Page 53 of Angel's Smoke

He was at her ear, commanding her attention and forcing her to look at him with that blazing gaze of his. It was no longer a mix of brown and hazel, but that of the burning topaz that came out when his fire needed to play. Then he pounded into her with purpose, pulling heat from within her soul higher to the surface with each thrust of her breasts against the glass. Anna couldn’t look away from him, even as he played her body like a finely tuned concert instrument. Her skin slicked over with sweat, and a fresh bloom of warmth coiled tighter in her belly every time he sank into her.

Still, he pierced her with his stare. Always watching. Always devouring. Always demanding she do the same.

Each time he seated himself fully, her body trembled with the fulfillment of all his promises. Every kiss, caress, and claiming brought something out in her, foreign feelings that lit her soul from within, until it felt like her very skin was pulsing with a fire that instinctively would never harm her, nor would it stop from erupting around her.

Anna leaned toward Iron, straining to kiss him as he sent her diving over an edge she’d not known prior to this man. Before his mouth captured hers, however, swallowing down a searing orgasm pulled from a place she’d never ventured, power rippled over his body. Flesh turned to armored iron beneath her fingertips. He pulled away, growling his release as he slammed his hips against her with unmatched ferocity.

Her body trembled around his cock, her core clutching him even tighter through pulses that somehow blinded her. Brilliant light flooded her small bedroom, its energy seeming to spark from her core connected to his. At her back, his fire erupted. Blue electric flames rippled over his metallic body as he let out a roar into her neck that could have toppled mountain ranges.

Anna collapsed back against his chest as the final pulses left both their bodies. The flames subsided, his armor gone as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind a slew of answers to questions she’d never gotten the courage to ask.

Iron held her back to him, curling around her curved form like a protective shell. Then he lifted her and rolled them both into the bed next to them. They lay there, flat on their backs, caring not for the mechanics of covers or how they were going to chase what they’d just done with some big spoon, little spoon consolations.

Anna turned to face him, but he was already looking at her, a stern expression taking over the wonder she’d hoped to see there.

Then she realized he wasn’t looking at her, so much as her wrist, which lay next to her ear facing up.

Anna reached for his hand, knowing full well what was likely now tattooed on hers based on what Iron had told her about the soul bond ritual, and kissed each of his knuckles. And when she was finished with one hand, she moved to the other. She didn’t stop there. She kissed everything she could. His pecs, biceps, the caps of his shoulders, that delicious divot in his chin, the perpetual furrow between his brows. All of it. She wanted to taste and own all of it.

Then he finally wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest. The heart hammering back against her ear was the sweetest rhythm she’d ever heard next to the heartbeat of her unborn child, and one she’d happily guard for as long as he’d let her, even if it meant wading through the waters of mortal overwhelm in a supernatural world.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered against his neck. He tightened his hold on her, still shaking with the aftershocks of all they’d just shared and all that he’d gained. She kissed his jaw again. “Whatever happens, I’ve got you, too.”

Chapter26

Iron stood before Anna’s bathroom mirror, tracking the rivulets of water dripping off his beard onto his bare chest. The droplets peppered their points home every time he splashed his face with another frigid dose of the stuff.

He finally had his fire back and had swept up Anna as his full soul bond in the process. Strange. He thought it would feel far different somehow, to share not only his strength with another person but his innate celestial makeup as well. He didn’t know what to expect, really, but nothing short of a full-on Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade seemed appropriate, complete with nationwide marching bands and Broadway performances. After all, when one had been on the hunt for solutions to literal world-ending problems for longer than mortals had a metric to measure it, you kind of expected to feel . . .something. At the very least, a sense of relief or achievement.

Instead, all he felt was . . . complete but not the satisfying sort. Not the kind of completion one enjoyed after ticking off tasks on a list or finding the right food storage container lid to go with its mate. No, this completion was more finite, more absolute.

It was the end to a soul’s endless search and the eternal rest of a restless power long starved.

Anna.

Iron shut off the faucet, wiped any lingering chill from his skin lest it travel to hers, and hurried back to his mate.

Fuck, hismate. His soul bond. There was a ring to it that, for so long, he’d only associated with others, but now that phrase held a weight that made him rethink his allegiances or, at the very least, reprioritize the hell out of them. She’d set him free, released his full fire. How, by the eternal wisdom of the prime mages, was he supposed to still go to work and do his fucking job like his world didn’t now hang on whatever the woman in that bed needed?

It was a unique kind of cruelness, to finally know such a connection and freedom, only to have it placed on hold while you went off to fight the good fight no mortal would even know whether you won or lost.

Glory had never been the endgame, but Iron was beginning to wonder whether the duty he’d pledged his life to had been misplaced.

Iron turned the corner and was about to enter the bedroom when Anna’s serene form slowed his momentum, yanking him to a halt. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and smiled, marveling at the voracious creature who’d trapped him in her bed and kept him there for the better part of the afternoon.

Half-draped in the comforter, with a lone foot peeking out at the base of the bed, Anna looked like she’d wrestled with an alligator and had not only won the match but convinced the creature to gleefully turn its hide into a pair of boots for the privilege of worshipping at her feet. Half of her long copper hair coiled around her outstretched forearm, while the other half sprawled across the pillow he’d just been using. Her bare shoulders and flushed complexion still bore the markings of their recent exertions. And though he was man enough to acknowledge that her mesmerizing glow could have been attributed to her pregnancy as much as his rather thorough attentions, he couldn’t be mad at it. She was a vision of the dreams he never wanted to stop having and the desires he’d been too afraid to voice.

But what hecouldbe mad at was the disturbed furrow between her brow and the faraway look in her eyes that had her ten seconds away from mindlessly twisting the ends of her hair into snarls.

She looked lost, like a wandering listless thing, and his heart seized at the sight, worried about how far her mind might wander away from him.

“You can’t do that,” he said, hoping to penetrate her deep thoughts.

Focus sharpened her eyes, dragging them away from wherever she’d gone. “Do what?”

“Go places I can’t follow you.”

That serene smile returned to her lips, the one he’d coaxed out of her earlier when he kissed the space between every single one of her vertebrae before entering her again. It was one of many memories that would color the remainder of his days when the darkness became impenetrable.

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