"Raphael!"
Rising, he flew them back up into the icily clear night sky, each star cut in crystal.
"You said a strong vampire could kill me," she said, feeling the cold color her cheeks as the wind ripped through her hair. "Angelfire, I can guess. What else am I vulnerable to?"
"Angelfire is the easiest method, but those archangels who can't create the fire have other means."
"I wasn't planning on hanging out with the Cadre, so that's good."
Lips against her ear, a touch that seared her to the toes, but his words . . . "Disease is no longer your enemy, but fellow angels can also kill you. You're so young that if you were partially dismembered, you'd die."
She swallowed her gorge at that violent image. "That happen often?"
"No. Usually, the head is cut off and burned. Very few survive that."
"How couldanyone survive?"
"Angels are resilient," he murmured, twisting to glide them back down.
"This place is huge," she said, glimpsing lights far in the distance. "How can no one know it exists?"
Raphael didn't answer until he'd landed on the balcony outside their bedroom.
"Immortals may disagree on many things, but on this we are united - our Refuge must never be known to mortals."
"Sara?" She clenched her fingers on his upper arms. "Did you do something to her mind?"
"No." Eyes of endless, merciless blue stared down at her, eclipsing everything else. "But if she speaks of it, I must silence her and all those she tells."
A cold knot formed in her stomach. "Even if that would break my heart?"
"Make sure she doesn't speak." He cupped her cheek, his fingers cool from the night air.
"And that will not come to pass."
She pushed away from him. This time, he let her go, let her walk to the end of the balcony and stare down into that ragged tear in the flesh of the earth. There were fewer lights now, as if the angels were bedding down for the night. "I'm not part of your world, Raphael. I'm still human inside - I won't sit back and let my friends be slaughtered."
"I would expect no less." He opened the doors. "Come, sleep."
"How can you expect me to sleep after saying something like that?" Swiveling on her heel, she stared at him.
He glanced back, a being of such power that she still couldn't accept he loved her. But was an archangel's love like a human's? Or did it cut deeper? Draw heart's-blood?
"I forget," he said, "that you are so very young." Moving to her, he stroked his fingers down her temple, over her jaw. "Mortals fade, Elena. It is a simple truth."
"So I should forget my friends, my family?"
"Remember them," Raphael said, "but also remember that one day, they won't be there."
Grief was a wild-eyed beast inside of her. She couldn't imagine a world without Sara, without Beth. The ties she had with her younger sister might've been eroded by the choices they'd both made, but that didn't mean Elena loved her any less. "I don't know if I have the courage to survive that kind of loss."
"You'll find it when the time comes."
The pain in his voice slid a dagger hilt deep into her own heart. "Who?"
She didn't really expect an answer. Raphael might be her lover, but he was also an archangel. And archangels had made an art form out of keeping secrets. So when he ran his knuckles down her face and said, "Dmitri," it took her several seconds to respond.
"He was Made against his will," she guessed, remembering the conversation she'd once had with Dmitri about children. Had the vampire watched his children grow old? Had he lost a wife he loved?
Raphael didn't respond this time, nudging her into the bedroom. "You must rest or you won't be fit for flight by the time of the ball."
She followed, shaken by the truth he'd forced her to face.
Raphael placed his hands on her shoulders. "Undo the straps." The heat of his body was a lush stroke against her, invisible, inescapable.
And that quickly, her wings were afire with sensation, with a need that obliterated all else. It took effort to breathe, to speak. "Raphael, are you inside my mind?" She was pulling out and undoing the straps that held the piece of fabric crisscrossed over her br**sts even as she spoke.
"No." Long, strong fingers playing over her collarbones, the dip of her breastbone.
"Such soft skin, Guild Hunter."
Every inch of her seemed to burn with a thirst that couldn't be quenched. "Then what's happening to me?"
"You are still becoming."
He slipped off her top, and she felt the rasp of every fine thread, shuddered against the fleeting brush of his fingertips.
"Do you know what I taste at the curve of your neck?" He pressed his lips over that very spot. "Fire and earth, spring windstorms cut by a hint of steel."
She shivered, reaching back to tangle her hand in the heavy silk of his hair. "Is that how you see me?"
"It's who you are." He moved his hand up the slope of her hip, a slow seduction that made her suck in her stomach in anticipation.
