Archangel's Kiss (22 page)

Raphael looked up at that instant, his eyes smoldering with an unequivocally sexual heat that said he knew exactly what she was thinking. Holding that gaze, she closed the door and walked to him with slow, intent steps. Instead of stopping when she reached the granite, she jumped up and, sweeping the papers out of her way, swung her legs over the other side, spreading them to bracket him in between.

The archangel put his hands on her thighs. “Again you come to me with nightmares in your eyes.”

“Yes,” she said, pushing her hands through his hair. “I come to you.” It was a trust she’d given no one else.

He squeezed her thighs, pulling her closer with an effortless strength that made her heart race. The Archangel of New York was in a dangerous mood today. Bending down as he lifted up his head, she kissed him. Her dominant position lasted a bare second. A subtle shift in his hold and he had her in his lap, her legs on either side of his, the damp heat between her thighs pressed to the rigid line of his cock.

Gasping at the sudden, electric contact, it took her a second to realize she’d spread her wings over his desk. “I’m messing up your papers,” she whispered against lips that had tempted her into the most erotic of sins.

He moved up his hand to close over her breast.

A shock of sensation. Her spine arched.

“I’ll take recompense for your misdemeanor in flesh. Are you ready to pay?” A question full of a sensual cruelty that made her survival instincts ripple in fear.

But instead of fighting she relaxed. Raphael, she thought, was more than terrifying enough to banish even the worst nightmare. When his teeth closed over the pulse in her neck, when his hands ripped away her top to leave her upper body bare, she gripped his shoulders and hung on.

Then those strong white teeth moved lower.

Her stomach swirled with an addictive mix of fear and desire. “Raphael.”

He flicked out his tongue, one hand on her back, the other plumping up her breast so he could lave the nipple with a slow focus that had her entire body going taut in expectation. “Are you planning to bite?” It was a husky question.

Hearing the chill in that, she found herself hesitating, even as her body craved his touch. Was she anywhere near strong enough to take on the Archangel of New York in this kind of a mood?

He was in her mind, slipping in as desire short-circuited her defenses. “Will you ever understand the need for boundaries?” She nipped at his lip, frustrated enough to act on instinct.

His eyes turned to midnight as he lifted his head, his thumb brushing over the peak he’d aroused to throbbing readiness. “No.”

“Sorry”—she wrapped her arms around his neck—“you don’t get away with autocratic answers with me.” And she wasn’t going to let her anger drive a wedge between them. This thing that tied them together—this raw, painful emotion—was worth fighting for. “And I’m never going to accept being made a puppet. Not by Lijuan, and certainly not by the man I consider mine.”

He didn’t answer, just watched her with that aloof focus. He’d watched her like that the first time they’d met. Then, she’d been afraid he’d kill her. Now, she knew he wouldn’t. But . . . he might hurt her in ways only an immortal could. She should’ve backed down—but she’d never been one to do that.

“What,” she said, touching her nose to his in unspoken affection, in a trust that was a fragile thread he could snap with a single careless act, “has you in such a bad mood?”

The scent of the sea swelled, until she could almost touch the foam. The pause, it was full of things unspoken, a gleaming blade hanging over their heads. Sweat broke out along her spine but she continued to hold him, continued to fight for a relationship that had come out of nowhere and become the most important thing in her universe.

Elena.
A caress across her mind as he dropped his head to the curve of her neck.

Heart thudding at the knowledge that the danger had passed, she stroked her hands through his hair, nuzzled her face against him. “You have your own nightmares,” she said, understanding coming to her in the clarity after the storm. “They were bad today.”

Both arms around her, he tugged her even closer. She went, needing the warmth of him as much as he needed her. And wasn’t that a kicker? The Archangel of New York needed her? Her, Elena Deveraux, Guild Hunter and unwanted daughter. Squeezing him with a fierce tenderness, she pressed her lips to his temple, his cheek, any part of him she could reach.

