You don't play fair, Archangel.
She so rarely initiated mental contact that he savored it.Neither do you. My c*ck is about to burst.
"I promise to make it better."
Blowing out a breath between clenched teeth, he put her on her feet in the shower, then reached over and turned on the cold water. She shrieked as the water hit her, slapping her hands on his still-clothed chest. "Get me out of here!"
"You're an angel," he said, soaked to the skin. "You aren't that sensitive to the cold."
But he turned up the heat.
She glared at him. "What was that for?"
He waited in silence.
"Good," she said after a few seconds, "I'm glad you're suffering."
He was a being who'd lived over a thousand years, thought he'd long ago lost the ability to truly laugh. Tonight he felt humor tug at his lips, despite the fact that his body remained painfully hard with need, his blood a fever. "That wasn't very nice of you, Elena."
A suspicious look as she pushed her hair off her face.
"After all, I brought you to your pleasure twice."
"We're keeping track now?" Her eyes glittered.
"Of course."
Her nose crinkled up, and then she couldn't hold it in any longer, her laughter bubbling out of her in a wave of pure delight. It hit him right in the heart he hadn't been certain he still had before he met Elena. Holding her under the water, he buried his face in the dampness of her hair and smiled.When you're back up to full strength, you're going to be very busy catching up.
Her arms came around his neck, her body pressed to his in an open kind of affection that he knew was rare for his hunter. Trust, he thought, she was beginning to trust him. Fear was an emotion he hadn't felt for centuries - not until the night Elena lay broken in his arms, in a Manhattan that had become a war zone - but now, it whispered through his veins.
Elena's trust was not easily given.
But it could so easily be lost.
"Are you planning on taking off your clothes?" Her fingers were already on the buttons of his shirt.
Shifting back, he let her strip him, let her tease him, let her make him a fraction more human.
Half an hour later, Raphael watched Elena give in to sleep, her lashes pale against gold-touched skin that spoke of a land of orange sunsets and thriving markets, snake charmers and veiled women with kohl-rimmed eyes, her wings spread out in a sweep of midnight and dawn as she lay on her front. Those wings, the wings of a warrior-born, were a fitting accent to her strength. But it was the woman, he thought, kneeling down beside the bed for an instant, who was the true treasure.
Brushing her hair off her face, he ran the back of his hand down her cheek.Mine. The possessiveness had grown ever stronger since she'd agreed to be his lover. He knew it would only increase. Because in all his centuries of existence, he'd never before taken a lover he considered his on every level. He'd kill for her, destroy for her, savage anyone who dared attempt to take her from him.
And he would never let her go . . . even if she begged for her freedom.
Rising to his feet, he walked out of the room through the balcony doors, closing them gently behind himself. The snow had stopped falling, leaving the Refuge clothed in the shade of innocence.Watch over her , he said to the angel circling above.
Galen's response was swift.I'll let nothing reach her.
Raphael knew Galen wasn't convinced about Elena, but the angel had given his word -
and none of the Seven would ever betray Raphael. Taking off in a steep dive, he touched his mind to Elena's resting one - the act had become habit after the year she'd spent locked in a sleep he hadn't been able to penetrate.
The silence had been endless. Relentless.
Today he felt her exhaustion, her mind at peace, free of the dreams that so often stalked her. Withdrawing, leaving her to her slumber, he cut through the icy air toward the Medica. It was as he was about to dive from his position high above Keir's domain that he felt another mind touch his.
Michaela.
Chapter 17
The other archangel came into sight seconds later, her wings copper in a sky slowly turning from gray to light. He waited as she brought herself to a standing hover in front of him. "The boy?" she asked, her expression haunted by an agony he knew would've made Elena's heart fill with pity, with sympathy.
He was older, harder. He'd seen Michaela end lives on a whim, play with men and angels as one would with chess pieces. But in this . . . she'd earned the right to know. "He will heal."
A shudder rippled through her body, a body so beautiful that it had made fools of kings and led to the death of at least one archangel. Neha might be the Queen of Snakes, but Raphael was certain it was Michaela who'd helped push Uram to the point of no return, goading him with the most poisonous of whispers.
"Your hunter," Michaela said, making no effort to hide her dislike, "was she able to pick up the trail?"
