Archangel's Kiss (4 page)

“I don’t have a death wis—ah, Zoe’s awake.” Maternal love filled every syllable. “And look at that, so is Deacon. Zoe’s daddy wakes to her slightest cry, doesn’t he, sweetie pie?”

Elena drew in a cleansing breath, the loving images created by Sara’s words banishing those of Uram’s depravity. “I think you guys are getting more sickening with each day.”

“My baby’s almost one and a half now, Ellie,” Sara whispered. “I want you to see her.”

“I will.” It was a promise. “I’m going to learn to use these wings if it kills me.” Her eye fell on Lijuan’s invitation as the words left her mouth, death closing a skeletal hand around her throat.

H
owever, a week after her conversation with Sara, Elena found herself thinking not of death but of vengeance. “I knew you were into pain, but I didn’t know you were a sadist,” she said to Dmitri’s back, her bones melting into the luscious heat of the isolated hot spring the damn vampire had all but carried her to—after pounding her ass to dust in a training session meant to toughen her muscles.

Turning, he focused the full power of those dark eyes on her, eyes that could tempt an innocent into sin, a sinner into hell itself. “When,” he murmured in a voice that spoke of closed doors and broken taboos, “have I ever given you reason to doubt me?”

Fur stroked over her lips, between her legs, along her back.

Her skin tightened in response to the potency of his scent, a scent that was an aphrodisiac to one of the hunter-born, but she didn’t back down, well aware he was enjoying having her at such a complete disadvantage. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in New York?” He was the leader of Raphael’s Seven, a tight-knit group of vampires and angels who protected Raphael—even against threats he might not yet see.

Elena was deathly certain that Dmitri would execute her with ice-cold precision should he come to consider her too big a chink in Raphael’s armor. Raphael might kill the vampire for it, but as Dmitri had once said to her—she’d still be dead. “Surely some little groupie’s crying her heart out over you.” She couldn’t help but think of that night in the vampire wing of the Tower—Dmitri’s head bending over the supple neck of a ripely curved blonde whose pleasure had scented the air in a sensual perfume.

“You break my heart.” An insincere smile, the amusement of a vampire so old, his age was a heavy weight on her bones. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to start thinking you don’t like me.” Stripping off his thin linen shirt without blinking—and there was snow on the ground up here for crissakes—he went to the top button of his pants.

“You planning to die today?” she asked conversationally. Because Raphael would rip out Dmitri’s heart if the vampire touched her. Of course, it’d be hard for the archangel to do that—she’d have already cut it out. Dmitri might be able to taunt her body to keening need with that scent of his, but Elena wasn’t about to be compelled. Not by this vampire. And not by the man he called sire.

“It’s a big pool.” He pulled off his pants.

She caught a glimpse of one sleekly muscled flank before she closed her eyes. Well, she thought, conscious of the heat blazing across her cheeks, at least that cleared up all doubts as to his coloring—Dmitri wasn’t tanned. The exotic honey of his skin was inborn . . . and flawless.

A wash of water that announced his entry into the pool. “You can look now, hunter.” Pure mockery.

“Why would I want to?” Opening her eyes, she turned her gaze toward the breathtaking mountain vista instead. Hunters weren’t prudes, but Elena chose her friends with care. And when it came to people she was comfortable being naked with—being vulnerable with—that list was even shorter. Dmitri was in no way, shape, or form in that group.

As she focused on the snow-capped peaks in the distance, she kept an eye on him with her peripheral vision. Not that she’d survive him if he came after her, not given her current physical state, but that was no reason to make herself an easy target.
Fur and diamonds, sex and pleasure.
The scents wrapped around her, a thousand silken ropes, but they were muted. It was his gaze that worried her right then—that of a predator sizing up prey.

It took almost a minute before he shrugged and dropped back his head, his arms braced on the rocky edge of the natural pool. He was, she was forced to admit as she glanced back, sexy as the most wicked of indulgences. Dark eyes, dark hair, a mouth that promised pain and pleasure in equal measures. But she felt nothing beyond a reluctant female appreciation. Blue was her addiction and her salvation.

A tendril of darkest chocolate wrapped around her.

