Page 88 of Runes To Rain
I’m blinking the stars from my eyes, my body a limp, compliant pool as he kneels between my legs, one hand on each to keep me from closing them. When my eyes finally focus, I see him licking my release from his lips.
He reaches up as I watch and wipes his chin with the back of his hand. Then he’s propped over me again, his eyes running over my face and down my body. “Gods, you're gorgeous when you do that,” he says. “As though I needed any more encouragement.”
He leans onto his elbows and runs his thumb over my bottom lip. I feel a sting and realize I must have broken the skin earlier when I bit them. He’s staring at my lips. “Fuck. You’re going to kill me,” he grumbles. Then he leans down and kisses me.
By the time he pulls his lips from mine, his tongue lingering against my cupid's bow, I’m seeing stars. Need is just beginning to build in me again from the kiss. The way my body is craving him, craving everything about him, feels dangerous.
The breath crashes out of me as I stare at him. “Please?” I somehow manage.
“Oh no, we’re not being greedy tonight, remember?” Dio says huskily. “We have plenty of time for all the things I want to do to you.”
Then he rises and lifts me, holding me against his chest.
He carries me to the bathroom and begins to fill the tub. Once it is sufficiently filled, he lowers me gently into the warm water. I hiss as it wraps around me, finding every aching muscle. It begins to soak in, and my body goes languid with the heat. I rest my head back against the tub, feeling utterly at peace.
Then he washes me, his hands gentle. As he does so, I can’t help the moan that escapes with my breath.
“Fuck I love it when you make that sound,” he groans.
I’m beginning to fall asleep by the time he lifts me out of the water. He dries me and wraps me gently in a large towel. Then he carries me out to one of the soft armchairs. “Stay right here while I clean up,” he says.
I close my eyes, cuddling back against the chair, my feet drawn up, tucked into a ball. He’s back soon with a towel wrapped low around his waist, his hair hanging in damp tendrils on his forehead. I stare at him, feeling as though I might lose my mind at the feeling in my heart.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he rumbles at me with a smirk. “I just got you cleaned up.”
He holds out a hand. I take it, and as he guides me back to the thick rug, he says, “This will have to do for tonight.”
As I sit, he goes to the couch, my normal bed, and takes a blanket and sheet from the pile beside it before joining me. As he wraps himself around me and pulls the covers over us, sleep is already claiming me.
Iwake, not immediately remembering where I am. The couch feels particularly firm beneath me, and then I hear his breathing and remember.
Dio’s sleeping form is tangled with mine, and we’re partially covered in one of Lily’s clean white sheets. His face is turned toward me, and it is relaxed with sleep. I don’t think I have ever seen him look this peaceful.
I have never experienced love before, but I know now, as I look at him, that’s what this feeling is. It is so much more than what the books made it sound like, so much more than what I feel in Malam’s memories. I feel as though a wildfire blazed through my chest, consumed my heart, and in its place left a phoenix, risen from the ashes. As I continue to look at Dio, it feels as though the phoenix spreads its wings in my chest. I’m filled with beautiful, burning agony as I take a breath, the utter intensity of the love I feel for this man.
I notice a shock of hair that rests over one of his eyes. I reach out to brush it aside. Before I can do so, suddenly my whole body tenses as my instincts scream so loudly at me it is as though I can’t breathe, can’t see.
Somehow, I untangle myself without waking him, dress, strap my sword to my back, and rush as quickly as I can from the building.
There happens to be a carriage outside the building, and I press too many pounds, which I don’t remember grabbing, into the carriage driver’s palm. I give him an address that I don’t know or recognize, even as I say it out loud. Climbing quickly into the carriage, it takes off, the driver taking my request for speed seriously.
The trip passes in a blur, and I leap from the carriage even as it stops. I rush into the building that I find myself in front of. I run through the door and up several flights of stairs. My feetfollow a path I have no conscious awareness of. I move from the stairs down a hallway to a door that stands partially open.
I hear a screaming in my head.
I push through the door. Even in this focused state, I freeze for a moment as I see the scene in front of me.
Two angels crowd a table with Lily behind it, a kitchen knife in her hand. I register belatedly that the screaming wasn’t in my head.
I don’t remember drawing my sword, but suddenly I am between Lily and the angels, pushing her back through a doorway. I have no care for the knife she holds. Somehow, I manage to avoid being stabbed.
I face down the angels, the sword held casually in my hand as I study them. For some reason, my vision chooses this moment to partially blur, and when it clears, one of the angels is too close. I barely block him in time, and it is clumsy. His sword leaves a mark on my arm that feels like acid.
I press forward into his space, and he parries my blows, his eyes on mine, reading my face and my next move. My wings, where they meet my shoulders, pulse slightly with pain. Instincts scream at me. This is different, be careful.
The awful dance continues, and I mark him, but this time, so does he mark me. There is a hazy feeling in my head, and my body feels sluggish. I am so focused on the angel in front of me that I don’t recognize I have made an error until there is a sudden ache in my chest, but not that of a blade.
Even as I try to understand the reason for the ache, I see a knife leave the hand of the other angel, the one who has been watching us fight. I brace myself for the impact, but it goes past me.
