I wormed again. I wasn’t questioning my choice, but god if he wasn’t making me fight for it, and in this moment, I was an absolute coward. “Silas…”
He softened his hold to pull away and watch my expression. Despite the black-and-white dominance of his command, his gilded eyes told a different story. There was thirst in them, yes, but there was also hope. I held his gaze for as long as I could until the hope became an unspoken plea—one that he wouldn’t let bleed into his expression, but one that sang from the deepest parts of him.
“I want you to stay,” I said. “I want…”
His fingers flexed against my back as he went stiff. He didn’t breathe.
I scrunched my eyes closed against the pain of vulnerability as I admitted my truth. “I’m no angel, either. You know who and what I am.” I opened my eyes and met his as I said, “I want you to take off my—”
Apparently, that was enough.
He was out of the pale fighting leathers in an instant. I didn’t have time to marvel at how different he looked without the battle attire before my arms were over my head, allowing him to take off my shirt in one deft motion. He moved over me, sending me to my back. His hand caught my head the moment before it bounced against the mattress. He slipped his hand from the back of my head to the back of my neck, forcing me to tilt my chin toward the ceiling as he dragged burning kisses over my throat, along my jaw, stopping just shy of my mouth. I inhaled him by the bucketful. Goose bumps ran over my entire body as frankincense and gold filled my lungs, my blood, my innermost being.
I wanted his tongue on mine. I arched for him to kiss me, but he slipped past my lips to leave a fiery trail of kisses down my collarbone, following my sternum, my belly, pausing just above the hem of my sweatpants. I lifted my hips as he settled back onto his knees to drag my pants off my waist, over my ass, down my thighs with aching slowness. They landed somewhere in the shadowy puddles of my bedroom with a soft sound as his mouth found my knee. My toes curled against the vibrations of his low groan of desire as warm air, soft lips, and gentle kisses crept from my knee to my inner thigh.
The forbidden rebellion of corrupting an angel tantalized and healed me all at once. I stared my churchgoing childhood in the eye and flipped it the middle finger as desire slicked between my legs. I was naked before an agent of Heaven, and I was not afraid. I’d never felt more empowered than I did bare beneath the enemy.
I was the motherfucking antichrist.
Silas’s pause was so complete that I almost panicked over whether he could hear my thoughts. I hadn’t realized I was panting in anticipation before he pulled himself up to look me in the eye once more.
“It’s not too late,” he said. “I want this, but if you’re having second thoughts—”
“Touch me,” I breathed.
“If you have even a single doubt—”
I grabbed him by the back of his head and yanked him to me. I kissed him as hard as I could, desperate for him to understand how healing this was for me. This was more than carnal want. This was better than friends with benefits, than one-night stands, than wasted years in club bathrooms and dating apps and short-lived human connections. This was taking back my power from the years I’d been threatened and tormented with verses and prayers and punishments. I needed this every bit as much as he wanted it.
He returned the kiss immediately, leaving me humming with his taste.
The kiss broke only so he could look into my eyes and watch my face as his tip teased my entrance. I tightened my hold on the back of his neck and gave the barest of nods before my sharp gasp was the only noise in the room.
I melted into his involuntary moan. I wrapped my legs around him to take every last inch. I bit down on the pulsing muscle that ran between his neck and shoulder, sinking my teeth into it as I groaned.
He held me against him as he flipped us, leaving me on top as the aggressor, me to set the pace, me to move my hips to say with every thrust: I want this, I want this, I want this.
The corner of my eye caught its effects before I was able to marvel it fully: He’d turned my skin into shimmering gold dust, as if his glitter was inside me.
Time was a pad of butter over hot bread as it soaked into the night, drenching us both in sweat and desire and spice. The glitter spread, every inch of me glowing in a very literal way as we shone, fused together by crushed gems and sunlight. He was relentless, thick, and rough. I held on for dear life, clawing, biting, struggling to keep hold as though I were riding a magnificent, glistening bull.
He sat up with me, our legs folded over one another.
“Move closer to the wall so I have something to holdon to,” I said.
“Hold on to me,” he replied.
He clutched me to his chest for dear life as we moved. I kept my legs wrapped around him as he took me to the brink and pushed me over. I knew from the hot pulse, the shared gasps and breaths and cries, the sticky wetness oozing from within me, and from the flooding scent of thieves’ oil that I wasn’t the only one who’d finished.
I didn’t see God when I came.
I saw an angel.
