Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(25)

It asked for everything.

“Put your cards on the table, Archangel Alexander.” It was deliberate, her use of his full title. “I’m not here to guess at your motives.”

Lightning in his eyes, he dipped his head to complete the kiss that had begun with their first moment of eye contact. It was . . . There’d been no kiss like this in her existence. It cut her even as it claimed her, and then she was the one who was doing the cutting, doing the claiming, each as hungry as the other.

The cuts formed into scars, into invisible marks that would never fade.

A single kiss and she knew young Zanaya hadn’t been foolish after all. “It was always meant to be this,” she said against his kiss-bruised lips when they came up for air. “It was always meant to be us.”

“Yes,” he agreed, but then hardened his jaw. “But to have taken you then would’ve been to take an infant. Tell me that you’re the same woman today as you were then.”

Zanaya liked to win arguments, but she didn’t like to lie. So she scowled . . . but kissed him again, because she was the moth and Alexander the beckoning flame—or perhaps it was the other way around. He might be one of the Cadre but he didn’t hold the power in this relationship. Neither did she.

When he took her into his arms and flew into the sky, she was a full and enthusiastic participant in a dance frenetic and wild. She forgot everything she knew of this act. He lost all technique.

And they came together in a pleasure so deep it was pain.

Afterward, their naked bodies sheened with sweat and protected by the archangelic cloak of glamour—which made them invisible to all but other archangels with the same gift, he flew her to his home in the Refuge and to his bed. Where they lay side by side to give their hearts and breaths time to calm, and Zanaya said, “I don’t share, Alexander. Pension off your concubines.”

Zanaya wasn’t about to throw any woman onto the streets, but neither was she content to have Alexander’s concubines flitting about. A generous pension wasn’t only the decent thing to do, it removed any guilt from the situation—because as far as she knew, Alexander had remained as emotionally unattached as ever. The concubines could have had no illusions of love or forever.

“If you don’t,” she said, “I’ll cut off a part of your body anytime I see you.”

He didn’t point out that he was an archangel and could crush her in a heartbeat. He just said, “I’ve not had a harem for many years, my Zani. Since the moment it became clear that you were heading toward becoming a senior general.”

A literal skip of her heart.

Turning her head, she looked straight at him to see if he was playing her. But no, it was the warrior—blunt and up-front—who looked at her, not the archangel well versed in the politics of the Cadre. She was tough, but she wasn’t hard of heart, not when it came to him. It mattered, that he’d done this, begun to treat them as a possibility the moment it appeared it might become one.

Shifting to fully face him, she kissed him with a sweetness that came from within. The instant it was over, she felt unmoored, vulnerable. How foolish, to show her heart with such openness . . . but Alexander nuzzled her right then, holding her with as much tenderness.

Don’t use my vulnerability to hurt me.

The words stuck in her throat. Because to speak them would be to teach him that he could hurt her. Far better to wait and see what came next in this strange relationship that had built over more than a millennium.

This was just their beginning . . . and as she’d seen from Rzia and Camio, a beautiful beginning was a sign of nothing. It could still end in tears and recrimination and rage.





14


But what came next was a thing most unexpected that twisted up her heart and threatened to stop her breath. A mere three turns of the moon into their relationship, while she was on a fleeting visit to his territory, Alexander said, “I have a gift for you, Zani.” Shifting on his heel, he walked to the large trunk at the foot of his bed, all honed muscle and sleek grace in the sunlight that poured in through the open balcony doors.

He was bare to the skin but for a simple leather skirt that shielded his manhood. Alexander was anything but shy, had only pulled on the short garment because they intended to walk to the stables prior to Zanaya’s onward journey. Alexander had promised to show her his newest stallion, a “big and bold creature with a storm in its heart.”

Zanaya loved horses even though she rarely rode these days. It felt unfair to her steed to make it put up with such large wings—the infrequent times she did ride, she stood in the stirrups with her wings sleeked back, she and the horse a single organism that flew across the landscape. Today, she intended to cadge a treat for the animals from the kitchen, spend some time petting and admiring them before she left.

The reminder of how soon she’d have to take flight was a stab to the gut.

The pain chilled her skin and iced her heart, her mind roiling with images of how Rzia had watched for Camio even as bitterness swallowed her whole. So it was that she finished pulling on her flying leathers in a gnawing panic. “I’m not one of your concubines,” she bit out, the words far harder than they should’ve been. “You have no need to coddle me.”

Rzia had kept every single memento from her time with Camio, each bauble and trinket hidden in a wooden box that Zanaya was forbidden to touch. Even in her sour resentment of Camio, Rzia had been more protective of him and that box of memories cruel and cold than of her living child.