Angel Unleashed Read online

  Sighs escaped her with each fresh physical assault, rising from deep in her throat. Whips of her internal flames licked at him. Lashes of fire turned him on, drove him on.

  Tethered to those outrageous sensations, Rhys felt more alive than he ever had. He had an unquenchable desire for more of whatever this was. More of her. His mouth ravaged her mouth, leaving bruises of possession that marked her as his. His hands on her hips held her steady, so that each thrust met its intended mark.

  And she gave back, aiding each thrust, drinking him in with her talented mouth while her light engulfed him. He breathed in that light, reveled in the sparks inside him that it created. Nerves hummed. Muscles twitched with the effort to satisfy her, and in doing so, himself.

  No longer content with raking his skin, Avery pounded at him with her closed fists. She nipped at his lips with her tiny white teeth and whispered words he didn’t understand.

  As the pleasure grew to monstrous proportions, Rhys felt a rumbling vibration start to roll inside her. Tearing his mouth from hers, he arched his back. One final thrust, one last good stroke, and he held her there, to that rising internal drumbeat. He held her until that earthquake reached its peak, and rode out the climax that threatened his hold on sanity.

  The pleasure went on and on, ceaselessly. Waves of electrified pulses came, crashing over and over until Rhys finally opened his eyes.

  Avery’s eyelashes fluttered as she writhed beneath him, moving, stretching, until her own internal quakes finally calmed. Breathing shallowly, uttering a moan, she opened her eyes to look at him.

  Beneath the golden glint in her sky-blue eyes, Rhys felt himself begin to sink. He was inside her, and her light was inside him. He had been moved, robbed of breath, transfixed to the point of being nearly mindless, and he wasn’t sure how that kind of complete takeover could happen.

  All that light brought a surge of memory with it. Memories of Broceliande, where he had traded one life for another.

  White stone walls reached toward the moon, surrounded by a dark garden at their base. Windowless towers of quarried limestone rose, tall, formidable, creamy in color and pleasing to the eye. He knew this image, was intimately familiar with Broceliande’s beautiful outer shell.

  In the distance came sounds: water in the golden fountain, clouds moving in the wind. But beyond those things he heard...screaming.

  “No!”

  The command came from outside of himself to scatter the dream.

  “Not now.” Another insistent demand.

  It was Avery’s voice. Her tone. His angel was speaking to him. He had become entangled in her light and was having a hard time extricating himself.

  New chills merged with the extremes of the heat he had sampled. He wanted to understand why his thoughts would go back there, to the castle, now, of all times.

  A warm hand on his face brought him around. Avery was looking at him. Their bodies were entwined, their legs in a tangle. Both hearts were racing.

  “That’s not for you,” she warned with that throaty, serious tone. “I thought it would be, at one time in the past. I see now that I was wrong.”

  Her expression was both sober and pained. Did she regret what they had done so soon?

  “I’ve hurt you.” Rhys eyed her bruised mouth.

  It wasn’t like him to be fuzzy or out of focus. No one knew better than he did that nothing he could do would truly hurt this angel. Her wounds would heal as quickly as his did. The bruises would disappear in minutes, and she’d feel nothing in the morning.

  He had shoved her through a boarded-up window, and that action had served to ignite the sparks that had sealed them together. That moment had made them a unified whole.

  She spoke again. “I didn’t show that picture of the castle to you. You have no right to it.”

  In the back of Rhys’s mind, the scream he had heard in the dream echoed. Tendrils of his inky sigils writhed in response to the reverberating sound.

  Warning...

  Waving red flags.

  “Are you suggesting that flashback wasn’t conceived from my memory?” he asked, thinking her comment absurd. Only the Knights knew about that blasted castle and what had gone on there. The information this angel said she possessed about him and his brethren had to be based in rumor, as she had said.

  But then, how had she known about St. John, his brother? She had brought up his name in regard to the penthouse.

  “The light comes with consequences,” she said, holding his attention with her big blue eyes. “I didn’t mean for you to experience that, but I...I had to have you, have this. We had to get it over with.”

  She wasn’t making sense. Light still surrounded her and, by default, him, as if there was a hole in the ceiling and moonlight shone through.

  “Nothing is over,” he countered. “This was merely a great beginning. Hell, I already want a replay.”

  His body was in agreement with that.

  “Can’t happen,” she said. “I have to go. I’ve told you already, we’ve gotten too close. This was a mistake.”

  “Too close for what? Why would this matter? To whom would it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “I liked what we did. You liked it.”

  “I...” she began.

  “Where do you have to go?” Rhys interrupted, already guessing the answer. She had come to London for one thing and had gotten distracted. They both had. Time had passed, when Avery’s mission might be time sensitive. Taking hours out of that schedule for some long-overdue pleasure probably hadn’t been on her to-do list.

  Her hands were on his chest, on his shirt. He was dressed, and she was naked, on her back in the dirt. He had just shared the most intimate of acts with an angel and couldn’t get enough of her. Would he be damned for that? Would she suffer the consequences?

