Heart melted and in his hands, she just held on to him with a needy, hungry desperation. Her other hand remained locked with his as her body stretched to accommodate his girth and length. Kissing her, Naasir rocked forward another inch. She clawed at his back. Growling into the kiss, he rocked again.
And again, and again.
Until he was lodged fully in her, the ache of him inside her an erotic pain, and the feeling of belonging so deep tears pooled in her eyes. "Naasir."
Keeping one hand under the back of her knee, he nuzzled his way down to her throat.
Her stomach fluttered.
Her breath hitched.
And then he sank his fangs into her right as he began to move his cock in slow, deep thrusts, each movement rasping over her aroused flesh.
The pleasure was a huge, raw crash over her senses. Naasir rode her through the first wave, ignited another by sucking her blood and rubbing his thumb against the throbbing nub between her thighs. The second one slayed her, leaving her limp and honey slick, her muscles quivering.
It was all she could do to keep her leg around his body.
Increasing the speed of his thrusts once her body stopped spasming around his cock, Naasir raised his head from her neck and took her mouth again as he pounded her into the picnic blanket. She felt taken, branded, loved with an honest, wild ferocity that called to her own primal nature.
Not fighting instinct, she bit down on his neck when he bent his mouth to her throat again. A deep, inhuman growl, his hand tightening its grip . . . and his fangs sinking into her as he thrust his cock home.
*
Naasir collapsed on top of his mate, his cock still snug inside her, and lazily stroked one silken thigh. He could hear her heart thundering beneath him, feel her body clenching in unexpected spasms that wrung pleasure from her limp form. Shocked surprise had dilated her pupils to dark moons.
Smiling smugly, he kissed her, then nuzzled his way down to lick closed the tiny wounds he'd made with his fangs. "You're delicious." He would feed from her often when they rutted.
Enjoying their combined slickness, and happy she was marked by him now, he stroked gently in and out of her. His cock was beginning to harden to full readiness again. "Do you hurt?"
"I ache." She ran her fingers over his lips, eyes heavy lidded. "You fill me up." A smile when he nipped at the tips of her fingers, followed by a shiver as he circled his hips in a sensual tease. "Don't stop."
Delighted, he slid his hand down her body to push it under her tunic and the tight tank top she wore to control her breasts. Her inner muscles clamped possessively on his cock when he closed his hand over the warm, soft globe and squeezed. He liked that, so he squeezed again.
Andromeda arched her neck in response. Dropping his head to lick and kiss at her neck, he began to move. Slower this time, but just as deep. He could keep this up for an hour, might just do it if she let him. Lazily licking at her neck as he rubbed his thumb over her nipple, he pretended to bite her when she put both her hands in his hair and tugged.
A harder pull. "I want a kiss."
Kissing his mate was no hardship. Stretched out on top of her, he playfully seduced her mouth until she pushed at his T-shirt again. "Help me get this off."
Sated enough to be more patient, he cooperated and soon the warm air kissed the naked skin of his back. He went to rip off her tunic, too, but she grabbed his wrist. "I already don't have any pants." Reaching down to her waist, she pulled the tunic off over her head, then followed with the tank top, freeing her breasts, the plump mounds topped by dark brown nipples.
"Pretty," he purred.
Maneuvering so he was on his knees between her spread thighs, his cock still buried inside her, he palmed both breasts with possessive hands, watched her eyes flutter shut. Her teeth sank into her lower lip when he pricked her with his claws, the moan that left her throat making his balls draw up tight.
Patience evaporated.
He covered her body with his once more. He'd fondle and bite and suck on her pretty breasts later. Right now he wanted to rub up against her, inside her, wanted to drench her in his scent until no one else would ever dare make a claim on her.
Andi was his.
Her hands stroked up his ribs and over to his back, her body beginning to move in time with his lazy thrusts. "This is . . ." Another moan as he ground himself against her.
Sliding his hand under her, he clenched his fingers on her ass, tilting her up for even deeper penetration.
"Naasir . . ." Her nails dug into his shoulders, her wings restless on the picnic blanket.