“Must be something in the air,” she found herself saying in a voice so quiet, it was almost not sound. “I can’t seem to stop thinking of my mother, my sisters.” It was the first time she’d ever spoken of her nightmares aloud. Even her best friend didn’t know the truth of her childhood, of the evil that haunted her until some days she could hardly breathe.

“Tell me their names.” Warm breath against her neck, his arms so strong around her.

“You know.”

“It’s only fact.”

“My mother,” she said, holding on, holding tight, “her name was Marguerite.”

Elena.
A mental kiss, his scent enfolding her as protectively as his arms.

Her lip quivered until she caught it between her teeth. “She’d been in the States since she married my father, but she still spoke with a Parisian accent. She was this fascinating, lovely butterfly with her laughter and her quick hands. I used to just love sitting in the kitchen, or in her work room, watching my mother talk as she worked.”

Marguerite had made quilts, beautiful one-of-a-kind pieces that had sold for enough money that she’d built up a small nest egg. Nothing in comparison to her husband’s fortune, but hers had been passed on to her daughters with love, while Jeffrey . . . “She’d never have let my father do what he did.”

“He lives only because I know you love him.”

“I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop myself.” That love was rooted too deep, so deep that even years of neglect hadn’t snuffed it out completely. “I used to wish he’d died instead of my mother, but I know my mom would’ve hated me for thinking that.”

“Your mother would’ve forgiven you.”

Elena wanted to believe that so much it hurt. “She was the heart of our family. After her death,
everything
died.”

“Tell me of your lost sisters.”

“If Mama was the heart, then Ari and Belle were the peace and the storm.” They’d left a gaping hole in the Deveraux family when their blood slicked across the floor.

She clung to Raphael, shoving away the hated image with desperate hands. “I was the middle child and I liked it. Beth was the baby, but Ari and Belle let me do things with them sometimes.” No more words would come, her chest tight with lack of air.

“I didn’t have siblings.”

The words were unexpected enough that they broke through her anguish. Staying in place, wrapped around Raphael like ivy, she listened.

“Angelic births are rare, and my parents were both thousands of years old when I was born.” Each birth was a celebration but his had been particularly feted. “I was the first child born of two archangels in several millennia.”

Elena, his hunter trusting him to hold her safe, lay quiet against him, but he could feel her attention, her palm warm through the linen of his shirt. Sliding one of his own hands down her naked back, slow and easy, he continued to talk, to share things he’d not spoken of in an eternity. “But there were some who said I shouldn’t have been born.”

“Why?” She raised her head, clearing her eyes with hard swipes of her knuckles. “Why would they say that?”

“Because Nadiel and Caliane were
too
old.” Holding her close enough that her breasts brushed his chest with every breath, he moved his hands up over the curve of her waist, her rib cage, savoring the feel of her skin against his own. “There was concern that they’d begun to degenerate.”

Elena frowned. “I don’t understand. Immortality is immortality.”

“But we evolve,” he said. “Some of us devolve.”

“Lijuan,” she whispered. “Has she evolved?”

“That’s what we say, but even the Cadre wonders what it is she’s evolving into.” A nightmare, that was certain. But a private one, or one that would lay waste to the world?

Elena was in no way stupid. She understood in bare seconds. “That’s why your mother executed your father.”

“Yes. He was the first.”

“Both?” Pain—for
him
—arced through those expressive eyes.

“Not at the start.” He saw the last moments of his father’s existence as clearly as if the scenes were painted across his irises. “My father’s life ended in fire.”

“That mural,” she said, “on the hallway in our wing—it’s his death.”

“A reminder of what might await me.”

She shook her head. “Never. I won’t let it happen.”

His human, he thought, his hunter. She was so very young, and yet there was a core of strength in her that fascinated him, would continue to fascinate him through the ages. She’d already changed him in ways he didn’t understand—perhaps, he thought slowly, there was a chance she might save him from Nadiel’s madness. “Even if you fail,” he said, “I have every confidence that you’ll find a way to end my life before I stain the world with evil.”

