Familiar Angel Read online

  Suriel finished the rune he was working on and moved his fingertips to the contours of Harry’s jaw. “You’re so wise,” he said, his mouth pulled up in a faint smile. “How did you get to be this wise?”

  “I’ve lived two lifetimes—I’d like to hope I’ve learned something.” Harry’s heart was sliding into melancholy. “How long will you be gone?”

  “A year? A hundred? I have no idea.” And then, as though he doubted. “You’ll wait for me?”

  Harry’s laugh held no humor. He turned his head and sucked Suriel’s thumb into his mouth so his damned angel would stop casting spells long enough to hear him. “I’ve waited this long, haven’t I?” he demanded upon Suriel’s gasp.

  “You were not chaste the entire time,” Suriel said primly.

  “I wasn’t falling in love,” Harry retorted.

  Even the air seemed to stop moving.

  “You’re in love with me.” Suriel’s voice held nothing but the deepest satisfaction.

  “I’ve said that already.”

  “Probably—but I’m savoring the moment. It’s joyous.”

  At once, Harry felt urgency. He scooted up and captured Suriel’s mouth. Their blood heated, their movements grew frantic, and this time was rushed, a frantic rutting into each other’s hands, a need to hold the other one as long as possible until pleasure exploded for them both.

  This time sleep took them while the spend was still cooling on their fingers.

  Suriel woke up, sometime near dawn, and snuggled up to Harry’s back, pressing his erection between his thighs.

  A fumbling for the lubricant, and again.

  When they woke up in the morning, Harry was marked by his lover, inside and out, and even Suriel’s half-hooded gaze at breakfast was sultry and possessive.

  Harry served him pancakes, just to watch him delight in the strawberry preserves Emma had stocked in the refrigerator, and Suriel seemed very happy to indulge in human food some more. But as they were sitting at the table, talking about preserves and how to keep summer in a glass jar to break open again for winter, Suriel turned that hooded, sultry gaze on Harry while he was talking.

  Harry licked his lips nervously, and he didn’t remember much after that, except Suriel had to bear him up in the shower as they rinsed preserves and whipped cream off their bodies, and his backside was getting sore.

  But Suriel kissed his neck in the shower, and his heart sped up and…

  And again.

  Finally, in the afternoon, Harry chivvied Suriel out the door and into his cat form so he could spend some unmolested minutes talking to his family on the phone. Suriel went, his tail twitching, his whiskers in a dither, and Harry knew he’d better hurry up with his phone call before they ended up in bed.

  “Harry!” Edward sounded out of breath and distracted—but not too distracted to give Harry a ration of crap. “You sore yet?”

  “Yes, you buggering asshole. What’s it to you?”

  Edward’s deep chuckle of satisfaction was wholly concentrated on Harry’s happiness. “You should try topping sometime, Harry. Isn’t that how you usually like it?”

  Harry groaned. “You are horrible, and I regret everything I ever told you in confidence. How is the search for Anya? Have we found her yet? Do we know what happened?”

  “Not good,” Edward told him, suddenly serious. “She was targeted by someone who’d been studying her habits. We asked, and Krista was supposed to be at the party too. Emma did some snooping around Krista’s friends, and it turned out she’d had someone looking into her background too.”

  “Oh shit. A girl only gets abducted once in her life, right?”

  “Unless it’s the gift that keeps on giving,” Edward agreed grimly. “Yeah, we think this has to do with their first abduction—almost payback for getting away in Vegas.”

  Harry’s heart sank. Too many god-awful things attached to that trip to Vegas. He thought getting nearly beaten to death was the worst part, but hearing Big Cass had been there made that so much more special. That Cass’s outfit was back in the lives of the girls who had gotten away—that was bad news indeed.

  “So, you didn’t happen to ask Krista if she remembered one of her captors, did you?”

