Sentinel of Heaven (33 page)

“There are
many kinds of strengths, baby... this is the only one to make you vulnerable,
is all.”

Moira lay her
head back on the upholstered padding behind her; he moved to cradle her face in
one hand and let the other stray low between their bodies, seeking out that
little hardness inside her slit and sporting with it, rubbing it with the side
of his thumb, drawing out her pleasure and watching her with dark wet eyes.

“It's too
bright in here,” she breathed.  He turned the wall sconces off with his power,
leaving them alone in the shadows together, surrounded in the dim glow of his
wings.

The pace of
his finger never slacked, not even when her hips began to twist and flick in
the scant space she had to move, not even when her breathing got faster and
ragged and she pushed and arched her back.  When she began to pant, to give
little moans with each breath, he leaned down her to nuzzle her forehead
gently, always watching her.

Then he took
her hands in his free one and lifted them from the back of his neck, stretching
them out behind her head until she was pulling up against his forearm like an
iron bar to help her find her ease, bracing and relaxing, her cries stringing
together.

“Do you crave
it?” Leo whispered above her earlobe, his thumb circling and tapping and
rubbing.  “Do you wish it now?”

“Yes, oh yes,
oh yes!”

“Take it then,”
he said and she was orgasming, clenching hard and fluttering open again,
passionate sobs that were shockingly loud in the little room, intermixed with
his name.

The last spasm
lingered and her thighs felt drenched with her own fluid; his finger paused and
moved, paused and moved, not allowing her to come down from the peak.

“Now you are
open to me... now you are ready...” he was coaxing in his low warm voice and a
tiny part of her mind wondered at the weakness he called strength.

“Tell me you
want it, my lover, my queen – tell me to give it to you.”

“Oh... oh
angel, oh yes, Leo – come!” she gasped.

“You wish my
seed?”  The second climax followed fast on the heels of the first and all the
flesh of her lower back was tingling as powerfully as if she lay on a fire ant hill,
all the way down her ass and between her thighs to where he was sheathed inside
her and she could do no more than nod desperately and convey that need across
the bond, robbed of all sense to speak.

“Ahhh my love,
my mate, my wife,” he was breathing tenderly, “there I am in you, there, feel
it, feel me,” and he lost his English again and continued in his mother-tongue
but the meaning was the same; all the while he did not thrust,
could
not in this bound up position, but came hard in spite of or perhaps because of
it and pulsed inside her vigorously again and again and again, his voice never
changing until his breath gave out and he lost cohesion, squeezing his eyes
tightly shut at the end.

She let her
hands come down eventually from where he had braced them, to rest on top of his
shoulders.  Leo had wrapped his arms around her body by then, holding her to
him.  He remained inside her; quiescent but not going soft, unwilling to
withdraw yet.  Moira listened to his steady breathing in the dark.  She could
feel the buzz of his thoughts through the bond, although their contents were
hidden from her.

“What–” she
tried to say and coughed, her throat gone dry.  He pulled her water glass out
of the air and handed it to her; it tasted clean and cold and she drank
gratefully.  When done she passed it back to him.  Leo fit his lips to the
place where hers had been and gulped down the rest of the water, then sent it
back to the kitchen.

“What was it
that you said, there at the end?” Moira murmured, her hand gentle on the side
of his massive neck.

“My lady,” he
sighed.  “I know that you heard me aright... if it pleased you not, consider it
the raving of a man in extremis, who knows not what he speaks.”

“I don't know
if I could cheapen it like that.”

“Once applied
to you, no term could ever be cheapened,” Leo answered in a soft whisper.  “Your
grace will have transformed it beyond such concerns.”

The tip of his
finger caressed the pendant at her throat.

Say it
again,
she wanted to ask. 
Let me hear it again.  Let me hear your
voice call me your wife, in that tone of ultimate completion, of homecoming.

Moira couldn't
decide who would find it more cruel if she
did
request it, herself or
Leo.   She tightened her arms to raise her face to his in the darkness, nuzzling
through the steely strands of his mane to bind his lips in a kiss. 

“I love you,”
she whispered.

“My lady... I
love you so.”  The corner of his mouth quirked and he shook his head.  “It is
late, and my foolish body has delayed your supper.”

“I don't need
anything heavy,” Moira said, biting back a yawn.  “Maybe some fruit...
cherries?  Cherries in bed.”  Then the yawn escaped her and she covered her
mouth with the back of her hand, to Leo's chuckle.

“Cherries in
bed, my mortal lady, and then you shall sleep as long as you wish on our
holiday.  No clock to wake us.”

He disengaged
slowly, both of them sighing with the feeling, then stood and helped her to
rise.  She visited the restroom on the way back to their nest; in the new
boudoir she heard him picking up her shredded clothing and obviously restoring
it to both wholeness and cleanliness, for he paused long enough to put the
items back on hangers in the closet or fold them in the dresser.

