Galen knew that. He also knew she was his to protect. “May I speak to you alone?”
“Illium, Aodhan.”
The two angels swept off the balcony at the quiet command, their wings making a brilliant show of shattered light and wild blue against the jagged stone of the gorge as they attempted to outfly each other.
“You court Jessamy,” Raphael said, his attention on Galen, the staggering power that ran through his veins a near-visible presence. “She understands the world as not many do, will recognize why you cannot remain in the Refuge at this time.”
Galen shook his head, determined to fight for this. “The flight to your territory is long and will require us to move at a steady pace.” Unlike Illium and Aodhan’s game, it would be about endurance. “A light passenger won’t slow us down.”
Raphael’s eyes darkened in surprise. “Jessamy does not leave the Refuge.”
“No.” Hands at his back, he gripped the wrist of one with the other. “Jessamy cannot leave the Refuge.”
The archangel’s motionlessness was nothing mortal, nothing even an ordinary angel could emulate. It was utterly and completely of himself. “You shame me, Galen,” he said at long last, the golden filaments in his wings catching the sunlight. “So many centuries have I known her, and not once have I ever asked if she would like to visit other lands.”
“Jessamy,” Galen said, “is not a woman who shares her innermost thoughts with the world.” It was a gift to be allowed to see beyond the gauzy, impenetrable veil of her composed grace.
Raphael gave him an oblique look. “And yet she shares them with you?”
“No, but she will.” Galen wasn’t budging, wasn’t ever changing his mind, and he wasn’t leaving her behind. “Illium says I have all the subtlety of a bear with a blunt club, but bears with clubs get results.”
Raphael laughed; however, his words were practical. “You’re the only one Jessamy has ever allowed to fly her as an adult, but if you can gain her cooperation, we can alternate. We leave with the next dawn.”
As Galen flew off the balcony not long afterward, the wind rippling through his hair, he thought of what he’d said to Raphael, considered every facet of it. Jessamy was a woman of secret passions and dreams, of hidden layers and intimate mysteries. He wondered if he would ever truly know her. The idea of always being on the outside made pain shoot down his clenched jaw, but regardless of his comment to Raphael, she was no enemy he could conquer with brute power. The campaign to win Jessamy must be a subtle thing.
Landing in front of the school, he saw the closed door and realized lessons must be over. He was readying himself to fly to the library when a tiny creature with sun-bright hair dropped down from the sky in a crooked dive. Catching her to stop her from crashing to the earth, he held her away from him with both hands around her waist, and scowled. “Your flight technique is faulty.”
Big brown eyes with lashes the same light shade as her curls stared at him. “You’re big, Jessamy’s angel.”
Jessamy’s angel.
Deciding he could handle the invasion of tiny creatures—because two more had managed to land around him—he put the girl on her feet beside her friends. “Why are you here? The school is closed.”
It was one of the boys who replied. “We’re allowed to play in the park.” He slid his hand into Galen’s in a trust that made something go hot and tight in his throat. Children were an unknown species to him—he’d spent his life with warriors, even when he was a babe himself.
“Will you play with us?” the girl asked, tipping her head back in an effort to meet his gaze… so far back that the weight of her wings toppled her over.
Reaching down, he tugged her up with one hand. “No, I think you all need a lesson in flight.”
So it was that he spent time he didn’t have drilling three excited babes who held his hands when it wasn’t their turn to fly, and who called him Jessamy’s angel. “I’m leaving the Refuge,” he told them afterward, for to disappear without warning would be to betray their trust. “And I’m taking Jessamy with me.”
Sadness blunted the shine in their bright eyes. The little girl’s lower lip wobbled. “Will you bring her back?”
Hunkered down before them, he gave a solemn nod, because he understood what he was asking. “Yes, but now it’s time for Jessamy to fly.”
Stalking into the library after the children assented that he could “borrow” Jessamy for a while, he felt the hush of the hall of learning attempt to cloak him. It snagged, tore. He was as out of place here as he would be in Jessamy’s bed, big brute that he was… but that mattered little. Not when she looked up from the book in which she was writing, the ink flowing gracefully across the page, and smiled. “There you are, devious man.”
Fisting his hand in her hair, he claimed a kiss, the contact a raw melding of mouths. “I have something to ask you,” he said, taking another sipping taste of her mouth as she spread her fingers against the sensitive inner surface of his wings.
