Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(43)

A tug of his lips, a smile so open that it showed her a glimpse of the youth she’d been born too late to know. “Only you would order me to draw you a bath.” Hauling open one of the doors with an easy grace, he waved her in. “My lady.”

Laughing, she strode in.

She experienced no surprise at seeing the relatively meagre furnishings in the initial area of his suite. He’d always gone for spare in his living quarters—except for in one place. “Ah, there it is.” A huge four-poster bed complete with curtains that could be tied back, and luxuriant bedding.

“Will you make fun of me for my continued liking of comfort when I sleep?”

“Never,” she said as she took off her sword and kicked off the boots that a member of Alexander’s staff had managed to find for her. “Not when I enjoy it so much.”

Water ran somewhere close by and she knew he’d started to fill the bath. Padding toward the sound of that water, she dropped her clothing until she was bare to the skin, the air kissing every inch of her.

Leaning one hand against the doorjamb of the bathing chamber, she took in the floor tiles of gentle desert gold riven with streaks of a deeper gold; the color was reflected in the dark gold of the water spouts, but the walls were a simple cream, as were the thick towels that sat piled up in a woven basket to one side of what she assumed was a built-in bowl to wash the face.

Water gushed from one of the golden spouts, and given the steam rising up from the bath, that water was hot. No need then, to build a fire below the bath, or to have water heated elsewhere in the home carried up in buckets. How extraordinary . . . and yet somehow not startling.

Because even when certain things changed over the eons, they remained the same. This world might have technologies far beyond what angelkind had discovered when she went to Sleep, but people still needed to bathe, to wash their faces.

But the most intriguing thing in this room was the angel who stood beside the bath, half bent over it as he tested the water with his hand. His wings were a glory of silver against the muted colors of the space, his hair shining in the light that poured from a fixture in the ceiling. For the people of this time had also managed to harness light.

“Someone already came in and filled it two-thirds of the way up,” he told her as he flicked the water off his fingers. “You won’t have to wait—” Speech bitten off on a harsh inhale as he turned, saw her.

She smiled, and yes, it was pride that heated her blood. So many years they’d been apart and still he looked at her with that wild storm in his eyes. There was no shield of an archangel powerful and remote, and no sign of the general so inscrutable that his enemies could never guess at his motives or planned moves.

This was the Alexander that Zanaya alone saw.

Needing to touch him, she closed the distance between them. “You’re overdressed, lover.” A husky purr against his chest as she ran her hands down the beaten dark brown of his leathers, but it was a bittersweet joy that ran through her veins. “I could almost imagine these being the same set I gifted you once.”

He closed his hand over her wrist, his hold rough with warmth. “I wore those until they fell apart. I was so angry with you, but still I wore them.” Dropping his head to her own on that rough confession, he crushed her lips with his own.

She didn’t mind.

Their love had never been a gentle thing.

Thrusting her hand into the thick silk of his hair, she gripped hard as she kissed him back with just as much fury, just as much need. Being on tiptoes was her usual state when they kissed, even though he always bent for her, but never had she felt at a disadvantage. Here, they’d always, always, been equals.

When he took hold of her hips and lifted, she moved with him, ended up with her legs locked around his waist. He was so strong and warm against her, the fluid muscle of him obvious even through his leathers. They’d been in this position so many times that it felt as easy as breathing.

Zanaya could remember laughing and running to him on a visit, wrapping her legs around his waist as he held her while they kissed, utterly delighted to see each other. So many times she’d run into his arms, this archangel who was the only man in all of eternity who’d ever had the power to cause her pain.

Today, however, when they drew apart with their chests heaving, there was no pain, only an ache that came from having missed him even in her Sleep. “Hello, lover,” she murmured.

He kissed the tips of her fingers when she ran them over his lips, and she remembered that no, they weren’t always so passionate and almost angry with each other in bed. There’d been tenderness too, long ago, before the fractures grew too great. Before they both bled too much. Before the wounds hardened into scars.

Unable to look back at the unbearable sweetness of what had once been, she ravaged his mouth in another untamed kiss while tearing at his leathers. He got the message, pulled back only long enough to rip the top off over his head and throw it to the tiles. It fell with no sound, the leather beyond soft after so many years against his skin.

Running her hands over that skin, over the warmth and muscle of him, she gloried in the now, in this moment when Zani was with her Alexander. The steam from the bath floated in the air, lingered against his skin and her own, and when she dropped her mouth to his throat, she tasted salt.

A shudder, one of his hands fisting in her hair.

He’d always been sensitive along his throat. She kissed the strong column, her memories of him an imprint on her soul. Always she’d remember how he liked to be touched, how he liked to touch in turn. Even when they hadn’t been able to speak to each other, mute with anger, they’d been able to communicate through touch.