Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter)

by Nalini Singh

  “It was hidden away,” Naasir said. “Maybe Osiris found it in the ice when he built the house that became his stronghold.” A shrug. “Later, it returned to the ice.”

  “Will you tell me about your becoming?” Under a warm African sun where no darkness could linger.

  He growled and, reaching over, grabbed the Grimoire. Undoing the lock with a rough quickness that made her squeak, he thrust it at her. “Is this it?”

  Realizing he wasn’t going to tell her anything until she’d confirmed whether or not this was in fact the Grimoire, she took it from him and, sitting cross-legged on the picnic blanket, opened it with care. The text flowed like water across the page, interrupted only by two squares of delicately detailed illustrations.

  Gold and silver and green and red, the colors were brilliant, as if the lines had been drawn yesterday. The black ink of the writing was as dark. Turning the page, she found a full-page drawing of a griffin. The mythical creature’s wings were gloriously arched, its body that of a lion and its eyes a hypnotic obsidian. Running her fingers carefully over the image, she felt her throat thicken.

  “This is a jewel,” she whispered to Naasir. “One of the Seven Lost Angelic Treasures.” She rubbed away the tears rolling down her cheeks before the salt water could fall and damage the page.

  Shifting to sit behind her so he could look over her shoulder, Naasir wrapped one strong arm around her waist. “Can you read the writing?”

  “Yes. It’s an ancient angelic tongue.” Though angels were immortals, their languages had nonetheless drifted over the eons. “If I read it aloud, you’d understand large parts of it. It’s just the writing of it that’s changed so significantly.”

  Naasir’s hair brushed her cheek as he leaned forward to turn the page, his body warm and strong around her. “So it’s the book from your vow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Tugging the Grimoire out of her hands, he dropped it on the far side of the picnic blanket. When she turned to ask why he’d done that, he slammed his mouth against hers, his hand thrusting into her hair.

  The shock of contact was blinding. Then came the hot, hard punch of violent pleasure. It hurt, she’d been needing him for so long. Moaning, she twisted in his embrace so that she could wrap her arms around his neck. He had other ideas.

  A second later, she was on her back on the blanket, Naasir over her.

  Weaving his hands through her own, he pinned them to either side of her head. His hair—one of her feathers still in place—fell around his face as he dipped his head toward her, his eyes silver bright. Mercy but he was beautiful, she thought and then his mouth was devouring hers, and her heart, it was thumping like a brutal hammer inside her chest.

  She devoured him as he devoured her, her tongue licking against his, her teeth grazing his lips. He bit. Of course he bit. And that was okay, because this was Naasir and he was hers for this moment, this instant, this day.

  He lowered his full weight on her, nudging apart her legs and grinding his erect cock against the swollen folds between her thighs. Inner muscles spasming as a ragged cry was ripped from her throat, she wrapped her legs around his waist and rocked against him. Growling into her mouth, he released one of her hands, reached down between them.

  Claws grazed her skin.

  She jerked as she felt her pants tear. He didn’t stop there—he ripped and tore until there were only a few shreds hanging by her boots. Her panties disappeared as quickly and then his no-longer-clawed fingers were stroking her with a slick, wet intimacy that made her want to beg and to take and to give all at once. Shuddering, her breasts aching and her nipples painfully sensitive, she pushed up his T-shirt and, when he didn’t cooperate, nipped hard at his jaw.

  That got her a growl and a silver-eyed glance through lashes as beautiful.

  “Take this off,” she ordered.

  He thrust a finger inside her instead.

  Her spine arched as her mouth fell open on a silent scream, her breath lost and her body clenching down hard on the small, possessive invasion.

  Naasir’s lips brushed her throat.

  She jerked at the scrape of fangs, but he didn’t bite, every muscle in his body so tense it was as if he’d snap. Her mind was fuzzy but she knew instinctively what was wrong. Pushing her free hand into his hair to hold him to her, she gasped in enough air to speak. “Yes. You can feed from me. Take me.”

