"Oh, the track's happening," she said, stealing a single moment to savor the wild heat of him. "It's just a matter of how fast I'll be able to go." A deep breath and she dragged herself out of bed, her wings held close to her back until she was standing beside it. She turned to find Raphael watching her with those eyes of unearthly blue, his chest na**d enticement bathed in sunlight.
"Elena." A subtle reprimand.
Blushing, she went through a quick but comprehensive warm-up. "Nothing's too stiff."
Her eyes returned to that magnificent body he wouldn't let her touch. "I might need a massage at the end of the day, though."
"That might be a temptation too far."
Memories stroked into her mind, of his fingers teasing her to ecstasy as that deep voice told her every wicked thing he planned to do. Feeling her body flush, she turned away from a face that could make even a hunter fall into sin, and made her way to the bathroom. A quick shower later, she was feeling a bit more human.
Human.
No, she wasn't that anymore. But she wasn't a vampire either. She wondered if her father would find her more acceptable now, or would this make her even more of an abomination in his eyes?
"Go then, go and roll around in the muck. Don't bother coming back."
It still hurt, that rejection, the way he'd looked at her from behind the thin metal frames of his spectacles. After her mother's death she'd tried so hard to be what Jeffrey Deveraux wanted in a daughter, in his oldest surviving heir. Her existence had been a tightrope, one that wobbled constantly beneath her terrified feet. Never had she been comfortable in the Big House, the house her father had bought after the blood, the death, the screams. But she'd tried. Until one day, the tightrope snapped.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
"Your hunger makes mine sing, hunter."
She stiffened in rejection. "No."
Turning off the water, she got out and stood with the towel pressed to her face. Was it real, that whisper? It had to be. She'd never forget that low, sinuous voice, that handsome face that hid the soul of a murderer. But she'd forgotten those words, had buried them.
The words . . . and what came after.
Elena.
Clean, fresh, the sea and the wind. She clung to it.Hey, I'll be out soon.
I can sense your fear.
She didn't know how to answer that, so she didn't. The scent of the sea, the fresh bite of wind, didn't disappear. Part of her wondered if he was stealing her secrets, but another part of her was glad he hadn't left her alone in that home turned butcher's shop.Raphael?
He appeared in the doorway, a being she'd once shot in terror. A being who now held her very soul in his hands. "You have need of me?"
"How much do you know?" she asked him. "About my family?"
"The facts. I had you fully investigated before the Cadre decided to hire you."
She'd known that, but now she met his gaze, walling up her suddenly vulnerable heart.
He could hurt her so much. "Have you taken more than the facts from me?"
"What do you think?"
"I think you're used to taking what you want."
"Yes." A slow nod.
Her heart threatened to break.
"But," he said, "I'm beginning to learn the value of that which is freely given." Walking across, he ran one hand over the acutely sensitive arch of her wing.
She shivered, caught by the magnetism of an archangel who'd never be anything close to mortal. And then he spoke, his eyes the infinite blue at the deepest part of the ocean, endless and pure beyond description. "I haven't taken your secrets, Elena."
Everything crashed open, emotion threatening to tow her under. "That's not the answer I expected."
Picking up a towel, he moved behind her and began to dry her wings with slow, soft strokes. Too late she realized that with her holding the towel to her front, her entire back was bare to his eyes.
"The color sweeps up your back." He slid her hair over one shoulder, pressing a kiss to the delicate skin of her nape.
She shivered, tried to lift her wings so she could slide the towel around her body.
"No." Stroking his hand down the curve of her spine and over her bu**ocks, he trailed his fingers back up.
She found herself rising on tiptoe to escape the delicious torment. "Raphael."
"Will you tell me your secrets?"
Her feet lowered to the ground on a ripple of pain and fear. Leaning back into him, she let her head fall against his chest. "Some secrets hurt too much."
He ran his hand down her wing again, but this time, the sensation felt more like comfort.
"We have eternity," he said, one arm coming around her neck from the front.
She felt her heart skip a beat at the certainty in his tone. "In that eternity, will you tell me your secrets?"
"I haven't shared my secrets for more sunrises than you can imagine." He tugged her even closer. "But until I met you, I'd never claimed a hunter, either."
There was something strange about scent-tracking through the Refuge. It wasn't only that she seemed to be developing the ability to track angels - that came and went, the new scents static in the back of her mind - it was that she could feel eyes on her every step of the way. "You'd think they'd never seen a hunter before," she muttered under her breath.
Illium, walking beside her, vivid interest in his own eyes, took her words for a question.
"Many of them haven't."
"I guess." She frowned as she caught a hint of a scent that tugged at her instincts, but it whispered away so fast, she couldn't pinpoint the elements that made up the whole.
"Maybe they're just checking you out." Bare-chested and with the lithe muscle of a man who knew how to use his body, he was, as Sara would put it, "deliciously bitable."
A wicked smile. "Your wings are trailing in the snow."
Glancing behind her, she saw the white tips encrusted with ice. "No wonder they feel numb." She pulled the wings back up, realizing they'd entered one of the main thoroughfares. It bustled with activity, but beneath it all was a hum of lethal anger. "Do all vampires know about this place?"
"No, only the most trusted."
Which made the assault on Sam all the more egregious. But of course, everyone knew the vampire had been nothing but a tool. It was the angel who mattered, the angel who'd be put to death in the most painful way known to immortals - and they'd had a long time to come up with methods of torture. Catching a minute hint of citrus, she angled left, to a section almost free of angelic eyes. "Any orange groves in this direction?"