Page 45 of Angel's Smoke

Iron exhaled a sadness far deeper than she thought him capable of, and it worried her. “Look, I’d like you to stay here tonight, with me. I mean, notwithme. I’ll sleep elsewhere, but here, in my suite of rooms. Those clothes are for you, to get comfortable.”

That had her head shooting up. “Why?”

“Because I can’t take you back home tonight. I’m gassed, I need to heal up and recharge a bit, and you’ll be safe if?—”

“No, I mean, why won’t you stay with me?”

Entire chasms could have opened between them, and still, there wouldn’t have been enough space to keep her question from pelting him against the forehead and for her to expect an answer in return.

An unsettled heat ignited the air between them, filling it with heartfelt promises they’d yet to find a way to voice, but dammit all to hell, she wasn’t about to let him off the hook without trying.

“I could have stopped him if I had my full fire.” A pleading note sat behind his words, unnerving her further. “My fire failed me, and it was only by the stroke of dumb luck that some poor soul had likely ditched their car into the lake and my metal latched on to it before it was too late. But it came with a cost.”

Fire returned to his eyes, a heated fury searching for an outlet that could either soothe or stoke what burned within. “They know about you. They know you’re important to me. Because I got cocky and, for a few unbelievable hours, got to play pretend and live a life where happiness and laughter were the orders of the day.” He placed his hand over hers on top of the clothes, his knuckles brushing against her abdomen. “Where I got to envision taking you to the doctor tomorrow and asking far too late whether you’d let me come in the exam room because I knew it’d frazzle the fuck out of you.” He swallowed hard. “That you might secretly want me there but couldn’t bring yourself to ask. I got to create a moment in my mind where I saw your face light up at hearing the sound of your baby’s heartbeat and handing you extra tissues to wipe the excess ultrasound goop off your belly.”

Then a dark cloud stormed over those would-be memories, robbing her of the promise of those happy thoughts. “And I erased it all by putting a goddamn target on your back. By the mages, how can you even look at me, let alone want to share with me where you lay your head at night?”

“Because I want all of that, too!” she screamed, tossing the clothes to the floor. “I want you to take whatever you need from me that would bring you closer to your fullest self. I want you to go with me to the doctor and stare down every nose-in-the-air guy in that waiting room who assumes the worst of me because I’m a single thirty-four-year-old pregnant woman, as if that’s such a goddamn crime. I want to get closer to you, and I think you want that, too, but I am absolute shit when it comes to mind games, so what the hell am I missing, Iron? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I can’t return to the Empyrean unless I have my full fire back!” he rushed out. “And neither can my brothers.” His chest heaved through the exertion of his emotions, and it was enough to stun her back into silence. “Whatever we have, it would be a transaction. Atemporarytransaction.”

“But you said the soul bond was forever.”

He looked away from her. “Yes.”

“Can two people be bonded and live apart like that, with you in the Empyrean and me here?”

More silence and then, “I don’t know.”

“So, you’re not certain about any of it, yet you’ve already made your decision that I shouldn’t have one.”

He didn’t respond at first, then replied, “I don’t want you to get hurt, but I don’t know how to stop the course you and I are both on.”

She sat straighter on the bed, running through words spoken and scenarios described, but above them all was the pounding need in her chest. The need to be needed, to explore and provide in a way she’d never been afforded before. It was a transactional relationship of a different sort, one with a potential time limit, but one she couldn’t help but reach for with both hands.

“What if I don’t want to stop?” she asked, then set aside every fear hen-pecking at her logic center and did what her body had been urging her to do since she’d first dreamed of this man.

Anna rose to her feet and slid onto Iron’s lap, straddling his hips and wrapping her arms around his neck.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and then she brought his hands to her waist, settling them there like the anchors she needed them to be.

“Living for the moments we have while exploring whatever joy you and I are capable of. Am I scared? A bit, but not when I’m with you. And I’d rather do it scared than hide back in my cabin with only dreams to keep me company. I want the real thing, warts and all.”

Iron’s fingers fanned along the expanse of her ribs, pressing possessive divots into the negative spaces. Before he could voice any asinine words of so-called reason, she silenced his lips with her finger.

A burgeoning heat ignited between them, tightening her abdominals and prickling her skin.

She wanted this. Oh god, she wanted him, and if he spurned her one more time, well, she wasn’t sure she had it in her to bounce back from that type of rejection. The very idea of it felt dire.

But then his lips parted, and the heat of his tongue licked a wicked current along the pad of her finger.

Any breaths and lingering concerns she had were soon lost to the mesmerizing cove of his mouth.

Chapter22

Iron was so goddamn right. Anna tasted better than any delicacy dreamed up by mortals past or present. In that same vein, as he savored the flavor of her skin, he knew, with absolute certainty, another cell-altering truth: he was equally goddamn screwed.

The difference this time was his ability to care.

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