“They’re smaller . . . softer.” I thought of all the feathers I’d earned over the years, of how I’d relished stroking the untainted down. A shudder passed through me at the memory, and it made the silken barbs sway, tickling my bare shoulders and the backs of myarms.
“I can’t see, Feather,” he said, which made hope spring through me. But then, I understood he couldn’t see because my wings were tucked in too tight. “Stretch themout.”
My wing bones felt made of rusty steel instead of celestial magic. As I extended the web of sinew and cartilage, a bead of cold sweat formed on the nape of myneck.
Jarodpaled.
The bead rolled down my spine, tunneling between my contracted shoulder blades. “Are they—do you see something?” I finally twisted my neck as far as it would turn. When that didn’t help, I curled my wings until their outer edges touched in front ofme.
Jarod stepped back, and I wasn’t sure if he’d added the space because he was horrified or needed some distance to examine them. I traced the outermost fringe, Jarod’s keen eyes shadowing my fingertips’ path. I didn’t think my heart had thumped once since I’d made my wings appear. When I’d probed every rachis and vane, I shook myhead.
His eyebrows lurched up. “No?”
I kept shaking my head. All at once, blood gorged my veins, air expanded my lungs, and my heart revved up. The lump in my throat took more time to recede, but once it did, I managed to croak, “No.”
Color slowly leached back into Jarod’s face. “No?” he repeated, as though he hadn’t heardme.
Before I realized what I was doing, I took his hand and ran it over the rim of my right wing. “You see? No fluffyones.”
He sucked in a breath, which he held until I towed his fingers away from my feathers and released hiswrist.
“I’msorry.”
“For what,Feather?”
“For having made you . . .touchthem. I know how much you loathethem.”
A beat passed. “I do loathe them, but for an entirely different reason tonight.” He reached up and glided his palm over the silver vanes. When his hand curved and stroked the underside, a full body shudder went through me. “Tonight, I hate them because they could take you away fromme.”
I gasped at hisconfession.
“Tonight, I hate them because they’re the fucking most beautiful things I’ve ever laid eyes on, and yet I have this violent urge to cleave them from your body.” He glided his hand back up with a gentleness that didn’t match the tone of his voice or the fire in his eyes. When he stroked his way back down, and my teeth knocked together from the pleasure that shot through the barbed shafts, he snatched his handback.
“Am I hurting you?” Genuine worry crimped hisfeatures.
“No, Jarod. You’re not hurtingme.”
“Then why—why did your bodyshake?”
I smiled at how innocent he suddenly looked, like a boy who’d never touched someone else’s flesh. How I wished that were the case. Just the way he kissed told me I wasn’t the first woman he’d used his lips on. Before the thought could fill me with jealousy, I pushed itaway.
Far.Away.
“How about you take a wild guess?” I said. “You’re good atguessing.”
His pupils eclipsed his irises, and then both his hands flexed open and settled with no restraint on the underside of mywings.
I gasped from the almost brutal impact and shivered so hard Jarod banded one arm around my waist and dropped the other away from my body. “No pain. Ipromise.”
He searched myeyes.
I let my head loll against his neck and asked something of him that would surely cost me a feather. “Again. Do itagain.”
I heard him swallow. Without removing his arm from my waist, he lifted his other hand and drew it achingly slowly over the downy curve. My spine spasmed as a bolt of pleasure electrified the web of cartilage holding my feathers together. I understood then why it was forbidden to touch another angel’s wings without theirconsent.
I nestled my head into the crook of Jarod’s neck as he tracked his fingers slowly up and then back down. My knees softened until all that was holding me up was his rigid arm. I moaned against his neck, inhaling hisscent.
“Feather?”