When she came
out Leo waited for her in the dark of the bed, his wings glowing like the Milky
Way, a cut-crystal bowl in his palm filled with halved and pitted cherries.

He insisted on
feeding them to her one at a time as she lay comfortably in the sheets; she
pictured a little male sparrow bringing morsels to his mate on their nest.  Leo
interspersed kisses with his cherries, however; occasionally popping one into
his own mouth to enjoy the tart flavor.

When Moira was
satisfied he put the bowl away in some other dimension and moved closer to her,
to wrap his body protectively around her and his wing over her, preparing to
sleep.

“Say it again,”
she heard her lips murmur.  He froze, his hand on her hip.

“My lady... it
was a mindless thing, and a premature thing.  Forgive your poor angel his
indiscretion.”

“Are you telling
me you didn't mean it?”

He exhaled
softly, stirring her hair.  “No.”

“Then please,
Leo... say it again.”

She shifted to
look back at him over her shoulder; his eyes were as sad as she'd ever seen
them.

“May I not be
foresworn,” he murmured.  “May there not be anything that hides in my memory to
prevent me or stay me.”

She nodded. 

“Turn away,”
Leo told her.  “Do not watch me transgress, my lady.”

She relaxed
and lay her head into the pillow, facing away from him; he fit himself to her
back more tightly and bent over her ear.

“I am
Provenance's greatest fool,” he breathed, “because I have discovered myself
empty and wanting – I discovered a lack I had never truly felt before.  I never
knew how my soul cried out for completion, until I beheld the shape of its
missing piece. 

“I want you to
wife, Moira.  I know that with certainty.  And I know that I must wait until
you know it too, until you want me as your husband with the same strength and
surety.

“But I crave
it... to mate with you in times of pleasure and in times of need, to be by your
side and you at mine, to face the future together and whatever it holds.  To
give you all my mind and spirit, knowing you can bear it.  To wear your torc
around my throat and have mine at yours and know that all of Heaven and Earth
see that we belong together.

“My wife, my
wife – my Moira, the treasure of my heart.”

She gazed into
the dark beyond the cover of his wing.

“Did it hurt
to say?” she asked at last.

“Only in its
uncertainty,” Leo answered.

She turned in
his arms; they studied each other somberly, like two children telling secrets.

“You don't
like saying things... making vows or promises... that you don't yet know that
you can keep.”

He nodded.

“Neither do I.”

He gazed at
her quietly, his blue eyes vulnerable.

“May I be a
fool too, just for a moment?” Moira asked him, stroking his hair back from his
face, tucking it behind his earlobe.

He nodded.

She rose up on
elbow and hip to lean over his great head, to hover her lips above the curve of
his ear.

“I know not
what the future holds,” she breathed, taking on his precise cadence, his formal
method of speech, “nor what your past hides.  I know I am still in my early
days of knowing you, when somehow you have known me all my life.

“But if we are
mated and matched as I feel we are, fools together we must be; hear it from my
lips, if only once – my love, my mate, my husband...”

The muscles in
his jaw rippled as he clenched it, biting down on any vocal reaction – but his
eyes said enough as he reached up to bring her to him again, to cradle her
against his heartbeat.  They slipped into sleep together with no other words.

But Moira woke
to her dreams, as vivid and close as conscious life; she woke to a new embrace,
for Angela lay in her arms in the grass of the high valley, naked mahogany
flesh to her naked ivory.

The younger
woman was perhaps an inch or so shorter than herself; it felt strange to hold
someone so small after being tangled with Leo's disparate size.  She
experienced no shock at their nudity or their closeness.  Angela, broken and
crippled and damaged but here – like this – it wouldn't matter.

None of it
mattered.

Angela looked
up into her face with liquid brown eyes.  “My queen,” she whispered, much the
same way Leo said it.  There was no sign of the wheelchair or the manacles;
nothing bound them but the sunlight.

“Is this okay
with you?  That we’re like this?”

Angela
smiled.  “I only wish that you were here in truth.  Your touch cleanses, Moira –
that is one of your powers.  Your man knows it well.”

Moira teased
out a wavy black lock of Angela's hair, drawing it up to her lips.  “I wish I
could save you,” she said.

“You will, in
your way.  You've already begun.”

There was
nothing more, other than the sound of wind through distant trees and the
insects that buzzed in the high grass and the strange summer heat around them. 
Angela's eyes looked up into hers trustingly.  They twined around each other in
an endless calm, an embrace that was sensual without becoming sexual.  The dark
soldiers never intruded to break them apart.

The sun's
light woke Moira in the morning early enough to see that Leo still slept, his
arm over her waist and the weight of his spread wing keeping her warm.

Thanksgiving Day,
and at last something and someone to be thankful for...