Rich. Compelling. In no way muted.

She hissed through her teeth. “Turn it off.” Her body grew tight, her breasts swelling with a need as raw as it was unwanted.

“I’m relaxing.” Irritation coated in masculine arrogance—not exactly surprising given who Dmitri called sire. “I can’t do that if I have to control an integral part of my body.”

Before Elena could reply to an assertion she wasn’t sure she believed, a feather of heavenly blue edged in silver floated into the water in front of her. It reminded her of another day, another feather, Raphael’s hand opening to drop silver blue dust to the ground as possession glittered in his eyes. Using the memory to fight the sensual impact of Dmitri’s scent, she focused on the distinctive sound of wings settling behind her. “Hello, Illium.”

The angel walked around to sit on the snow-dusted rim to her right, dipping his legs into the water, jeans and all. In fact, like many of the angelic males in the Refuge, that was all he wore, his muscular chest naked to the sun’s rays. “Elena.” He looked from her to Dmitri with those breathtaking eyes of inhuman gold. “Something I should know?”

“I’ve threatened to kill him for the ten thousandth time,” Elena shared, closing her hand hard around a rock on the rim. Its edges dug into her palm as she fought the compulsion to go to Dmitri, to lick up his scent until it was all she was, all she knew. The vampire mocked her with his gaze, a silent challenge. No matter the sexual pull, this wasn’t about sex. It was about her right to be at Raphael’s side. “And he beat me to a pulp by proxy,” she completed, her voice steady though her body was screaming with arousal.

“In some circles,” Illium murmured, black hair tipped with blue lifting in the breeze, “that would be considered foreplay.”

Dmitri smiled. “Elena doesn’t care for my brand of foreplay.” Memories of blood and steel in his eyes. “Though she did—”

The scent of the sea, a wild turbulent storm, crashing into her mind.
Elena, why is Dmitri naked?

The surface of the pool began to ice over.

“Raphael, no!” she said out loud. “I am not going to give him the pleasure of watching me freeze to death!”

That, I would never allow.
The ice retreated.
It seems I must have a discussion with Dmitri.

She forced herself to think to him, though it was far more instinctive to speak; her heart, her soul, were still unalterably human.
No need. I can deal with him.

Can you? Never forget that he’s had centuries to hone his power.
A soft warning.
Push him too far and one of you will die.

She didn’t misunderstand.
Like I said, Archangel, don’t kill anyone on my account.

The response was a cool breeze, the stamp of an immortal’s possession.
He is the leader of my Seven. He is loyal.

She’d already guessed what he didn’t say—that Dmitri’s loyalty might equal her death.
I’ll fight my own battles.
It was who she was, her sense of self tied intrinsically to her ability to stand on her own two feet.

I told you once, I would rather die as Elena, than live as a shadow.
Leaving him with that truth—a truth that would never change, no matter her immortality, Elena returned her attention to Dmitri. “You forget to tell Raphael something?”

Shrugging, the vampire shot a speaking glance to her right. “If I was you, I’d worry more about his blue hide.”

“I think Illium can take care of himself.”

“Not if he keeps flirting with you.” A fine, almost elegant tendril of heat, champagne and sunshine, decadence in the light. “Raphael’s not the sharing kind.”

She pinned him with her eyes, attempting to ignore the twisting warmth in her stomach, a warmth he was fanning very deliberately. “Maybe you’re just jealous.”

Illium snorted with laughter as Dmitri’s own eyes narrowed. “I prefer to fuck women who aren’t covered in prickles.”

“I’m so brokenhearted about that that I can’t put it into words.”

The force of Illium’s laughter almost tumbled him into the water. “Nazarach’s arrived,” he finally managed to say to Dmitri—even as he ran a strand of Elena’s hair through his fingertips. “He wants to talk to you about the extension of a Contract as punishment for an escape attempt.”

Dmitri’s face betrayed nothing as he rose from the water with an inherently sensual grace. This time, Elena kept her eyes open, refusing to lose the silent battle of wills. His body was a sweep of smooth sun-kissed skin over pure muscle, muscle that flexed with power as he began to pull on his pants.