Unable to resist, he bent his head to her neck and bit again.
She came hard and out of control around him. Growling because he was pleased his mate found him so irresistible, he tightened the hand he had on her ass and drew on her blood as he continued to rock in and out of her. The taste of her on his tongue was drugging, her nails on his skin dark pleasure, the aroused, sated scent of her the final straw.
His spine locked as he thrust so hard into her that his balls slapped against her body.
He heard her cry out, but it wasn't in pain, and so that was all right.
48
Lying lazily naked on his back afterward, having taken off his jeans so Andromeda could wear them with her tunic, Naasir watched his mate watch him. He didn't know why, but she was shy about being naked under the sky. He didn't mind her wearing clothes if that made her happy, since she let him strip her whenever he wanted.
But she seemed to like him naked.
Her eyes kept going to him, and she'd sigh and lean over and kiss him. Or she'd pet his chest. Or his thigh. It was having a predictable effect, but he could contain himself now that he'd satisfied the first bite of need. Eating the square of meat she'd fed him--that she'd made for him, he watched her pick up the Grimoire.
"It's so beautiful," she said, stroking the cover before opening the book to look at the pages again.
Moving until she was sitting with her back half-propped up against his side, one arm on his chest and her hair electric and wild from his loving, she read to him from the book, translating the words unknown to him as she went. "And it was said that the griffin was the mightiest of creatures, but that it had a madness inside it nothing could cure. It could not be tamed. Blood drenched the ground where it walked and though it was a peerless fighter, it could not be controlled and was a wild creature that did not know the hand of man."
She turned the page. "Those who saw a griffin were forever marked by its regal appearance, for its violent and maddened heart was not visible on the surface. Its golden fur glinted in the sunlight and its wings took it aloft as high as angelkind. Even in its danger, it was too magnificent to kill."
Turning, she showed him an illustration of a griffin flying in the sky beside an angel. "Can you imagine?"
The anger of memory stirred in him. "Legends like this drove Osiris. He wanted to make them true." His claws sliced out. "Alexander's brother was a melder and he decided to meld living beings."
Putting down the Grimoire, Andromeda turned to fully face him. "I'm sorry," she said, voice trembling. "I'm so sorry. All this time, I talked about the Grimoire and I never considered how it might hurt you."
Naasir hadn't meant for his words to wound her. "Your thoughts and wonder about mysterious creatures don't hurt me," he said, tugging her down into his arms and tucking her head against his neck. "It's fun with you." A game.
"Really?"
"Yes." Andromeda's heart wasn't twisted, and she had no desire to cage or own any of these creatures. "I like hearing the things you have to say."
Then, because it was time, he told her of the evil that had taken place on the ice. "I didn't know about the Cascade before, but now that I do, I think Osiris must've gained his abilities in the last one. He was an Ancient like his brother, would've been alive then."
Andromeda's head moved against his chest as she nodded. "According to Jessamy's research, while the Cascade most signif
icantly affects archangels, it can also have an impact on a small percentage of other angels." She stroked his chest, running her nails over his skin and the fine fur that striped it.
The petting made it bearable to go into the death and the dark. "Osiris had the ability to put two things together and make them one." An ability no one had paid much heed to, for it seemed so frivolous. "At first, he melded inanimate objects for his and others' amusement--a chair to a broom, or a sword to a stone. Then he decided to see if he could meld two living things together." It had all been in the diaries Raphael had saved for Naasir.
"He started with plants and it worked. He is responsible for many of the most extraordinary flowers in the world--flowers that aren't one color but many, or that are so unusual a hybrid, no one can work out how they ever cross-pollinated."
Andromeda's breath brushed his neck, her nuzzled kiss making his eyes close. "After Raphael first found me and took me to the Refuge, I used to rip the heads off all the flowers Osiris had created in front of me, but then after a while, I decided that they had beaten him and should be allowed to exist. Like me, the flowers lived where he didn't."
"At some point," Andromeda said, her hand fisting on his chest as her voice vibrated with rage, "he decided to move from plants to people, to children. How can anyone justify such evil?"