“Hmm?”
He told her of the trip they’d be making, saw her passion-dazed expression skitter between dazzling joy, disbelief, and finally despair.
“It’s impossible,” she whispered at last. “The distance… even you can’t carry me that far.”
“I can carry you anywhere you want to go.” That was why he was so strong, so big—he’d been born for her. “But if there is need, Raphael requests you allow him to fly you, too.” Galen trusted the archangel—never would he put Jessamy’s life into the hands of a man he didn’t believe would fight to the death to protect that life.
Jessamy’s throat moved as she swallowed, her fingers motionless on his wing. “No one wants a malformed angel out in the world.” The statement was bleak, the rich brown of her eyes dull. “The mortals cannot see us as weak.”
He hated how she described herself, but he’d foreseen her concern, discussed the details of Raphael’s territory with the archangel. “There is a mortal settlement near Raphael’s tower,” he said. “But it’s at such a distance that they would need the sight of an eagle to glimpse you. No mortals work in the Tower itself, and there is significant open land around it, so you will not be trapped within.”
Jessamy’s response was a halting whisper. “I-I’ve become used to the Refuge, to the limits on my existence.” The elegant bones of her face cut against her skin as she angled her head in thought, her hair falling soft and luxuriant over her shoulder. Reaching out, he played with the strands, twining them around his finger as he would twine them around his fist when he had her beneath him.
No, he wasn’t the least civilized when it came to Jessamy. The wonder of it was, he was starting to believe she didn’t care.
Jessamy wanted to bask in the wild heat of the warrior who had invaded her sanctum. His thickly muscled thigh was close enough to touch, the warmth of his wing seductive under her palm, his feathers incongruously silken. Even the terrified joy she felt at the gift he’d laid before her didn’t squelch her piercing awareness of him, this weapon of a man who was somehow becoming hers.
“I can carry you anywhere you want to go.”
No one had ever offered her such freedom. No one had ever fought to show her the world. And she knew he must have fought. Because until Galen, no one had seen beyond the twisted wing and to the hunger within. The one thing she’d never ever factored into her decision to dance with him was that he’d take her with him when he left. Heart tearing wide-open, she looked up to catch him watching her, felt her stomach clench. But she didn’t shy. Instead, she moved the hand she had on his wing to the taut muscle of his thigh.
His body went rigid.
Skating her gaze over the primal hardness of him, she stroked once before rising… and moving between his legs. Cupping his face when he bent toward her, his hands on her hips, so large and warm, she initiated a kiss for the first time. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d imagined it might be, not with a partner so very enthusiastic that she found herself trapped between two muscular thighs while her breath was stolen from her.
It was exhilarating and petrifying and rather wonderful.
When Galen’s hand fisted in her gown, she knew she should stop him—the library was by no means deserted during the day—but she didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her br**sts to the heated iron of his chest, rubbing to assuage a sudden wild need. Galen’s groan was deep, his hand unclenching and fisting again in her skirts. “Is that a yes?”
Using her mouth to taste the thick line of his neck with the fascination of a woman who wanted to explore every tiny part of him, she drew the dark, unalterably male scent of him into her lungs. “Yes… and thank you.”
Galen went motionless, his hands closing over her arms to pull her away from his beautiful sculpture of a body.
“Galen?”
His jaw a brutal line, he said, “You understand you could be flying into war?”
For such freedom, she’d pay any price. “Yes.”
“We leave tomorrow morning.”
“The children—”
“You must know people who can step in to continue their education while you’re gone.”
“Of course. It’s their spirits I’m worried about.” It would be unbearable to reach for her dream knowing she’d left heartbroken children behind.
“Speak to the little creatures—something tells me they’ll understand.”
With that, he walked out of the library. No good-bye, no kiss. Arrogant, confusing barbarian of a man. One she was beginning to, quite simply, adore. “Bad temper, arrogance, and all.” Her laugh came from deep within, from the girl she’d once been.
That laughter reappeared again when she spoke to the children. The “little creatures” did indeed understand. Not only that, they admonished her to be careful of strangers and to make sure to send them a letter with every messenger. A hundred sweet, fierce hugs later, she walked down the pathway to her parents’ home… and though she tried so hard to hold on to it, the laughter faded.