Archangel's Consort

35

Elena lay sprawled on top of Raphael, a surely stupid smile on her face. “Wow,” she murmured into the warm curve of his neck. “That was ...”

He ran his hand over her back, fingers brushing the sensitive inner curves of her wings. “I was rough.”

“That you were.” Nuzzling into him, she licked at the salt of his skin. “It was perfect.” That he’d trusted her with the full fury of his emotions ... Smile growing deeper, she stroked her hand down the ridged musculature of his chest. “When did you get rid of your clothes?”

“Hmm?”

He sounded so lazy and sated that laughter bubbled out of her. “Hey.” She slapped his chest. “No going to sleep.”

I’m the archangel. I give the orders.

Her laugh turned into a startled grin. He had a sense of humor, her archangel, but not long ago, he’d have meant it when he said that. Placing her hand over his heart, she listened to the deep beat that wasn’t yet steady. She should’ve felt sleepy, but all she wanted to do was stroke him, kiss him, feel him warm and alive under her hands. “What happened, Raphael?”

He understood without further explanation. “It was a fatal blow. Even had Keir been beside me the instant after I took it, he wouldn’t have been able to heal me.”

The words chilled the embers of passion. “Lijuan’s that powerful?”

Yes. “But her power has twisted and changed from our last confrontation. It now carries total death, even for immortals.”

“You were scored on your wings and shoulders before the chest hit.”

“I think that type of a glancing blow would’ve killed a weaker, young angel.” His hand closed around the back of her neck, gave a little squeeze. “I’m old enough and strong enough that she needed to strike me either in the head or in the heart.”

“God, Raphael.” The idea of his death made her scrabble inside in panic. “I can’t lose you.” She’d lost two of her sisters, her mother, and in every way that mattered, her father. If she lost Raphael, that would be it. She wouldn’t make it.

“I live Elena.” Quiet words, his arms holding her close. “Because of you.”

She jerked up her head. “What?”

“My mother said even my blood carries your mark.” Reaching up, he ran his finger down the shell of her ear.

“I thought she was being insulting.”

“No.” Raphael thought back to when he’d first met Elena, when he’d first begun to feel the impact of the nascent bond between them. “Lijuan told me you would make me a little mortal and, in so doing, kill me.”

Guilt colored her expression. “I have made you weaker, Raphael. You heal slower—”

He pressed a finger to her lips. “I should’ve considered the source. Everything came from Lijuan.”

“I don’t understand.” Lines formed on her brow as she spoke. “You’re saying she somehow twisted the truth? Tried to sabotage you from the get-go?”

“I don’t think she would have thought of it in that fashion.” Moving his hand down to curve around her throat, he rubbed his thumb over her pulse ... over the mark he’d put on her.

Elena arched into the touch. “She does seem to like you in that weird, creepy way of hers.”

“Such flattery will go to my head, Guild Hunter.”

“Someone’s got to keep you humble.”

“Lijuan deals in death,” he told her, her laughter sinking into his skin, an invisible mark of her own. “A mortal is very much alive and of the moment.” Humans didn’t have the luxury of wasting years or decades, their lives beginning and ending in a firefly flicker.

Elena’s eyes went wide, that thin ring of silver not apparent in this light, but he knew it was there, a silent meter of how deep immortality had grown into her cells. “The change in you,” she said, “whatever it is, means you have the ability to resist her powers?”

“Not only resist, but neutralize.” Giving him an incredible advantage against the most powerful member of the Cadre, barring his mother. So long as he managed to get to safety long enough to recover from a strike, Lijuan could not kill him.

Elena whistled. “She knew. She knew that might happen.”

Raphael wasn’t so sure. “I think she had an idea of it, but I also believe part of what she told me was the truth—she did once have a lover who threatened to make her mortal.”

“And,” Elena completed, “she chose to kill him because he endangered her power. He scared her.”

“Yes.” He watched the expressions fly across her face. Such passion in that mortal heart, such a hunger for life. “Come here, Elena.”

She leaned down until her hair created a soft intimacy around their faces. “You worry that you have the seeds of madness in you”—a soft whisper husky with passion—“but you’ll never become what she is. Never.” Because Raphael had chosen to love when it had seemed the worst possible option.

His gaze was a cold mountain lake and the cool heart of a gemstone. “We may have unleashed a horror, Elena.”

She knew they were no longer talking about Lijuan. “If we’d killed her in cold blood as she Slept, or as she stood weakened before us, we’d be no better than monsters ourselves.”

“Then we wait.”