* * *
SHARA
Burning myrrh and cinnamon filled my nose. Flames shimmered around the phoenix. Some hers, her natural gift, but some belonged to the sunfire she carried. Molten sunlight, red-gold flames, searing blue, all melding to white-hot need.
Hot enough to scorch off what remained of my delicate lacy gown.
:Drop down a little,: Vivian said. :We won’t let you fall.:
First, I checked on Penelope to see where she was in my hair. Curled up in a warm little nest, she was sound asleep. Good. Focusing on her, I willed that section of hair to cradle her snugly against my back so she didn’t fall.
Loosening my grip on Vivian, I slipped down the curve of her chest. Smoldering feathers rubbed against me, heating my skin. Sweat poured down my forehead and between my breasts, but the flames didn’t burn me.
:Lower,: she panted. :Almost there.:
I locked my fingers around the upper curve of her wings and extended my arms, dangling down her body. Though I didn’t want to impede her ability to keep us in the sky.
The freshly healed bites on my lower biceps pulled under the strain of my weight, so I wouldn’t be able to hold on long. I didn’t realize how much I used my arms—until they hurt.
She flipped her wings up higher over her head, changing the angle of our flight, and molten steel burned between my thighs. I’d seen Smoak’s burning hot dick when Mayte came to visit me. I’d even used it once when he’d helped me fuck Nevarre.
But I’d never felt Smoak—Vivian—inside me.
Until now.
Rippling flames caught me, shifting our bodies together. Taking the strain off my arms. She slid into me, and my breath caught on a groan. Heat poured into me. Solid fire without pain, melting my bones. Searing my brain to ash.
Tucking her wings around me, she rolled us in the air. Gliding on her back for a few pumps of her tail feathers, lifting us in the air so each flap made her thrust and glide inside me. Rolling again, harder, whipping her fiery feathers into a corkscrew. I didn’t even have to hold on to her any longer, not with our momentum.
Her scent roared hotter, burning spices and feathers. The molten power of the sun. Liquid starlight, compressed into the raging power of a supernova. Exploding. Into me.
I sank my fangs into her, filling my mouth with her smoldering blood. Drinking her down, her flames rippling deep inside me. Searing me from the inside out.
Wings unfurled with a snap, and we shot straight up. Shrieking, the phoenix blazed like a comet. Pouring all her sunfire into me. Higher, through the clouds into thin, crisp air. As if she meant to escape earth’s gravity and rejoin the star that had originally birthed the sunfires.
Giving everything to me. Every drop of molten solar energy. Every single flame. Until her blazing fire spluttered out.
Our flight slowed. We hung. Paused. Weightless. Completely alone in the universe.
Our hair billowed around us. Red and black flowing rivers twined together. Her hands cupped my face, her mouth on mine. I breathed her in and wrapped my arms around her waist. Twirling, slowly, our hair flowed around us, wrapping us together, as we began to slowly sink back to earth.
Faster.
Free falling.
Her braids caught fire, rippling through my black hair like shining ruby strands woven through a black tornado. But the spreading firestorm melted into my hair without damaging it, darkening into black flames. A powerful spinning black hole, burning forever in the deepest, darkest corner of space.
I sensed the ocean below, approaching fast. She held her human form as long as possible, her mouth locked to mine. Her tongue stroked the roof of my mouth, probing the holes where my fangs lay. Making me want to bite her again and again.
:Please, anytime, anywhere, my queen.:
At the last possible second, her phoenix exploded out of her. Her wings caught the breeze and swept us along the water, close enough waves splashed us, sizzling in the heat of our wake.
Now, her phoenix burned as black as the night that had fallen around us rather than red-gold fire. Threads of red still flickered through the streaming black shadows of her flames. I thought at first Nevarre had lent us his shadows to hide us from watchful humans on the beach, but this was all Vivian.
Burning myrrh and cinnamon mixed combined with the infinite expanse of space.
Smoak filled our minds with the image of a giant red star. Expanding, swelling, its center darkening, compressing with immense pressure. Burning away the red until the star exploded in a blaze of white light, leaving only the spinning black hole, streaming with flashes of super-charged red energy.