Archangel Rafe (A Novel of The Seven Book 1) (28 page)

Rafe opened his heart and searched for her trail, tracing her from his chambers. They translocated to a deserted farmhouse.

“You take upstairs, I’ll take down.”

Uri clomped up the steps as Rafe ran through the rooms, but the only place he could find a hint of Angelina was on the ragged front porch swing. She wasn’t there now. But she had been in the last few hours. And then he observed the energy trail with hers. “Nathan.”

Uri leaned against the doorframe, his chest heaving. “Your assistant?”

Rafe realized that prissy, uptight, rule-following Nathan must have brought her to this farmhouse. Just as he’d probably taken her to the next place. The fact that her energy was missing had to mean Nathan was the traitor. The why would have to wait. Where was far more important. Rafe mentally traced her next leap.

“Back to Poland?”

“Poland again.” Uri blinked.

The scene of the fire. What the hell was going on? Rafe readied for the leap. He paused, staring at the dusty floor and the scuff of footprints. “I will not come back without her.”

FORTY-ONE

Angelina was dying. She could sense her life force slipping away.

A disturbance rippled the air. Rafe appeared in the doorway to the barn. He tried to enter but an invisible wall held him back. “No!” he roared.

“You can come no further,” Tomasz said his face a white mask.

Rafe’s anguished gaze stared at the wood spike through her Angel’s mark. He couldn’t heal this wound. She could see the truth.

“Uri, get these people out of the barn. Now.”

Uri called to the villagers. Even though he couldn’t breach the inside of the barn, he could convince the villagers to leave. “My friends, please, I implore you to leave this barn.” Almost as if in a trance, they filed out the barn door, and left only Tomasz and Angelina inside.

“Show Tomasz how to mutate the chickens to kill normal humans and I’ll allow him entrance into the barn,” the evil voice commanded.

That was the change in the plan. Whoever was in the loft was going to try to kill regular humans.

“It’s impossible.” Rafe pounded at the ward. “The chicken DNA cannot be changed or healed by Angels.
O
nly conditions can be healed.”

“Then she is out of time.”

Angelina lifted her gaze to Rafe with a plea. “Kill me now.”

“I cannot.” He shook his head.

“It’s not forbidden,” she rasped. “I saw you.”

“It’s not forbidden.” Rafe laughed bitterly. “It would break my heart. I can’t lose you.”

“Let her go,” Tomasz yelled to the loft.

Rafe turned on Tomasz. “You dare to kill her the way your father was killed?”

“What?” Tomasz denied, “No. My father died in the fire.”

“Your father was stabbed through his Angel’s mark,” Rafe sneered. “Most likely by the one who did this to Angelina.”

Death slowly tugged at her consciousness.

“No. That’s.” His tormented gaze shifted toward the loft. “Not possible.”

Angelina saw Rafe throw himself against the invisible wall. He stabbed the space with his dagger, but he could not pierce it. He tried to use healing energy to punch a hole, but that didn’t work, either. The ward was just as effective as the energy disrupter prison.

Angelina’s vision blurred and her head drooped. “You’re only a pawn in a larger war.”

“Is that truly how he died?” Tomasz shifted his gaze back and forth between Angelina and Rafe.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Let me in,” Rafe raged from the doorway.

“You healed the villagers.” Tomasz held her gaze with his, except his image kept wavering. “Why?”

It was getting harder and harder to concentrate. Death crept closer to her heart. “They are as worthy as anyone else.”

With a cry of rage, Tomasz rushed toward the ladder to the loft. There was a soft pop as barrier broke. Angelina sensed the presence was gone.

Rafe rushed in. But it was too late for her. “I love you,” she said softly to Rafe.

“I love you too.”

“Brandt, Lina, my sister, you need to take care of them. Protect them.”

“What have I done?” Tomasz dropped to the ground.

“Uri, get in here,” Rafe yelled.

“What the hell took so long?” Uri stopped dead at the sight of Angelina slowly dying from the spike through her Angel mark.

“I couldn’t get through the ward to get to her,” Rafe said. The ward had been uncommonly strong.

