by Nalini Singh
“I’ve threatened to kill him for the ten thousandth time,” Elena shared, closing her hand hard around a rock on the rim. Its edges dug into her palm as she fought the compulsion to go to Dmitri, to lick up his scent until it was all she was, all she knew. The vampire mocked her with his gaze, a silent challenge. No matter the sexual pull, this wasn’t about sex. It was about her right to be at Raphael’s side. “And he beat me to a pulp by proxy,” she completed, her voice steady though her body was screaming with arousal.
“In some circles,” Illium murmured, black hair tipped with blue lifting in the breeze, “that would be considered foreplay.”
Dmitri smiled. “Elena doesn’t care for my brand of foreplay.” Memories of blood and steel in his eyes. “Though she did—”
The scent of the sea, a wild turbulent storm, crashing into her mind. Elena, why is Dmitri naked?
The surface of the pool began to ice over.
“Raphael, no!” she said out loud. “I am not going to give him the pleasure of watching me freeze to death!”
That, I would never allow. The ice retreated. It seems I must have a discussion with Dmitri.
She forced herself to think to him, though it was far more instinctive to speak; her heart, her soul, were still unalterably human. No need. I can deal with him.
Can you? Never forget that he’s had centuries to hone his power. A soft warning. Push him too far and one of you will die.
She didn’t misunderstand. Like I said, Archangel, don’t kill anyone on my account.
The response was a cool breeze, the stamp of an immortal’s possession. He is the leader of my Seven. He is loyal.
She’d already guessed what he didn’t say—that Dmitri’s loyalty might equal her death. I’ll fight my own battles. It was who she was, her sense of self tied intrinsically to her ability to stand on her own two feet.
Even if you have no hope of winning?
I told you once, I would rather die as Elena, than live as a shadow. Leaving him with that truth—a truth that would never change, no matter her immortality, Elena returned her attention to Dmitri. “You forget to tell Raphael something?”
Shrugging, the vampire shot a speaking glance to her right. “If I was you, I’d worry more about his blue hide.”
“I think Illium can take care of himself.”
“Not if he keeps flirting with you.” A fine, almost elegant tendril of heat, champagne and sunshine, decadence in the light. “Raphael’s not the sharing kind.”
She pinned him with her eyes, attempting to ignore the twisting warmth in her stomach, a warmth he was fanning very deliberately. “Maybe you’re just jealous.”
Illium snorted with laughter as Dmitri’s own eyes narrowed. “I prefer to fuck women who aren’t covered in prickles.”
“I’m so brokenhearted about that that I can’t put it into words.”
The force of Illium’s laughter almost tumbled him into the water. “Nazarach’s arrived,” he finally managed to say to Dmitri—even as he ran a strand of Elena’s hair through his fingertips. “He wants to talk to you about the extension of a Contract as punishment for an escape attempt.”
Dmitri’s face betrayed nothing as he rose from the water with an inherently sensual grace. This time, Elena kept her eyes open, refusing to lose the silent battle of wills. His body was a sweep of smooth sun-kissed skin over pure muscle, muscle that flexed with power as he began to pull on his pants.
His eyes met hers as he zipped them up, diamonds and fur and the unmistakable musk of raw sex wrapping around her throat like a necklace . . . or a noose. “Until next we meet.” The scent faded. “Let’s go.” It was directed at Illium, the tone one of command.
Elena wasn’t the least surprised when Illium rose to his feet and left with a simple good-bye. The blue-winged angel might mess with Dmitri, but it was clear that he—like the rest of the Seven, the members she’d met at least—would follow him without question. And for Raphael, each and every one would lay down his life in the blink of an eye.
The water rippled away from her in the wash of wind caused by an angel’s landing.
The scent of the sea, the rain, clean and wild on her tongue.
She felt her skin go taut, as if it was suddenly too small to contain the fever within. “Come to tease me, Archangel?” His scent had always spoken to her hunter senses, even before they became lovers. Now . . .
