Chapter Three

Kylee swam toward consciousness reluctantly. She’d been having one of the most bizarre dreams, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was about.

Bird feathers, she finally realized.

That was weird.

Why would she be dreaming about feathers?

She opened her eyes finally, unable to either grasp the elusive dream or drift back into sleep and found herself staring at the bedside table.

The lamp was still on. She must have really been out of it by the time she’d made it back to her room. Shuddering as memories of the night before crashed in on her, she moved slowly and carefully to sit up. Her throat hurt.

Pushing up from the bed, she amended that. Her whole body hurt.

Staggering a little from the after effects of not enough sleep and too much pain killer, she winded her way to the mirror for a look at her boo-boos. Just as she’d suspected, Enrico had left an imprint of his hand on her throat. She pulled her blouse up, turning to study the bruising that wound around her waist to her back—probably from the crash.

She was lucky she’d only gotten bruises.

She froze as she faced the room again.

There was a man sprawled in her bed!

Good God! How had she gotten back to her room with a man?

Frowning, completely forgetting her aches and pains, she moved a few steps closer, peering down at him. She’d thought the bed sheets were draped across his waist. She realized on closer inspection that it was some kind of wrap.

She caught a glimpse of wing then. The sight touched off a horrendous avalanche of memories.

She hadn’t seen him and then dreamed he was in her bed. He was in her bed.

Except for the wings, he looked as human as—well a lot better than most of the men she knew. In fact, now that she could see him really well, with a clear head, he was downright—beautiful.

He couldn’t be human, though, not with those wings.

Alien?

She wasn’t going for the angel thing. She didn’t believe in all that supernatural stuff. Most of it was scientifically explainable, or a trick.

She studied his face for a long time, partly from pure admiration and partly because she wanted to reassure herself that he was unconscious—not dead. Seeing no sign that he was feigning sleep, she allowed her gaze to drift downward. His chest was moving slowly and evenly.

There was no gash along his side, and very little of the ‘blue blood’, dried or otherwise. Most of that was on the bed sheets. There was a long angry red line, however, that ran from just beneath his left pec downward in a curved line that met the waist of the thing he was wearing. It looked like a very recently healed wound. He had another, somewhat shorter wound along one thigh, barely visible through the torn fabric but noticeable because the fabric around it was stained just as the sheets were.

She stared at the sarong-like thing around his waist, wondering if he looked as human there as the rest of him did. After glancing at his face again to make certain he was still asleep, or unconscious, she took a step closer and caught the edge of the wrap, lifting it very carefully for a peek. There was definitely something there. She couldn’t quite make it out, though. Leaning a little closer, she lifted the cloth just a tiny bit higher for a better look.

He moved. It moved, standing up to look at her with one dark eye like a serpent that had been disturbed.

Dropping the cloth as if she’d been burned, she jerked upright.

His eyes were not only open, he’d propped his arms behind his head.

His expression was unreadable, but she had the feeling somewhere in his mind was the question—See anything you like?

Her face grew hot.

“I was—uh—just checking the wound on your thigh.”

His brows rose. He didn’t comment on the outright lie—the very obvious lie. His leg hadn’t been anywhere near where she’d been looking—unless one counted that middle leg, which had looked way too lively to be wounded.

He sat up abruptly, threw his legs off the bed and stood. “I am curious also,” he murmured, walking right up to her and taking hold of her blouse. He had her shirt unbuttoned to the waist before she recovered enough from her shock to slap his hands.

His brows rose, but he removed his hands, folding his arms over his chest “You prefer to remove it yourself?”

“I do not!” Kylee gasped, outraged. “I’m not just going to—to strip because you’re curious.”

He dropped his arms to his sides and walked around her, looking her over curiously. “I’ve not had the opportunity to observe a human woman so closely before. You appear much the same, though, as the Elumi women—you have not their abilities, their strength, or their skills, but physically you seem not so different—except smaller, much smaller.”

Kylee turned with him, fairly certain she didn’t want him behind her where she couldn’t watch him. She ignored the insulting comparison. If he thought for one minute that that kind of comment was going to put her on her metal to prove herself, he was wrong. It just irritated her.

“There are superstitions about mortal women that I find intrigue me. I myself am not superstitious, but many believe these tales and I have wondered how such strange beliefs might have come about.”

She should have felt far more threatened by the strange being than she was intrigued, but the reverse was true. She wondered if that was because of some primal sense that told her he was no real threat to her, or if it was her own latent superstitions about angels and the fact that he looked so much like the concept of goodness and purity.

She didn’t really believe in such fairy tales on an intellectual level, but she supposed on a more primitive level she didn’t disbelieve either. Rather like disputing the existence of ghosts in the daylight, but fearing the cemetery at night.