"According to his diaries, it began by chance--he found an urchin boy and brought him to his old laboratory in Alexander's territory. He intended for the boy to become a cleaner. Then his hunting dog ran into the room and he was struck by the idea of melding them. He called it a 'glorious moment of genius.'"
Naasir pulled up Andromeda's leg so it lay across his body. She turned a little farther and swept her wing over him. The heavy warmth, the scent of her, it anchored him to the joyous present where he had his mate in his arms and Osiris was long dead, never to commit his atrocities again.
"He tried to meld the boy and the dog then and there. The two died in a twisted mess of limbs and organs." Naasir's heart raged at the knowledge that that had been merely the start of Osiris's murderous reign. "The failure only fueled his ugly desires. He bought children from poor families, or simply abducted them, paid poachers and hunters to bring him the young of animals."
Lifting Andromeda's hand to his mouth, he kissed her palm and forced himself to remember the peace he'd felt under the ice. No sadness, no pain, no horror. "The boy who is part of me grew up alone until the tiger cub. Osiris either stole or bought the boy when he was a baby--I never found out which."
He ran his hand through Andromeda's hair, bunching it up in his hand, then letting it escape in a burst of color and life. Pretty. "In his diaries, he called us his hope." Such an ugly use of the word. "And though I wish he'd never had the satisfaction, he succeeded with the tiger cub and the boy. Osiris never worked out why and all I can tell you is that the tiger cub and the boy were best friends who helped one another survive." The instant of change was blurry in his memory, but he knew there had been pain, such agonizing pain.
Andromeda rose up and, expression stripped of all traces of civilization, said, "I'm glad he's dead."
He squeezed her waist with the arm he had around her. "I tried to kill him immediately after my transformation, but I was too weak." It had felt as if he was a broken doll, his limbs useless and his mind dull.
"It took me months and months to start thinking clearly again, though my thought patterns weren't 'human.' Neither were they animal." Rather, an amalgamation of the two. "I had to learn to walk again, talk again. Osiris wanted to know why I had two legs instead of four, why the boy's form had taken precedence over that of the tiger cub, so he did more experiments."
Andromeda's eyes glinted. "I'm glad he's dead," she repeated, "but I want to bring him back to life so I can hack out his black heart and feed it to him."
Naasir bared his teeth at her. "I knew you were my mate." He drew her close with a grip around her nape, parted her lips with his own and licked his tongue against hers until her wing fluttered over him and her thigh rubbed against his.
Sliding his hand under her tunic to palm her breast, he rolled her over onto her back. His nostrils flared at her scent. Moving his hand down her quivering abdomen, he slipped it under the loose waistband of the jeans and stroked two fingers through her slickness. When he raised his head, her lips were more swollen than before and her breath shallow.
"Any more questions?" Lashes shading his eyes as he watched the rise and fall of her chest, he circled his thumb around the slippery nub at the apex of her thighs.
Gripping his biceps with one hand, she tried to glare at him but pleasure kept rippling over her. "Beast."
He grinned. "Your beast." Nipping at her lower lip, he used his teeth to tug at the soft flesh while he moved his fingers with a playful dexterity that made her give a startled moan and orgasm in sweet little flutters he wanted to lick up with his tongue.
His mouth watered.
Putting his lips to her ear, he said, "You're going to be my dessert after dinner tonight. I'm going to lick you up like honey, sink my fangs into the delicate, plump flesh between your thighs."
Her body jerked, her thighs clenching on his hand. She didn't startle when his claws released, though he was holding flesh so soft and fragile. No surprise. His mate was as wild as him and she knew he would never hurt her.
Trembling fingers wove into his hair but her teeth on his jaw were sharp. "Not if I get my mouth on you first."
He growled and tore off her jeans and ten minutes later, Andromeda lay sweat-drenched and naked on his chest, while his heart pounded, his entire self stretched out under the sunshine in sated bliss.
When Andromeda finally pushed up on his chest to face him, she looked deliciously used, marked by his bite and by his kiss. And the affection in her eyes . . . He basked in it. "How long till we have to go in?" he asked.
