Raphael dropped her lightly on the bed.
"Nice." She sighed at the decadent feel of the sheets against her skin, her eyes locked with those of an archangel. His gaze was so hotly male, so proprietal that she wondered, for a fleeting second, if she'd made a mistake. What if he wanted to keep her? "Did you ever have a slave?" she asked.
His lips curved slightly, but it was an amusement tempered with sensual demand. "Many." He gripped her ankles, spread her legs. "All very eager to serve-in every possible manner."
She tried to kick out but he hauled her closer, face drawn in a way that was intrinsically sexual. "Some of them had spent years learning to drive a man to ecstasy. The vampires had had hundreds of years to practice."
"Bastard." A cutting denunciation, but her stomach was tight with anticipation, her breasts hot.
"However"-he pulled her up to meet his thrust as he buried himself inside her in one powerful stroke-"none of them did I forbid from taking other lovers."
Her back arched as she tried to assimilate the impact of his entry into her body, the extreme fullness, the stretched ecstasy. When she could finally draw breath, she found him in the same position, as if he, too, was fighting for control. "You don't strike me as the sharing type." Her voice was raw.
"No. If one went to another man"-he began to pull out with slow deliberation-"there were dozens ready to take her place. It mattered little to me."
She was almost beyond thought now, her entire being focused on the point where their bodies joined. What reason remained collapsed under the heady, seductive force of his words.
"If you take another lover, Elena"-he thrust back in, making her gasp-"what I do to him will become a nightmare etched in human memory." And then there were no more words, only movement-the slick motion of body against body, the thrust and parry of male and female, the lush, erotic explosion into ecstasy.
The last thing Elena remembered was thinking that maybe she'd underestimated the force of their combined hunger.
She woke to the realization that she was sleeping on something warm, soft, and silky. Spreading her fingers, she found herself petting-"Oh!" She jerked upright, horrified. A heavy male arm pushed her back down.
"Your wings," she whispered, stroking her hand down the splendor of one.
"They're strong." A lazy masculine statement, full of . . . something.
She was about to turn and look at him when she saw the state of her body. "Oh, no, you didn't!" She glittered from head to toe, angel dust in her pores, on her eyelashes, in her mouth. The special blend.
He caressed his hand over her hip, along the dip of her waist, over her breast. "It was . . . not on purpose."
Was that embarrassment she heard in his voice? Frowning, she licked some of the glittery stuff off her lips. It made her body all warm and tingly-as if she wasn't already burning up from the inside out. "Is this like-um-being a little quick off the mark?"
He squeezed the arm he had around her midsection. "Any complaints?"
She smiled, realizing she was right-the archangel had lost control. "Hell, no." Twisting in his arms, she wiggled up to look into his face. Her smile faded. "You look . . . different." Nothing she could explain, nothing she could touch. But . . .
His expression grew shadowed. "You've made me a little more human."
Flashes of memory. Raphael bleeding out from a gunshot wound. "What does that mean?"
"I don't know." His kiss was a fever and he was inside her before she knew it, their coupling fast, furious, and utterly magnificent.
Much, much later, as they faced the promise of a new day, she tried to wash off the angel dust, with only marginal success. Her skin continued to shine but it wasn't as noticeable. And thankfully, the stuff didn't, in fact, glow in the dark. "If someone tastes this," she said to Raphael as he watched her dress from his relaxed position by the fireplace, "will they want to jump my bones?"
"Yes." Those eyes gleamed. "So don't let them taste."
She stilled at the menace in his command. "Don't go around killing people on my account, Raphael."
"You made your choice."
To sleep with an archangel.
"I think the sexual high is starting to wear off," she muttered, pulling on a new pair of cargos in dark khaki, and a black T-shirt. She threw on a black sweater as well. It was early morning and still dark outside, the temperature having dropped along with the rain. "I mean it, Raphael, you go around killing innocent people, I'll hunt you." She didn't bother to hide her weapons-including the special gun-from him as she pulled them out of the overnight bag and concealed them on her body.
His face was expressionless as he watched her, his wings backlit by the flames, his magnificent body naked but for a pair of black pants. "The honeymoon is over?"
She walked across the carpet to stare up into a face she knew she'd see in her dreams the rest of her life. "Nope." Fisting her hands on his naked chest, she waited for him to lower his head, and then took a kiss. "Here's a tip-you want to call me your toy, go ahead. Just don't expect me to be one."
A hand on her nape, a warning grip. "Don't attempt to manage me, little hunter. I'm not-"
The rest of his words disappeared in a crash of white noise.
Come here, little hunter. Taste.
"Elena." The sharp word pulled her back to the here and now.
"Fine." She cleared her throat. "Glad we sorted that out. The rain's stopped-"
"What do you see?"
She met his eyes, shook her head. "I'm not ready to tell you." Might never be.
He didn't threaten to take it from her by force. "It's still drizzling lightly. That should help keep him in Stupor."
"Yeah." Drawing back, she folded her arms. "I didn't think about that. They don't like the cold, do they?" It was a rhetorical question. "Especially after a glut."
"But then again, Uram isn't a vampire."
She blew out a frustrated breath. "Then what the hell is he? Tell me!"
"He is an Angel of Blood." He walked to the window, but she knew he saw things far more sinister than the predawn gloom. "A true abomination, a thing that should never have existed."
The anger that emanated from him was an almost physical force. "Is he the first?"
"He's the first archangel to become bloodborn in my memory. But Lijuan says there have been others."