  Tension dissipating into molten heat, he scraped his fangs over her needy flesh again and, withdrawing his finger from her body to her moan and the carnal, liquid sound of her readiness, moved his hand to the fly of his jeans . . . and a second later, the rigid length of him was demanding heat against her. Shoving up her thigh until her knee pressed into her breast, he began to push into her.

  She’d expected him to thrust, had been prepared for inevitable discomfort, but he nuzzled and kissed at her as he went slowly. “You’re very tight, mate.”

  Heart melted and in his hands, she just held on to him with a needy, hungry desperation. Her other hand remained locked with his as her body stretched to accommodate his girth and length. Kissing her, Naasir rocked forward another inch. She clawed at his back. Growling into the kiss, he rocked again.

  And again, and again.

  Until he was lodged fully in her, the ache of him inside her an erotic pain, and the feeling of belonging so deep tears pooled in her eyes. “Naasir.”

  Keeping one hand under the back of her knee, he nuzzled his way down to her throat.

  Her stomach fluttered.

  Her breath hitched.

  And then he sank his fangs into her right as he began to move his cock in slow, deep thrusts, each movement rasping over her aroused flesh.

  The pleasure was a huge, raw crash over her senses. Naasir rode her through the first wave, ignited another by sucking her blood and rubbing his thumb against the throbbing nub between her thighs. The second one slayed her, leaving her limp and honey slick, her muscles quivering.

  It was all she could do to keep her leg around his body.

  Increasing the speed of his thrusts once her body stopped spasming around his cock, Naasir raised his head from her neck and took her mouth again as he pounded her into the picnic blanket. She felt taken, branded, loved with an honest, wild ferocity that called to her own primal nature.

  Not fighting instinct, she bit down on his neck when he bent his mouth to her throat again. A deep, inhuman growl, his hand tightening its grip . . . and his fangs sinking into her as he thrust his cock home.

  * * *

  Naasir collapsed on top of his mate, his cock still snug inside her, and lazily stroked one silken thigh. He could hear her heart thundering beneath him, feel her body clenching in unexpected spasms that wrung pleasure from her limp form. Shocked surprise had dilated her pupils to dark moons.

  Smiling smugly, he kissed her, then nuzzled his way down to lick closed the tiny wounds he’d made with his fangs. “You’re delicious.” He would feed from her often when they rutted.

  Enjoying their combined slickness, and happy she was marked by him now, he stroked gently in and out of her. His cock was beginning to harden to full readiness again. “Do you hurt?”

  “I ache.” She ran her fingers over his lips, eyes heavy lidded. “You fill me up.” A smile when he nipped at the tips of her fingers, followed by a shiver as he circled his hips in a sensual tease. “Don’t stop.”

  Delighted, he slid his hand down her body to push it under her tunic and the tight tank top she wore to control her breasts. Her inner muscles clamped possessively on his cock when he closed his hand over the warm, soft globe and squeezed. He liked that, so he squeezed again.

  Andromeda arched her neck in response. Dropping his head to lick and kiss at her neck, he began to move. Slower this time, but just as deep. He could keep this up for an hour, might just do it if she let him. Lazily licking at her neck as he rubbed his thumb over her nipple, he pretended to bite her when she put both her hands in his hair and tugged.r />
  A harder pull. “I want a kiss.”

  Kissing his mate was no hardship. Stretched out on top of her, he playfully seduced her mouth until she pushed at his T-shirt again. “Help me get this off.”

  Sated enough to be more patient, he cooperated and soon the warm air kissed the naked skin of his back. He went to rip off her tunic, too, but she grabbed his wrist. “I already don’t have any pants.” Reaching down to her waist, she pulled the tunic off over her head, then followed with the tank top, freeing her breasts, the plump mounds topped by dark brown nipples.

  “Pretty,” he purred.

  Maneuvering so he was on his knees between her spread thighs, his cock still buried inside her, he palmed both breasts with possessive hands, watched her eyes flutter shut. Her teeth sank into her lower lip when he pricked her with his claws, the moan that left her throat making his balls draw up tight.

