Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(67)

You know you have but to ask. There will be no Contract for your chosen.

I know. He and Raphael had fought over the centuries, had fallen out, but they were tied by bonds so deep that the bindings had held even as they became ever older, ever more inhuman. The problem is, I think the last thing Honor would ever want to become is a vampire.

Another silence between two men who had known each other long enough not to fear it. Dmitri was the one who broke it. “What did Naasir say?” The vampire, one of the Seven, was currently posted in the newly risen city of Amanat, once a jewel in the archangel Caliane’s crown, now her home.

“That my mother treats him as a beloved pet.” Raphael’s tone held a dark amusement threaded through with something more dangerous. “It appears likely she has realized what he is.”

“It’s no secret.” Though Naasir’s origins and abilities were not widely known beyond a small, tight circle. “At least she’s accepted him.” Giving them a constant flow of information from Amanat without Raphael having to be there. “And the angel Jason left in his stead?”

“Caliane ignores Isabel, which is as good an outcome.” The archangel’s wings glittered in the first rays of the sun. “You’ve always been my blade, Dmitri. Tell me—should I have killed her?”

Dmitri met the inhuman blue of those eyes, centuries of friendship and pain between them. “Perhaps,” he said, his mind on a woman with a husky laugh and a smile that haunted his memory, “there are second chances.”





Honor sat at her small dining table, the notebook Dr. Reuben had given her now closed, dawn shimmering on the horizon beyond. A few buildings still sparkled with light-filled offices, but the day was coming, the sun a warm glow in the east. The Tower stood outlined against it, appearing somehow softer in this strange, fragile twilight.

Dmitri, she thought, would never appear soft.

Her body continued to smolder from the slow burn of his kiss, his touch. Not even the fact that they’d gone little further after her flashback could mute the impact of it. His sensuality was potent, as raw as it was sophisticated, as dark as it was patient.

Lulling her. Seducing her.

Honor knew full well he was managing their encounters, accustoming her to his touch, his kiss, his strength. She had no quarrel with exploring her sensuality with a man who knew more about pleasure than she could imagine; she trusted him in bed. Of course, she thought with a smile as she got up to prepare breakfast, she had no intention of allowing him to continue to lead the dance once they became lovers in truth.

She’d finished her cereal and was walking to refill her tea when someone knocked on the glass wall that fronted her apartment. Twisting on her heel, she went for the gun tucked into the back of her jeans . . . and saw wings of silver-kissed blue backlit to brilliance by the rising sun. Illium jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the Tower.

Nodding, she watched him drop down, then sweep over the city in a breathtaking show of color even more startling against the dawn sky. When his wings were joined by those of midnight and dawn, she drew in a stunned breath, still utterly fascinated by Elena’s transformation. Rather than holding a hover beside Elena, Illium executed a sharp vertical dive that had Honor’s heart in her throat, before he turned to rise, then fly back up at the same speed to circle around and beside Elena, a playfulness to his movements that said the two of them were friends.

That was one wake-up call she’d have to share with Ashwini, she thought with a grin as she headed to change into a less ragged T-shirt, having showered when she woke. But when she stepped into the bedroom, she found herself discarding the T-shirt in favor of a short-sleeved, scoop-necked top that painted itself to her body and was a bright, stop sign red. It wouldn’t impede her movements, didn’t even show much cleavage, but it was the sexiest thing she’d worn since after the assault. It felt good. Brushing on a bit of makeup, including poppy red lipstick over her mouth, she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and strapped on her weapons.

It was too hot to cover the shoulder holster with a jacket, the temperature having spiked overnight, so she shrugged and left it at that.

There was a topless red Ferrari idling at the curb when she stepped out of her building. “I didn’t realize I rated the pickup service,” she said to the vampire in the driver’s seat.





24


Dressed in a crisp white shirt, open at the collar, and black suit pants, he looked like some high-paid executive on his way to a breakfast meeting, his eyes shaded by mirrored sunglasses she wanted to rip off so she could read his gaze.

“I haven’t gotten what I want out of you yet.”

It could’ve been a joke. It could also have been the absolute truth.

“Have you eaten?” he asked, pulling out into the traffic.

“Yes.” Speaking of breakfast—“Who do you feed from?”

“Careful, Honor.” A tenor to the words that rubbed her the wrong way. “I might start to think you were the jealous, possessive type.”

She never had been, but then, he was the only man who’d become an obsession. In the early morning hours today, she’d dreamed not of her faceless dream lover, but of Dmitri, with his experienced hands and sinful touch. “Yes,” she said, knowing she was asking for something he might be incapable of giving. “I think I am.”