Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(79)

Titus nodded his permission to her request and told her to take along the angel who stood guard in the courtyard. He was here to watch over Sharine now. After Kiama’s departure, he turned to find Sharine looking down at the book again. Her long tail of hair had slipped to one side to reveal the slender line of her neck and the gentle slope of her shoulders.

No one looking at her would believe that she was made of titanium and had a temper hot enough to set the sky aflame. And still he tempted that temper by bending to press a kiss to the spot where her neck flowed into her back.

She shivered. “Titus.” No anger after all, and her eyes held an otherworldly glow when their gazes met.

Outside of a Cascade, only one thing was supposed to glow among angelkind—an archangel’s wings when he was about to release his deadly power. Yet her eyes held a light that wasn’t from the sun. He accepted that. She was Sharine, and Sharine made her own rules.

Today, she rose on her toes and he bent, and they met in between in a kiss that had him groaning, his hands gripping her hips. When he lifted her up, she wrapped her arms around his neck and met him lick for lick, taste for taste, her chest pressed to the damp plane of his. Heart booming and air no longer necessary, he crushed her close and kissed her like a man starving.

Her breasts were the perfect size for her body and they had nipples that pressed at him through her tunic until he wanted to tear off the tunic and suck hard, make them wet and slick. Shifting his hands to her lower curves, he bounced her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

Groaning, he turned to sit her down on the desk . . . and reality hit.

“Not here,” he said, breaking the kiss, his breath rough and his chest rising and falling in a ragged rhythm. “Not in the home of my enemy.”

Sharine ran her hand over his jaw, the touch unexpectedly tender. “Agreed,” she said, then leaned in to kiss him one more time.

He didn’t want to release her when she began to unfold her legs, but he forced his grip to ease, though he kept his hands on her so she slid down his body. A smile was his reward, and he was gratified to see that her breathing was as jagged as his. Damp patches marred the light purple of her tunic.

“You make me feel young and reckless, Titus,” she said, and touched her lips to his chest before pulling away.

The spot where she’d kissed, it ached deep inside.

His response flat-out terrified him and he was man enough to admit it.

“What have you found?” he asked, his voice coming out rough with the weight of the emotions he didn’t want to feel.

“Let me read out Charisemnon’s own words—you tell me what you think it says.” She held up her hand when he would’ve spoken, his eyebrows lowered. “Stop glowering—I’m not testing you in some fashion.” Razored words that should’ve killed his arousal dead.

His cock hardened even further; clearly his body wasn’t interested in being rational. “Then what’s this about?”

Lips plump and pink from the passion of their kiss, she said, “I’m simply unsure if my emotions toward what Charisemnon did have colored my interpretation.”

“If you searched the world for the least objective person on the subject of Charisemnon, you’d find me,” Titus pointed out, hands on his hips. “He is lower than a cockroach in my estimation. At least a cockroach knows no better.”

“Just try,” she said on a huff of breath. “You’re a highly intelligent man. Think with the strategic part of your brain that you utilize in the battlefield.”

Preening a little—though he wasn’t about to show it—he folded his arms and jerked up his chin. “Read, then, and I’ll see what I hear.”

Her reading voice was lyrical and lovely and he had to fight to pay attention to her words.

“‘I am racing to a great success in building a masterwork out of Lijuan’s gift and my own,’” she read, “‘such success as has not been seen among my kind for eons upon eons. Lijuan says that she has reason to believe there was another as great as me at the dawn of our existence, that she has scrolls in her keeping that hint at the reason behind vampires and why the toxin lives in us. If she is right, that first architect of disease was indeed terrible and strong.’”

Moving around the room because standing still wasn’t his natural state, Titus snorted. “Of course he worships the worst of us.”

Ignoring his interruption, Sharine carried on. “‘But I will be better than that unknown angel. They are forgotten. No one will forget me for I will do the one thing he could not. He infected angels, but he wasn’t in control. I will be in control. I will decide who lives and who dies. My legacy will be of power so deadly that no one will stand against me. Not even Lijuan. Should she try, well, I have my weapons.’”

Throwing back his head, Titus laughed long and hard, his amusement profoundly real. “There is never any honor among evildoers. They would’ve eaten each other had they survived the war.” The image gave him great pleasure. “Is there more? Or has he finished patting himself on the back?”

“There’s more, but what do you hear in that part?” Closing the book, Sharine turned so that she was looking at him as he walked along the other side of the room. Her wings were brilliant splashes of color in this otherwise staid space, as if a butterfly had flown in from the outside.