Uri ignored Tomasz slumped over on the ground, gasping, and asked Rafe, “Can she be saved?”

“I don’t know.” Rafe was afraid the answer would be no. “But first we have to get out of here. You have to go after the energy trail from the loft.”

“Why?”

“I believe it was Remiel.”

Uri nodded. “You take care of Angelina and I’ll go try to capture and bind the rogue Archangel.”

Rafe translocated them back to the Angelic Realm and into his chamber. He lay her down gently on his bed, and examined the spike, fearing it was hopeless. He knew of no way to stop death from claiming her.

FORTY-TWO

“Rafe?”

“I’ve got you,
Carus
.”

Rafe lay down next to Angelina on the soft velvet comforter, and clasped her frigid hands in his. With trembling fingertips, he pressed the fine vein at her wrist, searching for her pulse. Sluggish and uneven. He hated the way her blood was moving through her body.

He held his hands over her and went deep into her body. But with the wood through her Angel mark, her energy had turned on her. The only thing holding off certain death was the Latifa ceremony that Victor had performed.

She blinked slowly. “Didn’t think I’d be back here.”

Damn it, damn it. “Why didn’t you call sooner?”

“Tried.” She passed out again.

A regular healing would not work. This was life or death. She was uncommonly strong. Rafe could think of only one thing that might work. They needed as much skin-to-skin contact as physically possible. Rafe willed the clothes from her body and his own. Wrapping his arms around her unresponsive body, he twined their legs together, and pressed his hot body against hers. Rafe attempted to neutralize the excess positive energy into positive, and eliminate the threat.

He ran his hands over her back and up her neck, and then gripped her face in his palms and stared at her as if he could will her back to consciousness. “Wake up, damn it.”

An empty chill spread throughout his body as she remained unresponsive and limp in his arms. He refused to lose her, refused to let her soul be extinguished. He would not let this happen. Not while he still had breath in his body. He roared a silent howl of rage and denial, and rolled so he was underneath her.

Her breasts pressed into the rigid walls of his chest and her arms hung limply along his sides. He forced a kiss to her stiff and frozen lips, like a man possessed. He refused to let her go. He traced the familiar lines of her face, the delicate arch of her brow, the sweep of her lashes against high cheekbones, and the strong feminine bow of her lips with his fingertips.

Her hips lay within the cradle of his.

Fury, strong and sharp, welled within him. He would not lose her. He could not. His chest was one giant gaping hole devoid of all sensation but a hollow, empty pain. If he let go, she would sink into the open cavity where his heart had once resided, and disappear.

Angelina twitched.

He kissed again fiercely as if he could will her to live. And he felt the flutter of her tongue against his. Rafe froze, unsure if he’d wished movement that wasn’t there or if he really had felt her kiss.

Thank the Universe, she had moved. His heart pounded in triple time, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, like a timpani drum in a marching band. He wrapped his arms around her back and let her head rest in the crook between his neck and shoulder. With every soft, feathering of breath against his bare skin, he gave thanks and kissed her over and over.

“Thank you, thank you,” between kisses he whispered thanks to the Universe for sparing him the torture of her death. He didn’t think he could bear the agony or the guilt.

She lifted her head cautiously like a drunk on the morning after. “Rafe?”

“I’m here, angel.” He suppressed the urge to yell at her. Yelling could wait until she was better.

In response, she pressed her lips against his mouth. Relief rose within him, needing an outlet, needing a repository for the fear and adrenaline still coursing through him. “I feel terrible.” She rested her cheek on his chest.

“I know you do,
Carus
.” Rafe rubbed his hands up and down her back, and continued to neutralize the her energy. The contact was solely intended for healing her. Until she shifted her hips. Suddenly he became aware of her naked body pressed against his. Her nipples stabbed into his chest, and a living, rippling heat poured from her core.

They needed to move. He needed her to shift from this position but she felt so damn good and he was so damn relieved that he held on to her instead, one large palm sliding down her back to cup her buttocks.

She licked at his lips. “Feels good.” And yet once they stopped kissing, he could feel her start to fade again.

“You left.”