“Of course.”
But when she turned her head to meet his gaze as he came to crouch on the rim, what she saw made her breath catch in her throat. “What?”
Reaching forward, he pulled out the plain silver hoops in her ears. “These are now a lie.” He closed his hand and when it opened it again, silver dust fell to sparkle on the steaming water.
“Oh.” Unadorned silver was for the unattached—male or female. “I hope you have replacements,” she said, turning—her wings wonderfully waterlogged—so she could brace her arms on the ledge and face him. “Those were from a market in Marrakesh.”
He opened his other hand and a different pair of hoops shimmered back at her. Still as small, still as practical for a hunter, but a beautiful, wild amber. “You are now,” he said, putting them in her ears, “well and truly entangled.”
She stared at the ring finger of his hand, possessiveness a raging storm inside of her. “Where’s your amber?”
“You haven’t made a gift of it yet.”
“Find a piece to wear until I can get you something.” Because he wasn’t free, wasn’t open to invitation from those who would sleep with an archangel. He belonged to her, to a hunter. “I wouldn’t want to get blood on the carpet killing all those simpering vampire floozies.”
“So very romantic, Elena.” His tone was clear, his expression unchanged, but she knew he was laughing at her.
So she splashed him. Or tried to. The water froze between them, a sculpture of iridescent droplets. It was an unexpected gift, a glimpse into the heart of the boy Raphael must’ve once been. Reaching out, she touched the frozen water . . . only to find it wasn’t frozen. Wonder bloomed. “How’re you keeping it like this?”
“It’s a child’s trick.” The breeze flirted with his hair as the water settled. “You’ll be able to control such small things when you’re a little older.”
“Precisely how old am I in angel-speak?”
“Well, our twenty-nine-year-olds tend to be considered infants.”
Lifting her hand, she ran her fingers down the rigid line of his thigh, her stomach tight with expectation. “I don’t think you see me as an infant.”
“Correct.” His voice had dropped, his cock brutally hard against the tough black material of his pants. “But I do think you’re still recovering.”
She looked up, her body slick with welcome. “Sex is relaxing.”
“Not the kind of sex I want.” Calm words, white lightning in those eyes, a reminder that this was the Archangel of New York she was trying to tempt into wickedness.
But she hadn’t survived him the first time by giving in. “Come in with me.”
He rose to his feet and circled around until he was at her back. “If you watch me, Elena, I might break my promises to both of us.”
She would’ve turned anyway, unable to resist the temptation that was the gut-wrenching masculine beauty of him, but then he said, “It would be so easy for me to hurt you.”
For the first time, she realized she wasn’t the only one who was dealing with something new, something unexpected. Staying in place, she listened to the dull thud of his boots hitting the snow, the intimate whisper of his clothes sliding off his body. She could see the corded strength of his arms and shoulders in her mind, her fingers aching to stroke the ridged plane of his abdomen, the muscular length of his thighs.
Her own thighs clenched as the water lapped around her, disturbed by a body far bigger and stronger than her own. She held her breath as he came closer, until he braced his hands against the rock on either side of her. Spreading out her wi
ngs so he could press against her back, she sucked in a breath. “Raphael, that’s not helping matters.”
The heat of his cock pulsed against her skin, a living brand, even as her wings arrowed sensation straight to the liquid-soft core of her body. An instant later, his lips touched her ear. “You torture me, Elena.” Teeth closing over her flesh, a none too gentle bite.
She yelped, the sound high, startled. “What was that for?”
“I’ve been celibate for over a year, Guild Hunter.” One big hand boldly cupped her breast, his fingers strong, unmistakably male against her flesh. “Need is rubbing on my temper.”
“What, you didn’t sink your cock into a vampire honey while I was out?”
Raphael pinched her nipple just hard enough to let her know she’d crossed a line. “You think so little of my honor?” Ice hung in the air.