  “Yeah.” Edward’s shudder was audible. “She remembers him, Harry. Big and bad and large as life. Now the good news is, if they want to use Anya again, they’re going to have to treat her right. She’s old enough, she’s got to be prettied up before they can sell her, and that will buy her some time. The bad news—”

  “Is if they got her for another reason, they’ve had her for a week.” Harry’s heart ached in his chest. “Suriel and I can be down there in eight hours,” he said. “There’s no reason the two of us can’t come and help—this is getting urg—”

  “No reason?” Edward yelped indignantly. “No reason? You’re on your honeymoon, man. This could be the closest thing you get to Happy Ever After.”

  Harry made an injured sound he couldn’t quite help. “He’s going to get pulled away,” he confessed, not sure if Edward had understood this would happen, even under the best-case scenario. “We don’t know when. But he’ll disappear and I’ll just have to wait for him, and in the meantime, we can’t call him or know he’s out there or—”

  “Or if he’s coming back,” Edward finished for him. “I get it, Harry. Look—Emma told me she’s got a boomerang on you—”

  “Seriously?” Oh Lord, that took some doing, and it was totally in Emma’s wheelhouse. “When does she get good at these things?”

  “I swear she practices in her head when she’s painting. It’s sort of irritating, actually—I could practice for a year and not be as good as she is after a month of getting ready for a show. But she’s got a boomerang on you, and if we need you, we’ll pull you. Now does that put you at ease?”

  Harry thought of it, of the likelihood of getting pulled into a gunfight naked with a full erection, completely concentrating on a whole other activity.

  “Not exactly.”

  Edward guffawed. “Well, maybe put your boxers on while you sleep, and at least you know you’ll be covered then.”

  “Has anyone told you that you have a miserable fucking sense of humor?” Harry asked sourly, and Edward laughed again.

  “Only you, at least six times a year. Just be aware, okay? We’ll call you. But otherwise….” Edward’s voice softened. “Take the time, my brother. You love him. There’s no sin in celebrating that. Don’t talk to me about duty either. You go above and beyond ninety-nine percent of the time. This is a tiny karmic window to feed your soul. It’s necessary.”

  “I just don’t—”

  “I know you don’t. Now shut up and go top. I’m sure he’ll love it. Later.”

  The line clicked dead, and Harry growled and put his phone back on the charger.

  Then he turned cat and ran out the door, wondering if Suriel felt like swimming again.

  Fighting Naked

  TWO DAYS passed. Three. Four.

  Harry managed to forget the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, ready to separate him from his lover without notice, and managed to simply enjoy.

  They cooked, they talked, they made love. Harry spent the time in a sort of delirium of arousal and ecstasy, and he could never remember how. Not how they made love—he remembered every moment of Suriel’s skin sliding over his, of Suriel’s body inside him—but how he managed to table his nagging worry for his family, his terror of Big Cass, his vast, aching fear that when Suriel disappeared Harry would be nothing, a fraud, the brittle exoskeleton of a fiercely armored creature.

  Those fears he put away in a neat little box, and for those charmed days with Suriel, he was whole, unfettered, unafraid.

  He cooked every meal, watched Suriel for his favorites, taking careful notes for Suriel’s return. When Suriel found out what he was doing, the sunrise smile on his face made Harry’s chest ache.

  “What?” he asked, turning the fried chicken breast and keeping his
face averted so Suriel couldn’t see his flush. “Why that smile?”

  “Hope, Harry! You’re daring to hope.”

  Harry busied himself with the other three chicken pieces. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  Suriel moved behind him, mindful that Harry was busy with something relatively dangerous.

  “No,” he whispered, moving his lips along Harry’s nape. “It just gives me faith that I’ll return. You understand, don’t you?”

  Harry nodded and turned the last piece of chicken. “If I believe you can do it, you believe,” he said dutifully. A child’s lesson, perhaps—but he hadn’t known it, felt it in his heart until just this moment. He poked at the chicken one more time, decided it was mostly done, and turned off the heat.

  Then turned in Suriel’s arms and captured his mouth.

  “I thought we were going to eat?” Suriel teased as Harry backed him across the kitchen and to the bed.

  “That’s not what you thought.” Harry chuckled, scraping his teeth across Suriel’s bare chest.

  “No.” Suriel hissed in a breath as Harry captured his nipple, throwing his head back and gasping.