But nothing could've prepared her for the shock of lightning that was his hand on her breast, his intent explicit. She couldn't help but watch, her entire being attuned to the merest shift of his.
Then he kissed her neck again and her senses splintered. Clenching the hand she'd thrust into his hair, she spun around, cupping his face between her hands, taking that beautiful, cruel mouth with her own. The kiss was wild, full of the fury of her need, the savage possession of his. One male hand fell to her hip as the other gripped her neck, refusing to let her draw back.
Her br**sts were crushed against the linen of his shirt, the texture deliciously - almost painfully - abrasive against her sensitized ni**les. She bit his lip in revenge for what he'd done to her. He bit her back, but he held the bite, releasing her flesh with a slow concentration that had her thighs pressing together in a burst of damp heat.
She went to slip her hand underneath his shirt. He caught her wrist. "No, Elena."
"I'm not that fragile," she said, frustrated. "Don't worry."
His hand tightened on her wrist for a second before he dropped it and took a step back, breaking their connection. Ready to fight him for what she needed, she looked up . . . and froze. "Raphael." Azure flames surged in those eyes, deadly as the angelfire he'd thrown at Uram in that final, cataclysmic fight.
"Go to bed," he said in a tone of voice so calm it was a sheet of ice.
But the fire continued to burn. Feeling her heart spasm at the lethal edge of it, she wrapped her arms around her body, covering her br**sts. She didn't know if she was protecting herself or him. "Will you come back?"
"Are you sure you want me to?" He'd turned and was through the balcony doors before she could answer.
She watched him take off into the infinite darkness of a mountain night, before closing the doors with fingers that had dug dark red crescents into her own skin and crawling into bed. But though she pulled every single one of the blankets over her, it took her a long time to stop shivering.
She'd thought she'd known, had thought she'd understood. But she hadn't. Ever since she'd woken, she'd been treating Raphael as if he was "safe." Tonight, she'd had a rude awakening. Raphael would never be safe. All it would take was one slip and he could kill her.
Was she strong enough to take that risk, that chance?
"You've made me a little mortal."
He'd said that to her the night she'd shot him, the night he'd bled so much that she'd cried, her hands trembling as she attempted to stop the crimson flow of blood. Had he been afraid then? Did Raphael even understand fear? She didn't know, wasn't sure he'd answer her if she asked.
Elena knew fear far too intimately. But, she thought, her muscles relaxing, she hadn't been afraid at the end. When her body lay shattered in Raphael's arms, she hadn't been afraid. And that was her answer.
Yes, she said speaking to Raphael, not knowing the strength of their mental connection, not sure how far it'd reach.Yes, I want you to come back.
He didn't answer, and she didn't know if he'd even heard her. But deep in the night, she felt the caress of lips against the curve of her neck, sensed the dark heat of a big male body curving around hers, her wings trapped in between . . . an indescribable intimacy between two angels.
Chapter 8
Elena woke alone, but there was a cup of coffee waiting for her on the nightstand - right next to Destiny's Rose. Raphael had given her the priceless treasure - a sculpture carved impossibly from a single diamond - not long after they first met. She kept trying to return it, only to find it back on her bedside table the next morning.
Eyes on the gift, one that was undeniably romantic, she struggled up into a sitting position and drew in the intoxicating scent of fresh coffee. However, she'd hardly taken a sip when she felt it - the cool stroke of satin blended with the promise of a pain that would hurt oh-so-good.
"Dmitri." Throat husky, she put down the cup and tugged the sheet above her br**sts.
Just in time.
The vampire walked in with the most perfunctory of knocks. "You're late for training."
Her eye went to the envelope in his hand. "What's that?"
"It's from your father." He handed it over. "Be down in half an hour."
She barely heard him, her eyes fixated on that envelope. What did Jeffrey Deveraux want now? "I'll be there." Words forced out past the rocks in her throat.
Dmitri left her with a kiss of diamonds and cream, a sensual taunt that trapped the air in her throat, made her thighs press together in involuntary reaction. But the distraction was momentary. All too soon, she was alone, staring at the envelope as if it might grow fangs and strike. "Don't be a coward, Ellie," she told herself and reached out to slit it open. It was, she saw, addressed to her care of the Guild.