"Not beneath the snow. Indications are that the vampire was helped by an angel." And if that knowledge leaked to the general populace, it would devastate what remained of the Refuge's equilibrium. "You need to check your people."
Her face turned to a stone mask, her bones blades against her skin. "Oh, I will." A pause, her eyes piercing even in the dark. "You don't think my people are loyal to me."
"It matters little what I think." What he believed was that fear alone, shaped by capricious whim, would never foster loyalty. "I must go. Elena will try to trace the scent again when she wakes."
"She remains as weak as a mortal."
"Good-bye, Michaela." If she believed Elena weak, that was her mistake.
He landed beside the Medica with a silence born of a million such landings, the snow hardly lifting around him. The building was serene, empty, but he knew angels and vampires both would return with the rising of the sun, to reassure themselves that Sam lived, that his heart still beat.
Until then, Raphael would watch over him.
Elena woke to the knowledge that she was in an archangel's arms, the sun streaking its way into the room on gilded fingers. "What time is it?"
"You've only slept a few hours," Raphael told her, his breath an intimate caress against her neck. "Do you feel strong enough to continue the track?"
"Oh, the track's happening," she said, stealing a single moment to savor the wild heat of him. "It's just a matter of how fast I'll be able to go." A deep breath and she dragged herself out of bed, her wings held close to her back until she was standing beside it. She turned to find Raphael watching her with those eyes of unearthly blue, his chest na**d enticement bathed in sunlight.
"Elena." A subtle reprimand.
Blushing, she went through a quick but comprehensive warm-up. "Nothing's too stiff."
Her eyes returned to that magnificent body he wouldn't let her touch. "I might need a massage at the end of the day, though."
"That might be a temptation too far."
Memories stroked into her mind, of his fingers teasing her to ecstasy as that deep voice told her every wicked thing he planned to do. Feeling her body flush, she turned away from a face that could make even a hunter fall into sin, and made her way to the bathroom. A quick shower later, she was feeling a bit more human.
Human.
No, she wasn't that anymore. But she wasn't a vampire either. She wondered if her father would find her more acceptable now, or would this make her even more of an abomination in his eyes?
"Go then, go and roll around in the muck. Don't bother coming back."
It still hurt, that rejection, the way he'd looked at her from behind the thin metal frames of his spectacles. After her mother's death she'd tried so hard to be what Jeffrey Deveraux wanted in a daughter, in his oldest surviving heir. Her existence had been a tightrope, one that wobbled constantly beneath her terrified feet. Never had she been comfortable in the Big House, the house her father had bought after the blood, the death, the screams. But she'd tried. Until one day, the tightrope snapped.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
"Your hunger makes mine sing, hunter."
She stiffened in rejection. "No."
Turning off the water, she got out and stood with the towel pressed to her face. Was it real, that whisper? It had to be. She'd never forget that low, sinuous voice, that handsome face that hid the soul of a murderer. But she'd forgotten those words, had buried them.
The words . . . and what came after.
Elena.
Clean, fresh, the sea and the wind. She clung to it.Hey, I'll be out soon.
I can sense your fear.
She didn't know how to answer that, so she didn't. The scent of the sea, the fresh bite of wind, didn't disappear. Part of her wondered if he was stealing her secrets, but another part of her was glad he hadn't left her alone in that home turned butcher's shop.Raphael?
He appeared in the doorway, a being she'd once shot in terror. A being who now held her very soul in his hands. "You have need of me?"
"How much do you know?" she asked him. "About my family?"
"The facts. I had you fully investigated before the Cadre decided to hire you."
She'd known that, but now she met his gaze, walling up her suddenly vulnerable heart.
He could hurt her so much. "Have you taken more than the facts from me?"
"What do you think?"
"I think you're used to taking what you want."
"Yes." A slow nod.
Her heart threatened to break.
"But," he said, "I'm beginning to learn the value of that which is freely given." Walking across, he ran one hand over the acutely sensitive arch of her wing.
She shivered, caught by the magnetism of an archangel who'd never be anything close to mortal. And then he spoke, his eyes the infinite blue at the deepest part of the ocean, endless and pure beyond description. "I haven't taken your secrets, Elena."