He absorbed her, and she watched him register it, her face giving nothing away. She let him look.
He dropped his bag with a soft plop.
She stood at the foot of her bed in her amber-lit fortress with the owl watching them from the nightstand, and she looked at him, demanding he come to her.
“You have the power to make me beg,” he whispered, moving into her personal space.
“Maybe later.” She released a soft breath. “Flash…” she murmured. “Take it all off. I want to look at you.”
He registered the tone. She hadn't meant to make it sound like a plea. He reached for the hem of his shirt with both hands, pulling it up and over his head in one motion, dropping it to the floor.
* * *
She stopped breathing.
Her chakana was there.
It wasthere, geometric and ancient and bold against the right side of his ribs, the same cross she wore on the left side of her own ribs, the four-pointed cross her family had carried for untold centuries, inked on the body of a SEAL she had met in a Venezuelan jungle one year ago. At the center, framed in the cutout where the realms intersected, sat the trident. Black and sharp and forged into the heart of the cross.
The Quechua words ran down the side.Ukhupacha. Kaypacha. Hananpacha.Three realms. Three truths. The underworld. The middle world. The upper world. Past, present, and future. Water, earth, and sky. That last connotation hit her so hard, she made a sound she didn't recognize. Flash lived in those worlds, his very identity tied to earth, water, and air.
Before she had any coherent thought, she pulled her shirt over her head, standing in nothing but her pants and black lace bra. Her hand reached out before her brain had cleared the command. She pressed her palm against his chakana, against his skin, against the cross that shouldn’t have been on his hard, beautiful body, and the moment her skin touched the ink, her own chakana ignited.
Lit.Heat bloomed across her ribs where her ink sat, sharp and bright and rising, the cross on her side answering the cross on his side, the geometry recognizing itself across the space between them. She gasped. She didn't pull her hand back. She pressed harder.
His chest heaving, he gently held her wrist. His other hand came up and found the place on her own ribs where her chakana was, and his palm settled flat against her ink, andhisheat answered hers. She felt it through her bones. The crosses had found each other and were singing through both their skin at frequencies that shouldn’t have existed.
A raw, guttural sound tore from Flash’s throat, his head snapping back as the connection slammed into him. She felt it all, knew everything about his reaction. It wasn't just the heat of her touch, but a current, a live wire of recognition that surged from her palm through his ribs and straight to his cock. His entire body went rigid, his hips jerking forward in a helpless, instinctual thrust as his chakana blazed with a searing, golden light.
He fought for control against a pleasure so profound it bordered on pain. The spectral wings behind him flared wide, the feathers rustling with an audible whisper, a brilliant, terrifying display of the power coursing between them. He was looking at her now, his gray eyes wide and wild, dawning with an earth-shattering understanding. He wasn't just a man beingtouched by a woman he desired. He was the key fitted into the lock, and the universe was holding its breath for the twist.
She was overcome with his untamed desire, whiplashing through her, and she whispered, "Turn around.”
His wings spanned his back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, sweeping wide and arching down the back of his arms in the same configuration as hers. Larger. Scarred at the trailing edges, the feathers shaded with burn-texture, the wings of a fierce bird of prey that had flown through battle after battle for a nation that would stay free or die. War wings.
He’d done this because of her, for her, to honor her, to keep her close, and he never got a chance to ruin her with his mouth. She was already devastated. The placement, the sweep, the arch down the arms, the way the feathers traced the same muscle groups, the way both pairs were designed tomove, the way both pairs would lift if their owners ever truly flew, the geometry was identical.
She had inked her wings to meanI do what I have to do alone. He had inked his wings to meanI will carry you.
Two birds. Two predators. Two halves of the same flight.
She laid her palm flat against the center of his back, between the wings. His skin was hot under her hand, and his wingsliftedunderneath her palm. A pulse of motion that wasn't motion, a shimmer of intention, the wings answering her touch the way they'd been waiting to answer it for a year, for as long as her hand had been making its way toward this exact place on his body.
He cried out again, his breathing ragged and wrecked. Her body answered in a rush. Her breasts felt heavy and swollen, the lace of her bra suddenly an abrasive torment against her sensitive, pebbled nipples. A deep, insistent ache bloomed in her core, a liquid heat that pooled between her thighs. The needfor friction, for pressure, for anything to relieve the exquisite tension building inside her was overwhelming.
She reached behind her and unhooked her bra, then to the waistband of her pants. In one smooth motion, she pushed them down, along with her soaked panties, kicking them aside. Completely bare, buzzing with a need so potent it was almost painful, she pressed her aching body against him, the loneliness, the pain of wanting him over impossible distances barely assuaged.
The breath broke out of her in a sound that was almost a sob. "Jae."
8
Where she clasped him,his chest heaved, and he turned in her arms.
The soft light of the bedroom painted him in shades of gold and shadow as he stood before her, his shirt gone, his shoulders a landscape of muscle and old battles. When they touched the other’s chakana, the ancient cross of her fallen empire, the blood that thrummed in her own veins, the bridge between worlds, her skin tingled. Her eyes traced it and then moved higher to where the impossible became real.
Faint as heat shimmer, a pair of spectral wings rose from his back, the feathers a cascade of white and bronze, woven through with the impossible red and blue of a nation's flag. They weren't solid, but they were there, a manifestation of his soul, a star-spangled eagle riding the air above him. Awe, sharp and potent, pierced through her, followed by a wave of possessive heat so intense it made her dizzy.
Her hands rose with reverence. One palm pressed flat against the hard planes of his chest, the other lower, her thumb brushing the chakana, then the trident. He had woven his brotherhood straight into the heart of her ancestry.
