It took him less than two minutes to make his way to her. The rays of the noon sun fell on her hair as she sat at a large desk, her wings flowing gracefully on either side of the chair back. She looked ethereal, a creature out of some other world.
Then she lifted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Are you attempting to smite me with your glare?”
Striding into the room, sure she’d sucked in a breath a moment before she spoke, he put his hands on his hips so she could more fully admire him. When she didn’t fall over at the sight of his masculine beauty, he scowled and looked around at all the bound volumes. “What, did my enemy write of his great exploits and heroic deeds?”
He hated that she looked so at ease here, in a place where he would rarely venture—he had a huge library in his citadel, but it was for his scholars and those others of his staff interested in scholarly pursuits. Titus knew he was intelligent, but he’d never been at home in the world of books and learning.
“You did know him well.” Sharine’s tone was dry. “Because yes, this is his history.”
Astonished, he took a second look around the room, noting the rows upon rows upon rows of volumes. In the end, his innate fairness had him giving a grudging nod of acknowledgment. “Charisemnon was a boil on the hind leg of a rabid feral pig, but he had determination, a certain kind of grit if he managed to keep this up for his entire lifetime.” He couldn’t help adding, “Pathetic that he then decided to spend his strength of will on manufacturing diseases.”
“I think I found something.” Whispers of sound, her wings settling, as she rose.
He turned and watched her walk toward him, a small woman made of light, but with a spine that was a steel rod. This woman wouldn’t bend except by her own will and she very definitely would not break. She stopped so close to him that their wings almost touched, and held out a journal opened at a specific section.
Wrenching his gaze away from the softness of her skin, and his attention from the heat of her body so dangerously near to his own, he looked down at the neat handwriting in the book. It looked familiar in a vague kind of way. “What’s the language?” He could speak a great many of them, but he had more knowledge of the spoken version than he did of their written forms.
“Oh, I apologize, Titus—I’ve been so deep into it for hours that I forgot it’s a highly specific tongue, spoken by those who grew up in an enclave on the Nile.”
Titus thought back, then spoke a line. “Is that it?”
An appreciative look on her face as she nodded. “Where did you learn it?”
He rolled his eyes at her. Her responding glare was very satisfying. Now she knew what he felt like. “That festering sore of an archangel was my enemy,” he said. “Of course I learned all the languages in which he might give orders in the field.”
He’d asked a warrior-scholar to track down an angel friendly to Titus who knew that obscure tongue, then he’d studied with that angel until he knew the language inside out. He’d also hired his teacher to decode any documents his spies picked up in the same language—Titus could read the language, but he was far slower at it than an expert.
“Sarcasm does not become you, my Lord Titus.”
He knew she’d used that address just to irritate him, so he said, “I am but your servant, my Lady Hummingbird.”
The two of them glared at one another, but below the aggravation was a fire that had the pulse in her throat skittering, and his cock beginning to harden. He and Sharine, they’d battle in bed together, too . . . and it’d be even more satisfying than this small battle.
He lifted his hand to run his fingers along the fine line of her jaw.
39
A cough from the doorway had him turning to face Kiama. Hands held crisply behind her back, she was looking anywhere but at the two of them as she said, “Sire, if you don’t need me, I’ll leave to take up my duties at the garrison—one of my people just went down with a wing injury.”
“Reborn?”
She nodded. “He spotted a lone one crawling away into the shadows of a tree, dropped to take it out—but a second one jumped out at him from a hiding spot. He wasn’t scratched or bitten, but his wing muscles need a day to heal.”
Titus nodded his permission to her request and told her to take along the angel who stood guard in the courtyard. He was here to watch over Sharine now. After Kiama’s departure, he turned to find Sharine looking down at the book again. Her long tail of hair had slipped to one side to reveal the slender line of her neck and the gentle slope of her shoulders.
No one looking at her would believe that she was made of titanium and had a temper hot enough to set the sky aflame. And still he tempted that temper by bending to press a kiss to the spot where her neck flowed into her back.
She shivered. “Titus.” No anger after all, and her eyes held an otherworldly glow when their gazes met.
Outside of a Cascade, only one thing was supposed to glow among angelkind—an archangel’s wings when he was about to release his deadly power. Yet her eyes held a light that wasn’t from the sun. He accepted that. She was Sharine, and Sharine made her own rules.
Today, she rose on her toes and he bent, and they met in between in a kiss that had him groaning, his hands gripping her hips. When he lifted her up, she wrapped her arms around his neck and met him lick for lick, taste for taste, her chest pressed to the damp plane of his. Heart booming and air no longer necessary, he crushed her close and kissed her like a man starving.
Her breasts were the perfect size for her body and they had nipples that pressed at him through her tunic until he wanted to tear off the tunic and suck hard, make them wet and slick. Shifting his hands to her lower curves, he bounced her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Groaning, he turned to sit her down on the desk . . . and reality hit.
“Not here,” he said, breaking the kiss, his breath rough and his chest rising and falling in a ragged rhythm. “Not in the home of my enemy.”
Sharine ran her hand over his jaw, the touch unexpectedly tender. “Agreed,” she said, then leaned in to kiss him one more time.
He didn’t want to release her when she began to unfold her legs, but he forced his grip to ease, though he kept his hands on her so she slid down his body. A smile was his reward, and he was gratified to see that her breathing was as jagged as his. Damp patches marred the light purple of her tunic.
“You make me feel young and reckless, Titus,” she said, and touched her lips to his chest before pulling away.
The spot where she’d kissed, it ached deep inside.
His response flat-out terrified him and he was man enough to admit it.
“What have you found?” he asked, his voice coming out rough with the weight of the emotions he didn’t want to feel.
“Let me read out Charisemnon’s own words—you tell me what you think it says.” She held up her hand when he would’ve spoken, his eyebrows lowered. “Stop glowering—I’m not testing you in some fashion.” Razored words that should’ve killed his arousal dead.
His cock hardened even further; clearly his body wasn’t interested in being rational. “Then what’s this about?”
Lips plump and pink from the passion of their kiss, she said, “I’m simply unsure if my emotions toward what Charisemnon did have colored my interpretation.”
“If you searched the world for the least objective person on the subject of Charisemnon, you’d find me,” Titus pointed out, hands on his hips. “He is lower than a cockroach in my estimation. At least a cockroach knows no better.”