Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(30)

“Zani.” He gritted his teeth. “It’s you I love.”

“Your love comes with conditions,” she snapped back. “You would make me one of your minions, simpering at your feet.”

Anger made his wings glow, his hands fist. “No one simpers in my court!” Alexander had no desire to be surrounded by those who’d say yes regardless of their true opinions. That way lay a weak and spineless court. “How dare you accuse me of such!”

“I dare because you are not my archangel!” She kicked at the remains of a calcified tree with her booted foot. “You will never be my archangel! I will never move into your territory! I do that and our relationship is over!”

“That is shite!” Shoving both hands through his hair, he strode halfway across the mountaintop in a futile attempt to release the angry energy inside him—only to turn around and come right back to stand toe-to-toe with her. “Archangels have lovers that live in their own territories! Relationships continue!”

“I am not those lovers, and you are not those archangels,” was the harsh rejoinder, her wings snapping open in a martial movement before snapping shut as hard. “You don’t know how to be anything but the ruler of all that you survey. I will not be ruled by my lover. Not now. Not ever!”

“I don’t wish to rule you!”

“Wishes matter naught when you’re an archangel used to getting your way!” Her face was incandescent with heat, her feet set apart, the two of them so close that her chest brushed his with every breath. “You say all these pretty words, but when it comes down to it, Archangel Alexander, you like to get your own way.”

“I’ve bent and bent for you! I even turned away from war against Inj’ra because you call her your liege!”

“Can you hear yourself?” A snarl. “You make every decision based on cold-eyed politics—and now, you try to use one of those decisions against me. Your love is a thing that strangles!”

When his wings blazed so bright that the glow lit up the night, he decided he had to get out, leave this madness. So he just stepped back and took off, up into the high cloud, where the air was so cold it hurt, and so thin that even an archangel’s lungs protested.

But while he might’ve managed to hold back the implosion, the need to keep her in his grasp grew and grew. As did her opposing refusal to accept anything from him. As if the smallest gift might lead to servitude and bondage.

Each rejection infuriated him—and each attempt on his part to possess her enraged her . . . until there came a time when they were literally fighting each other, two warriors who’d devolved to the worst parts of their natures. She couldn’t win, not against an archangel, but she bloodied him and he was furious because she made him hurt her when she wouldn’t stop.

“Enough!” It was a roar as they stood face-to-face, chests heaving and bodies bruised.

Zanaya wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s driving me to frothing madness.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

That was the first time they walked away from each other, and it was like the universe was being torn in two, ripped apart by bare and vicious hands. Alexander felt fragile within, a part of him irreparably damaged.

The split lasted a decade, and then one day, he saw her on a narrow street in a town built of red stone, a warrior dressed in faded black leathers with a sword in a spine sheath and the glory of her hair in a single pragmatic braid.

The flecks of white in the midnight of her wings caught the light, shimmered.

As he stood frozen, she moved as if she’d sensed his piercing regard. Their eyes locked . . . and time unraveled. There was no decision, no need for a decision. The next step was as inevitable as the summer monsoons and the winter snows—and soon they lay in each other’s arms in a bed with a gauzy white canopy on the second floor of an ancient home, the sounds of the market outside and the world within a haze.

He touched her with hands that ached with need.

She kissed him with a wet shine in her eyes.

There were no words at first, only a longing so deep it was agony. They communicated by touch, by breath, by the slide of skin against skin, wing against wing. He shuddered at the feel of her fingers stroking over the arches of his wings; she shivered when he returned the intimacy.

It hurt, his need to touch her and be touched by her.

He mapped her body with his mouth, kiss by kiss.

She traced the lines of him with her hand, a tactile portrait.

At last, when it felt as if they’d break apart into innumerable shards, they came together in a primal tenderness that made his throat burn and his arms clench tight around her, his small and fierce Zani.



* * *



*

It was much later, the two of them having spent that time entwined skin to skin in an effort to assuage the continued ache of need within, that words finally entered this room in a town on the edge of a desert.

“It’ll be different this time,” Zanaya said, her fingers caressing his cheek. “We’ll be different. We’re older. Wiser.”

“Yes.” Alexander rubbed his cheek against her hand. “I have missed you, my Zani. I swear I won’t make the same mistake, won’t attempt to grip you tight, keep you in my grasp.” It would be akin to trying to hold the wind.