Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter 7)

The tiny tugs on her scalp reaching deep inside her, Ashwini looked up at a wash of wind to see a squadron of angels passing overhead on a low flight path. They dipped their wings as a unit as they passed, and she knew Janvier had been spotted. He raised his free hand in acknowledgment right as a fresh gust of wind blew his hair back from his face.

That face could never be called beautiful. It had too many rough edges. But sexy? Yes, Janvier was sexy in every way a man could be sexy. The curve of his lips, the dark shadow of scruff on his jaw that said he didn’t fuss about being pretty, the glint of sinful knowledge in his eyes, the lazy way he moved, it added up to a package a woman would have to exercise incredible willpower to repudiate.

Ashwini’s willpower was at an all-time low.

As if he sensed that, Janvier slid his hand down her back to hook one thumb into her back right pocket. It was pushing at her boundaries and it was what he always did. If he ever stopped flirting with her, a part of her would die. “Do you have to report in to Illium in person?” she asked, ignoring his implied question about her brother, unable to go there, to talk about the agony that both divided and united her and Arvi; she couldn’t forget his betrayal, and Arvi couldn’t forgive what he saw as hers.

“I can call in the information.” Janvier’s gaze was acute, but his words easy. “You?”

“I’ll do the same.”

Separating to opposite ends of the cliff, she rang Sara while he contacted Illium.

Ashwini updated the Guild Director on the details, then said, “My instincts are screaming that the dog is a harbinger of worse to come.” The feeling had nothing to do with her more unusual abilities; it was pure hunter instinct. “I’m going to keep an eye on the area, work my contacts to see if I can shake anything loose.”

“I’m not putting you on an active hunt for another two weeks at least,” Sara replied, “so take the time and keep me in the loop. No heroics.” It was a command. “I damn well don’t intend to watch the undertakers put another one of my people in the ground.”

There had been far too many funerals after the battle that had thundered in the air, on the rooftops, and along the streets of Manhattan. Hunters, vampires, angels . . . the wave of death had been indiscriminate, the grief left in its wake a heavy shadow that colored Sara’s order tonight. “Noted,” Ashwini said to the other woman before hanging up.

Then she turned, looked at the man who walked toward her, his hair wind-tumbled and his smile an invitation, and knew she was about ten seconds away from making what might be the worst mistake of both their lives.

•   •   •

Janvier wanted Ashwini. He’d wanted her since their first meeting in the luxuriant green humidity of a cypress swamp, her skin beaded with sweat and dragonflies buzzing in the air. It had taken everything he had not to attempt to seduce her then and there, the desire to lick up the salt-laced tang of her as he drove his cock into her body a sudden, violent craving.

The fact that she had a crossbow aimed at his gut hadn’t dampened his lust, just heightened it, but the lust had only been the start. Each time they tangled, he’d learned a little more about his Ashblade, until having her body would no longer be enough. Janvier wanted all of the gifted, complicated, skilled woman in front of him.

Including her trust.

Today, the rich brown eyes he’d seen laughing, infuriated, amused, were sad and brittle. A small push and he knew she’d permit the seduction, allow him to use his body to make her forget the pain that lived in her, that huge thing too terrible for a mortal to possess. He could kiss her, taste her in an effort to assuage the need inside him, even thrust his cock so deep into her that she cried out. And when it was over, he’d have destroyed the most beautiful thing he’d encountered, that he’d felt, in all eternity.

“It’s a great night for a long ride,” he said before she could speak. “No real wind, and I can handle any snow that falls. You game?”

A pregnant pause, those mysterious eyes locked on his face.

His nerves stretched taut; Janvier didn’t know if he had the strength to refuse her if she made him a different offer, even knowing it would be a devastating mistake. She was his Achilles’ heel, his personal, luminous madness.

“Yes,” she said at last. “Let’s go.”

Grabbing the helmet he’d bought especially for her and that he never lent to anyone else, he put it on her with his own hands, flipping down the fog-resistant visor to protect her face. Then, zipping up his jacket after a glance at Ash to make sure hers was secure, he put on his helmet and straddled the bike. She hesitated for a second before swinging up behind him, long and sleek and the most complex, fascinating creature he’d ever met.

Not interrupting the silence that had fallen between them, he drove down the narrow cliff access road with care; he might have a daredevil streak, but despite her grit and determination, Ash was mortal. If he totaled the bike, she could die. His gut tightened, his spine locking.

Only a few more decades. Then it’ll be time for a new hunter to chase you.

She’d said that to him the first time she ever asked him for help. They’d gone into Nazarach’s territory, survived the sadistic angel, shared a decadent promise of a kiss on a train platform before she left him, his wild windstorm of a lover. Because she was very much his lover, even if they’d never been skin to skin. The idea of being with any other woman after he met her had simply been out of the question.

He would not—could not—let her die. Not the tempestuous storm that was her.

The light would go out of the world if she was gone.

The only impediment to her becoming near-immortal was Ash’s own resistance to the idea. Raphael had been aware of Ash since long before Janvier’s fateful meeting with her in that swamp; the archangel would be more than happy to have a woman with her abilities in his Tower. Somehow, Janvier had to make Ash see that living hundreds, perhaps thousands of years wouldn’t be the nightmare she imagined.

Once out of the Enclave, he turned the bike in the direction of the Adirondacks. The night wind whistled past them and other vehicles overtook on the left because he kept the speed undemanding, the snow on the sides of the road glittering in the beam of his headlight when they passed out of the more populated areas, the trees clean silhouettes against the night.

Flicking on the microphone and speaker system embedded in his helmet with a tilt of his head, he said, “There’s something about going for a ride with a beautiful woman wrapped around me.”