Aodhan didn’t reply, speaking to Raphael as he came to stand in front of him. “I may be a little slow tonight.”
“Stay,” Raphael said, raising his hand, that warm blue fire ringing his palm.
Aodhan’s face showed emotion for the first time. Panic, rage, fear, it was a twisting viciousness in his eyes. But he stood in place, let Raphael touch him, his flinch not noticeable unless you were looking very carefully. Raphael removed his hand a few moments later. The gash no longer looked as raw, as red.
Relief flooded Aodhan’s expression but Elena wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the fact that his wound was well on the way to being healed. She didn’t speak until after he’d left to return to his own room. “He doesn’t like being touched.”
“No,” Raphael confirmed, pulling off his own shirt and wiping his bloody hands on it.
Wondering what—or who—could have damaged an immortal so much that he flinched from even the most casual of touches, Elena began to remove what weapons she had left. “Good thing I brought spares.” Checking her thigh, she saw that while the wound was still pink, it didn’t need a dressing. “Shower?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t until they’d both showered and were sinking into the wet heat of a desperately needed bath that she said, “You’re the reason Sam is recovering faster than anyone expected.” Her heart overflowed with a fierce kind of pride.
“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.
“Mama?” Why was her mother’s high-heeled shoe lying on the tile of the foyer? Where was the other one? Mama hadn’t worn high heels for . . . a long time. She’d probably just gotten sick of it and kicked it off. Yeah, that must be it. But if she’d started to wear them again . . . maybe things would get better, maybe she’d smile and it would be real.
Her chest hurt with a painful kind of hope.
Stepping inside the cool wealth of the Big House, the house that had turned her daddy into a man she didn’t know, she went to reach for the shoe lying abandoned on its side. That was when she saw the shadow. So thin, swinging so gently.
She knew.
She knew.
She didn’t want to know.
Her heart a savage knot of barbed wire, she looked up. “Mama.” She didn’t scream. Because she knew.
The sound of tires on gravel, Beth being driven home from elementary school. Elena dropped her bag and ran. She knew. But Beth must never know. Beth must never see. Grabbing her sister’s small body in her arms, she pushed past the man who’d once been her father and out into the bright sunshine of a cloudless summer day.
And wished she didn’t know.
Elena 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.