wanting more of Angel’s seed down his throat but pulled back by his own orgasm, a shadow of Angel’s but enough to make him jerk his sore body, enough to make him cry.
The front of his underwear grew hot and wet, then cold, as his spend cooled.
He listened in fierce satisfaction as Angel’s panting breath rocked the bed.
Angel’s gentle hands on his face soothed some of his pain, and he smiled, eyes closed.
“Proud of yourself?” Angel asked, but he sounded too satisfied to be smug.
“You taste like lavender and lime,” Tucker said, laughing in the dark. “And a little like mint.”
“That’s not what humans usually taste like?”
Those hands kept up their tentative exploration of his face.
“No,” Tucker murmured. Oh man. The cold of Daisy Place chilled his skin. He wanted this moment to last for—
Angel moved away to grab a blanket from the foot of the bed and pull it up around Tucker’s shoulders.
“My shorts,” Tucker mumbled, already falling asleep. “I should wash up.”
“I’ll be back.”
And then Angel’s hands, tender and personal, wielded a warm washcloth and helped him into a clean pair of boxers.
Tucker grunted thanks and curled more deeply under the covers.
Angel’s hands on his cheeks were all the reassurance he could ask for.
“How do you feel?” Angel asked, finding Tucker’s stubble as Tucker had found his.
“Sore,” Tucker admitted. “That was awesome, but—”
“Too early,” Angel whispered. “I’m sor—”
“Don’t be.” Tucker opened his eyes. Fine lines had appeared at the corners of Angel’s mouth and green eyes. He was even more beautiful than Tucker remembered when he’d first closed his eyes and hoped Angel would stay.
“Don’t be sorry?” The hope in his voice was hard to bear.
“No. Be grateful. It was glorious having you in my mouth, Angel. I got to make love to you. A thousand lovers or more, and I’ve never gotten to choose a single one. And I touched you and sucked your cock and loved you. I didn’t know mortals were even allowed such beauty.”
Angel’s faint smile actually glowed. “Poetry.” He pushed Tucker’s tangled hair back from his brow. “My human lover speaks poetry.”
“My angel lover comes in different flavors,” Tucker said crudely, just to watch Angel’s eyes open in surprise.
Tucker smiled, happy, as his eyes fluttered closed. Angel’s flesh dematerialized sometime after he fell asleep, but even when Angel’s breath stopped fanning his face and his hand on Tucker’s cheek faded, Tucker knew he was still there.
TUCKER NEEDED him to be there—especially during the next week.
Angel kept the nightmares away.
And the nightmares were plentiful and painful.
Not even Angel could banish them completely. All he could do was be there when Tucker woke up, incoherent, in pain.
The kitten was good at curling up in front of him during these episodes, which was sweet but not enough.
They were one more souvenir of a life that was not going to stop throwing them curveballs just because one almost took Tucker out of the game.
After a week of being at home, Tucker and Angel sat on the porch in the early shadows of the late August evening under a canopy of invisible—and yet shady—wings. Squishbeans purred in Angel’s lap until suddenly she hissed and stalked away. Tucker looked up and saw a familiar transparent form gazing at him soulfully from the lawn.
“Wait right there!” he told it and then hurried inside. “Angel! Angel! Where’s my shorts from the day—”
Angel pulled them out of the drawer, laundered and repaired. He must have stitched them himself.
Tucker looked at him and smiled fondly. Whatever they were now, whatever they would become, being this sewn into each other’s pockets made Tucker as happy as he’d ever been since childhood. He wanted it to last.
“Thank you, Angel,” he said sincerely. Careful of his cast and the bandages still around his rib cage, he went rooting through the pockets of the shorts. “Yes!”
He grinned in triumph and then leaned forward to kiss Angel on the lips.
It was their first kiss—their first sexual moment, in fact—since Tucker fell asleep after making love. Tucker had been in a lot of pain the next day, and the next. The pain had been worth it, but Tucker had missed the physical contact. Even reaching for it, hoping for it, had become a memory.
Angel’s mouth opened now, and he gave a groan of such loneliness, Tucker had to answer him. Their mouths fused, Angel’s taste, lavender and citrus, permeating Tucker’s senses, flooding his heart, his stomach, his groin.
Only the feel of the little metal object in the palm of