“I’ll sound an alert if I sense intruders.”
Saying good night to the wing brother, the two of them walked in to find the home was a simple one-bedroom space furnished with a bed large enough to accommodate Andromeda’s wings. There was also a small table set with extra food and drink, and a separate section for the facilities.
As Naasir went and opened the large window not far from the bed, Andromeda walked into the bathroom and cleaned up. The wing brothers had retrieved the pack she’d abandoned during their escape this morning, and though she’d have rather changed into the loose sleep clothing given her by a villager, she put on the last clean set of her own gear.
If battle came to them in the middle of the night, she wanted to be ready.
Naasir brushed past her as she walked out and he walked in, his smile letting her know it had been deliberate. Like a cat rubbing past her. Smiling, she waited until after his shower, then made him turn around so she could examine his back.
His hair damp, he was dressed in a clean white tee she’d found in the pack, and a borrowed pair of dark brown cargos that hung low on his hips. Stripping off the tee, he threw it on a chair and stood still for her worried appraisal. Her breath caught; his skin was warm and rich and flawless, the muscles beneath liquid strength. No mystery why women fought to stroke him.
But beautiful as he was, that wasn’t her primary focus at this instant. “You do heal fast.” There were no scars, no sign that he’d come to within inches of being burned alive. “Does anything hurt?”
“No.” Shifting on his heel, he took her shoulders and ordering her to face the window, examined her wings with slow, methodical care. “Parts of your wings have been scraped down to the tendon.” The growl was deep. “Be careful when you sleep.”
Andromeda nodded, able to feel the stretching, throbbing pain that denoted healing tissue.
“Your feet?”
“Healed.” Usually, all energy would be directed to the wings, but her body had clearly decided the feet were a minor enough wound to deal with quickly.
Getting into bed, she lay on her stomach. When Naasir slipped in beside her, she lifted her wing to put it over him. He petted her gently over the uninjured sections. “Can I have one of your smaller feathers when it sheds? Don’t pull it out.” The last was an order.
The gritty roughness of his voice made her toes curl. “The one under your index finger—I can’t feel it.” An angel’s feathers were another organ in a sense, the awareness of them bone-deep. “I think it’s detached.”
Naasir touched it with care, and when it slid away, he took it and, getting out of bed, went to their single surviving pack. He returned with a fine strip of rawhide in hand, the kind men sometimes used to tie back their hair. As she watched, he sat on the bed and tied the feather neatly to the rawhide, then wove the strip of leather into a thin braid on one side of his head, tying it off with a clever twist at the end.
“There,” he said with satisfied pleasure, and turned over onto his stomach beside her.
Heart so melted it was just this warm thick honey in her chest, she draped her wing over him once again. “You need to feed.”
“I’ll drink the rest of the bottle.”
Andromeda ran her nails over his nape, to his heavy-lidded groan. “Drink from me. I ate well.” She slid the wrist of her other hand under his mouth when he lifted his head.
His soft, astonishing hair brushing over it, the damp strands a cool caress, he pressed a kiss to her pulse. It jumped. Nostrils flaring, he licked over the skin but didn’t bite. “One day, I’ll sip from you while my cock is snug inside your tight sheath, and it’ll be slow and deep and long.”
Breathing suddenly became a difficult task.
“But on this night, your body needs all its energy to heal the damage to your wings.” Another kiss, this one so tender, it made her lower lip quiver and her eyes well.
How could she possibly survive five hundred years without him?
39
Andromeda woke to the crash of thunder. Naasir was already awake. Lying on his back, one of his arms curved around her as she used his shoulder for a pillow, he was petting her wing as he watched the lightning storm beyond the window. The strikes glittered as bright as Naasir’s hair, no rain to soften their harsh brilliance.
“How long did we sleep?” she asked, snuggling closer to the furnace-like warmth of his body.
“It’s early morning.” A boom of thunder almost drowned out his words.
“I’ve never seen the sky that color.” A dark, roiling purple that threw shadows on the earth and sparked with shards of lightning. “It’s beautiful.” As wild as the chimera who held her so affectionately. “This must be the same storm that’s already covered the rest of the world.”
“I didn’t say anything in front of Tarek, but Raphael can fly above lightning.”
Andromeda’s eyes widened. “Yes, no archangel should’ve had any problem avoiding it.” Yet, unless something had changed in the night, neither Raphael, nor Lijuan, nor Favashi had made it here. That wasn’t coincidence. “It’s said that when an archangel ascends, the world changes in inexplicable ways. It might be the same for the waking of an Ancient.”
“This lightning isn’t normal,” Naasir agreed. “Caliane’s waking was violent, but not to this extent.”
“Alexander was a general, Caliane an angel known for her grace and her song.”
“She’s also a trained warrior who rose to protect her son,” Naasir reminded her. “I think the Cascade must be getting stronger.”
Hairs rising on the back of her neck at what that might mean, Andromeda shivered. “The good news is that I don’t think Lijuan would risk her noncorporeal form to a strike.”
Naasir’s chest rumbled under her hand. “Perhaps the storm will do the world a favor and burn Lijuan from existence.”
Both of them conscious such a gift was unlikely, they lay in silence until Andromeda said, “Do you remember being two before you became one?” It didn’t seem wrong to ask about that here, not with the ferocity of nature so close.
“Yes. The human boy played with the tiger cub.” His words held a smile. “They were best friends in a place with no other living beings but Osiris and the wolves he kept as pets . . . and when Osiris forced them into one, the friendship between boy and cub kept the chimera I became stable.”
Six thousand dead. The cub and the boy could’ve been two more casualties . . . and she might’ve never known Naasir.
Violently repudiating the thought, she listened to his heart, and she reminded herself he was very much strong and alive.