“Hmm. . .”
“Faster?Slower?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never . . . no one’s ever . . . touched my wings.” A soft whimper escaped my lips. I tried to muffle it against his skin, but considering how he seemed to grow a whole foot taller, I imagined he’d caught thesound.
He trailed his palm leisurely, and even though it was the sweetest form of torture, I growled, “Faster.”
A slow chuckle rumbled through his chest. For a long second, I didn’t think he’d listen to me, but his strokes sped up and pressure built inside my body and sizzled against my skin, and my heart . . . my heart distended, as though trying to break free from my rib cage to penetrateJarod’s.
I panted against his neck, then alternately nipped the taut flesh and moaned against it, rendering his breathing as patchy as myown.
The world suddenly stilled, then exploded. The floor, the ceiling, and the walls of Jarod’s house fell away. Only glittery starlight and my dark sinnerremained.
Jarod’s fingers came to rest on my hip, supporting me as the sparkle faded and the study’s walls closed back around us. Then he pressed his lips to my temple, stamping their shape into myskin.
A long,longtime later, he murmured, “Lie to me,Feather.”
“Wh-what?” I stuttered back toreality.
“Lie tome.”
I pulled away fromhim.
“How many feathers did I make you lose? Three,four?”
My eyeswidened.
“How many do you still need toearn?”
The fog of my orgasm—or was there another name for what I’d just experienced?—cleared. “Eighty-six. Ithink.”
“Lie to me twenty times,” he said, cradling my face between his palms. “I know it’ll hurt, but speak them so that if Asher lowers my score tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, it doesn’t rip you from my arms.” He touched his mouth to my parted lips. “Please. . .”
My chest cracked right open. “I hated the feel of your hands on mywings.”
My wing bones tensed, and then a feather drifted down like a clump of dawn-litsnow.
“Again,” Jarod said. “Please, baby,again.”
I told him how I’d hated kissinghim.
I told him how I thought he was as ugly on the outside as he was on theinside.
I told him so many lies that when I was done, a sparkling silver heap littered his rug, and my cheeks were wet from my pain and hiskisses.
Chapter 37
Poundingon the door made us springapart.
After I’d spoken twenty lies, perhaps more, enough to satisfy Jarod that I wouldn’t be stolen from his world, he’d led me to one of the armchairs. I’d magicked my aching wings away as he’d slid me onto his lap and embraced me with arms that felt like steelbands.
“Jarod!” Tristan’s voice made me blink my gummy lidsopen.
Jarod stroked my cheek with his longfingers.
“I know you’re in there,” Tristansaid.
“He’s going to tear down my door if I don’t let him in,” he muttered. “But if you don’t want to seehim—”
