Cipher (Demonica Underworld #8) - Larissa Ione Page 0,53

the fact that she’d brutally severed a fallen angel’s defining feature and the source of his power. Didn’t matter that they weren’t his. He felt it as if they were.

“Shh,” she murmured. “Rest. Heal.”

Without his wings, the healing process would take longer, but already the edges of his wounds were less ragged and starting to seal up, and his skin had lost the ashen tone.

He relaxed against her, the tension in his big frame draining with every passing minute.

Gently, she held him, stroking his damp hair until he looked up at her, his tormented gaze locking onto hers. “I’m sorry.”

Her mouth fell open with shock. “Are you kidding? For what?”

“For making you do this.” He reached up, his hand trembling as he cupped her cheek. “It couldn’t have been easy.”

No, it hadn’t been. But she’d definitely been on the less horrible end of the blade, and it amazed her, humbled her, that his concern wasn’t for himself, but for her. What a magnificent male he was.

The last of her walls crumbled, and she leaned into his touch, selfishly taking comfort from him when she was the one who should be comforting him. His mouth was just inches from hers, his breath fanning her lips, and she found herself wanting even more from him.

“Lyre?” His deep voice was soft, and yet, it hung in the air as a resonant echo.

“Yes?” she whispered.

“If we don’t make it out of here alive, I don’t want the last thing we did to be...this.”

She melted. All her emotions melted, just puddled in the lower chambers of her heart at his tender words.

“What are you saying?” she whispered back, even though she knew.

She hoped. This might not be the ideal place, but it was the perfect time. Nothing in her life had been under her control for years. She’d basically signed everything over to Bael, including her virginity, apparently.

Well, screw that. She’d just thrown in with Cipher, and if they failed in their attempt at escape, she’d either die or end up in Bael’s bed. She didn’t want to do either of those things without having experienced the kind of passion Cipher promised.

His mouth closed on hers, and as if he’d lit a fuse, her body sparked to life. Sizzling, fiery life, brought back from the cold, dead ashes of her past.

She opened to him, and his tongue slid between her lips and stroked hers, deepening the kiss as he pushed her onto her back. He wasn’t rough, but he wasn’t gentle, either. There was a desperate urgency to the way he tore open first her pants and then his, and as he kissed his way down her jaw and along her throat, tiny, hot nibbles left her moaning for more.

He gave her exactly that, making love to her with his mouth all the way to the top of her breasts, where he swept his tongue along the edge of her neckline.

“That’s so sexy,” she whispered, arching to help him shove her bra-lined tank up.

“No,” he said, as he gazed at her bare breasts. “This is.”

Lowering his head, he opened his mouth over her breast and sucked gently, sending a series of erotic tingles spiraling through her. His tongue was magic, stroking and licking each breast as his hands shoved her pants down her legs.

Eagerly she helped him, clawing at the stupid cargoes and then kicking at them when they tangled around her ankles. Finally, she flung them aside and welcomed Cipher between her thighs.

His hands were everywhere, tickling her ribs, stroking the sensitive skin at her hipbones, and delving lower to her swollen sex. She rolled her hips to meet his touch as she wrapped her arms around him. Her hands slid through slick smears of blood, and when she cried out in sorrow that she might be hurting him, he shifted and grasped her wrist, holding it at his back.

“No,” he breathed against her collarbone. “Your touch only makes it better.”

Oh, damn. He was so sweet, so strong, so out of place in this awful world. She fell for him right then and there, her pledge to remain emotionally detached gone up in the flames he was stoking in her as he slipped a finger between her folds.

She nearly sobbed with emotion and pleasure as he caressed her, his fingertip circling her clit with alternating measures of pressure, and adding feather light flicks at the tip and a few heartbeats of intense, steady pressure at the base.

She couldn’t bear it, the way he manipulated