“I’m jealous and frustrated,” she said, reaching back to press her palm against his cheek. “And I know I look like shit.” While vampires past their first few decades of life were beyond stunning, their skin unblemished, their bodies sleek. Very few humans ever came close to sleeping with an angel—they were simply outclassed.
Raphael skimmed his hand down her side. “It’s true you’ve lost a little weight, but I still want to fuck you mindless.”
4
Her brain blanked for several seconds. When she could speak, it came out a breathy moan. “You’re trying to kill me.”
A squeeze of her breast, the skin so tight the pleasure was almost pain. “It’s a much better form of punishment than tearing you limb from limb.”
“Can’t have sex with a dead woman, huh?”
“Precisely.”
Flames licked along her spine as he stroked both hands downward, sweeping his thumbs over the taut flesh of her buttocks. “Half the time, I’m not certain if you’re being serious or not.”
His fingers paused in their sensual torment. “Are you sure you wish me to know that? It’s a weakness.”
“Someone’s got to take the first step.” Lifting her foot, she ran it up behind his calf.
A kiss pressed to the beat of the pulse in her neck. “Such honesty will not serve you well among angelkind.”
“What about with you?”
“I’m used to utilizing what I know to maintain power.”
Elena leaned her chin on her hands, letting him ease the knots along the edges where her wings grew out of her back. It felt exquisite—so good she knew she’d never let another man touch her there, even in friendship. It would be a betrayal. “You’re being pretty honest yourself.”
“Perhaps between us,” he said slowly, as if considering the matter, “it may not be a weakness but a strength.”
Surprised, she turned her head. “Really? Then tell me something about yourself.”
He pressed his thumb into a particularly tight spot and she moaned, dropping her head onto her hands. “Lord have mercy.”
“It’s not the Lord you should be asking for mercy.” His tone held a possessive undercurrent that was becoming intimately familiar. “What would you like to know?”
She picked the first thing that came into her mind. “Are your parents still alive?”
Everything froze. The temperature of the water dipped so fast, she gasped for breath, her heart kicking out in panic. “Raphael!”
“Again, I must apologize.” A breath of heat against her neck, the water warming until her skin was no longer in danger of turning corpse-blue. “Who have you been talking to?”
The water might’ve warmed, but his voice remained an Arctic breeze. “No one. Asking about parents is a fairly normal activity.”
“Not when it’s my parents you’re asking about.” He pressed his body flush against hers, his arms coming around her waist.
She had the strangest feeling he was seeking comfort. It was such an odd thought to have about a being who held within him a power so vast, she could scarcely comprehend it, but she didn’t hesitate to put her arms around his, trusting him to hold her upright in the water. “I’m sorry if I opened old wounds.”
Old wounds.
Yes, Raphael thought, breathing in the scent of his hunter, the wildness barely contained beneath her skin. He’d wondered what Elena would do to a race of immortals—this mortal who’d made him a little bit human even as she became immortal. But he’d never stopped to wonder what she’d do to him.
“My father,” he said, surprising himself with the words, “died a long time ago.”
Flames everywhere, his father’s scream of rage, his mother’s tears. Salt on his lips. His own tears. He’d watched his mother kill his father and he’d cried. He’d been a boy, a true child, even among angelkind.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was an eternity ago.” And it was only in those rare moments when his shields fell that he remembered. Today, Elena had caught him unawares. His mind had flooded with the last images he had, not of his father but of his mother, her delicate feet walking lightly over grass stained with her own son’s life-blood. She’d been so beautiful, so gifted that angels had fought and died for her. Even at the end, as she crooned over Raphael’s fallen, broken body, her beauty had outshone the sun itself.
“Shh, my darling. Shh.”
“Raphael?”
Two feminine voices, one pulling him into the past, the other into the present.
If there had been a choice, he’d made it a year ago in the skies above New York, as the city lay in ruins around him. Now, he pressed his lips to the curve of Elena’s shoulder and soaked in her warmth, warmth that was distinctly mortal, melting the ice of memory. “You’ve been in this water long enough I think.”
