Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(70)

“Anything.” He’d split his veins for her, if that was what she wanted.

“If we’re going to do this, we do it full throttle.” The darkness of her eyes caught him, held him. “We live for today, not in mourning for the tomorrow that hasn’t yet arrived, and we don’t allow the rage to drown us.”

Jawbones grinding, he defied her to look out over the water, but if the Hudson held an answer for him, it was mired in the silky dark.

“Janvier.” Fingers weaving through his hair, his Ashblade’s arms around his neck. “I want to play with you as we’ve always played. No rules, no holding back. Don’t treat me as broken. Don’t do that.”

How could he deny her? He’d never been able to deny her anything. “Full throttle,” he promised, and it was the hardest promise he’d ever had to make, the anger inside him wanting to take over his skin. “I’ll show you things that’ll make you laugh in delight, scream in passion, cry for the sheer joy of it.”

Ash smiled in startled happiness at the words he’d first spoken to her on the train platform where they’d shared their first kiss and it was a beam of light piercing the oppressive dark. At that instant, he realized something else critical: his Ash would never permit herself to be imprisoned inside her own mind. She was a hunter, a woman who danced with danger on every job. When she felt the shadows begin to overwhelm her, she’d go out on a hunt one day and she wouldn’t come home, leaving him with memories of a beautiful lover who’d died doing what she loved.

No anguish like what she and her brother suffered as they watched Tanu deteriorate.

No lingering, agonizing loss. Just a clean, sharp cut.

What she didn’t realize was that he’d go with her, making a clean, sharp cut of his own. He’d lived more than two hundred years already, and the best of them, the best of them, had been the four since she’d entered his life.

The idea of going back to an existence where she wasn’t there anymore? He couldn’t do it. He’d never wanted to be a vampire to live forever. He’d done it for what he’d once believed was love, though he’d come to understand it for a false promise. This, this was love. The kind that forever changed a man.

If he survived Ash, he would no longer be the Janvier she knew—he’d be a man without a heart, his buried with her. In time, he’d become like the immortals he so despised, the ones for whom life held no meaning, and who’d attempt any cruelty in an effort to feel again.

No, whatever Ashwini’s life span, it would be his, too.

? ? ?

Ashwini knew that despite the promise he’d demanded from her, Janvier didn’t expect to come up to her apartment that night. He had too much honor to take advantage of her emotional state—but she needed him, wanted to greedily live every instant they had together now that she could go to him open and honest and without secrets.

“I’ll walk you up,” he said after parking his car in the illegal spot out in front of her building.

Taking his keys once they were through the doors, she threw them to the doorman, then dug out a generous tip. “Can you sneak the car into one of the underground parking spaces someone’s not using?” Not having a car of her own, she didn’t pay to keep a space.

“No problem.” Nic winked. “Mrs. Beachum’s in the Hamptons.”

“Thanks, Nic.” Not looking at Janvier, she walked to the elevators.

“Ash—”

“I don’t want to waste any more time.” She looked into the raw intensity of his eyes, allowed him to see her: skittering nerves, hot skin, muscles taut, she was a knot of want and need and ignorance. “I want to live, to kiss you, play with you, love you.”

He closed his eyes, shuddered. “I’m too selfish when it comes to you, cher, to try to convince you otherwise.”

Ashwini rose on tiptoe to run her lips down the stubbled edge of his jaw. “Good,” she whispered, her body humming at the proximity of his.

? ? ?

Stepping into Ash’s apartment after the too-fast elevator ride that hadn’t given his spinning head and thundering pulse any time to settle, Janvier took his time in removing his jacket and dropping it on the back of one of her sofas. She did the same thing before leaning down to unzip and pull off her ankle boots. He hunkered down to take off his own boots, then watched as she walked to the glass wall that looked out at the city.

His heart felt bruised tonight, but he’d rather be nowhere else than here, with her, with his lover. Be doing nothing else than loving her, living a lifetime in a heartbeat. When his phone buzzed, he almost didn’t look at the message, but Ash turned and in her face he saw the reminder that, no matter what, the victim had a prior claim on their attention.

“Khalil,” he told her after scanning the details, “appears to have settled in for a night of public debauchery at Masque. Emaya and Mateo couldn’t get in, but a Tower vampire named Trace was already inside when Khalil went in, and he reports that while Khalil is currently indulging his appetites on the glass platform, he’s booked out a more intimate ‘playroom’ for the night.”

“Does Masque have security protocols to protect guests in the playrooms?”

“Adele’s security monitors all the rooms via a live feed.” He met her gaze. “This monster appears locked up for the night, and we’ve heard nothing back from the computer teams tracking the victim’s identity. I think, cher, the night is ours.”