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My body moved before conscious thought could intervene, before any lingering shred of celestial restraint could assert itself. My hands, trembling with a desperate hunger, found the delicate curve of her golden heel, my fingers tracing a path upward along her ankle, her calf, and the sensitive skin behind her knee. She leaned one hand against the rough edge of the stone fireplace, her head tilted slightly.

I then lowered my face, my senses reeling with her scent. I brushed my lips along the smooth curve of her calf, inhaling her intoxicating perfume. My fingers slid higher, over her thigh. The silk of her gown fell further to the side, pooling around her like spilled blood. She slightly shifted with a subtle adjustment of her hips, and the core of her heat, the very essence of her, rested before me.

An offering. A command.

I kissed the inside of her thigh. Slowly. Reverently. Then again. Higher. I could feel the frantic beat of her pulse beneath her skin.

“You’re quiet, Guardian,” she murmured, her voice a low taunt.

“Shh,” I managed, my hoarse voice unrecognizable. “I’m praying.”

A slow, dangerous smile touched her lips. She knew what kind of prayer this was.

I pushed the heavy crimson silk aside, and my breath caught in my throat. Black lace. Delicate and exquisitely sinful. My cock, already hard and aching, gave a painful throb.

I hooked my fingers beneath its fragile edge and kissed her through it, inhaling the musky scent of her arousal. I felt the way she twitched as my mouth opened over her, a silent gasp against the delicate barrier.

When I finally carefully pulled the lace aside with my teeth, she didn’t stop me. Instead, she tilted her hips forward, a silent order.

My tongue slid along the slick seam of her, slow and reverent at first. I tasted salt and fire and something ancient, something that made my knees ache from the inside out. Her hand gripped the edge of the stone hearth above me, her knuckles pale.

She didn’t moan. Not yet.

She watched me instead, that knowing gaze locked onto mine, as if to ask if I remembered who kneels, who serves.

And I answered with my mouth.

My lips that had once whispered scripture now parted in desperate worship of her trembling heat. With my tongue, I traced every delicate fold, every sensitive pulse, and every desperate throb she refused to beg for yet so clearly craved.

Her foot pressed against my shoulder, steadying herself or perhaps claiming me. Her heel dug into my muscles with a pressure that was both pain and exquisite pleasure.

I gripped her thighs tighter, holding her open before me like she was a sacred text I’d waited an eternity to read. And then, reverently, with a groan that was torn from the very depths of my being, I slid one finger inside her.

She clenched, sharp and sudden as a startled bird, and my cock gave another painful, demanding twitch. It took every ounce of my will not to lose myself completely, not to take her then and there. I added a second finger without rushing or breaking the rhythm of my mouth against her flesh and curled them just right, just deep enough to find that hidden pulsing center.

Her breath stuttered above me. I felt her muscles tense and coil. Her hips shifted, a slow grind against my mouth. Her fingers, I realized with a jolt of pure lust, were sliding from the cold stones of the fireplace mantle and into my hair. And when she pulled hard, forcing me deeper, I groaned into her, the sound swallowed by her heat.

She ground against my mouth then with a desperate, almost savage intensity. As if she wanted to see her angel unravel completely. And I licked her like a damned man. Like she was the only forgiveness I’d ever crave, the only absolution I’d ever need. My fingers moved inside her in a steady, relentless rhythm, curling and pressing each time she exhaled my name or something like it.

Her voice, when it finally came, was sharp, splintered. “Don’t. Stop.”

As if I could. As if there were any universe, any heaven or any hell, where I’d choose to breathe over her taste, over this obliterating pleasure.

She came on my tongue with a soft shattered sound—part curse, part prayer. Her thighs clenched around my face as if she was trying to trap me there, to drown me in her essence.

And maybe I deserved that. Perhaps I craved it.

I didn’t move, didn’t stop, until her hand loosened its grip on my hair, until her foot slid from my shoulder. Her golden heel softly clicked against the stone floor like a final spent note in a desperate symphony.

I slowly rose then, my legs unsteady and my mouth still tasting of her. She watched me with those knowing eyes, her chest rising and falling in slow, uneven pulls.

When I stood to my full height, I towered over her—the angel and the fallen, the guardian and the captive. And for the first time in centuries, she looked up at me, truly looked at me, as if she felt I could still own her, still claim her, in a way no one else ever could.

She didn’t step back. She didn’t retreat.

Instead, she leaned forward, her slow movements deliberate, and dragged her tongue along my chin, tasting herself on my skin.

She then kissed me deeply, slowly, magnificently, and unapologetically. A kiss that sealed a new unspoken and infinitely more dangerous pact between us.