Elena's mind filled with the images she'd found of the oldest of the archangels. Lijuan was the only one of the Cadre who showed even the first signs of age. It did nothing to detract from her exotic beauty-her face, her bones, her pale, pale eyes. And yet, there was something subtly wrong about Lijuan. As if she didn't belong in this world anymore.
"The first archangel you know of," she murmured, thinking that through. "What about ordinary angels?"
"Very good, Elena." He didn't turn from the window, as remote as he'd been on that rooftop what felt like weeks ago. "Those others were easily contained. Most were young males with little of the intellect Uram seems to have retained after his transition."
"How many?" She stared at the back of his head as if she could force him to speak. "One a year?"
He met her eyes in the window's dusky reflection as she came to stand behind him. "No."
Biting back her frustration, she moved around to lean against the glass so they were face-to-face. "You're obviously very good at covering the tracks of the bloodborn-humans don't even have legends about this."
"In most cases, the victims alone learned the truth-and they did so minutes before their deaths."
"That makes me feel extra special." She found herself tracing the delicate gold edging of a feather near his biceps. "Tell me-these bloodborn, is it a madness they're born with?"
A sweep of sinfully rich lashes against skin she'd kissed not so long ago. "We all carry the potential to become bloodborn."
Startled at the straight answer, she dropped her hand. "What, no warnings about too much knowledge?"
"You already know too much." A smile that hinted at age, at ruthlessness, at things better left unimagined. "It's good you've come to my bed. No one will dare touch my lover."
"Too bad immortals have such fleeting interests." The cold of the glass at her back was beginning to seep into her bones, but she didn't move. "Since I already know so much, tell me why an angel turns vampire."
His face closed over. "You're still human."
She barely restrained the urge to kick him. "I'm also a hunter tracking an archangel. You pulled me into this. Give me the tools I need to fight."
"Your job is to find Uram. It's your ability we need."
We. The Cadre of Ten.
"How am I supposed to do that job if you insist on hobbling me?" It took extreme effort to keep her temper. "The more I know about the target, the better I am at predicting his movements!"
He traced a finger over her cheek. "Do you know why Illium lost his feathers?"
"Because you were in a bad mood?" She blew out a frustrated breath. "Stop trying to change the subject."
"Because," Raphael said, ignoring her order, "he bespoke our darkest truth to a human." The way he said that, the language, made it impossible to ignore his age, his immortality.
Captured despite herself, she asked, "What happened to the mortal?"
"We took her memories." He cupped her cheek. "And Illium was forbidden from speaking to her ever again."
"Did he love her?"
"Perhaps." His face said that that didn't matter. "He watched over her for the rest of her days, knowing she no longer knew him. Is that love?"
"Don't you know?"
"I've seen love defined a thousand ways over the centuries. There is no constant." He stared at her, his own face expressionless. "If Illium loved his mortal, then he was a fool. She's been dust for centuries."
"Heartless," she whispered, sensing the warmth of the rising sun at her back. How long had they stood here that the fading edge of night had turned to dawn? "Couldn't you have allowed him a lifetime with the woman he loved?"
"No." Sharp, clean lines, a face without mercy. "For if one mortal knows, soon another will. You have little concept of secrecy."
Elena saw in his absolute statement, her future. "Not my memories," she reminded him. "Hunt me to ground if it comes to that, but don't you dare take my memories."
"You'd rather die?"
"Yes."
"So be it."
Her blood fired at the finality of those three short words, knowing he'd spoken them as a vow. "You do realize that to kill me, you'll have to catch me."
His smile held the cool arrogance of a man who knew exactly how dangerous he was. "It'll break the ennui of age."
She snorted and glanced outside. "Rain's stopped. I'll go out, see if I can pick up a trail in case Uram didn't spend the night in Stupor."
"Eat first." He moved back. "We never stopped running search patterns-if he'd killed again, I would've heard by now."
Feeling jittery but knowing she'd do better with some nourishment, she agreed. "I'll grab something quick."
"Will you begin your search at Michaela's?"
"Might as well. If he is up and around, he'll probably come by to visit her. There's-" Something rang in a familiar pattern. "Damn, where did I put it?"
"Here." Raphael picked her cell phone out of the clothing she'd thrown over the small bag that held her stuff. "Catch."
"Thanks." One glance at the caller display was enough to make her stomach churn. "Hello, Jeffrey." She wondered what her father would say if she told him she was standing in a room with a half-naked archangel. Probably ask her to strike a deal while said archangel was befuddled with sex.
Looking at the profile of Raphael's highly intelligent face as he switched on a laptop she hadn't noticed until then, she felt her lips curve in a tight grin. "What is it?" The urge to hang up was a pounding need in her blood, but she'd gnaw off her own arm before she allowed Jeffrey to beat her into sniveling cowardice.
"You need to come to my office."
Something in his tone cut through the complex, turbulent layers of her anger. "Is someone there?"
"Now, Elieanora." He hung up.
"I need to get to my father's brownstone."
Turning from the laptop, Raphael raised an eyebrow. "I thought you'd said what you needed to say to your father yesterday?"
She didn't bother to ask how he knew-it wasn't as if she and Jeffrey had made any attempt to keep the volume down. "Something's wrong. Is the car still out front?"
He paused and she realized he was probably talking to the vampires mind-to-mind. "Dmitri will drive you."
"Fine." She began to stride out. "If this is one of Jeffrey's power games-Damn it, no, I'm not going to drop everything just because he tells me to." She pulled out the phone and called him back."I'm on a hunt," she said as soon as he picked up. "I don't have time to come play happy families."
"Then perhaps you'll find the time to come clean up the mess your friend left behind."
Her heart chilled. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm fairly sure she was still alive when he split her open and skinned off the flesh to display her broken rib cage."