Page 26 of Lost Feather
That night, I showered, scrubbed, and pumiced myself for over an hour, but never got the least bit cleaner, though my eyes did look a bit more green in the mirror. When it came time to find my room again though, I was lost, my trail of smudges nowhere to be found.
Finally, after hours of wandering around—getting close to pounding on doors and asking for help—I found some fingerprints and followed them back. I hid Ry’s feather under my bed next to the kazoo and fell asleep before I could tell my bed I loved it.
That night, to my shock, I dreamed of Gavriel. I still didn’t know what he looked like, but my unconscious mind cut and pasted a memory of Adonis from a statue I’d seen in Greece long ago, with blazing blue eyes. In the dream, he leaned over my bed in Sanctuary, his eyes burning lines of desire in me as he examined my perfectly clean, shining form.
“You’re even more beautiful than I’d hoped,” he murmured, his wings extending, a blaze of too-bright light reflecting from his gold feathers and throwing prisms around the room. “I’ve waited so long for you, to worship you.” He held up a hand, something balanced on his palm. “I brought tribute, my goddess.”
“All I need is you,” I protested.
“Yes. Me… and this.” He leaned over my bed, rubbing what turned out to be a dark chocolate truffle over his full lips, then kissing me when his were thoroughly coated.
“You taste so good,” I gasped.
“Nothing like your sweetness, my love. Let me taste you fully,” he groaned, his golden eyes filled with entreaty and raw lust. “All I dream of is your taste.”
His robe slipped away from his shoulders and slid onto the floor, revealing a sculped chest, ridges of abdominal muscles, and a sharply defined Adonis belt that pointed the way down to a massive cock. He was thicker than any man I’d ever seen, swollen with his need, and had a piercing—a golden bar just below the proud head that gleamed with a drop of moisture.
His lips trailed down my body, softer than feathers, smoother than cream, as he licked and sucked at every inch of my breasts and stomach. He traced circles lower and lower, until he was tantalizingly close to my clit, and then at last, his long, golden hair draped over my thighs. His tongue fluttered again and again, the pressure increasing infinitesimally with each movement over the center of my pleasure, until I exploded into a shower of glittering sparks, waves of orgasm flowing over me for what felt like hours.
I opened my eyes to find him gazing up at me adoringly as he vowed in his deep, seductive voice, “My darling one, I will lick you and touch you like this for eternity. I want nothing for myself. I love only to please you and bring you as many orgasms as your heart desires. All the orgasms. All for you.”
“Finally!” I yelled, waking myself from the dream as I tumbled off the side of the tall bed. Dangit, that dream had been a good one, even if Gavriel was the least likely dream lover ever.
I stumbled into my toga and stalked toward the door with a question, a growling stomach and—when I looked back at the bed—skid marks all over my sheets. What a waste.
“Knock knock,” Sunny chirped from the doorway. Her eyes widened at my bed’s sorry state. The new sheets were every bit as destroyed as the last ones. Good thing she’d pinched a whole lot of them. “Let me help you get those changed.”
I waved her away. “I don’t want you to get more of my smuttiness on you.”
“It’s fine, Feather. You know that’s why I’m… I mean, what’s a little more smut? I just like helping!” Something in her tone sounded off, like a guitar with one string untuned. Huh. So that’s what lying sounded like here. I didn’t pry; if I needed to know, she’d tell me eventually.
“Did you meet with Righteous already?”
“Yes.” She sidled up to the bed, whispering, “No idea we have the kazoo, but he locked the door with a higher-level word. I can’t get back in to return it. Can you keep it here?”
“Ride or die birches, remember?”
“I brought donuts,” she told me as I stripped the sheets. “And some stuff to keep you from being bored to tears in here.”
“So, I’m sort of on house arrest, huh?” She’d mentioned that the Guides had expressed concerns about me wandering around, dirtying up the place.
“Something like that. You should know, Righteous told the Guides about your sleepwalking last night.” I didn’t have time to wonder at Righteous lying for me, as she barreled on. “And High Angelus Gavriel found smudges on the wall outside Arabella’s room. He was so angry.” Her eyebrows rose, waiting for me to explain. I kept my face utterly still.
Oof. Maybe today was my unmaking day after all.
“High Angelus Gavriel had to go on a mission. When he gets back, I’d keep out of his way.”
Thinking of Gavriel brought my dream back in force, and I was glad my smut still hid my flaming cheeks. “He’s gone to Earth?”
She nodded, setting the plate of donuts on top of the now-clean sheets. Both of us climbed up, perching on the edge of the mattress and eating the donuts as cleanly as possible. “Yeah, he’s almost never in Sanctuary anymore. He only comes in for long enough to get purified, then heads back to do the really dangerous missions. The balance is shifting too fast for him to take more time off. Righteous and Valor and a bunch of the other Protectors help him, but it’s not the same.”
“What about the Guides?”
She rolled her eyes. “They’ll tell you that their mission is ministering to the Protectors. But they were all powerful Protectors to begin with, and personally, I think we need them more on Earth than in Sanctuary.”
“I felt the wind last night, and the shaking. Righteous said that’s a sign it’s getting bad here as well.”
“He talked to you?” Sunny blinked like an owl. “Like, a conversation?”