  One thing was for sure. Angels were bloody well addictive.

  “All right, Avery.” Rhys backed to his knees, got to his feet, put himself to rights before offering her his hand. “I’ll play along with what you want. Now that we’ve gotten this out of the way, as you said, where do we start the search for what you need? What will make you happy?”

  Before she replied with another question that wouldn’t have given him any satisfaction in terms of understanding her, a pesky, persistent thought came to him.

  If that memory wasn’t his, and the castle where he and his brothers had given up their mortality lay inside it, whose memory was it?

  How the hell could it have been hers?

  Chapter 13

  Avery liked being bare. Nudity was her natural state.

  She liked the feel of the draft on her limbs and the imprint of the buttons on her jacket cutting into her back and buttocks. Craving sensation after going without for so long made her relish the leftover burn of the friction of having had Rhys inside her.

  It was no dream this time, though she had imagined mating with him many times in the past. She had known it would be like this if they met. She might even have imagined the look she saw now on his handsome face—a look that told her he was not going anywhere anytime soon, and that his pledge to help her search had become part of his agenda. His tender expression, when translated, meant they’d merely gotten started in this new relationship, and he anticipated more moments like these.

  The problem was how much she wanted that same thing.

  I’ll be damned before letting you see that, Blood Knight.

  Giving in to her emotions now would get her nowhere and lead to a backward slide in her plans. This man, after all the centuries that had passed, had made her question those plans.

  “Too powerful,” she said, without explaining the remark.

  He tilted his head in question.

  Avery missed how his warm breath had filled
her lungs. With their mingled power surging through them, the creature now calling himself Rhys had somehow been able to share her memories. He had dialed up old images still stuck in her mind.

  She might have wanted that kind of mental mingling before tonight, allowing him to see what demands that castle had imposed on her. But she had told Rhys the truth about changing her mind. In person, she found him worthy of better treatment. He deserved more than to share in the pain of her past.

  “This is my fight,” she said to him.

  “What fight are we talking about?”

  Admitting her centuries-old love and admiration for this Blood Knight would be the end of her. With her wings, the real ones, she would be free to go home. Rhys would be left behind. She’d have one thing she wanted at the expense of something else that she had always secretly coveted.

  Those things were at odds with each other.

  “I’m going to find out what that Shade on the roof was talking about,” she said.

  “That’s crazy, and you know it.”

  “I have to go alone. They don’t like you. Your reputation precedes you here.”

  “This is because you actually believed that abomination and that the Shade has knowledge you need?”

  “That’s the downside of rumor, isn’t it? In order to find how much truth a rumor contains, the seeker has to explore all avenues toward that end.”

  Her lover hadn’t moved, though his body had tensed. “Are you regretting what we did here?” he asked. “So much so that you’d ignore common sense just to spite me?”

  “Yes.” The pain of uttering that lie struck hard and fiercely, nearly doubling her over. Avery hadn’t entirely convinced herself that tumbling on the floor with this Blood Knight had been a bad idea. The honest truth was that she liked everything about what they had done. Liked it way too much.

  The magnificent beast beside her nodded his head, perhaps recognizing the symptoms of the lie she had told. Each lie dimmed the light she carried and made her sicker inside.

  “It’s easier to answer a question with a question than it is to suffer the effects of an untruth,” he noted. “Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing by evading my probing and by keeping me in the dark about the specifics of your quest?”

  “It’s best if you don’t know everything. You will have to trust me on that.”

  “No one said you had to tell me everything. If I’m going to help you find the things you seek, though, shouldn’t I know all that entails?”

  “No. Not yet,” Avery replied. “Maybe you can start helping me by handing me my clothes.”

  She didn’t especially care for the grin he was showing her. But she did know what to do about it.

  “I will hurt you in the end,” she warned.

  “If that’s what it takes,” he said.

  The old promises she’d made had been transformed. Avery couldn’t bring herself to hurt the man across from her, who had become her incredibly talented lover. However, there was no way to stay with him without hurting him. The only way to remain true to her quest was for her to leave Rhys behind. Now. Sooner rather than later. Avoiding more pain for both of them.

  If that meant forgoing Rhys’s help when it might have been beneficial, she would have to be okay with that. Anything would have to do to stop the madness that struck her every time she looked at him.

  “Will you pick up my clothes?” she repeated, wanting to lie back down on the floor and open her arms. Wanting to forget about secrets. Wanting him to take her again, fast and hard, and leave her panting. Wishing he would chase away the demons in her past and free her of so many old burdens.

  None of that could happen here.

  “I go alone to the Shades,” she reiterated. “I find those ghosts by myself.”

  The grin she had loved for the brief seconds she’d seen it, had already faded from Rhys’s face, replaced by a seriousness that was equally devastating to her. Rhys was handling this lovemaking session better than she was. He was all in on helping her, and what she wanted most was to have him back between her legs.

