Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(82)

The last thing Elena remembered was thinking that maybe she'd underestimated the force of their combined hunger.

She woke to the realization that she was sleeping on something warm, soft, and silky. Spreading her fingers, she found herself petting-"Oh!" She jerked upright, horrified. A heavy male arm pushed her back down.

"Your wings," she whispered, stroking her hand down the splendor of one.

"They're strong." A lazy masculine statement, full of . . . something.

She was about to turn and look at him when she saw the state of her body. "Oh, no, you didn't!" She glittered from head to toe, angel dust in her pores, on her eyelashes, in her mouth. The special blend.

He caressed his hand over her hip, along the dip of her waist, over her breast. "It was . . . not on purpose."

Was that embarrassment she heard in his voice? Frowning, she licked some of the glittery stuff off her lips. It made her body all warm and tingly-as if she wasn't already burning up from the inside out. "Is this like-um-being a little quick off the mark?"

He squeezed the arm he had around her midsection. "Any complaints?"

She smiled, realizing she was right-the archangel had lost control. "Hell, no." Twisting in his arms, she wiggled up to look into his face. Her smile faded. "You look . . . different." Nothing she could explain, nothing she could touch. But . . .

His expression grew shadowed. "You've made me a little more human."

Flashes of memory. Raphael bleeding out from a gunshot wound. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know." His kiss was a fever and he was inside her before she knew it, their coupling fast, furious, and utterly magnificent.

Much, much later, as they faced the promise of a new day, she tried to wash off the angel dust, with only marginal success. Her skin continued to shine but it wasn't as noticeable. And thankfully, the stuff didn't, in fact, glow in the dark. "If someone tastes this," she said to Raphael as he watched her dress from his relaxed position by the fireplace, "will they want to jump my bones?"

"Yes." Those eyes gleamed. "So don't let them taste."

She stilled at the menace in his command. "Don't go around killing people on my account, Raphael."

"You made your choice."

To sleep with an archangel.

"I think the sexual high is starting to wear off," she muttered, pulling on a new pair of cargos in dark khaki, and a black T-shirt. She threw on a black sweater as well. It was early morning and still dark outside, the temperature having dropped along with the rain. "I mean it, Raphael, you go around killing innocent people, I'll hunt you." She didn't bother to hide her weapons-including the special gun-from him as she pulled them out of the overnight bag and concealed them on her body.

His face was expressionless as he watched her, his wings backlit by the flames, his magnificent body naked but for a pair of black pants. "The honeymoon is over?"

She walked across the carpet to stare up into a face she knew she'd see in her dreams the rest of her life. "Nope." Fisting her hands on his naked chest, she waited for him to lower his head, and then took a kiss. "Here's a tip-you want to call me your toy, go ahead. Just don't expect me to be one."

A hand on her nape, a warning grip. "Don't attempt to manage me, little hunter. I'm not-"

The rest of his words disappeared in a crash of white noise.

Come here, little hunter. Taste.

"Elena." The sharp word pulled her back to the here and now.

"Fine." She cleared her throat. "Glad we sorted that out. The rain's stopped-"

"What do you see?"

She met his eyes, shook her head. "I'm not ready to tell you." Might never be.

He didn't threaten to take it from her by force. "It's still drizzling lightly. That should help keep him in Stupor."

"Yeah." Drawing back, she folded her arms. "I didn't think about that. They don't like the cold, do they?" It was a rhetorical question. "Especially after a glut."

"But then again, Uram isn't a vampire."

She blew out a frustrated breath. "Then what the hell is he? Tell me!"

"He is an Angel of Blood." He walked to the window, but she knew he saw things far more sinister than the predawn gloom. "A true abomination, a thing that should never have existed."

The anger that emanated from him was an almost physical force. "Is he the first?"

"He's the first archangel to become bloodborn in my memory. But Lijuan says there have been others."

Elena's mind filled with the images she'd found of the oldest of the archangels. Lijuan was the only one of the Cadre who showed even the first signs of age. It did nothing to detract from her exotic beauty-her face, her bones, her pale, pale eyes. And yet, there was something subtly wrong about Lijuan. As if she didn't belong in this world anymore.

"The first archangel you know of," she murmured, thinking that through. "What about ordinary angels?"

"Very good, Elena." He didn't turn from the window, as remote as he'd been on that rooftop what felt like weeks ago. "Those others were easily contained. Most were young males with little of the intellect Uram seems to have retained after his transition."