She caressed
his face lightly until his eyes fluttered open and focused on her – revealing
the most smitten expression she'd ever seen on a man.

“The sun has
risen, baby,” she murmured, touching the corner of his smile.

“Yes, and the
fiery orb outside as well,” he answered, pulling her to him for a kiss.

“Tomorrow's
going to be very important,” she said when they came up for air.

“You think on
tomorrow already?  I had hoped my lady would savor more of today...”

“I bring it up
because it has an effect on today – I need to get up early tomorrow, so I
should go to bed early tonight, but it's going to be difficult since we've
slept in so late...”

“With your
permission, my lady,” he said, bearing her onto her back and himself over her, “your
angel will do his poor best to wear you out suitably...”

And he did;
oh, how he did!

She woke on
Black Friday to the shrilling of the clock and slapped the snooze button,
scrubbing her eyes.

“My God, I'd
forgotten
how
early this was.”

The angel in
her bed snuggled closer in the darkness.  “You said it was important, my lady?”

“It is.  I
need to stop at the gas station for one thing; the car's running on fumes.  But
before I leave I need to put on makeup; there's a meeting today, with my boss's
bosses... I've got to look my best.  Usually I don't bother.”

Leo leaned
over her for his morning kiss.  “Then your angel shall help you prepare; all
will be ready when you are.”

Moira smiled
and ran her hands through his sleek silver hair, feeling her heart beat hard in
her chest.  He turned off the alarm before it could ring again and helped her
up from the bed, sending her into the bathroom for her shower.

But once out
of the sunlight of his attention her nerves began to twist. 
Just stage-fright,
she told herself. 
This knot in my guts is just performance anxiety.

You'll do
fine.  You'll tell the truth.  You'll tell what you've figured out and what
you've guessed and you'll prove to them your wit and your worth.

But I
don't want to,
she told herself. 
I don't want to have to prove things
any more, not to them.  I don't want to do this.  I don't want to deal with
this.

Fear rose up –
choking fear that twisted around her throat and constricted.  She leaned
against the tile wall of the shower and breathed through her nose for several
minutes.

My name is
Moira and I am standing in the shower.  My lover is called Leo and he is
outside helping me get ready for the day.  I will have a good meeting today.  I
will follow my presentation and give an excellent accounting of myself.  I will
finish up the day well.  I will come home tonight and we'll have a weekend
together.

Maybe he
can transport us to the beach; it's been too long since I've seen the ocean. 
We can go together even though it's too cold to go in the water, here.  We can
walk on the shore a ways if Leo will manage my pain.  We'll spend time together
because we’re in love.

“My lady?”
came her angel's voice from the bathroom door.  “Are you well?”

“Yeah,” she
answered softly, then repeated louder so he'd hear her over the water.  “Yes,
I'll be out in a moment.”

She showered
and got out to dry off, trying to let her mind be empty.

He appeared in
the doorway again.  “My love, I feel tension from you...”

“I know, and
I'm sorry – I'm just unexpectedly nervy about today.”

“If you wish,
I can...” and he made a round-about motion with his hand, reminding her
abruptly of his silent days, “the same way I do with your pain chemicals.”

“Please!”
Moira almost begged, and when he lay his wide palms on her shoulders she drew
in a breath that was icy cold and still, crystallizing in her lungs.  She
craned her head back to meet his eyes, feeling the calm spreading through her
mind.

He smiled at
her gently.  “It is battle-tension you feel; that waiting until the start of
the fray.  When the enemy is engaged it converts to a tranquil clarity, even in
the midst of bloodshed.  I know it myself.  I can assist with it until you are
out of range.”

“Much better. 
I can't even tell you how much that helps.”

Cold, sterling
cold inside her but her heart still beating hard; the few times she'd performed
in college plays she'd felt that same sensation as she stepped out on the stage
and drew breath to speak her first lines.  Her lungs were full of menthol and
her head filled with icicles as she gathered up everything she was, everything
special within her, and prepared to cast it out to the audience.

The show must
go on.

He followed
her to the closet as she chose her wardrobe: black ankle boots that almost
looked like dress shoes under the hem of her black dress pants.  The pants were
cut to her curves but weren't anything special or eye-catching; that was the
shirt's role.

The shirt. 
The
shirt: some synthetic blend that draped and looked like silk, of a
blue-undertoned red the color of arterial blood.  Red, to attract the eye and
captivate it; cool-toned to flatter those in power.  Three-quarter sleeves, to
make her appear taller.  The cut of the blouse emphasized her hourglass figure,
with a rising mandarin collar that looked crisp and professional – but opened
in a v-neck at the front and plunged
just
daringly enough to remind
people she was female.

It would frame
Leo's pendant where it lay right below her collarbones.

She lay the
items on the chaise longue with a sigh and pulled on her bra and underwear to
sit down at her makeup mirror, flipping on the lights.