“I don’t ever want to move.”
“I’ll fly you back.”
Her protest was weak as he lifted her out of the water, her body still so breakable.
“Don’t move, hunter.” Drying her wings with care, he pulled on his pants, then watched her dress, his heart overflowing with a mix of possession, satisfaction, and a terror unlike any he’d ever known before. If Elena fell from the sky, if she was thrown onto the unyielding earth, she wouldn’t survive. She was too young, an immortal just born.
When she came into his embrace, her arms going around his neck, her lips pressing to his pectorals, he shuddered and, closing his own arms around her, rose into the orange red glow of a sky skillfully painted by the rays of the slowly setting sun. Instead of going high, above the cloud layer, he stayed low, mindful that she felt the cold. If he’d known what they’d find, he’d have made a far different choice, but as it was, Elena saw the nightmare first.
“Raphael! Stop!”
He halted at the urgency in her tone, hovering just over the border that delineated where his territory ended and Elijah’s began. Even in the Refuge, there were lines—unmarked, unspoken, but existent all the same. One power could not stand too close to another. Not without destruction of a magnitude that would savage their kind. “What is it?”
“Look.”
Following the line of her arm, he saw a body colored in a hundred shades of copper by the sun. It lay in a small, silent square on his side of the border. His vision was acute, better than a raptor’s, yet he could see no movement, nothing that spoke of life. But he did see what had been done to the male. Fury ignited.
“Take me down, Raphael.” Distracted words, her eyes on the body that had curved in on itself as if in a desperate attempt to lessen the brutality of its injuries. “Even if there isn’t a vampiric trail to follow, I know how to track.”
He stayed in place. “You’re still recovering.”
Her head snapped up, those silver eyes liquid mercury. “Don’t you dare stop me from being what I am. Don’t you dare.” There was something very old in those words, in that anger, as if it had aged within her.
He’d taken her mind twice since she’d woken, both times to protect her from hurting herself. Today, those same primal drives urged him to disregard her orders—she might’ve been h
unter-born, but she wasn’t yet anywhere near strong enough to handle this.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Elena said, taut pain in every word, “but if you take my mind, if you force me to go against my instincts, I’ll never forgive you.”
“I won’t watch you die again, Elena.” The Cadre had chosen her because she was the best, relentless in her pursuit of her prey. But then, she’d been disposable. Now, she was integral to his existence.
“For eighteen years”—somber words, a haunted expression—“I tried to be what my father wanted. I tried not to be hunter-born. It killed me a little more each day.”
He knew what he was. He knew what he was capable of. He also knew that if he broke her, he’d despise himself for all eternity. “You’ll do exactly as I say.”
An immediate nod. “This is unfamiliar territory—I’m not going to go off half-cocked.”
Descending in a gentle dive, he came to an easy landing a few feet from the body—in the shadow of a dual-level home that bore the soft patina of age. Elena held onto him for a couple of seconds, as if getting her muscles under control before turning to kneel beside the badly beaten vampire. He crouched beside her, reaching out to place his fingers on the vampire’s temple. A pulse wasn’t always a good indicator of life when it came to the Made.
It took him several seconds to sense the dull echo of the vampire’s mind, a sign of how close the male was to true death. “He lives.”
Elena blew out a breath. “Dear God, someone really wanted to hurt him.” The vampire had been beaten so severely he was nothing much more than ground meat over bone. He might’ve been handsome, probably had been from the sense of age pressing against Elena’s skin, but there wasn’t enough left of his face to tell.
One eye was swollen shut. The other . . . the eye socket had been shattered with such vicious thoroughness that if you didn’t know he was meant to have an eye there, you’d never guess where his cheek ended and his eye began. Oddly, his lips had been left untouched. Below the neck, his clothing was driven into his flesh, evidence of a sustained and repeated kicking. And his bones . . . they stuck out—bloody, broken branches through what had once been a pair of jeans.