Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Cupping the side of her face, he let himself be so sweetly loved, the taste of salt and sorrow in their kiss.
Her breath was warm against his when she drew back, her features soft, and though this was a cold place far from ideal for intimacy, she didn’t rebuke him when he put his fingers on the zipper of her jerkin. Pulling it down, he watched her shrug it off, then remove her sword and associated leather sheath—strapped to her body over the shoulders, and with straps that criss-crossed her upper torso.
She shivered when he stroked his hands under the black of her thermal top, her skin a smooth warmth that he ached to caress, to kiss. Then he felt it, a pulse of her power . . . that created hundreds of tiny windstorms around them, heating up the air. Of all the people in his existence since childhood’s end, Zanaya alone had looked after him.
Feeling broken open, he just held on to her.
She kissed him again, cupping his face with both hands, while he gripped her waist with his. “Alexander, my Alexander.” A murmur against his jaw, along it, down his throat.
Unable to wait to feel her touch on his skin, he stripped his own upper body. She sighed, removed her top to reveal the round firmness of her breasts . . . then pressed herself against him, the contact a kiss of affection, of love, of two people who’d always been meant to be together.
Running his hand up her spine, he kissed her throat as she touched the hypersensitive arch of his wings. It made his cock ache, his heart thump, such deep pleasure that it was edged with pain. And his heart, it beat only with her name. His Zani.
They sat that way, kissing and touching, for a long time, Alexander healing under the raw wave of her affection so fierce and tender. When she rose to strip herself bare, he simply undid his pants to reveal his rampant cock. And then she took him, coming down to straddle him with an ease that had been eons in the making.
Eye to eye, lips to lips, his Zani rocked them into a release that tore up his spine and made his wings glow as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. He felt her quiver on him, around him, her body going taut before she went limp in his arms.
* * *
* * *
They lay entwined on the sand, Alexander having used his power to move away the shells. Even so, he made Zani lie on his wing rather than directly on the sand, then curled that wing over her naked body. He still wore his pants and boots, and her whirlwinds yet created a warmth that made comfort possible on this remote and chill island.
“I love you, too,” she said when he thought she’d fallen asleep tucked against his side. “Until you’re a madness I can’t shake.”
He was glad she’d stepped away from the grief; Alexander felt raw, could bear no more for today. “Charming,” he muttered. “You make me sound a cursed affliction.”
Zanaya shrugged, her hand on his heart. “It is what it is; I’ve driven you a little mad over the millennia, too.”
Forced to admit she was right, he grimaced and shifted so that he could look down on her while she yet remained on his wing. “What are you saying? That we’re not meant to be?” His gut became as hard as steel. Because that? He’d never, not once considered it. Theirs might not have been a smooth road, but so long as Zanaya existed, she’d one day be his and he’d be hers. That was their destiny.
“No, my love.” Zanaya’s lips curved in a smile that ached with sadness. “I’m saying that you were the last thought in my head when I went into Sleep, and the final flicker in my mind as that evil bitch of an archangel—” She bared her teeth. “As Lijuan sucked the life out of me, all I could think of was apologizing to you.”
He scowled. “Apologizing? For what?” He knew damn well it wouldn’t be for her decision to Sleep.
Fingers brushing his lips. “ ‘I’m so sorry, Xander,’ I wanted to say, ‘but I can’t come back this time. There’s no more time to fix us’.”
His anger, his fear, his frustration, it all vanished under a crashing wave of love and need. “Zani.” But she held him back when he went to lean down, kiss her with a passion that erased the darkness.
“No, this is what we always do.” Blazing eyes. “We fall into the emotion, into the passion, without ever fixing the fractures. Our foundation is rotten, has always been rotten. We never bothered to fix it because it was holding well enough . . . but I don’t want that life now, Alexander.”