Archangel's Kiss (Guild Hunter #2)(89)

Her gaze locked with Raphael’s, her heart a painful fist in her chest. Because she, too, would have to watch her sister die.

I won’t apologize, Elena. It would be a lie—I couldn’t let you leave me.

The raw honesty of the answer, of the emotion behind it, rocked her. I forget, and then I remember and it hurts all the more.

Beth will turn to dust when her time comes, but she’ll die knowing her children will be watched over by an angel.

She gave a jerky nod, met Jason’s gaze, realizing for the first time that his eyes were black, so black it was almost impossible to distinguish pupil from iris. “Will the courtiers turn against Lijuan if we prove to them that there’s no immortality in being reborn?”

Jason’s wings rustled as he resettled them, but even here, in this room full of light, he’d managed to find a shadow, until she had to concentrate to see their outline. “We may turn a few, but most are too used to seeing her as their goddess. They’ll follow blindly where she leads.”

Giving Lijuan an endless supply of bodies for her army of the dead.





35




Elena lay in Raphael’s arms, her body exhausted in the most sexual of ways. The archangel had kept his promise. He’d made her scream. Her heart was still thumping with the echo of searing pleasure when she fell into the warm darkness of a peaceful sleep. So peaceful that it took her a while to understand what it was she was hearing.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

“Come here, little hunter, taste.” A finger pressing to her mouth.

She clamped her lips tight, but the taste, it seeped inside anyway, an insidious, unspeakable thing. No! Her mind refused to realize what it was, refused to understand.

But the monster wouldn’t let her escape. “Isn’t Belle delicious?” His eyes were darkest brown, ringed with a thin circle of bloodred. “I saved some for you. Here.” Hands brushing away her sister’s golden blonde hair from her neck, revealing the raw meat that was her throat. “I think it might still be warm.” His face nuzzling into Belle’s neck, his hand on breasts that had just begun to bud.

The scream tore out of her. “No!” She was on him, fists and hands like claws, teeth and kicks and fury.

But even a hunter-born wasn’t as strong as a vampire full grown. A vampire glutted with blood. He played with her, made her believe she’d hurt him. And when her guard was down, when she was gasping from the fight . . . he kissed her.

Elena woke choking.

Black spots hazed her vision, threatening to tip her into unconsciousness until the scent of the rain, of the sea, infiltrated her mind. Fresh and wild and far from the horror she could feel in her mouth, it wrenched her out of the loop of nightmare and had her sucking in air as she turned desperately into Raphael’s arms.

They locked around her, an absolute, unbreakable haven. “Shh, I have you.”

“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Raphael held Elena tight, so tight he had to be putting bruises on her. But still she trembled, her words garbled, her fear so thick he could taste it. “Elena.” He kept saying her name, kept brushing his mind across hers until she seemed to see him, to know him. Continuing to hold her, he swept his hand down her wings over and over, soothing her, reminding her that she was here, with him, not locked in a past she couldn’t escape.

He kept his own anger, his rage, contained behind iron shields. Archangels could do many things, but not even he could turn back the clock and erase the evil that had ravaged Elena before she’d had a chance to grow.

“He fed me Belle’s blood.” It was a husky whisper, as if her throat was torn from screaming.

“Tell me.”

“My sister’s blood. He kissed me, feeding me Belle’s blood.” Rage and horror and a bewildered kind of pain. “I tried to spit it out but he covered my mouth, my nose, and I drank it. Oh God, I drank it.”

Sensing the hysteria beginning to retake hold of her, he tugged her head from his chest, taking her mouth in a kiss that was pure, untrammeled demand. She froze for a fractured instant before her hands thrust into his hair, before her body twisted until she slid beneath him, her legs wrapping around his waist.

There was a wild kind of desperation in her kiss, a kiss flavored with the salt of her tears. She wanted to forget. He’d do anything in his power to help her find what peace she could. He took her as hard as she wanted, pinning her wrists to the sheets with one hand, shoving her thigh aside with the other, and sliding into her welcoming sheath in a single thrust.

Her scream echoed into his mouth. He kissed her through the taking, through the raw, almost painful emotion of their joining. He kissed her until she gasped for breath, until her eyes went blank with pleasure, with passion, with ecstasy. And then he kissed her as she came down from the peak.

“Again,” he whispered into her mouth.

She met him stroke for stroke, her hips rising in welcome, in demand. Tugging her hands free, she held him to her, trailing her mouth over his cheek, his jaw, his neck. At the end, she buried her head in his neck and simply held on . . . let him hold her, let him protect her.

It was her trust that brought him to his knees, that shoved him over the edge and into her arms.

“Thank you.” Elena refused to let Raphael move off her body, her lips brushing his ear as she spoke, the dark silk of his hair cool against her flesh. “Thank you.”