It didn’t hurt that he was the next thing to naked, looked more human than not, and he was magnificent in every way—tall, blond, well proportioned, muscular, and intimidatingly handsome.

“What tales?” she prompted when he didn’t finish.

He moved surprisingly fast. One moment he was merely standing before her, studying her. The next he had her pinned against his length, one arm around her body, the other clutching the back of her head. “An Elumi finding himself too weakened to heal swiftly, may draw strength from the energy a mortal woman yields in the throes of passion.”

Stunned, both by the remark and his assault, Kylee could only blink at him blankly while her mind spun its wheels ineffectually.

“It is said that this cannot be done, however, without the Elumi male becoming enslaved by the pleasure he finds in the woman’s flesh. It is forbidden for this reason.

“I, myself, cannot conceive of it. You are—tempting, though. And I am weakened by my wounds.”

Those comments only succeeded in producing more disjointed and fractured thoughts, but rather like speed reading, key words stood out and were assimilated. He wanted sex, passion. She’d never seriously considered having sex only to try it, especially not with a stranger, a no strings, never meet again, no pretense of a relationship animal coupling.

She was a little startled to discover how much that appealed to her at the moment.

His lips were warm as they brushed experimentally along hers, more as if he were testing his interest than her resistance. When he had explored the feel of surface to surface, he caught her lips gently between his, sucking lightly first the upper and then the lower tender flesh. Heated desire instantly tautened every muscle in her body and brought every nerve ending tingling to life. Enthralled that so tame a kiss could awaken her so thoroughly, Kylee held perfectly still, waiting, expectant, holding her breath unconsciously.

He exhaled a harsh breath, his lips parting from hers fractionally. As if that had prodded her own memory of the need to breathe, Kylee released a shuddering breath, as well, dragging in the scent and taste of their mingled breaths as she inhaled deeply once more. The merging scents sent a chemical rush through her that shut down any ability to think with her rational mind. Guided solely by instincts, her hunger thoroughly roused, she bridged the slight distance that separated them, pressing her lips to his in offering and then nibbling provocatively at his lips when he didn’t immediately accept.

A harder rush of anticipation and excitement filled her as he opened his mouth over hers almost crushingly, plunging his tongue into her mouth with ravening hunger, as if he’d been holding back only with an effort and she had broken the dam of his resistance.

Her head swam dizzily as she found herself twisting, falling, colliding jarringly with the mattress. Briefly, their lips parted as they landed on the bed but even as she began to float upward toward greater awareness, he sought her lips again and he kissed her more feverishly than before as he sank against her, supporting part of his weight with one arm as he sprawled half atop her.

A new level of tension and expectation invaded her at the ferocity of his kiss, the feverish need communicated by his restless quest to familiarize himself with her body by touch. His palm glided over her bare midriff, cupped one breast, massaging it through her bra, then moved downward to tug at the waistband of her trousers. The pressure eased as he probed the intricacy of the closure and surpassed it, brushing his hand along her stomach and spearing his fingers through the thatch of hair on her mound.

Her belly quivered at his touch. Warmth and moisture burgeoned within her passage as he eased his fingers lower, delving into her cleft, finding the little bud that sent keen jolts of need through her.

After only a moment, he withdrew his hand. Hooking his thumb in her trousers, he peeled both trousers and panties from her hips and down her thighs. Abandoning that pursuit when he gained the limit of his reach, he deserted her lips for the tender skin of her throat, his heated breath and lips sending shivers of delight through her as he moved lower until he was nibbling at the edges of her breasts. Lifting one hand, he pushed her blouse and bra strap from her shoulder, scooping one breast from its cup and covering the tip with his mouth.

Kylee sucked in a sharp breath as she felt the heat of his mouth close around her engorged nipple and shards of pleasure sliced through her, making every muscle in her body go taut.

Reaching down, he pushed her clothing from her thighs to her knees. Anxious to feel his skin against her own, Kylee wiggled free of the restriction. He slid a hair roughened knee between her thighs. She widened them, offering him access to her body, wanting him to touch her as he had before.

Transferring his attention from one breast to the other, he pushed her shirt and bra strap from her other shoulder, pushing the cup beneath her breast and capturing the peak lightly between his teeth as he ran his palm downward, over her belly and settled his hand between her thighs.

Fettered by the restricting fabric of her blouse and bra, Kylee clutched at him as he delved into her cleft, digging her fingers into the flesh of his upper arm and arching upward as he teased her clit with his finger. Her belly clenched spasmodically with the acuteness of the shock wave of sensation that went through her. She dragged in a shuddering breath, panting as wave after wave rolled over her until she was so taut with need she felt like a mindless mass of raw nerve endings.