  Avery thought about slapping him for ensnaring her with his beauty and for the deviation in her agenda this Blood Knight, in all his glory, had caused. She raised her fists to pound on his chest, but he caught them before she could.

  “All right,” he said, at last. “If that’s what you want, I’ll give you your freedom.”

  They stood for some time longer, looking at each other, measuring each other in terms of what would happen next. When he released her hands and leaned over to retrieve her clothes, as she had asked, Avery whispered an honest “Sorry,” and slammed him with a beam of light that made him stagger.

  As he dealt with that unexpected blow, Avery swooped up her pants, jacket and boots, and jumped through the open window.

  Rhys would only be frozen for a few seconds more while his body absorbed and then adjusted to the light she’d used as a weapon against him. What she’d done wouldn’t slow him down for long, since his soul also housed light.

  After a few seconds of feeling stunned, you will be all right.

  It was strange how important his welfare was to her all of a sudden, and how much she dreaded leaving him. While Blood Knights had beating hearts that bled and broke like everyone else’s, those hearts were both the Seven’s salvation and their curse, as Rhys was going to find out when she disappeared.

  “Sorry,” she repeated.

  With the wind in her hair and the cool night on her bare back, Avery ran from Rhys and from what they had done, willing the inked wings on her back to aid her retreat. No amount of distance was going to stop her own heart from breaking, no matter which way this went, now that she had finally remembered she had one.

  * * *

  Rhys straightened quickly with a fresh intake of breath. In his mind, he heard the echo of Avery’s Sorry as he used the window for his own escape.

  “You didn’t play nice,” he said, as much to her as to himself.

  Once he hit the sidewalk, he began to run. Sprinting cooled his overheated face while offering a temporary respite from thinking about what he and Avery had done. One long stride after another took him blocks from the room where their bodies had joined in several all-consuming moments of physical bliss.

  Hell with forgetting about it; he wanted more moments like that, right now. His loins pulsed with longing. His muscles were far too tense.

  He had to find her.

  Listening to the beat of the night, he traced the disturbance creating a disruption in the atmosphere. If Avery was so damn smart, why didn’t she know about the trail she had left? Anyone with enhanced abilities could have detected the direction she had taken. All around them, monsters dwelled. Too damn many of them.

  “Helping you is my duty,” he said, needing to speak those words out loud, wondering if she’d hear them. “But can I wait to do that, as you’ve requested?”

  He didn’t want to postpone the next meeting. Avery was going to face a creature that had formed an alliance with vampires, and that kind of partnership was unprecedented and sick. The two species had been on the same street more than one time tonight, and that didn’t bode well for anyone.

  Better yet, an alliance between a Shade and an angel would be the highlight of the century. And that just wasn’t feasible.

  How could you think they have information you need, Avery?

  No one in their right mind would trust the ghosts.

  “We had a deal,” he growled. “A deal is a deal. You should know that by now.”

  Darkness had never been his friend, only a necessary ally. The fact that he missed days in the sunshine was a secret he kept to himself. In Avery’s light, those memories had been rekindled. Sun. Flowers. Green grass. Water. Landscapes stretching in all directions, completely visible
to everyone. Staring into Avery’s eyes, he had relived those days, and he had, for perhaps the first time in his lengthy tenure on Earth as a Blood Knight, experienced a few moments of what felt like freedom.

  Turning back was not an option.

  As he had lain embedded in Avery’s lush body, with her heat surrounding him and her nails on his back, he had almost accepted the notion that his long existence had led him to that very moment, and that going forward might actually be worthwhile if she was to be part of his future.

  In spite of her protests, leaving Avery to the bad guys went against everything he stood for. She had not disclosed the secrets at the core of her quest, and because of that, he was still in the dark. Her pain, transferred to him through her touch—the blood she had drawn with her nails and her raised fists—had been a terrible thing, a burden she must have carried with her since whatever had happened to her had set her on this present course.

  You never belonged here on Earth, my angel. I know that.

  I cannot ask you to stay if freedom is what you seek.

  Her quest?

  That quest was centered on her wings, and how she had lost them. Rhys felt certain now that she had not willingly given them up, because what could possibly have been worth the trade-off?

  “Whatever gross event has left you grounded has to be the bane of your current existence.”

  He doubted Avery could hear him speaking, but that was irrelevant, because Rhys couldn’t keep his thoughts inside.

  “That event is also the reason, the impetus, that sent you to me. The secrets you’re keeping are tied to why you inked the new pair of wings on your pale, scarred flesh. Do you miss the real ones? Do you ache for your birthright and pine for what you’ve lost, the way anyone else would pine for a missing limb?”

  Considering that scenario, Rhys thought his heart would break.

  He relived the last moments on the floor of that abandoned room and the incredible climax they had shared. His body ached from the power behind the act and the desire to have Avery beneath him again.

  “You can’t have it both ways, my angel. Either you like me, or you don’t.”