Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,63

slip from my mouth to tangle with his.

Our bodies rocked together with each sweep of his wings, creating a torturous friction that brought a gasp to my lips. Looping my arms around Thorn’s neck, I dared to glance down. The view knocked all the air from my lungs.

Holy mother of meteors, we were really flying. The city sprawled below me in a vast spread of twinkling lights, some of them coursing along roadways and others blinking off even as I watched as people turned in for the night.

Who needed stars when you could have a vision like this below you?

My life had never been more literally in Thorn’s hands. If I’d slipped from his grasp, no spurt of fiery power could have stopped me from making an excellent impression of a pancake, splat on the ground below. But even as my pulse beat faster while I took in the scene we were soaring over, not a hint of that adrenaline was panic. I had a hell of a lot more faith in the warrior’s strength than in my hocus pocus.

“It’s spectacular.” I brought my gaze back to my lover, to the smoldering wingéd visage that was even more awe-inspiring to me than the sights beneath us, and my throat constricted.

I didn’t want him to leave us, for however long he might feel he needed to—now or ever. This brutal, valiant monster was like no one I’d ever met or would again. And despite the turmoil he’d been going through, he’d offered up this moment just for me.

I touched his face, tracing my thumb over his lips before meeting his eyes again. I wasn’t trying to sway his choice, but he deserved to know exactly what he was choosing between, didn’t he?

“I love you,” I said.

The words came out so quietly I was afraid they’d be lost in the wind. But the flare of the glow in Thorn’s eyes left no doubt that he’d heard them. Even with the unearthly reverb that came into his voice, his response came out ragged with emotion. “And I you, Sorsha.”

He kissed me so hard my head spun—or maybe it was that we really were spinning with another flap of his wings, spiraling even higher into the sky. A waft of chilly air licked across my neck, but it only created a perfect contrast with the heat coursing between us.

Thorn’s lips traveled from my mouth to my jaw and down the side of my neck, sparking pleasure everywhere they touched. His resonant voice sent giddy tremors over my skin. “You would not hate me instead if I left?”

I shook my head against him, soaking in everything I could of the being that held me. “The fact that you wouldn’t let love stop you from fulfilling your responsibilities is part of what makes you who you are. It’s an honor to mean so much to you that I’d factor in at all.”

He made a rumbling sound low in his throat and managed to maneuver his hand to stroke over my breast. Bliss quivered through my chest with the swivel of his palm against my nipple. “How could my absence not wound you? It’s hard enough for me to think of it.”

“It would hurt, but that’s okay.” I thought of that moment in Omen’s cave when I’d jumped between him and Thorn and thrown my life on the line to save them both. “Sometimes the right thing hurts. It’s just that the wrong thing would hurt more. And whatever you do, I know it’s a measure of what you need to be the man you believe you should be, not how much you care about me. You’ve proven all you need to about that already.”

I pressed a kiss to the edge of his jaw with a little smile and sang, “Because I’ve had the climb of my life, no, I’d never melt this way and more.”

Thorn let out a huff that sounded more amused than anything. “You and your ridiculous songs,” he rumbled, and then he was kissing me again, pulling me flush against his muscle-packed body at the same time. His thickly corded erection rubbed against me through the layers of our clothes, and it was a miracle I didn’t spontaneously combust from that.

If I ever went down in flames, that’d be the way to do it.

A needy whimper slipped from my lips, and my warrior knew how to answer it. Without hesitation, he wrenched at my jeans with a rasp of tearing fabric. I fumbled