  “You thought you were going to bugger me raw again.”

  Suriel sank onto the bed, and Harry fell to his knees before him. With a quick shucking motion, he had the cargo shorts Suriel had been wearing pulled down off his thighs and had taken that lovely fine cock into his mouth, swallowing until he could feel it in the back of his throat.

  Suriel bucked, and Harry kept pressure, enjoying Suriel’s fingers tugging at his hair. “Are you getting tired of the buggering?” he asked, and Harry tugged gently at his testicles in answer. He slurped his way back and grinned over Suriel’s nude body, noticing the wings spread out behind him.

  “I am not,” he answered, nuzzling the inside of Suriel’s thigh. When they’d first made love, he’d been nearly hairless, and what had grown was downy and without color. Now the hair on his legs was pale flame-gold and fine—but definitely masculine, the detail of a mammal coming into his skin.

  Harry lowered his head and pulled one newly furred testicle into his mouth and laved it gently before releasing it and moving to the other.

  “You know,” Suriel breathed, “you could always… ahh… bugger me!”

  Harry chuckled and slid his palms from Suriel’s backside up to the crook of his knees, spreading his legs. “I thought of that,” he murmured, letting his lips and tongue tease the head of his cock. “I did.” He parted Suriel’s cheeks and licked a straight line down his crease, pausing to breathe on the sensitive pucker of flesh.

  “So something is holding you back?”

  Harry laughed, goaded by the outraged, frustrated ring of Suriel’s voice. “I’m torn,” he said before lapping delicately and then tapping with his fingertip. The muscles under his hands thrummed with self-restraint, and Suriel tugged on his hair in desperation. Suriel’s entire position, sprawled, wanton, begging for carnality, sent waves of desire pulsing straight to Harry’s groin.

  “Torn between what?” Suriel demanded. Harry answered him with another lick, and Suriel’s groan shook the bed. “Harry!”

  Harry licked a tight buttock. “Torn between wanting to save it, so you have something to come back and learn about being human….” He sucked on his finger, getting it sloppy, and played with Suriel’s entrance.

  “And?” Suriel begged.

  “And….” Harry taunted, sucking the head of Suriel’s cock into his mouth again and teasing with his tongue while thrusting his finger in slowly and pulling it back.

  “Harry!” Suriel gasped, hands pounding the bed on either side of him.

  Harry pulled back, sucking hard, so Suriel’s flesh made a popping sound when it pulled free of Harry’s lips. “And getting buggered now,” he whispered. “And I’ll make love to you so sweet, it’ll feel so good, you’ll have no choice but to make it back to live by my side.”

  “That one. Oh please…. Harry, that one!”

  Suriel fumbled with the small plastic bottle, and Harry took it, locking his fingers around Suriel’s tightly for a moment. He pushed up so they could look each other in the eyes, but he didn’t pull his finger from the tight grip of Suriel’s body.

  “You sure?” he asked, feeling wicked and noble, both great emotions in the same breast.

  “Please, Harry.” Suriel closed his eyes and arched his back, his whole body aroused beyond endurance by the easiest, simplest penetration. The spasm of arousal passed, and he gazed at Harry with limpid eyes. “I want to take you with me, inside my flesh, like you are in my heart.”

  Ah, animal needs—they would be Harry’s undoing. He pulled from Suriel’s body and stripped, using another copious dose of lubricant before positioning himself.

  “You ready, then?” he asked, poised too far back to lean over and reassure him with kisses. But this wasn’t that kind of lovemaking, was it? This was the gift of possession, and it needed care at the first.

  Suriel gazed at him, helpless, vulnerable, needy.

  “I have faith in you,” he said, a faint smile pulling at the corners of his full, wide mouth. “You give me such pleasure every day… ahhhhh….”

  Harry slid inside him, slowly, surely, feeling the resistance, waiting, receding, rocking forward again. Suriel greeted every rock back with a soft cry of protest, every rock forward with a grunt of welcome.

