the new weightless feeling inside him making it akin to flying. In seconds he had Noa in his arms and pressed, once again, against the folly’s jagged wall. But this time it wasn’t to kill her or wrap his hand around her throat. There was no murderous intent within him anymore, at least not toward her.
Noa’s warmth breath fanned across his face. He closed his eyes and breathed in her intoxicating scent. As he opened them, it was like seeing her face for the first time. And it was as stunning as a church’s stained-glass window. Every part of her was complex and enslaving.
Noa’s eyes weren’t simply brown. They were ochre, the color of a fall leaf on a low-hanging branch, clutching on to its final days of life. Her skin was milky white, as if she’d been carved from marble. A batch of freckles were scattered across her nose like spilled cinnamon on a baker’s countertop. And her hair … Diel moved his head closer and pressed the soft strands against his cheek. Vibrant. She looked celestial, like she was not of this world.
To him, she was as powerful as a motherfucking deity.
Diel’s breathing was ragged, but he didn’t give a fuck about lost breath. Noa was pressed against him, and he felt every exaggerated curve of her body. Noa lifted her hand and moved back a strand of black hair that had fallen over his left eye.
He tensed with need as Noa smiled and whispered, “There he is.” Her hushed comment made his heart swell so big he thought it might rip out of his chest. Then her hand traveled down his face, leaving a river of heat in its wake. Diel bit his lip at her touch, his monster’s memories showing him just how much they’d craved it. How the man had had nothing to fear from her. She was like them. God had made her just like them. At that thought, Diel rolled his hips forward, but he froze when her fingertips drifted to the scar around his neck.
Diel held his breath, closing his eyes. He became completely still, a veritable statue, as Noa ran the top of her nail over his mangled and mutilated skin. Diel exhaled in stuttered bursts from his nose as her finger traveled to the nape of his neck, then back to where his collar had sat against his Adam’s apple. He opened his eyes, chest aching. Noa was breathing heavily too, her pupils blown. Her back arched off the wall, and she pressed her leather-covered breasts against Diel’s slick, naked chest.
Groaning savagely, Diel pinned her harder against the wall. Noa smiled as her breath hitched at the contact. Her cheeks burst with redness, and her wet tongue licked her slightly parted lips. Then she leaned forward, and, clutching the back of his head, threading his messy dark locks through her fingers, she flicked out her tongue once more and traced it over the ruined skin where his collar once sat.
Diel roared at the maddening feel of her hot tongue lapping at his biggest scar, then he wrapped her hair in his hand and crushed his mouth to hers. He didn’t overthink it. He just took and took and tasted Noa in his mouth, his tongue thrusting against hers.
He’d never kissed anyone before. Never known how to even do it correctly. But instinct took the lead, and he devoured her mouth with the same intensity as he would make a kill—completely, thoroughly, and with blood swelling his cock and darkness thrashing in his veins. Inexperience didn’t matter at that moment—it was lust and the magnetic pull of her and him and all the soul-scalding fire that raged like an inferno between them.
Noa’s responding moan swirled around them, and Diel’s hips thrust forward, searching to take her further, deeper, to swallow her whole. Noa shifted her body closer still. Jumping high enough to wrap her long legs around Diel’s waist, she threaded her arms around his neck, yanking him as close as she could.
That was the breaking of the floodwall, the dropping of any barrier the old Diel had failed to destroy.
Using his chest to keep her pinned against the wall, he smashed his lips to hers, unable to stop ravishing her mouth, and moved his hands to the hem of her leather shirt. Noa’s strong thighs kept her hooked to his body as he reluctantly reared back and peeled the leather shirt over her head, tossing it to the floor behind