Gates of Rapture Read online

  Watching her brought a chuff from his throat. His lungs worked like bellows until he was growling and huffing.

  “That sound,” she cried.

  He couldn’t help the sound he made but when he sucked harder and the chuffs strengthened, her legs locked around his back and he could tell by her cries she was once more caught in ecstasy.

  Something inside him eased a little as he brought her over and over, resting between and taking her to the heights until she was limp, her eyes glazed, her breathing fast.

  He moved over her again, moving up the bed, up and up until he could position himself against her mouth. He pushed his cock against her lips, demanding.

  She met his gaze then slowly parted her lips. When she was wide enough, he plunged into her and mouth-fucked her hard. She used her hands and her nails and scored his buttocks, and it felt just right.

  He was taking possession of her. She knew it. He knew it.

  He felt his balls grow tight, but he didn’t want to come like this. He withdrew, suspending himself over her, waiting it out. He had to spend himself inside her.

  He flipped her over and pulled her up onto her knees. She arched her back, which tilted her buttocks up. He dipped low and licked her until she was flowing wet again then he rose up and drove into her hard.

  Damn, his wing-locks. They’d been burning and he had this feeling he would mount his wings, but he didn’t want to. Shit.

  As he began to pump into her, he chuffed hard.

  “Come for me, Leto. You are so beautiful like this. Come for me.”

  Her words, her voice, her body, her scent. He supported himself on one arm and with his free hand he fondled her breasts, squeezing them hard. He bit down on the back of her neck and pumped fast.

  Damn his wing-locks.

  As he came, he roared because his wings released, adding to the intense pleasure. But would there be enough room for his entire wingspan? Or would he be maimed?

  The sensation of releasing into Grace took over and pleasure came from every direction at once. He thrust hard, his wings flapped, and the sound of Grace crying out in pleasure spurred him on. He pumped harder, giving her every bit of who he was as a man. Pleasure rippled over his massive body, and some terrible pain inside him finally drifted away. Grace had come back. She had come home to him. He could breathe again.

  He began to slow in his movements and to savor how she sighed and cooed, and that he was connected deep.

  At last, his consciousness began to fade, and he fell down on her so that she collapsed under him and under the covering of his wings.

  * * *

  At first, Grace was too lethargic to move—but she wouldn’t have been able to anyway. She was caught in some kind of postcoital bliss that rocked her eyes in her head. She smiled and savored. Her mouth was pressed into the mattress, making it even harder to breathe.

  Everything was so very wrong, yet so right, which made no sense at all yet complete sense.

  Leto had given her a choice.

  She would always remember that as probably the most heroic thing he could ever have done with her. She had understood the depth of his need and she knew he’d been locked into some kind of primordial beast-mode. Yet somehow his rational self had shone through. No, she would never forget that he’d given her a choice.

  So here she was buried beneath his wings and his massive, bruising body, and she couldn’t move. She could barely breathe, he was so heavy on her. But she could draw just enough air to survive, which made her smile.

  She was with Leto, the warrior she had known for the entire two thousand years of her long vampire life, from the time that Thorne had joined the Warriors of the Blood. Leto and Thorne had been battling death vampires together all these long centuries.

  Leto was also the warrior she had written all her erotic poems about during her decades in the Prescott Two Creator’s Convent. It was as though somehow her spiritual mind had known that one day she would be here, fulfilled by Leto’s body.

  But as she came down from the bliss of ecstasy, her rational mind began to explore all the implications of such irrational behavior. She wasn’t afraid of pregnancy. For reasons she had never understood, she had been barren for almost her entire life. This was a great sadness to her, of course, but not something she’d been able to change in all these centuries. The one birth she had experienced, when she was young, had not ended well. She had always wondered if that was the cause of her inability to conceive.

  She doubted she would ever know.

  Her mind drifted very quickly to Fourth Earth and to the vampire she had left behind. How strange to think that just a little while ago, she had been living in a palace in Denver Four, caring for Casimir and his children, enjoying Beatrice’s friendship, and now she was here.

  She had left the clouds and had fallen hard to earth.

  That her fate seemed inextricably bound to Leto’s was clear. She knew his history, that he’d lost a mother to death vampires when he was very little. His soul had been closed off even longer than her own. But on some deep level, before these truths had been shared between them, she had known him and he had known her.

  But what did this portend for her? Or, more accurately, what was she willing to do about it?

  She was tired of not breathing deeply, so she pushed at Leto, giving him a hint.

  “Hey,” she said softly and pushed again, taking care not to disturb the feathers. A vampire’s wings were strong but they were also in many ways fragile; even pulling on an individual feather too hard would cause pain.

  But after a few more nudges, the last two quite firm, she realized he wasn’t just asleep, he was unconscious.

  She was about to remedy the situation, but something within her vibrated softly, like a chime deep within her soul, as though something must be understood and known in this very moment, before she took one more step into the future.

  She grew very still, her face smashed into the mattress, Leto’s body heavy and warm on top of her.

  She searched through her mind and followed the sound of the soft chime, flowing down and down through a veil of dark clouds until her mind pulsed with blue light. She remained in that unearthly glow.

