Page 12 of Angel's Promise
I was scared. I could admit that now, here, in this place where admitting it didn't mean being alone with it. But the fear had shifted. I wasn't scared for myself anymore, not really. I was scared for him. For what he would do to protect me and what it might cost him. I'd seen the way the compound moved when there was a threat, the quiet efficiency of men who'd trained for exactly this, and I understood now that these men would put themselves between me and danger without hesitation. Because Angel had told them to and because I was his to keep safe.
That word.His.It should have bothered me. A week ago, it would have. But nothing about Angel felt like ownership. It felt like a man planting himself between me and the world and sayingyou'll have to come through me.It felt like safety in theshape of a person. It felt like the opposite of everything I'd been running from.
That night, I couldn't sit still. The compound was locked down, the brothers on rotation, the road watched. Everything that could be done was being done and I was useless in the middle of it, vibrating with fear, adrenaline and something else, something hotter, something that had been building all day every time Angel moved through a room and I felt the controlled violence running under his skin.
He found me in his room. I'd gone there without thinking about it, without making a conscious decision. My feet had just carried me there because his room was where I felt safest and I was done pretending otherwise.
He came through the door and saw me sitting on the edge of his bed and stopped. For a second, he just looked at me. I looked back, and something passed between us that was bigger than words, heavier, the accumulated weight of a week of fear, a day of threat and the knowledge that the world outside these walls wanted to tear us apart.
I stood up. Crossed the room to him. Put my hands flat on his chest and felt his heartbeat under my palms, steady, strong, the heartbeat of a man who was not afraid of what was coming.
"Be here with me," I said. "Tonight. Just be here."
He kissed me.
It was different from previous times. The tenderness was still there, somewhere underneath, but something else had taken the front. He kissed me hard, his hand in my hair, tilting my head back, his mouth hot and demanding on mine. I could feel the tension of the day in the way he held me, the fear he'd been carrying for hours channelled into the press of his body against mine, the grip of his fingers, the way he kissed me like he was trying to convince himself I was real and solid and here.
I grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head. My hands ran across his chest, his stomach, the ridges of muscle and scars that mapped a life I was only beginning to understand. He was so warm. The heat of his skin under my fingers made something in my belly tighten, low and insistent, and when I pressed my mouth to the center of his chest and felt his breath catch, the power of it shot through me.
He undressed me fast. Faster than last time. His hands weren't tentative now. They were sure, deliberate, a man who knew exactly what he wanted and was done waiting for it. My shirt went first, then my bra, his fingers working the clasp without fumbling because this was a man who knew his way around a woman's body and the confidence of that, the certainty in his hands, made my skin feel like it was on fire.
He pulled me against him, chest to chest, and the contact of bare skin was electric. I could feel every inch of him, the hard planes of muscle against my breasts, the heat radiating off him, his hands spread wide across my back, holding me so close I could feel his heartbeat against mine.
He walked me backward to the bed. I sat, then lay back, and he followed me down. The weight of him over me, pressing me into the mattress, his hips between my thighs. I could feel him, hard against me through the denim, and the pressure of it made me arch up into him, instinctive, wanting.
"Off," I said, pulling at his belt. "I want these off."
Something shifted in his face. A look that was all heat and intent, a look that made me feel like I was the only thing in his world. He stood long enough to strip off the rest of his clothes and mine, and when he came back down over me, skin against skin, the full length of him pressed against me, I made a sound that I'd have been embarrassed about if I could think clearly enough to feel embarrassment.
He kissed down my throat. Slower now, taking his time even though every muscle in his body was taut with urgency. His mouth was hot on my collarbone, my shoulder, the curve of my breast. He took my nipple into his mouth and I gasped, my back arching, my fingers threading into his hair and holding him there. The sensation was sharp and sweet and it radiated outward, down through my belly, between my thighs, gathering heat.
His mouth moved lower. Across my ribs, down my stomach. I wanted it, wanted his mouth everywhere, but more than that I wantedhim.All of him. The weight and the heat and the fullness of him inside me.
"Angel." His name came out rough. "I want you. Now. Please, I don't want to wait."
He came back up my body, settled between my thighs, and the sight of him, hard and thick and wanting me, made my breath stutter.
He braced himself over me. One hand planted by my head, the other gripping my hip, angling me up toward him. His eyes locked on mine. Dark, intense, burning with something nobody had ever directed at me before.
He pushed into me.
My head fell back against the pillow. The stretch of him, the slow, relentless press of him filling me, was overwhelming. He was big and I felt every inch of it, the way my body opened for him, the way he held himself back, controlled, giving me time to adjust even though I could feel the restraint costing him, could see it in the cords of his neck and the flex of his jaw.
"Okay?" he asked. His voice was wrecked. Low and rough and barely held together.
I didn’t answer with words, and instead pulled him down and kissed him, sloppy and desperate, and I rolled my hips up to take him deeper and we both groaned into each other's mouths.
He moved. And the first real thrust drove every coherent thought out of my head.
He didn't hold back. The tenderness of last time had given way to something rawer, more urgent, driven by the threat outside and the fear of losing this and the desperate, animal need to be as close as two people could get. His hips drove into mine with a rhythm that was steady and devastating, deep strokes that I felt in my entire body, that pushed the air out of my lungs and made me grip his shoulders because I needed something to hold onto.
"God, Angel... just like that, oh fuck."
He shifted his angle, hitched my thigh higher up his hip, and the next stroke hit somewhere inside me that made my vision blur. I cried out, loud, louder than I meant to, and I didn't care. I didn't care if every brother in this compound probably heard me because the man above me was looking at me like I was everything and moving inside me like he'd been built for exactly this and nothing in my life had ever felt this good.
His hand tightened on my hip. He pulled me into each thrust, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh there, and the possessiveness of it, the way he held me where he wanted me, made something inside me ignite. He wasn't gentle and I didn't want gentle. I wanted this. The raw, primal, consuming weight of him above me, the sound of his breathing gone ragged, the low sounds he made against my neck that he probably didn't know he was making.
I dragged my nails down his back. He hissed through his teeth, his hips snapping harder, and I felt his control slipping. The composed, patient, deliberate man who ran this compound and commanded these brothers was losing himself inside me, and the power of that was intoxicating. I'd broken through something. Every measured, careful thing about him was gone and what was left was raw and desperate and mine.