His eyes met hers as he zipped them up, diamonds and fur and the unmistakable musk of raw sex wrapping around her throat like a necklace . . . or a noose. “Until next we meet.” The scent faded. “Let’s go.” It was directed at Illium, the tone one of command.

Elena wasn’t the least surprised when Illium rose to his feet and left with a simple good-bye. The blue-winged angel might mess with Dmitri, but it was clear that he—like the rest of the Seven, the members she’d met at least—would follow him without question. And for Raphael, each and every one would lay down his life in the blink of an eye.

The water rippled away from her in the wash of wind caused by an angel’s landing.

She felt her skin go taut, as if it was suddenly too small to contain the fever within. “Come to tease me, Archangel?” His scent had always spoken to her hunter senses, even before they became lovers. Now . . .

“Of course.”

But when she turned her head to meet his gaze as he came to crouch on the rim, what she saw made her breath catch in her throat. “What?”

Reaching forward, he pulled out the plain silver hoops in her ears. “These are now a lie.” He closed his hand and when it opened it again, silver dust fell to sparkle on the steaming water.

“Oh.” Unadorned silver was for the unattached—male or female. “I hope you have replacements,” she said, turning—her wings wonderfully waterlogged—so she could brace her arms on the ledge and face him. “Those were from a market in Marrakesh.”

He opened his other hand and a different pair of hoops shimmered back at her. Still as small, still as practical for a hunter, but a beautiful, wild amber. “You are now,” he said, putting them in her ears, “well and truly entangled.”

She stared at the ring finger of his hand, possessiveness a raging storm inside of her. “Where’s your amber?”

“You haven’t made a gift of it yet.”

“Find a piece to wear until I can get you something.” Because he wasn’t free, wasn’t open to invitation from those who would sleep with an archangel. He belonged to her, to a hunter. “I wouldn’t want to get blood on the carpet killing all those simpering vampire floozies.”

“So very romantic, Elena.” His tone was clear, his expression unchanged, but she knew he was laughing at her.

So she splashed him. Or tried to. The water froze between them, a sculpture of iridescent droplets. It was an unexpected gift, a glimpse into the heart of the boy Raphael must’ve once been. Reaching out, she touched the frozen water . . . only to find it wasn’t frozen. Wonder bloomed. “How’re you keeping it like this?”

“It’s a child’s trick.” The breeze flirted with his hair as the water settled. “You’ll be able to control such small things when you’re a little older.”

“Precisely how old am I in angel-speak?”

“Well, our twenty-nine-year-olds tend to be considered infants.”

Lifting her hand, she ran her fingers down the rigid line of his thigh, her stomach tight with expectation. “I don’t think you see me as an infant.”

“Correct.” His voice had dropped, his cock brutally hard against the tough black material of his pants. “But I do think you’re still recovering.”

She looked up, her body slick with welcome. “Sex is relaxing.”

“Not the kind of sex I want.” Calm words, white lightning in those eyes, a reminder that this was the Archangel of New York she was trying to tempt into wickedness.

But she hadn’t survived him the first time by giving in. “Come in with me.”

He rose to his feet and circled around until he was at her back. “If you watch me, Elena, I might break my promises to both of us.”

She would’ve turned anyway, unable to resist the temptation that was the gut-wrenching masculine beauty of him, but then he said, “It would be so easy for me to hurt you.”

For the first time, she realized she wasn’t the only one who was dealing with something new, something unexpected. Staying in place, she listened to the dull thud of his boots hitting the snow, the intimate whisper of his clothes sliding off his body. She could see the corded strength of his arms and shoulders in her mind, her fingers aching to stroke the ridged plane of his abdomen, the muscular length of his thighs.

Her own thighs clenched as the water lapped around her, disturbed by a body far bigger and stronger than her own. She held her breath as he came closer, until he braced his hands against the rock on either side of her. Spreading out her wings so he could press against her back, she sucked in a breath. “Raphael, that’s not helping matters.”

The heat of his cock pulsed against her skin, a living brand, even as her wings arrowed sensation straight to the liquid- soft core of her body. An instant later, his lips touched her ear. “You torture me, Elena.” Teeth closing over her flesh, a none too gentle bite.