  She had never been in this place before, but the color told her she was very close to her obsidian power, her blue flame power. Using her instincts, she wrapped herself in that power. As she focused, Leto’s soul was simply there. She understood then that in some mysterious way, her power was related to her ability to read the souls of others, even to search them, something she had been able to do since she was very young.

  This time, however, Leto’s soul seemed sharper and clearer than ever before.

  She sank deep into both his character and his past. She saw the battles he had waged, the thousands of conversations he’d had with Commander Greaves, his arguments with Greaves’s generals. Then before his abdication of his Warrior of the Blood status, she saw his close connection to all his warrior brothers, especially to Thorne, and how Leto had once served as Thorne’s mentor. She saw the women Leto had loved over the past century and beyond that, over the full course of his three thousand years. She saw him as a child, back and back until she was able to see what had prompted him to become a warrior. He had always wanted to be the very best warrior in his tribe. From a young age, he had prided himself on being the best. How much it must have hurt him to have been a spy. She moved forward swiftly in time until he was once more serving as a spy on behalf of the Sixth ascender James. She saw how James had explained how critical it was that Sixth Earth get extensive information on Greaves, something only a spy could deliver, and in the ensuing years just how much Leto had suffered as he performed his traitor’s role.

  She saw the arena battle in which Leto had been required to fight Alison, each bearing a sword. She felt how much the performance of this duty wounded the depths of his soul, how much he had hated setting his centuries of experience against an untried woman, even how hard he had fought. Then his surpris
e when her vast powers had emerged and Alison had defeated him using a pocket of time reversal. However, in this moment, Grace saw something more. She realized that Leto had a connection to Alison, a purpose to fulfill with her in the coming days, though Grace couldn’t discern what that purpose was.

  She knew that Alison was destined to open the Trough or portal to Third Earth, an unfathomable feat. This much Grace knew from conversations with Thorne over the past year and a half. No one knew the timing, only that when it happened, Second Earth would be changed forever. But what did it mean that Leto had this kind of connection to Alison?

  She moved forward once more until she was now in the absolute present with Leto, still in his bizarre beast-form, crushing the air from her lungs, his weight growing heavier and heavier.

  She was still locked into her blue flame power and was still rummaging around within Leto’s soul. She saw the nobility of his character—that his loyalty, until the moment he’d become a spy, had defined him. Breaking that loyalty had caused a cancerous growth in his heart. He no longer felt worthy of life, of what was good in life. He especially didn’t feel worthy of her. She also had the sense that the change he underwent with increasing frequency was permanent.

  As she released Leto’s soul, she returned to her reality and Leto’s beautiful weight on her. She hated this war and what it did to fine, worthy ascenders, how Thorne had lived in pain for centuries, increasing when her twin sister, Patience, was taken; how a decent man like Leto had been turned into something almost unrecognizable.

  Now she had returned to participate in the war in a way she had never imagined doing before. She was obsidian flame and had an opportunity to change the future.

  Struggling to take her next breath, she knew the time had come to leave this dark place beneath the earth, to get some distance from Leto and chart the course she had set for herself.

  Leto, you’re very heavy. Can you move, please?

  She gave him another push back with her shoulders and when he still didn’t budge or respond to her telepathy, she simply folded from underneath him, hoping that his wings would lie flat afterward.

  She materialized beside the mattress. The soft light blue linen sheets hung over the sides and spread out like a lake on the dark gray stone of the floor.

  She gasped. She had never seen Leto’s wings so close before. She took a step forward, careful not to step on either the mesh superstructure that held the feathers in place or the feathers themselves. She had forgotten how beautiful Leto’s wings were; upper and lower wings essentially created four panels. The feathers were a deep blue like sapphires.

  He was so beautiful, even in his beast-form. She felt an almost overwhelming need to stretch out beside him and offer him what comfort she could.

  Right now, however, what she needed was time to think about what coming back to Mortal Earth would mean for her in the coming days. She thought the thought, and folded to the bottom floor of Leto’s cabin. A quick search through his home brought her to his expansive bathroom on the second floor and the sight of what she wanted now more than anything. A shower.

  * * *

  Endelle wasn’t alone in her office, but she might as well have been; at least that’s the way she felt. Thorne stood across the room by the east-facing windows, his back to her, talking quietly into his phone to his woman, his breh, Marguerite. Every once in a while, he’d laugh. Despite the passage of five months when Thorne had bonded with Marguerite, Endelle still had a rock in her chest that she couldn’t seem to get rid of. The rock was Thorne-shaped. He had a new life now with his breh and as the Supreme High Commander of the Allied Ascender Forces, but that didn’t change how much she missed him.

  Thorne had been her right hand all these centuries, but he’d split from her and now lived his own life. She understood and respected that he had a new role to play. She just hadn’t realized how much she had relied on him or how important he’d been to her.

  She’d get over it, of course. But today was one of those days. She had a nasty gut feeling about the war, that something bad was on the wind. In former times, she’d have had a sit-down with Thorne; they’d talk it over, then strategize.

  Now? He had other duties, important ones, like building her army.

