Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(124)

“Truce,” she said, lowering her arms to stretch up on her toes before coming down flat on her feet and reaching up to rub the back of her neck.

He just watched her, drank her in. The time she’d spent unconscious during the transition had been the loneliest of his life, the breath-stealing pain of it not yet faded. But it wasn’t the most powerful emotion that held him prisoner. That was naked joy.

“Hey.” Dark eyes on him, his lover drew him into a slow, hot kiss that was a stamp of possession. “I love the way you look at me.”

“Good. I intend to do it for eternity.” Clasping her hand in his, he drew her to their home. As he’d told her, it wasn’t grand, but it was perfect for them. With four bedrooms, there was plenty of space for friends and his family to drop by—which the entire clan would be doing en masse in a month’s time—and the polished wood floor of the sprawling living area gave Ash a built-in dance studio.

The first time she’d danced for him, he’d felt as if she’d gifted him with her soul. It was a gift he treasured with ferocious protectiveness.

“Look,” she whispered, pointing to the happily exhausted form of their new chocolate-colored mutt of a puppy. “He’s adorable, but what’s even more adorable is when you try to teach him to do tricks and he just wants to lick and love you to death.”

“I am not giving up,” Janvier vowed. “He will fetch something for me eventually.” They’d adopted the scraggly furball after someone abandoned him as a newborn at Dr. Shamar’s veterinary clinic, and right now, he was dreaming doggy dreams on the verandah, dark against the white of the walls.

Ash and Janvier—with help from Guild and Tower friends—had stripped the old paint a month earlier and put on a fresh coat of creamy white. It suited the house with its delicate cornices and wraparound verandah. Inside, his Ash indulged her liking for color, turning each room into a warm, welcoming haven.

It was the pieces she’d restored and saved that he most loved.

She was the one who’d figured out how to polish up the double swing with an iron frame that he’d found in a junk shop, the two of them working together to create the large flat cushions for the seat and the back. The rejuvenated swing sat on the back part of the verandah, facing their small but breathtaking view of Manhattan.

Taking a seat on the swing, the puppy curled up underneath in his favorite spot, the two of them unlaced and took off their boots and socks. “Yesterday,” Ash said, eyes sparkling, “when Bluebell dropped by, I asked him to take off his boots before he came inside and he accused me of having an unnatural relationship with our wooden floor.”

“Does he not know it is a most decadent ménage à trois?” Janvier slapped a hand over his heart. “My dear, honeyed floor, let me count the ways I love thee.”

Ashwini laughed at the languid seduction of his voice. “She is a divine other woman.” It was in the two months directly after she woke as a near-immortal that she and Janvier had worked on the floor. She’d been painfully weak then and the repetitive motions needed to strip and polish the wood had acted as low-impact physical therapy.

Four months on, every time she looked at that floor, she remembered lying in the then-empty room with Janvier, the sun’s kiss on their bodies and their hands linked as they discussed their plans for the house . . . and for the future. There was, of course, no way to see the malformation in her brain, but six months on and she felt no different from prior to her Making.

“The countdown is now frozen in amber,” Keir had told her, his hands gentle on her face, “or as close to it as matters not. Live without fear.”

The echo of Arvi’s words had made her eyes burn, her breath stuck in her chest. The hole in her heart that was the space where Arvi and Tanu had lived would always hurt, but she would honor the gift they had given her. For the first time in her life, she no longer knew when she would cease to exist, and that was a wonderful gift.

“How was your meeting with Dmitri?” Janvier asked as they walked inside.

“Good.” Hitching herself onto the counter, she said, “I was able to give him a heads-up on that creepazoid vamp Carys mentioned.” Ashwini was currently working for the Tower in the role of liaison with the people who lived in the gray that had been Giorgio’s hunting ground, though she’d also received dispensation to work for the Guild in her off time.

“It would be idiotic of us to deprive the Guild of one of its best hunters when the hunters do a task that makes our job easier,” Dmitri had said point-blank. “You and Janvier, however, will also work as a team directly under my authority to hunt down older vampires wanted for crimes beyond the purview of the Guild.”

That was a job she could sink her teeth into, with the best partner she could imagine. That partner’s eyes widened slightly when she added, “Ellie grabbed me as I was leaving and made us an offer. Turns out she needs a Guard. Founding member is Izzy, with Vivek having just come onboard.”

Janvier handed her a bottle of blood from the fridge. “Both of us?”

“We’re a pair.” It was an irrefutable truth. “She told Raphael she was planning to steal you and he said she’d made an excellent choice.”

Janvier’s smile was slow. “I see no downside, cher. We will be expected to undergo intensive training over time, and to come in if Elena needs us—”