War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Read Online Free

She held his hands behind his head as she slid down onto him, and then briefly played at kissing his neck and biting his nipples to make him shudder and moan.
    He grabbed her thighs and pressed her hips hard against his own to bury himself in her, to vanish inside her, held tightly in a place somewhere between pleasure and pain, a place that burned with how much he wanted her and ached with how much he needed her.
    Their love-making was fast and hard, and a bit louder than usual. He pushed up and up, lifting his hips ever higher as though all her strength and the gravity of the entire world beneath his back were not enough to force them together, to bring her down over him, to grasp him, to own him.
    She fought back, crashing down as she bit her lip, as she shoved him against the bedding, as she tried to take the rhythm from him and ride him so fast that all sensation became a blur, making him fight back to slow her down, to battle back into that perfect place where it felt the way he wanted it to feel. Crushed, controlled, buried, gasping. Fingers raked across backs and chests and arms, digging in hard.
    When it became too rough, too painful, she pressed her hands against his thighs and healed his weakness, soothing his pain and restoring his strength, and so they went on, and on, and on. He came and she paused, but only for a moment before gripping him with her legs and riding on. She came and again she paused, quivering, barely breathing, then moaning loudly, and laughing. She kissed him hard, plunging her tongue into his mouth and he drank her in, wrapping his arms around her back, pulling their hot skin together as though he hoped to make them truly one flesh, lost in ecstasy.
    Then she leaned back, smiling, and she started all over again. He gazed up at her face, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her skin shining with sweat.
    I wonder if Raziel ever thought his healing gifts would be used quite like this.
    Afterward, Zerai lay beside her watching the sunlight bleed across the ceiling. He should have been exhausted, and his muscles should have been screaming for an hour in the hot spring, but he felt fine. He felt strong. So he stood up from their bed and began dressing. He paused. “I don’t suppose this time we…?”
    “No,” she said softly. “It’s the wrong time. We missed it this month.”
    “Right.” He finished putting on his pants and boots. “You’d think with all the practice we get, we’d hit the target once in a while.”
    “I told you.” Veneka stood and stretched. “I’m not ready.”
    “I know, I just…” He smiled sheepishly at her. “I’m being greedy. I want more of you. I want a dozen little Venekas running around the house, screaming and laughing and healing their own skinned knees.”
    “I know you do.” She smiled at him as she dressed. “Patience. It will happen, some day.”
    Some day.
    He looked at his belt and sword, and the mere sight of the dull leather and shining steel felt like miserable weights dragging him down out of paradise and back into the real world, into the old world. A world of cruelty and fear, a world of demons and death. He put the belt on and went outside.
    He plucked a grape from the vine beside his door and glanced up at the white saker falcon perched in the young acacia on his roof. Nezana stretched his pale wings and leapt into the sky in silence. The falconer watched him until he soared out of sight.
    Good hunting, old friend.
    “Will you patrol the north road again today?” Veneka called from inside.
    “No, I’m going to wait at the fountain. They’ll be here soon.”
    She came out dressed in green stripes, and each stripe tessellated with a different pattern of blocks, lines, and other shapes to create a riot of patterns flowing down her body. “But Raziel sent Vashti only yesterday afternoon. It will take two days at least for the djinn to arrive.”
    “Djinn are fast when they want to be. They’ll be here soon.” He rested his hand on