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As she descended from heights never before seen, Brass’s muffled purr of satisfaction squeezed out one final tremor in her thighs. Those precious kisses she would keep for eternity. Small, sacred pecks of affection that no one but her would ever know they’d shared.
When the light of all they’d done ascended over her little quadrant of the world, would he think of those kisses still?
She needed to think so.
Especially as he dropped to his knees, gently lifted her from around his shoulders, and settled her comfortably against the wall, careful not to let her skin touch the cold paint lest she get chilled. When they raised their heads, his with no shortage of disheveled hair and unspent desire, twin orbs of riotous ochre flames pinned her to the wall.
She gasped and pegged him with a question her soul demanded answers to long before her head thought to ask it. “What are you?”
Fear, cold and lethal, chased away the heat of their exchange. A stunned expression fell over his face, followed by the stony silent treatment visage that he’d throw on from time to time like a well-worn sweater.
It was armor, she realized. Armor against her.
With his drawbridge fortified and without answering her question, he surged to his feet, grabbed up his trench coat and sodden shirt, and shut the door on the best thing that had ever happened to her.
Chapter 17
Of all the beings in the mortal realm who’d possessed the singular ability to see into Brass’s soul and play connect the dots with the shreds of his humanity, of course it’d be Molly. His goddamn lips were still warm from her flavor, and his fire thought it was the perfect time to show its belly and beg for a rubdown. The more time he spent in her presence, the harder it was to remember just how deep his desperation was. But to feast on her pleasure and then have her mocha gaze tunnel into his scorched insides and rip out whatever soft bits were left? To touch him and not only spy his despair but truly see it?
To borrow a favorite idiom from his brother Chrome . . .
Brass was well and truly fucked.
Over the past few weeks, the swearing had become an odd comfort, and he’d begun to understand his brother’s preference for the flare much more. Sometimes, there was simply nothing better than a well-timed fuck.
Mages knew his head had been more than run through the wringer on that one.
His bare feet rasped out soft slaps among the granite-carved stairs descending to their den’s sparring ring. He brushed his twitchy fingers against the great mountain’s stony walls, structures that had been carved by the angels back when mortals were little more than amoebas. With each bounce of his thighs, his heart pumped harder, forcing blood to places that still remained impossibly full. And sticking with the theme of too much steam and not enough pressure release valves, the mountain wasn’t helping. Each night, the sediments and minerals would feed his fire, strengthening his celestial senses and refueling his power over the metals and alloys he commanded.
Well, he was right full up at the damn moment, wasn’t he? Any more energy would only serve to push out what his snake of a soul craved to keep close to him.
That would be Molly. The strength of her thighs settled on his shoulders as he licked her to oblivion was the perfect weight his body demanded to reach its full physical potential. Her ripples of pleasure became his sustenance, drawing more vigor out of him like a marathoner chasing a runner’s high.
Except there was no high, only height. A singular summit that, once she’d crested it and he’d felt her nails scoring his shoulders with every sure step he ascended, her sighs of pleasure went right to his cock. The breaths she released were affirmations, endorsements he’d readily brand across his back with a blade of her choosing.
Because, somehow, she’d already inscribed her name on his soul.
And that somehow was the thing that curled his gut and chased him into the pit of the great mountain hoping to beat the shit out of something.
Every boiling kettle eventually found release, and Brass was a millisecond away from erupting. The only way to do so without leveling Aurora and taking half the White Mountains down with him was through practiced form, patience, and a shit ton of padding. Though he was loath to admit it, polyethylene foam was one of the better inventions mortals had figured out. Sure as hell beat three-quarters of their processed foods or anything sold at those dollar stores. Personal protection equipment, however? Now there was something he could get behind.
It was a start, at least, though the jury was still out on exactly how many mountain peaks he needed to keep intact and still have the mortals call them a mountain range.
As he rounded the corner of the stairwell that dumped into the open sparring ring, soft clacks rose up to greet him, engulfing the steps of his approach. Swirling in the center of a veritable ocean’s worth of blue floor pads were Iron and Rhode, who, like him, were bare except for matching white karate gi pants. The angels tracked each other in slow, measured circles, two predators sizing up their opponents. Rhode’s umber gaze marked Iron’s larger strides through the spaces made vacant by the former’s bo. His frame, once so wiry and emaciated from eons in captivity, had begun to pack on lean muscle and regain some core balance. Blue, blown veins no longer protruded from too-pale skin, and clothing, while still several sizes smaller than Brass remembered, clung to hips and thighs that had begun to fill out with long-forgotten strength. And though it had only been a few months, ripples of abdominals had started to form below increasingly powerful pectorals. It would still be some time before Rhode’s hair grew back, and the Seraphim commander’s war braids again hung from his temples, but he was up and moving and, judging by the blossoming bruises on Iron’s ribs and shoulders, regaining a bit of his former ruthlessness.
Brass slid into the room, tucked his arms across his chest, and waited for the drop he knew was coming. Where Iron mirrored their great mountain in size and strength, with boulders for biceps and impenetrable stamina, Rhode had always been a viper. A supreme master of patience and ambush foraging. When Chrome served as intelligence master of the Empyrean, Rhode had been hand-selected by him to command the sentinel’s spy legions. Despite Chrome’s profuse protests, Rhode had insisted on infiltrating Cyro’s surveillance network the night before the Sealing in hopes of discovering anything that could have helped the sentinels prevent the impending attack by Cyro’s forces on the Empyrean.
Rhode had never returned from the mission and had only been discovered by Chrome and Drea a few months ago when they raided the demon grotto under the pretense of Drea’s false employment there. He’d been held as Cyro’s captive all that time, and though he claimed he had very little memory of his time there, Brass had his doubts.
When it came to staying immobile for the sake of the hunt, there was no one more adept at the skill.
Even through eons, apparently.
Iron slowly crossed one bare foot in front of the other, his dual-colored eyes trained on Rhode’s hands gripping the bo. Before he stepped out of his stance entirely, he spun his right shoulder around and kicked out his powerful leg toward Rhode’s head. The crack that echoed along the craggy cavern walls was the only measure of impact that preceded Iron’s back crashing against the foam mat.
In a blur of white and wood, Rhode had swung up his bo, deflecting Iron’s foot a moment before it connected against the side of Rhode’s head. With a reverse sweep of his staff, Rhode ducked low and swung his weapon behind Iron’s ankle, felling the giant like a two-hundred-year-old oak.
Never remarking on or even smiling at his win, Rhode angled his staff down to Iron and, with a heavy dose of sportsmanlike conduct long missing from the sentinels’ brutish habits, pulled the angel to his feet.