  Patience evaporated.

  He covered her body with his once more. He’d fondle and bite and suck on her pretty breasts later. Right now he wanted to rub up against her, inside her, wanted to drench her in his scent until no one else would ever dare make a claim on her.

  Andi was his.

  Her hands stroked up his ribs and over to his back, her body beginning to move in time with his lazy thrusts. “This is . . .” Another moan as he ground himself against her.

  Sliding his hand under her, he clenched his fingers on her ass, tilting her up for even deeper penetration.

  “Naasir . . .” Her nails dug into his shoulders, her wings restless on the picnic blanket.

  Unable to resist, he bent his head to her neck and bit again.

  She came hard and out of control around him. Growling because he was pleased his mate found him so irresistible, he tightened the hand he had on her ass and drew on her blood as he continued to rock in and out of her. The taste of her on his tongue was drugging, her nails on his skin dark pleasure, the aroused, sated scent of her the final straw.

  His spine locked as he thrust so hard into her that his balls slapped against her body.

  He heard her cry out, but it wasn’t in pain, and so that was all right.

  48

  Lying lazily naked on his back afterward, having taken off his jeans so Andromeda could wear them with her tunic, Naasir watched his mate watch him. He didn’t know why, but she was shy about being naked under the sky. He didn’t mind her wearing clothes if that made her happy, since she let him strip her whenever he wanted.

  But she seemed to like him naked.

  Her eyes kept going to him, and she’d sigh and lean over and kiss him. Or she’d pet his chest. Or his thigh. It was having a predictable effect, but he could contain himself now that he’d satisfied the first bite of need. Eating the square of meat she’d fed him—that she’d made for him, he watched her pick up the Grimoire.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said, stroking the cover before opening the book to look at the pages again.

  Moving until she was sitting with her back half-propped up against his side, one arm on his chest and her hair electric and wild from his loving, she read to him from the book, translating the words unknown to him as she went. “And it was said that the griffin was the mightiest of creatures, but that it had a madness inside it nothing could cure. It could not be tamed. Blood drenched the ground where it walked and though it was a peerless fighter, it could not be controlled and was a wild creature that did not know the hand of man.”

  She turned the page. “Those who saw a griffin were forever marked by its regal appearance, for its violent and maddened heart was not visible on the surface. Its golden fur glinted in the sunlight and its wings took it aloft as high as angelkind. Even in its danger, it was too magnificent to kill.”

  Turning, she showed him an illustration of a griffin flying in the sky beside an angel. “Can you imagine?”

  The anger of memory stirred in him. “Legends like this drove Osiris. He wanted to make them true.” His claws sliced out. “Alexander’s brother was a melder and he decided to meld living beings.”

  Putting down the Grimoire, Andromeda turned to fully face him. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice trembling. “I’m so sorry. All this time, I talked about the Grimoire and I never considered how it might hurt you.”

  Naasir hadn’t meant for his words to wound her. “Your thoughts and wonder about mysterious creatures don’t hurt me,” he said, tugging her down into his arms and tucking her head against his neck. “It’s fun with you.” A game.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Andromeda’s heart wasn’t twisted, and she had no desire to cage or own any of these creatures. “I like hearing the things you have to say.”

  Then, because it was time, he told her of the evil that had taken place on the ice. “I didn’t know about the Cascade before, but now that I do, I think Osiris must’ve gained his abilities in the last one. He was an Ancient like his brother, would’ve been alive then.”

  Andromeda’s head moved against his chest as she nodded. “According to Jessamy’s research, while the Cascade most significantly affects archangels, it can also have an impact on a small percentage of other angels.” She stroked his chest, running her nails over his skin and the fine fur that striped it.

  The petting made it bearable to go into the death and the dark. “Osiris had the ability to put two things together and make them one.” An ability no one had paid much heed to, for it seemed so frivolous. “At first, he melded inanimate objects for his and others’ amusement—a chair to a broom, or a sword to a stone. Then he decided to see if he could meld two living things together.” It had all been in the diaries Raphael had saved for Naasir.