"Hours yet." She pushed back his sweat-damp hair as his eyelids lowered. "Don't go to sleep yet. I do have one question."
Lazy, he didn't bother to open his eyes. "Hmm?"
"The fact you're a chimera doesn't explain your vampirism."
Naasir yawned. "Osiris was afraid I wasn't a true, immortal chimera, that I'd die before he'd unearthed his answers. He also wanted to keep me a child so I'd be easier to control." Especially after Naasir's last attack had left him with claw marks shredding his face.
"Not that it would've saved him had I stayed a child. The day Raphael found me--after hearing about what Osiris was doing from a courier who'd seen more than he should--I'd jumped on Osiris from the ceiling, clawed out his eyes and made him slip on the stairs. His skull cracked hard enough against the stone to leave him unconscious." At which point, Naasir had ripped out his throat and clawed open his chest cavity. "But that was Osiris's rationalization for Making me."
Horror and rage had his mate going stiff above him. "Making a child is strictly forbidden. Children go mad if Made. They die."
"I came close to death, but perhaps because I was a chimera, I survived no more mad than when he began the process."
"You were never mad."
"I was feral."
"That's not madness." Kisses on his jaw.
He turned into them, shamelessly asking for more. Andromeda gave him what he wanted, her lips as gentle as her love was fierce.
Opening his eyes so he could see that fierce love in hers, he picked up her hand to nip and kiss at her fingertips. "Those who know I ate Osiris's heart say that perhaps I'm so strong, so immortal, because I ate the heart of an Ancient while I wasn't yet full-grown."
"Does that bother you?"
"No." Naasir bared his teeth. "I like the idea of having consumed my enemy and made his power my own."
"Me, too," said his smart, wild mate, her eyes glinting. "You grew despite the Making."
"Yes." No one had expected that, those who knew of him readying themselves to deal with the distress and pain of a child who never grew, but whose understanding might get steadily older. "M
y growth patterns mimicked those of angelic children."
No one knew why, but the prevailing theory was that as a chimera, he was already naturally immortal and as such, his body had fought the toxins of the Making. However, because he'd been small and weak, he hadn't totally won the fight and thus gained certain vampiric characteristics. "Like angelkind, I haven't measurably aged since I became an adult. We can be together for eternity."
Andromeda's face blanched, all happiness wiped away.
Growling, he tumbled her over onto her back and braced himself above her. "Enough, mate," he said in a tone that wasn't wholly human. "What are you hiding from me?"
Her throat moved, the words she spoke a harsh rasp. "Tomorrow, I must go to Charisemnon's court."
Naasir curled his lip over his teeth. "You must do a tribute to your archangel? I will go with you to protect you."
"No." Andromeda's breathing turned labored, as if she was finding it hard to draw air into her lungs. "I'm bound to serve five hundred years in his court."
Naasir went motionless above her. "Why are you enslaved?"
"A familial blood vow. It cannot be negotiated."
Naasir snarled at the finality in her tone. "No one likes Charisemnon," he said. "Just ignore the obligation." He nipped at her lower lip, then did it again because she'd been hiding things from him that hurt her.
Nails digging into his shoulders, she narrowed her eyes. He ran a clawed hand over her cheek in warning. She didn't look scared at all. "I like your nails in me," he said with a grin. "Dig harder."
A distinct grr sound from his mate. "I can't just not turn up," she snapped. "You know what archangels are like--they might fight amongst themselves, but they won't support rebellion within each other's families."
"Things have changed." Naasir braced himself on his forearms. "Raphael hates Charisemnon for causing the Falling. He'll accept you into his protection." Because she was Naasir's, and Raphael backed his Seven.
Andromeda shook her head. "It may cost him the allegiance of those like Astaad who are more traditional."
Naasir growled, but he didn't argue--they both knew she was right. Astaad considered Charisemnon an enemy, but if Raphael broke such a deep angelic prohibition, it could fracture their alliance. And any infighting or serious disagreement between the allies would give Lijuan a weakness to exploit. But-- "Jason took Mahiya away from Neha."