Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(5)

The artwork along one wall was a fury of red that drew her with its cruel ferocity.

Sensual.

Beautiful.

Lethal.

“This way.”

Blood pounding through her veins in a way she knew wasn’t safe in the company of the Made, she followed two steps behind her guide—so she’d have warning if he swiveled, went for her throat. Her gun was tucked into a shoulder holster concealed under the faded gray of her favorite sweatshirt, her knife in a sheath openly on her thigh, but she had two more hidden in sheaths strapped to her arms. It wouldn’t be enough, not against a vampire who instinct and experience told her had to be over two hundred, but at least she’d go down fighting.

Stopping in front of an open door, he waved her through before turning back toward the elevator. She took a step inside . . . and froze.

Dmitri was standing on the other side of a heavy glass desk, the Manhattan skyline glittering at his back, his head bent, strands of silken black hair caressing his forehead as he scanned the piece of paper in his hand. Her mind rolled back. Before . . . before . . . she’d been fascinated by this one vampire, though she’d only ever seen him from a distance or on the television screen. She’d even made a scrapbook of his movements—to the point that she’d started to feel like a disturbed stalker and burned the whole thing.

It hadn’t gotten rid of the strange, irrational compulsion she’d felt toward him as long as she could remember. Nothing had gotten rid of it . . . until the dank, filthy basement and the terror. That had numbed everything, but now she wondered if she hadn’t always been slightly unhinged, she’d been so obsessed by a stranger who was whispered to have a penchant for sensual cruelty, pleasure cut with pain.

Then he looked up.

And she stopped breathing.





Dmitri saw the woman in the doorway in a kaleidoscope of images. Soft ebony hair clipped at her nape, but promising a wildness of curls. Haunting—haunted—eyes of deepest green tilted up at the corners. Pale brown skin that he knew would turn to warm honey in the sun. “Born in Hawaii?” he asked, and it was a strange question to ask a hunter who’d come to do a consult.

She blinked, long lashes momentarily shielding those eyes that spoke of distant forests and hidden gemstones. “No. In a nowhere town far from the ocean.”

He found himself circling the glass and steel of his desk to head toward her. For an instant, he thought she would stumble backward and out into the corridor, but then she stiffened her spine, held her position. He was aware of the fear—sharp and acrid—skittering behind her eyes, but still he shifted around her to push the door shut.

Allowing her to leave wasn’t an option.

When he stepped back to face her once more, the ugly ripple of fear had been brought under rigid control, but her breathing was jerky, her gaze skating away from his when he tried to capture it. “What’s your name?”

“Honor.”

Honor. He tasted the name, decided it fit. “Hunter-born?”

A shake of her head.

Not surprising. Elena had likely warned the Guild Director about his ability to use tendrils of exquisite scent to seduce and lure those hunters who were born with the bloodhound capability to scent-track vampires. Sara would hardly send him fresh prey. But this woman, this Honor . . . he wanted to use luscious strokes of scent on her until she was flushed and limp, her arousal an unmistakable musk against his senses.

It was instinct to ensure she wasn’t lying to him—he swirled out a drugging whisper of champagne and desire molten as gold, orchids under moonlight, chocolate-dipped berries kissing a woman’s skin. Honor shook her head a little, a barely imperceptible movement that echoed the frown lines on her forehead.

So, not strong enough to identify herself, or be identified by the Guild as hunter-born, but enough that she had a slight susceptibility to the scent lure. He was unsurprised by the discovery, having met more than one like her in the centuries since he’d developed the talent—they seemed drawn to the Guild, regardless of the fact that they carried only the merest hint of the hunting bloodline. That, of course, meant he couldn’t seduce Honor as easily as he could a true hunter-born . . . but scent wasn’t the sole weapon in his arsenal when it came to sex.

Scanning his eyes over her again, he noted the jagged pulse in her neck, but it was the skin covering the spot that held his attention. “Whoever you allowed to feed from you,” he said in a smooth murmur he was well aware held a caressing stroke of menace, “wasn’t very tidy.” Her scars denoted a vampire who’d torn and ravaged.

Her hand clenched on the handle of the laptop bag she’d shrugged off her shoulder. “That’s none of your business.”

Surprised she’d found the guts to say that to him in spite of the terror that rippled through her, raw and bleeding, he raised an eyebrow. “Yes, it is.” He’d bedded many a beautiful woman, left some sobbing with pleasure, others from a sensual viciousness that had taught them to never again attempt to play him. Honor wasn’t beautiful. There was too much fear in her. Dmitri might like a little pain in bed, but in most cases, he preferred his partners enjoy it, too.

This broken hunter, with her terror that turned the air caustic, would quiver and shatter like fractured glass with the first touch of his mouth. And still he wanted to run his fingers over that skin meant to be gilded by the sun, to trace the lush curves of her lips, the long line of her neck, the compulsion strong enough that it was a warning. The last time he’d allowed his cock to overrule his head, he’d almost ended up an archangel’s pet assassin.