Archangel's Kiss (38 page)

“I’ve evolved,” he said, his eyes holding an almost lost look. Blue fire ringed the hand he lifted out of the water. “The gift is new, weak—I couldn’t heal Sam fully, though I returned many times.”

“But you sped up the process.” Moving to cup his face in her hands, she touched her forehead to his. “The scales are balanced, Raphael.”

“No,” he said. “They will never be balanced. I must never forget what I became in the Quiet.”

She thought of the swiftness of the justice meted out tonight, thought too of the thin line between power and cruelty, and knew he was right. “Well, one thing’s for sure—if you hadn’t been there tonight, I’d be dead.”

His eyes turned that forever, endless blue that made it seem as if she was falling into another universe. “You must never let Neha touch you,” he said, gripping her nape, pulling her even closer. “I was only able to stop Anoushka’s poison because it was on the surface. Neha’s is a thousand times more venomous.”

She didn’t resist his touch, sensing a fear the archangel would never admit aloud. It did something to her to know that her life mattered that much to him. Part of her, a part that was still that scared young teenager standing on the doorstep to the Big House, was so afraid that he’d tire of her, that her love wouldn’t be enough.

“So many nightmares,” he whispered, stroking his hand up her back as she straddled him.

“She left me,” Elena whispered. “She loved me, but she left me.”

“I’ll never leave you, Elena.” A glimpse of the archangel he was, used to power, to control. “And I’ll never let you go.”

Other women might’ve rebelled against such a claim, but Elena had never belonged to anyone. Now she did, and the knowledge began to fix something broken inside of her. “Two-way street, Archangel,” she reminded him.

“I think I enjoy being claimed by a hunter.” Hands on her hips, strong, demanding. “Come, take me inside. Make us one.”

The words were gentle, the hard thrust of his cock anything but. Spreading her hands on his shoulders, she slid down the dark heat of him, shuddering as her flesh stretched to accommodate that unforgiving length. “Raphael.” Whispered against his mouth as her body closed around him.

He gasped, dropping his head for an instant. His lips brushed the pulse in her neck and she felt teeth. A bite. Not gentle. A hiss of air escaped her as he licked over the small hurt, as he moved his mouth up her neck, across her jaw.
You didn’t call me when Anoushka attacked.

She weaved her fingers through his hair, biting at his lower lip when he lifted his head.
I called you when I needed you.

A frozen moment, their eyes locked into each other.

It felt as if he was looking through her heart, through her soul, through to the very core of who she was. But she saw him, too, this magnificent being full of power and secrets so deep and old, she wondered that she’d ever learn them all.

The kiss stole her breath, her thoughts, her everything. Moaning, she ran her fingers over the arch of his wings, felt him grow impossibly harder inside her. It was almost too much. She rose, her body releasing his with tortuous slowness, his mouth taking hers until she was a creature of the flesh, her senses awash in pleasure.

Tightening his grip on her waist, he pulled her back down. She went, needing the intimate friction, the earthy pleasure.
“Raphael.”
He broke the kiss to move one hand up to cup her breast, running his thumb over the part of her nipple that peeked above the waterline.

There was something unbelievably erotic about watching him touch her, his eyes a brand, his fingers so long and sure. Clenching her own hand on the slope of his wing, she moved impatiently against him. His head jerked up, eyes glittering like gemstones. The hand on her back shifted, fingers stroking the oh-so- sensitive inner curve of her wings.

“Stop that,” she said against his lips, unable to halt the slow, hot caress of her flesh on his, a tight release and sheathing that made her heart thunder.

So sensitive,
hbeebti
.

She didn’t understand it, and yet she did. He’d said something beautiful to her in a language that she only ever heard in hazy dreams now, a language that—no matter the associated memories of pain and loss—had always meant love.

Taking his hand, she brought it to her lips. The kiss she pressed to his palm was soft, his response a blaze of cobalt. And then there were no more words. Only pleasure. Searing, bone-deep pleasure. She broke apart, held in the arms of an archangel who would never let her fall.

E
lena dressed with quiet determination the night of the ball. But the past, it lay like a thick black blanket over her, heavy, suffocating. She wanted to claw at her neck, to gasp in desperately needed air, but that would betray weakness. And here, any weakness would be blood to the sharks that circled below the music that permeated the city.

Turning, she spied the sweep of blue the tailor had designed for the ball. It was a dress. But it was a dress for a warrior. Already wearing panties and the spike-heeled black boots that came up to her thighs, her weapons strapped to her body, she picked up the dress, the fabric like water against her fingertips.

“You tempt a man into mortal sin.”

She sucked in a breath as she saw her archangel, his chest bare, his legs clad in formal black pants. “Look who’s talking.” He was beauty cut by time, a lethal blade honed through the ages.

Lifting the dress, she stepped into it. The material slid against her legs as she drew it up, the top half pooling at her hips. Raphael prowled to her, his eyes skating over the naked flesh of her breasts. Possession glittered in those eyes, and that was all the warning she got before the storm of his kiss, the touch of his fingers . . . the angel dust that filtered into her very pores.

She held the kiss when he would have broken it. “Not yet.” Then she took her archangel, drinking in the taste of him until it suffused her veins, infiltrated her cells.

“You,” Raphael said against her mouth when she finally set him free, “will kiss me like that tonight.”

It was an order she could live with. “Deal.”

Stroking both hands down over her breasts, Raphael lifted the two pieces of fabric that made up the top to her shoulders—after crisscrossing them below the neck—and began to tie a knot at her nape.

“I guess,” she said, licking her lips, feeling her thighs clench, “I don’t need makeup now.” Angel dust shimmered like diamonds on her skin.

