“Tell me,” Mila whispered, running a hand through my hair.
I tipped my head up, propping my chin on her lap. “Tell you what?”
“Everything.” Her hand trailed along my shoulder, stopping where my tunic covered the ends of the lash scars. “Did he…”
“No,” I rushed, and relief flickered through her gaze, but her eyes bounced between my own. She could tell there was more. Some sort of fundamental change I’d undergone. It was in the way my skin wrapped around my fucking bones, like a new armor had been forged. “He manipulated Ophelia. Drugged her. Poisoned her. Something.” Fire scorched Mila’s stare. “And when she was under his influence, he made her try to turnmeinto a seraph.”
Her fingers knotted in my hair, her voice like ice. “How?”
“With the myth magic. He thinks she’ll be able to turn any warrior into a seraph if she tries hard enough.” I left out the details of how it wrenched me apart, burned me from the inside out, and ignited a need to see the god dead. I’d tell her everything eventually—would have to tell the entire group—but right now…
I skimmed my hands up her thighs to her hips. Her skin was warm—alive, unlike the memories I had of her unconscious in the Gates of Angeldust. She felt so good beneath my palms, and every second I spent touching her made me desperate for more. To finally let my guard down after weeks.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said. Her tongue darted out, dragging across her bottom lip, and my entire existence narrowed to that motion. Mourning was thick in her stare, in her voice, deeper than usual, like it had been dragged through nights of tears and grief. “Not yet.”
I swallowed the pain flooding those words, understanding she meant she wasn’t ready to talk about her weeks either. The fact that I hadn’t been here to take care of her after she lost Lyria sealed an already deeply bruised desire for retribution against Echnid. I would take that god to the Spirit Realm.
“Later, I want to know everything that’s happened since I’ve been gone,” I clarified, gripping the hem of her silk robe like my life depended on it.
Mila nodded, and then, we both exploded. As if all those weeks I’d been locking away how desperately I both needed to feel her and simply needed her to be okay now overflowed and poured between us.
My lips met hers, and where her kiss in the dunes had saidhelloandI missed youthis wasI was drowning without you.
Images of the Gates of Angeldust and her body coming out of that water, limp and weighed down, flashed through my mind, and a groan worked up my throat. I pressed up, not breaking the kiss, and leaned forward until Mila was flat on the bed. Until my hips were pressing between hers and the hard length of my cock ground against her center.
Mila gasped at the contact, her head tilting back. I dragged one hand down her chest, pulling open her robe, and?—
“White fucking lace,” I said, low and guttural.
Mila laughed. It was her favorite. My favorite, too. I had dreams about that pale fabric against her skin, her scars and body on full display. Mine to worship.
“You chose a good day to return to me, Warrior Prince,” she panted as I kneeled and removed the robe so nothing but her and white lace looked up at me. “I was ready for you.”
Kissing down her chest and stomach, I cupped between her legs. “Seems like you’re always ready for me.”
Pushing aside her undergarments, I dragged two fingers up her center, lightly circling her clit. Mila’s back arched as shemoaned my name, eyes dropping closed and head tipped back. That sound made me ache for her.
She squirmed as I slowly pushed one finger in, having to focus really fucking hard on not letting go too early. Because it wouldn’t take much—not with how she looked beneath me—but after these weeks, I was desperate for all of her.
“You’re a fucking dream, Mila,” I praised as I pumped my fingers faster and circled her clit with my thumb. “All I dreamed of when I was gone. I don’t know what I’ve done in this life to deserve you.”
Not only to be gifted her once, but to get to come back to her? To have this safe landing place after so much unimaginable horror? I didn’t deserve any of it.
Mila writhed against my hand, begging as I worked her to that ledge and repeated how much I missed her.Needed her. If everything I’d been through—the treaty, imprisonment, Titus’s torture, and Echnid—was the dark, choking midnight, then Mila was the dawn on the horizon. The one you feared you wouldn’t see when the night was thickest but dared to hope for. The one that allowed you to breathe again.
Only after she’d come once on my fingers did I stand and strip off my leathers, peel the white lace down her thighs. Mila watched with lust-drunk eyes and kiss-swollen lips, admiring every inch of me in a way I definitely didn’t deserve, but a way I was going to savor all the same.
I crawled over her, fisting my cock and lining it up with her slick entrance. Mila traced my scars and tattoo, her eyes pausing on the North Star.
“Mila,” I said, soft and vulnerable. When she looked back up at me, I pushed into her an inch. She gasped, and I swallowed it with a kiss, growling against her lips. “That tattoo is no more than silent ink. You are who I want my soul bound to.”
And I sheathed myself inside her. She cried out as my pelvis bottomed out, clinging to me. She was warm and tight and fuck if she wasn’t the greatest feeling on Ambrisk. Made just for me, for us to fit together like two fucked up, scarred puzzle pieces whose broken edges couldn’t be met with anyone else’s.
I pulled my hips back and snapped forward, punctuating my next words. “You and I are meant for every damn tomorrow, Mila Lovall. I love you, and there is no me without you—not the me I am now or the man I am meant to become. You make me whole in every way.”
She paused, those three words I’d never gotten a chance to say sinking in. Then, Mila tightened her legs around my waist, and with a vicious smile, she flipped us. I settled into the overstuffed comforter with a laugh.
A laugh that disappeared into a groan as Mila sank down. She rolled her hips, and with eyes locked on mine, she looked better than any damn Angel.