Rebellion in those eyes. “We die,” she said, “we die together. That’s the deal.”

He thought about his final thoughts as he’d fallen with her in New York, her body broken in his arms, her voice less than a whisper in his mind. He hadn’t considered holding onto his eternity for a second, had chosen to die with her, with his hunter. That she would choose to do the same . . . His hands clenched. “We die,” he repeated, “we die together.”

A moment of utter silence, the sense of something being locked into place.

Releasing the pain of memory, he pressed a kiss to the pulse in her neck. “We must see what Lijuan has sent you.”

She shivered. “Can I have your shirt?”

He let her scramble off his lap, her body beautiful and lithe . . . and strong. Gauging her muscle tone with a critical eye as she turned to look at something on his desk, he made a decision. “Flying lessons begin tomorrow.”

She spun around so fast, she almost tripped on her wings. “Really?” A huge grin bisected her face. “Are you going to teach me?”

“Of course.” He’d trust her life to no one else. Sliding off his shirt, he gave it to her.

She pulled it on and rolled up the sleeves. It was much too big for her, of course, but she left the ends hanging. When he commented on that, a touch of color streaked across her cheeks. “It’s comforting, okay. Now where’s this stupid gift?”

E
lena saw Raphael’s lips shape into the barest hint of a smile at her bad-tempered words, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he walked to a cabinet in the corner, the muscles of his back shifting with a fluid strength that made every female hormone in her sit up in begging attention.

Staving off the lingering echoes of the past with the sensual pleasure of watching her archangel move, she walked to stand beside him as he opened the cabinet to reveal a small black box about the right size and shape for jewelry. She recoiled, taking a physical step backward, her words coming in a hard rush. “Throw that thing into the deepest pit you can find.”

Raphael glanced at her. “What do you feel?”

“It gives me the creeps.” Hugging herself, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms, ice forming in the hollow of her stomach. “I don’t want it anywhere near me.”

“Interesting.” Reaching in, he picked up the box. “I sense nothing, and yet even without blood, it sings to you.”

“Don’t touch it,” she ordered between gritted teeth. “I told you to throw it away.”

“We can’t, Elena. You know that.”

She didn’t want to know it. “Power games. So what? We tell her thanks and send back a bauble or something. You must have a few lying around.”

“That will not do.” Eyes that had shifted to the shadowed color found in the deepest, darkest part of dawn, before the sun rose to the horizon. “This is a very specific gift. It’s a test.”

“So what?” she said again. “Archangels play power games. Who the fuck says I have to?”

Raphael put the box on a corner of his desk, his wings whispering against hers. “Like it or not, by becoming my lover, you’ve accepted an invitation to those games.”

Her skin felt as if it was being touched by a thousand spidery fingers. “Can we throw it away after I open it?”

“Yes.”

“That won’t be bad politics?”

“It’ll be a statement.” He held out his hand. “Come, hunter. I need a drop of your blood.”

“See? Creepy?” Shuddering, she took out one of her knives and pricked her left index finger. “Anyone who gives gifts locked by blood isn’t ever going to give you a bath set.”

Taking her hand, Raphael held it over the box, squeezing her finger just hard enough to release a single, luminous drop of blood. She watched it hang on her skin for a frozen moment, as if loathe to touch the velvet box, before it fell in a slow, soft splash. The box seemed to consume it, a voracious blackness that hungered for the taste of life. Her hand clenched around the knife. “I really don’t want to go to this ball.”

Raphael kissed her fingertip before releasing her hand. “Do you want me to open it?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t going to touch that thing if she could help it.

He flipped it open. She couldn’t see what was inside at first, her view blocked by his hand, but then he moved . . .

Her gorge rose. Dropping the knife, she spun and headed for the door she hoped led to the bathroom. Her relief was overpowered by the retching that ripped through her as she stumbled into the tiled enclosure. Dropping her head above the toilet, she brought up her lunch in a hard, rough pulse that felt like it was peeling off the lining of her stomach itself.