  He was powerful as hell now and actually served as part of the obsidian flame triad, not as a significant player but as the anchor. Between that, and adding to her massive Militia Warrior forces daily, he sure as hell didn’t have time to soothe her shitty loneliness.

  She rubbed the back of her neck, which reminded her of the other glorious part of her life right now, that she had permanent scars back there, also something she couldn’t get rid of. That Sixth bastard, Braulio, had put them there, but she still didn’t know what they were for or what he’d really done to her. She only knew she often woke up sweaty and nauseated and ready to do battle with anyone and anything.

  Jesus H. Christ. Too much shit in her life.

  She sat at her desk in her office, leaning back in her tall chair, her head pressed against the Appaloosa horsehide that hung over the back. With her elbows on the arms of the chair, she formed a steeple with her hands and tapped her fingertips together.

  Her gaze shifted past Thorne. The windows had been replaced since her last freak-out when she was sure Thorne was dead. She’d gone full-out, batshit crazy and demanded that James, another real Sixth Earth piece of work, get his ass down to her office on Second, bring healers with him, and restore Thorne’s life. Hell, she’d threatened to destroy the planet if he hadn’t.

  So James had come, with the Sixth healers, and brought Thorne back.

  And there Thorne stood, a changed man, his back to her, his Droid Ascender pressed to his ear. Marguerite was pregnant with twins, and he was playing the concerned husband role like he’d been born to it. God, staring at him was like looking at an amputated leg, the portion that had been removed. She kept wanting to reach for Thorne and reattach him somehow.

  “So how are you doing?”

  Endelle flipped around in her chair to find that Alison had just folded into her office. “How the hell did you sneak in here without my knowing and why the hell are you grinning like that?”

  “I have news.”

  Endelle waited to hear what it was. But Alison didn’t say a word, she just kept grinning like someone was tickling her ass-crack.

  “Okay, I am so not in the mood for any fucking games.”

  Alison lifted a brow then turned slowly around until Endelle had a perfect view of her bare back and what looked like wing-locks.

  “Holy shit.” She rose up from her chair and looked closer. “Alison, don’t be shitting me. Does this mean you fucking got your wings?”

  Alison turned back around, her expression euphoric. “Yes, Madame Endelle, I so fucking did. I woke up this morning, felt a little strange, then a vibration flowed through me like an electric current. The impulse to mount my wings was almost overwhelming. As soon as I told Kerrick what was going on, he folded me to the back lawn and I let them fly. I still can’t believe it.”

  Neither could Endelle. Despite the fact that Alison was only recently ascended from Mortal Earth, Endelle had always known that Alison would mount her wings early. Anyone with that much power wouldn’t wait decades to take to the skies.

  Damn but wasn’t she a beauty; about six feet, long blond hair pinned back this afternoon with a gold clip. Was it any wonder Kerrick had fallen hard for her? But then had he really had a choice? Her warriors were succumbing fast to the breh-hedden, one after the other, a bunch of overbuilt dominoes. She had long suspected that the appearance of the breh-hedden on Second Earth was a balancing force against Greaves, a set of dimensional scales working on behalf of ascenders everywhere to keep evil from triumphing.

  Thorne was the latest victim of the breh-bond, and for the past five months she’d received reports from the Seattle Colony on Mortal Earth that Leto was still caught in the fist of that myth-that-wasn’t-a-myth. Oddly, it was Thorne�
��s sister, Grace, that Leto had lost it for.

  But as she met Alison’s gaze, she had a strong prescience that there was more to the sudden appearance of her wings than just flight capability. Endelle could feel it in every cell of her body.

  Her heart started beating like a bird trying to get out of a cage. She put her hand to her chest.

  Alison had ascended over a year ago, one freakishly powerful mortal who had carried with her just about every preternatural ability a Second ascender could ever possess. She had ended up serving as Endelle’s executive assistant, even though she could have been anything in the second dimension, including a Warrior of the Blood. The woman, however, had the killing instinct of dandelion fluff, so executive assistant it was.

  Endelle clapped her hands together. “This is some righteous shit. So are they white, blue, orange, what?”

  Alison shook her head and her eyes glittered. “Emerald, like Kerrick’s eyes. A beautiful deep green with black banding at the tips.”

  “Mount them for me.”

  Alison looked around then shook her head. “I can’t.”

  Endelle smiled. “The wingspan is too big.”

  “Yep.” Mounting wings in too small a space could cause damage.

  Endelle narrowed her eyes. “Okay, spill the rest of it, because I know there’s something else, right?”

  Alison nodded. “My dreams have returned, the ones about opening the Trough to Third Earth.”

  “The portal to the third dimension,” Endelle murmured. She put two fingers to her lips and sat down. Her heart was still that wild bird. Vampires didn’t usually stroke out, but she thought if she didn’t calm the hell down she might just be the first one. So Alison had mounted her wings and now her dreams had returned, the ones that placed her at White Lake with the blue spinning vortex above: the portal to Third Earth.

  She swallowed hard. She had a feeling that everything relating to the war and to Greaves was coming to a head.

  Then she felt something new slam into her from the direction of Mortal Earth and another holy shit shot through her mind.