Yes, Elena thought, he did. But even he hadn’t been able to discover the identity of these creatures that had the vampires so certain of her death. “What are they?” Her spine locked as her mind offered an explanation. “Not vampires who’ve given in to bloodlust?” Locked in a constant loop of violence, feeding and hunger, those vampires made the most sociopathic of killers.
“Come here, little hunter. Taste.”
Illium shook his head as she slammed the door on a memory that refused to stay buried, his hair tumbled by the stiff breeze coming off the mountains. He was a jewel against the night, his beauty so intense that it forced the eye to him rather than the stars. She took the lifeline, hung onto the present. “Why hasn’t Michaela killed you yet?”
“I’m male. She’d rather fuck me.”
The blunt answer threw her off balance for a second. “Have you?”
“Do I look like I want to be eaten alive after sex?”
Startled into a grin, she turned her face into the wind, enjoying the biting freshness. “So, Lijuan’s pets?”
“Ask Raphael.”
Her smile disappeared at the thought of where Raphael was at that moment. Searching for a distraction, she nodded at the lights she could see dotting the sides of the gorge that fell away beneath them, a massive split in the earth’s crust. “Don’t tell me people live down there?” Water ran far, far below the lights, but even so, she could feel the raging thunder of its passage.
“Why not? The caves make the most perfect of aeries.” His grin was a slash of white across his face. “I have one. When you can fly, you can come see it.”
“At the rate I’m going, I’ll be eighty by the time I can actually fly.”
“It’ll only take once,” Illium said softly, his face lifted up to the moonlight. The beams played over him as if entranced, turning his skin translucent, his hair a thousand strands of liquid ebony dipped in sapphires. “That first flight is something you never forget—the rush of air as your wings spread, the intoxicating freedom, the sheer joy that dances in the soul from being all that you’re meant to be.”
Caught by the unexpected poetry of his words, she almost didn’t see Raphael sweeping in to land. Almost. Because nothing and no one else could ever hold her attention when her archangel was in the vicinity. Barely aware of Illium going quiet beside her, she watched the devastating grace of Raphael’s descent. Illium was as beautiful as a gleaming blade, but Raphael . . . Raphael was magnificent.
“Time for me to go, I think.”
She felt Illium leave, but it was a distant knowledge, her eyes drawn inextricably to the archangel who’d landed before her. “How was dinner?” she asked, staring into those cobalt eyes full of secrets it would take her an eternity to unravel.
“I survived.”
It should’ve made her smile, but all she felt was a violent possessiveness—honed to the most lethal of edges by the knowledge that right now, the green-eyed female archangel could kill her without even a modicum of effort. “Did Michaela mark you?”
“Why don’t you check?” He flared out his wings.
Feeling stupidly vulnerable all of a sudden, she turned to grip the balcony railing. “It’s none of my business if you choose to spend time with a woman who’d eat your heart and dance gleefully on your grave if it would mean she gained power.”
“Oh, but I disagree, Elena.” Strong arms on either side of hers, big hands closing over the railing. “Tighten your wings.”
It took her a minute to figure out how to do that neat tucking into the body thing she’d seen other angels do with their wings. “That’s harder than it looks.”
“Takes muscle control.” Words spoken against her neck as he pressed closer, her wings trapped between them.
It hurt . . . with a pain that made her skin shimmer in hunger, in need. Every shift of his body, every brush of his lips, it went straight to her core. But she’d been fighting her attraction to Raphael since the moment she met him—it had never made her an easy target. “What do you disagree about?” she asked, her gaze drawn to the wings she could see sweeping through the lush black of the night, heading for those isolated aeries.
Angels going home.
A strange thought, a strange sensation, to stand here in their most secret place when they’d always been shadows in the darkness to her.
“I consider it very much your business if I choose to spend time with Michaela.”
She heard a dangerous undertone in his words, one that curled her toes even as it pricked at her hunter instincts. “Do you?”
“As I consider it very much my business that your wings are dusted with blue.”
Eyes widening, she pushed away from the railing. Or tried to. “Raphael, let me go so I can see.”
“No.”
She blew out a breath. “Stop it. Illium didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Angel dust is not an instinctive act . . . unless one is in the throes of sex.” His fingers plucked at the tight peak of her nipple, a shockingly sensual reminder that the Archangel of New York had once lost control in bed. “It’s very much premeditated.”
“If he wasn’t down there,” she said, fighting to speak through the slamming rush of need, “I’d smack him. He’s jerking your chain.”
Lips on her ear, his hand moving to cup her breast with devastating intimacy. “Illium has always had a wild disregard for his life.”
She couldn’t help it. She curved her neck to give him better access. “And yet he’s one of your Seven.”
“I think in this case, he knows he’s your favorite.” Kisses along her neck, hot and sexual in a way that told her he had only one thing in mind.
Giving a laugh husky with need, she reached back to run the fingers of one hand over his cheek. “Do I have that much influence over you?”
The graze of teeth. “If your Bluebell is alive tomorrow, you’ll have your answer.” His body pressed into her, hot, hard, and demanding, as his hands slid under her clothing to close over her bare breasts.
“Raphael.”
Finally allowing her to turn, he crowded her against the railing. Instinct drove her to spread her wings over the metal that was all that kept her from falling to the rocks below. No, she thought, on the heels of that thought. Raphael would never let her fall. And if she fell, he’d fall with her. “Kiss me, Archangel.”
“As you wish, Guild Hunter.” His lips met hers, harshly masculine and earthy in a way that paid lie to any myths about angels being too “evolved” to indulge in such physical pleasures.
Moaning in the back of her throat, she wrapped her arms around his neck, rising on tiptoe to meet him kiss for tangled kiss. When his hand brushed the side of her breast, she shivered from the pleasure of it. Biting at his lower lip, she opened her eyes. “Now.”
“No.” Another hotly sexual kiss.
Breaking it, she ran her hand down the muscled plane of his chest, lower. He gripped it before she could close her fingers over the rigid length of him. “I’m not that weak,” she protested.
“You’re not that strong either.” Power ringed his irises. “Not for what I want.”
She stilled. “And what is that?”
Everything. The sea and the wind. Clean and wild . . . and inside her mind.
“I’ll give you my hunger, my heart,” she said, fighting to retain her independence, and more—to build a foundation for their relationship that would last an eternity. “But my mind is my own. Accept that.”
“Or?” The cool question of a being used to getting exactly what he wanted.
“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.” Leaning back against the balcony, her body aching, unfulfilled, she simply looked at him, at the exquisite balance of beauty and cruelty, perfection and darkness. His own hunger had turned his face acetic, that flawless bone structure dramatic against his skin. But he made no move to kiss her again.
“I’ll break you.”
The words he’d spoken earlier came back to her, an invisible wall between them. Knowing he was right, she blew out a breath. “I have a question.”