Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(27)

Nothing else mattered.

The words were wrong. The thoughts were wrong.

Sara mattered.

Beth mattered.

She mattered.

Raphael's lips traveled down her neck and to the flesh exposed by the open buttons of her shirt. "Beautiful."

I have not taken a human lover in eons. But you taste . . . intriguing.

She was a plaything.

To be toyed with and discarded.

Raphael could control her mind.

Giving a scream of pure rage, she kicked off him hard enough to send herself sprawling. The shock of pain as her tailbone connected with the floor snapped the final tendrils of a desire so visceral, so addictive, it made a fool out of her even now. "You bastard! Is rape what turns you on?"

For a single fleeting second, she thought she saw shock shadow his expression, but then that familiar arrogance looked back at her. "It was worth a try." He shrugged. "You can't say you didn't enjoy it."

She was so mad she didn't stop to think, to consider why she'd come here. Giving another scream, she rushed him. To her surprise, she got in a few good licks before he grabbed her arms and forced her against a wall.

His wings spread out to block her view of the room and it wasn't until he growled, "Leave us!" that she realized someone else had entered.

"Yes, sire."

Vampire. Dmitri.

And she'd been so f*cking disoriented, so filled with manufactured lust turned into rage, that she hadn't heard him enter. "I'm going to kill you!" Her sense of violation had her humiliatingly close to tears. She should've expected such tactics from Raphael but she hadn't. Which made her an A-grade moron. "Let me go!"

He looked down at her, the blue of his eyes suddenly dark-as if a storm had rolled in. "No. In this state, you'll force me to hurt you."

For a second her heart kicked. He cared. She screamed again. "Get out of my head!"

"I am not in your head, Guild Hunter."

The use of the formal title was a verbal slap, one that brought her back to her senses. Instead of responding with the blood-fury boiling inside her, she took several deep breaths and tried to go to that calm place in her mind, the same place she went to whenever the memories of Ariel-No, she couldn't return there. Why wouldn't the past leave her alone today?

Another deep breath.

The scent of the sea, cool, crisp, powerful.

Raphael.

She opened her eyes. "I'm fine."

He waited several long seconds before releasing her. "Go. We'll discuss this later."

Her hand itched to go for a weapon but she simply turned on her heel and walked out. She had no intention of dying-not until she'd carved out Raphael's lying eyes and thrown them in the deepest, dirtiest cesspool she could find.

As soon as he heard the elevator doors close, Raphael called down to security. "Don't lose her. Ensure she stays safe."

"Yes, sire," was Dmitri's response, but Raphael heard the edge of disbelief.

He hung up without responding to the unasked question. Why had he allowed the hunter to live after she attacked him?

Is rape what turns you on?

His mouth tightened, his knuckles whitening as he fisted his hands. He'd done and been accused of many things through the ages. But never had he taken a woman against her will. Never. He hadn't done so today either.

But something had happened.

It was why he'd allowed her to assault him-she'd needed to vent her rage, and his disgust with himself was such that he'd welcomed the blows. There were some taboos that should never be broken. That he'd crossed a bright line he'd laid down centuries ago made him wonder about his own mental state. He knew his bloodstream was clear-he'd been tested yesterday-so this wasn't a result of the toxin putrefying his mind, sending his powers out of control.

Which left him with the unknown.

He swore in a low, ancient language long dead. He couldn't ask Neha, the Queen of Poisons. She'd see a weakness and immediately move to strike. None of the Cadre who might know the answer could be trusted in this except for Lijuan and Elijah. Lijuan had no interest in petty power. She'd gone too far, changed into something not wholly of this world. Elijah, Raphael wasn't sure about, but the other male was the scholar among them.

The problem was, Lijuan eschewed modern conveniences like the phone. She lived in a mountain compound hidden deep within China. He'd either have to fly to her or . . . His fist tightened even further. He couldn't leave his city while Uram roamed. Which left only one real choice.

As he turned to stride out, his eye fell on the message tube Elena had left behind. Destiny's Rose was an ancient treasure, one he'd earned as a young angel in the service of an archangel of ages long past. Legend said that it had been created by the combined power of the first Cadre. Raphael didn't know the truth of that, but it was undeniably priceless. He'd given it to Elena for reasons he didn't entirely understand. But she would have it. It bore her name now.

Grabbing the tube, he headed up to the penthouse and, specifically, to the room of pure black in the dead center. The human covens would see that room as evil. They saw darkness as evil. But sometimes, darkness was nothing more than a tool, neither good nor evil.

It was the soul of the man using the tool that changed things. Raphael's hand clenched on the message tube. For the first time in centuries, he wasn't sure who he was. Not good. He'd never been that. But neither had he been evil . . . until today.