  “He started with plants and it worked. He is responsible for many of the most extraordinary flowers in the world—flowers that aren’t one color but many, or that are so unusual a hybrid, no one can work out how they ever cross-pollinated.”

  Andromeda’s breath brushed his neck, her nuzzled kiss making his eyes close. “After Raphael first found me and took me to the Refuge, I used to rip the heads off all the flowers Osiris had created in front of me, but then after a while, I decided that they had beaten him and should be allowed to exist. Like me, the flowers lived where he didn’t.”

  “At some point,” Andromeda said, her hand fisting on his chest as her voice vibrated with rage, “he decided to move from plants to people, to children. How can anyone justify such evil?”

  “According to his diaries, it began by chance—he found an urchin boy and brought him to his old laboratory in Alexander’s territory. He intended for the boy to become a cleaner. Then his hunting dog ran into the room and he was struck by the idea of melding them. He called it a ‘glorious moment of genius.’”

  Naasir pulled up Andromeda’s leg so it lay across his body. She turned a little farther and swept her wing over him. The heavy warmth, the scent of her, it anchored him to the joyous present where he had his mate in his arms and Osiris was long dead, never to commit his atrocities again.

  “He tried to meld the boy and the dog then and there. The two died in a twisted mess of limbs and organs.” Naasir’s heart raged at the knowledge that that had been merely the start of Osiris’s murderous reign. “The failure only fueled his ugly desires. He bought children from poor families, or simply abducted them, paid poachers and hunters to bring him the young of animals.”

  Lifting Andromeda’s hand to his mouth, he kissed her palm and forced himself to remember the peace he’d felt under the ice. No sadness, no pain, no horror. “The boy who is part of me grew up alone until the tiger cub. Osiris either stole or bought the boy when he was a baby—I never found out which.”

  He ran his hand through Andromeda’s hair, bunching it up in his hand, then letting it escape in a burst of color and life. Pretty. “In his diaries, he called us his hope.” Such an ugly use of the word. “And though I wish he’d never had the satisfaction, he succeeded with the tiger cub and the boy. Osiris never worked out why and all I can tell you i
s that the tiger cub and the boy were best friends who helped one another survive.” The instant of change was blurry in his memory, but he knew there had been pain, such agonizing pain.

  Andromeda rose up and, expression stripped of all traces of civilization, said, “I’m glad he’s dead.”

  He squeezed her waist with the arm he had around her. “I tried to kill him immediately after my transformation, but I was too weak.” It had felt as if he was a broken doll, his limbs useless and his mind dull.

  “It took me months and months to start thinking clearly again, though my thought patterns weren’t ‘human.’ Neither were they animal.” Rather, an amalgamation of the two. “I had to learn to walk again, talk again. Osiris wanted to know why I had two legs instead of four, why the boy’s form had taken precedence over that of the tiger cub, so he did more experiments.”

  Andromeda’s eyes glinted. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she repeated, “but I want to bring him back to life so I can hack out his black heart and feed it to him.”

  Naasir bared his teeth at her. “I knew you were my mate.” He drew her close with a grip around her nape, parted her lips with his own and licked his tongue against hers until her wing fluttered over him and her thigh rubbed against his.

  Sliding his hand under her tunic to palm her breast, he rolled her over onto her back. His nostrils flared at her scent. Moving his hand down her quivering abdomen, he slipped it under the loose waistband of the jeans and stroked two fingers through her slickness. When he raised his head, her lips were more swollen than before and her breath shallow.

  “Any more questions?” Lashes shading his eyes as he watched the rise and fall of her chest, he circled his thumb around the slippery nub at the apex of her thighs.

  Gripping his biceps with one hand, she tried to glare at him but pleasure kept rippling over her. “Beast.”

  He grinned. “Your beast.” Nipping at her lower lip, he used his teeth to tug at the soft flesh while he moved his fingers with a playful dexterity that made her give a startled moan and orgasm in sweet little flutters he wanted to lick up with his tongue.