“Please,” she gasped desperately.

He lifted his head from her breast, nuzzling her neck as he settled between her thighs. “Gabriel,” he murmured, his voice harsh with need as he probed her body, entered her slowly and paused. “Say it.”

With an effort, Kylee unclenched her eyelids to look up at him. His face was taut, fierce with need and his struggle to control it. His wings were arched behind the golden halo of his long, flowing hair, dispelling any illusion of a coupling between an ordinary man and a woman. If anything the exotic aspect only made her heart pound harder with excitement. Her fingers tightened on his hard, bulging biceps. “Gabriel, please.”

As if he’d merely been waiting for her to acknowledge him, to refute any possibility that she was holding the image of another in her mind, he claimed her completely in a series of thrusting sorties that plowed past clinging, resistant flesh until he’d sunk his engorged member to her depths. He hesitated then for many moments, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his muscles trembling from tension. Sucking in a harsh breath, he caught her wrists, manacling them to the bed on either side of her head as he began to move rhythmically after a long struggle for mastery, as if he could no longer contain his need, as if his control had slipped beyond his grasp.

Wild jolts of exquisite sensation surged through her with each stroke and Kylee clenched her eyes to focus on the pleasurable tension that wound inside her. Digging her heels into the mattress, she rose to meet his driving thrusts, feeling the rise of pleasure magnified by the shift in position, feeling it intensify so rapidly that her struggles to catch her breath became sharp cries of need.

He began to shudder with his own imminent release. His rapid ascent to his pinnacle touched off an answering demand within her own body, bumping her up the scale until her body could contain the tension no more, culminating in a shattering eruption of bliss that made her cry out with the sharpness of it. Uttering a harsh growl of sound, he followed her over the edge, shaking with the force of it and finally sinking heavily against her as if the explosion had drained him of every ounce of strength he possessed.

Kylee dragged in a deep, shuddering breath, feeling perfectly limp with repletion. His weight crushed down upon her, even though he still supported some of the weight of his upper chest on his elbows. She found it surprisingly welcome for all that, relished the illusion of a lover’s intimacy, of being held tightly, possessively.

She had never experienced passion that had even come close to what she’d just felt. She wondered lazily if it would be like that again, or if it was only the circumstances surrounding the situation that had intensified it beyond anything she’d ever known.

She thought very likely that that was it.

She’d nearly been killed the night before. The need to reaffirm that life would go on as before had no doubt contributed to the explosive nature of her release—residual fear and tension from the night’s events sharpening the pleasure to a keen blade that had sliced through all other considerations—such as the fact that he was totally alien and unknown to her.

He roused slightly and began to nuzzle against her neck. “There is a man who claims you as his woman, Kylee?”

Surprise flickered through her and then amusement and irritation.

“Women do not belong to men here. If a man and woman care enough about each other to stay together, they belong to each other.”

He nipped at her neck with the edge of his teeth. “But there is no man?”

“If there were, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Good. Then I will not have to kill one to claim you,” he murmured, covering her mouth in a deep kiss before she could respond to that remark. She dismissed it as she felt him grow hard inside of her again.

He made love to her more slowly, building the tension lazily until it became a great conflagration no less intense than the feverish need he’d built in her before. In fact, as impossible as she would have thought it to so quickly and easily build a fire among the embers, he did so, and built it hotter than before.

Her second release was so powerful she was not only left weak in the aftermath, but drained of even the will to struggle to hang on to consciousness. She drifted off to never land wrapped in a fuzzy cocoon of expended bliss.

Gabriel was pacing the room when she awoke. As if he sensed her gaze on him, he turned and strode toward her. “I have dire need of my sword.”

Still disoriented from sleep, it took Kylee a minute to make any sense of his remark. As memory flooded back, embarrassment joined it. She looked down at herself, more than half hoping she’d dreamed the earlier events. No such luck. She was naked from the waist down. Her bra was still under her armpits, her blouse open and a crumpled mess, and the stickiness between her thighs left her in no doubt he’d made a deposit.

Good God! She hadn’t even had the presence of mind to use protection?

She didn’t especially want to think about that right now, particularly since he was looking her over like he was considering dessert. Grabbing a handful of sheet, she pulled it across her lap and then quickly adjusted her bra.

Something flickered in his eyes, but he seemed to dismiss it. “The sword?”

Kylee frowned thoughtfully. “Oh!” She looked at him guiltily. “I put it under the front seat of the car.”

Anger and frustration flickered across his features. “The vehicle you were in last night? It is not here.”

“Uh—that’s because it was towed to the police impound lot.”