Placing one hand on the naked plane of her stomach after ensuring the knot was secure, Raphael pressed a kiss to her nape, bared since she’d put her hair up in a tight bun. She’d considered spearing that knot with chopsticks, but her hair was too slippery to hold the ornamentation. Instead, she’d tucked in a small hairpin detailed with the image of a wildflower.

Simple. Perfectly adapted. Hard to kill.

It had been a gift from Sara, tucked beside the ring Elena had asked her best friend to order. The amber had come from a dealer who’d owed Elena a favor, the specific piece one she’d seen in his private collection. Balli had paid up the favor because it had been a matter of honor, but she knew it had to have hurt. Of course, once he saw where his amber had gone . . . The thought of his round face wreathed in smiles made her heart lighten.

Raphael played his fingers over her abdomen, his ring catching the light. “Your injuries?”

“Nothing to worry about.” Her thigh ached enough to remind her of Anoushka’s attack, but the cuts on her arms had scabbed over.

“Can you move?”

She spun out, reaching for the blades hidden in the butter-soft black leather arm sheaths she was wearing openly tonight, protocol be damned. The skirts of the dress parted like liquid, as if attuned to her every move. She lobbed a knife toward the archangel who watched her.

Catching it with lethal ease, he threw it back. She tucked it into the arm sheath, before testing how difficult it would be to get to the gun strapped to her left thigh. Not hard at all. “No problems.”

As she rose, the dress fell seamlessly around her body, all the slits elegantly concealed. “What are the chances I won’t need to use my weapons tonight?”

Raphael’s answer was terrifying in its starkness. “Lijuan’s reborn walk the halls.”

T
he ball was held outdoors in a massive courtyard framed by low buildings full of light, food, and musicians, the hypnotic strains of the
ehru
lingering in the air. Looking around, Elena couldn’t do anything but admire the stunning simplicity of it all—the thin, rectangular paving stones beneath the revelers’ feet had been washed until they gleamed a creamy white, the entire area lit with delicate lanterns in a thousand different hues, their light reflecting off the star-studded night sky.

Cherry blossom trees in full bloom—
impossible
—spread their lush pink arms over the courtiers, their limbs twined with lights that twinkled like diamonds. Elena picked a single perfect blossom from her hair. “I can feel the truth whispering beneath,” she said, scenting the barest hint of rot, of death, “but on the surface, it’s magical.”

“A queen keeps a court that is spoken about. A goddess keeps a court that is never forgotten.”

Wings filled her vision as angel after angel flew down for a graceful landing, all of them dressed in clothing that accentuated loveliness beyond mortal ken. Even the vampires, their own faces a study in the most sensual symmetry, stood enthralled. The few mortals who’d been invited or brought as dates fought not to stare, but it was a losing battle.

Elena might have had the same reaction—had she not been standing next to the most compelling man in the room. Raphael had chosen to wear black tonight, the severe color throwing his eyes into vivid focus. He was at once a being of unearthly beauty and a warrior king who wouldn’t hesitate to spill blood.

“I didn’t expect her to attend.”

Following his gaze, she saw Neha, a queen dressed in a silk sari of unembellished white, her hair pulled off her face in an austere bun. Those dark eyes burned with hatred as she stared at Michaela.

Michaela appeared unconcerned, her body caressed by an exquisite ankle-length gown in the colors of sunset, her fingers curled around Dahariel’s forearm. The male angel wasn’t smiling, his expression as detached as that of the predator brought to mind by his wings. But there was no mistaking the sexual heat between the two.

Elena looked away, her eyes colliding with Neha’s as the Archangel of India glimpsed her and Raphael. Elena froze at the contact. What lived in Neha was older than civilization, a cold, cold creature without soul or sentience. She watched, her blood turning to ice as Neha began to move toward them with jerky footsteps quite unlike her usual sensual grace.

Wings rustled as Aodhan and Jason emerged out of the night to flank them.

Neha ignored everyone but Raphael. “I will forgive you, Raphael.” Flat, toneless words. “Anoushka broke our greatest law. For that, she died.”

Raphael stayed silent as Neha turned and left without another word, heading toward a circle of vampires with brown eyes and skin that spoke of an ancient land of heat and a sleek, hidden violence, much like the tigers that prowled its forests.

“How much,” Elena said, withdrawing her hand from its position over the butt of her gun, “of that did she actually mean?”

“None and all.”
Neha will act as an archangel, but hate is a poison in her soul.

Releasing the breath she hadn’t been aware of holding, Elena let her gaze drift forward, to the steps that led up to what was, without question, a throne. Lijuan sat on a masterfully carved chair of what was almost certainly ivory. Three men stood beside her—Xi, with his wings of red on gray; a Chinese vampire with a flawless face; and the reborn who’d served Elena and Raphael that first night. But he was no longer the sole one of his kind.

They stood on the edges of the crowd, a silent army with eyes that tracked all movement. There was an odd sheen to their gaze, a hunger that made her instincts rise in warning. Flesh, she thought, remembering the report she’d read sitting in Jessamy’s sunny classroom, they lived on flesh. “Her reborn surround us,” she said, wondering how the other guests couldn’t smell the rot, the musty smell of a grave desecrated.

Raphael didn’t shift his gaze off Lijuan, but his words told her he was conscious of everything around them. “An angel without wings is a creature maimed, prey brought to ground.”

She took a deep breath, mind awash with the images of that sunset in the wildflower garden, Illium’s sword a silver blur as he amputated the wings of Michaela’s guard. It was instinct to tighten her own wings even further before turning her attention toward the throne once more.