“I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”

With a stifled groan, he opened his mouth and suddenly she was there, invading, conquering as if she were the victor and he the spoils. With her hands, she explored the contours of his biceps and shoulders, the slight shift causing friction between her nipples and his chest.

His cock hardened with a rush of blood, engorging and pressing into the concave valley between her hips. As one they shifted, Angelina inching up slightly and Rafe moving down until his erection aligned with her sex.

He teased her with little intimate brushes along her deliciously slick channel with the lightest of touches but never actual penetration. The head of his shaft teased her bundle of nerves as they dueled with their mouths.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” he bit at her mouth as if he could gobble her up in great huge gulps. He had told her he would come any time.

“I tried.” She rubbed her body along his, every cell heating as if she couldn’t bear not to touch him, her soft skin like silk against his larger, rougher body.

Relief was an aphrodisiac of monumental proportions. He slid his hand up to cup her breast. And yet, he could feel her energy receding again.

She moaned into his mouth then lifted slightly onto her knees, pausing as the tip of his cock slid inside her.

Only the tip. They held there on the precipice.

Suddenly Rafe knew what he had to do. The only way that he could push as much energy into her body as possible.

He eased her down onto his shaft as he arched up with his hips. The sudden carnal contact roared through his body. The pleasure, intense and unexpected, overtook him.

He slid his hands to her hips and controlled the rhythm of their frenzied mating. His heart was crazed as he grappled with the reality that he could still lose her. Anchoring her to him with his arms, with every hard stroke, he stabbed her internal bundle of nerve endings, and increased her response. The force of their thrusts caused her breasts to bob tauntingly in his face until he arched up and captured one nipple in his mouth.

He sucked on her breast in time to the rhythm of their thrusts. Angelina’s thighs gripped his hips. Her head was thrown back in ecstasy, her body rosy and flush with desire. The sight of her abandoning all inhibitions and riding him like an ancient pagan goddess catapulted him over the edge.

With a hoarse shout, he emptied himself into her, coming in great bursting jets as her body fisted around him, contracting and milking his cock for every ounce of pleasure.

Breath heaving, she lay limply across his body, still holding him inside her as they both fought to calm their breath, desire still pulsing through his body in little zings of pleasure.

Relief and desire mingled together warming his body and heart. He could feel her energy return. Not full strength but more than she’d had only minutes ago.

There was no warning. No key in the lock, no rustle of clothes, to indicate the presence of another until Nora’s horrified exclamation echoed in the large marble chamber, “What have you done?”

FORTY-THREE

“He saved me.”

Angelina suddenly wore clothes. The transition was abrupt and shocking. One moment she’d been weak and barely hanging on to her life. The next she was naked and twined with Rafe. And the next they were separated by what felt like the length of a football field. Rafe was across the room from her. She looked around at the familiar white marble walls and high ceilings. The faint scent of dried herbs hung in the air. She would focus on anything to avoid looking at the woman in the doorway.

“That’s not what it looked like to me.” Nora scowled, arms crossed over her well-endowed chest.

They were in deep shit. But frankly, she didn’t know where Nora got off yelling at them. However, she had authority and Angelina didn’t.

“Extenuating circumstances,” Angelina said flatly. Her defiance crumbled as lethargy began to steal over her again.

Rafe leaned against a marble column that would do the Parthenon proud. “She was dying.”

Nora flung a hand in the air. “So you decided, what the hell, may as well, f--”

“Show some respect,” Rafe barked before Nora could finish.

“You dare chastise me?”

Angelina felt another wave of weakness and tried to blink away a sudden fogginess. She observed the ping-pong of words between Rafe and Nora. Angelina swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. “I think what Rafe is trying to say is that he tried anything he could think of to save me.”

Odd, her words sounded slurred.

“There is a law.” Nora held one hand over her eyes, like a little kid pretending not to see. “This must be dealt with.”

The fuzziness increased. And the knitting hole in her wrist over her mark throbbed.

“What happened?” Nora asked softly.

Victor appeared in the room. “Again, you have a human in your room?”

“She was dying,” Rafe snarled.

Angelina was trying not to panic but her vision grayed to black. “Rafe?”