  And Suriel’s grip around Harry’s body—oh! Exquisite. Harry kept thrusting, a clammy sweat breaking out over his back as he thought of hurting Suriel with this act, of even once, even a little, giving Suriel reason to regret what he’d just given to Harry, a lowly mortal who had been in the wrong place at the right time.

  Suriel arched his back with acceptance and wrapped his long legs around Harry’s thighs. Harry—deeply entrenched in his lover’s body now—fell forward, weight on his elbows. Suriel grabbed a pillow and shoved it under his hips, giving them both a better angle.

  “Ooooohhh….”

  “It’s good,” Suriel panted. “Sooooo good. I’m full of you, Harry. As full in my body as I’ve been in my heart. Don’t leave me… not now.”

  “No,” Harry whispered, pulling back just enough to thrust forward. “If I’m torn away from you, it’s not because I wanted to go.”

  Suriel groaned as Harry bottomed out. “Not your body, your heart. Never leave me in your heart.”

  Harry thrust again. “Never.”

  “Never leave me in your heart.”

  Oh! Suriel! “As if I could,” Harry sobbed, thrusting again.

  “Promise, Harry!” Suriel cried. “I’m so scared!”

  “Never!” Harry pounded again, heartsore at the admission from his angel. “Always by your side.”

  “Please!”

  “Always!”

  “Harry!”

  He was scared. Harry leaned forward, keeping their bodies locked together, and kissed him, kissed away his fear, kissed away his desperation. His hips kept moving, their rhythm hard and exacting but not furious. He wanted Suriel raised up, up, up into the realms of pleasure before he came apart.

  Suriel arched into the kiss, taking Harry’s body into his own, starving with need. There were no words then, only the slap of their bodies, the harshness of their breathing, the whimpers of craving from Suriel’s throat.

  “Ahh!” Suriel broke away from him, shaking, undone, and Harry pushed up on one arm so he could slide a hand between them and grip Suriel’s cock, stroking hard and without mercy. Suriel bucked, crying out, his muscles rippling in completion. Then and only then, as his come scalded over Harry’s fist, landing hot and slick between them, did Harry let his vision go white, go dark, red-and-gold fireworks exploding behind his tightly clenched eyes.

  His heart thundered so loud in his ears he almost couldn’t hear Suriel gasping his name.

  But only almost.

  “Suriel,” he whispered, dragging his lips across Suriel’s chin, down his neck, over his shoulder. “Suriel. My brave an
gel.”

  “Harry,” Suriel whispered back. “Brave Harry. My boy.”

  “Carry me with you,” Harry murmured into his ear. “Carry my seed, my love. Carry all of me with you. While there’s breath in my body, I’ll always believe in your love.”

  Even in the shadows of nightfall, Harry could see diamond tracks of helpless tears.

  “Do you think less of me?” Suriel asked, gazing at Harry anxiously.

  “To know you’re afraid?” Harry licked the path of a teardrop, shivering in the joy of the salt. “No.”

  “No?”

  “It makes me know you care about the outcome,” Harry told him, giving him a quick kiss. “It makes me know this is important to you. That this is real.”

  Suriel wrapped his arms tightly around Harry’s shoulders then, and Harry allowed himself to collapse, sliding from the sanctuary of Suriel’s body in favor of lying on top of him, all the skin touching all the skin.

  “We are real. We are the only thing that is real. The place I’m going, the tests I’ll be given, you and me, this moment here—this is the real I need to come back to.”

  Harry managed to chuckle in spite of the ache in his chest, the harsh reminder that these charmed days were not for lasting. “You’re sure it’s not the chicken?” he teased.

  Suriel nodded and smiled. “Although I do have an appetite now.”

  Harry smiled again and rested his head on Suriel’s shoulder. They would eventually get up and make ready to eat, but for now they were hungrier for the reassurance that these days, these moments of heaven in each other’s arms, might not have been in vain.

  That night, Harry lay in bed trying to memorize the contours of Suriel’s face in the moonlight. He lay, replete and sated, eyes closed, mouth parted, a faint smile on his face, while Harry stroked his chest randomly, tired but not wanting to fall asleep, not just yet.

  “Do you like what you see?” Suriel murmured, keeping his eyes closed.