleansed of bad energies.” Solemn words from Aodhan. “This work created by a gifted artisan shouldn’t be abandoned or forsaken because of another’s evil.”

Now here it sat, physically cleansed by a concoction of Aodhan’s designed not to damage the delicate paintings on the jug, and spiritually cleansed by a mortal holy man from China. Angels had no holy men of their own, not in that way. As Illium had told Catalina when she’d asked him, angelkind had no religions—perhaps an inevitable thing in a race of immortals for whom a life beyond this one was an academic thought at best.

The closest they got to it was talking about “the Havens” and life “beyond the veil” but even that was a nebulous concept with no structure behind it. Simply an acknowledgment that perhaps there was another plane of existence; that acknowledgment was enough to offer them a painful comfort when angels died young, as had happened in the war.

Then there were those of their kind who had become…different over time. Wise in a form that was transcendent, their minds and bodies apart from this world in a way that Illium couldn’t explain. But to talk to them was to know you spoke to a being who was so present in the instant as to be a guiding star in your world…and so much in another place that you would never reach them.

Illium’s own mother often showed glimpses of that, though he had the feeling she’d taken a deliberate step off the path of late, wanting to live life full throttle in the world in which they stood.

Illium also saw the promise of such transcendence in his best friend and lover.

Aodhan had always had a level of empathy beyond words. It was part of what made him an artist whose portraits caused his subjects to cry with all he saw in them, and it had only intensified after his kidnapping. As if the horror of it had ripped away a layer of protection, allowing him to see a world others never would. If the time did come that Aodhan walked that path, Illium hoped he’d take him along on the journey rather than leaving him behind.

Even the idea of it was a knife to his immortal spirit. He’d follow Adi anywhere, but there were some places he couldn’t go without a hand reaching back to tug him through the divide.

But Aodhan’s possible transcendence was a prospect eons into the future.

Today, his friend remained earthbound, his spirit hurt in ways profound; he needed tenderness.

There are softer bruises that hide beneath the scars.

With Catalina’s wisdom in mind, he nudged Aodhan onto the bed he’d scattered with rose petals.

Not the rich red of seduction, but the pale blush pink of flirtation.

The other man sprawled with his back to the headboard, and his towel in real danger of falling off. As it was, one muscled thigh glittered under the candlelight when Aodhan shifted to sit with his left knee bent, his arm braced loosely over it.

Picking up a rose petal with a faint smile on his lips, he rubbed it between his fingertips before looking at Illium all lazy-lidded and content. “This is a good date, Blue.” Simple words that made Illium feel ten feet tall.

“I’m just getting started,” he managed to get out.

Yet playing with the petal, his expression vulnerable in a way Illium knew he’d show no other being, Aodhan said, “Who did Smoke spend the day with while we were out?”

Illium loved that he’d thought of their pet even at this moment. “Holly. Ingrate basically jumped on her from my arms. I was on my way to drop her off with Laric since he told me the patients love it when she comes by. Anyway, I swear they were talking.”

Aodhan nodded solemnly. “No surprise. Holly is mostly a cat after all.”

Illium laughed at the apt description of Venom’s vampire mate. With her quicksilver nature and wry sense of humor—and changeable moods—Holly did have certain feline characteristics.

He was smiling at the thought as he shifted the plates off the table and onto the bed itself—on which he’d placed a special tray that was designed to stay in place and contain anything that slipped. He’d bought it especially for tonight…and all the nights to come when he intended to lavish Adi with affection, with care.

“You’re the beautiful one in this relationship, Blue,” Aodhan murmured, his voice quiet but resonant in its depth. “You know that, don’t you? You’re built to perfection, every sinew and muscle in flawless proportion. That’s before you get to the most extraordinary eyes I’ve ever seen, and those firm lips that own mine.”

Illium’s cheeks heated. He went to make a joke about it, brush it off, but the way Aodhan was looking at him made that seem a cowardice. “Why don’t we agree to disagree?” he said instead. “Because I look at you, in the light or in the dark, and all I see is pure gorgeous man.”

“In the dark?” A confused angling of the head. “I don’t sparkle in the dark.”

“You don’t need to sparkle. You just need to be you.” He continued to speak before Aodhan could reply. “The Aodhan who walked hand in hand with me for literal weeks after the asshole called my father decided to go into Sleep even though he had a kid who thought he hung the moon and who kept watching the skies for him.

“The Aodhan who, though his heart is of an artist, picked up a sword and learned how to be an elite warrior so that I’d never walk into battle alone.

“The Aodhan who doesn’t get angry with me even when I confuse myself with why I’m so scared about us, why I take three steps forward only to stumble backward without warning. That’s the man I see in the dark, and it’s his wing I feel lying over me, protecting me in my sleep.”

Aodhan’s throat moved, his eyes wet. “Come here.”

Unable to deny that husky request, Illium shifted to stand beside the bed next to Aodhan. The other man took his hips, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over the vee-line created by Illium’s lean musculature.

Sensation shivered throughout Illium’s body, along with a crashing wave of love so deep, it hurt.

If Aodhan ever left him again…

Before he could complete the agonizing thought, Aodhan shifted to press his lips to Illium’s abdomen, just above the edge of the precariously knotted towel. Warm breath, sure lips, the barest touch of wet. Sucking in a rough inhale, Illium went to clench his hand reflexively in Aodhan’s hair before a surge of protectiveness had him placing that hand on the other man’s shoulder instead.

Never would he make Adi feel trapped.

The shoulder under his touch bunched as Aodhan shifted back, locked his eyes with Illium’s…and tugged at the knot in the towel, his knuckles brushing Illium’s abdomen. The tug wasn’t enough to dislodge it, just enough for a question. In answer, Illium didn’t step back, didn’t break the contact between them.

His heart was in his throat, his skin so tight, it felt as if it would burst.

Part of him—the part that had been looking after Aodhan for centuries—wanted to tell the other man that this was too fast, that it might rebound on him. But the Aodhan who looked at him, square jawed and with desire an inferno in his gaze, wasn’t afraid or held hostage by nightmare. He was a warrior in control of his desires—and this was what he wanted.

Illium was who he wanted

Another tug, this one stronger.

The towel pooled to the floor…and Aodhan’s gaze lowered.

He brushed his knuckles over the last inches of Illium’s abdomen…lower…