Archangel's Kiss

Caught by the unexpected poetry of his words, she almost didn't see Raphael sweeping in to land. Almost. Because nothing and no one else could ever hold her attention when her archangel was in the vicinity. Barely aware of Illium going quiet beside her, she watched the devastating grace of Raphael's descent. Illium was as beautiful as a gleaming blade, but Raphael . . . Raphael was magnificent.

"Time for me to go, I think."

She felt Illium leave, but it was a distant knowledge, her eyes drawn inextricably to the archangel who'd landed before her. "How was dinner?" she asked, staring into those cobalt eyes full of secrets it would take her an eternity to unravel.

"I survived."

It should've made her smile, but all she felt was a violent possessiveness - honed to the most lethal of edges by the knowledge that right now, the green-eyed female archangel could kill her without even a modicum of effort. "Did Michaela mark you?"

"Why don't you check?" He flared out his wings.

Feeling stupidly vulnerable all of a sudden, she turned to grip the balcony railing. "It's none of my business if you choose to spend time with a woman who'd eat your heart and dance gleefully on your grave if it would mean she gained power."

"Oh, but I disagree, Elena." Strong arms on either side of hers, big hands closing over the railing. "Tighten your wings."

It took her a minute to figure out how to do that neat tucking into the body thing she'd seen other angels do with their wings. "That's harder than it looks."

"Takes muscle control." Words spoken against her neck as he pressed closer, her wings trapped between them.

It hurt . . . with a pain that made her skin shimmer in hunger, in need. Every shift of his body, every brush of his lips, it went straight to her core. But she'd been fighting her attraction to Raphael since the moment she met him - it had never made her an easy target. "What do you disagree about?" she asked, her gaze drawn to the wings she could see sweeping through the lush black of the night, heading for those isolated aeries.

Angels going home.

A strange thought, a strange sensation, to stand here in their most secret place when they'd always been shadows in the darkness to her.

"I consider it very much your business if I choose to spend time with Michaela."

She heard a dangerous undertone in his words, one that curled her toes even as it pricked at her hunter instincts. "Do you?"

"As I consider it very much my business that your wings are dusted with blue."

Eyes widening, she pushed away from the railing. Or tried to. "Raphael, let me go so I can see."

"No."

She blew out a breath. "Stop it. Illium didn't mean anything by it."

"Angel dust is not an instinctive act . . . unless one is in the throes of sex." His fingers plucked at the tight peak of her nipple, a shockingly sensual reminder that the Archangel of New York had once lost control in bed. "It's very much premeditated."

"If he wasn't down there," she said, fighting to speak through the slamming rush of need, "I'd smack him. He's jerking your chain."

Lips on her ear, his hand moving to cup her breast with devastating intimacy. "Illium has always had a wild disregard for his life."

She couldn't help it. She curved her neck to give him better access. "And yet he's one of your Seven."

"I think in this case, he knows he's your favorite." Kisses along her neck, hot and sexual in a way that told her he had only one thing in mind.

Giving a laugh husky with need, she reached back to run the fingers of one hand over his cheek. "Do I have that much influence over you?"

The graze of teeth. "If your Bluebell is alive tomorrow, you'll have your answer." His body pressed into her, hot, hard, and demanding, as his hands slid under her clothing to close over her bare breasts.

"Raphael."

Finally allowing her to turn, he crowded her against the railing. Instinct drove her to spread her wings over the metal that was all that kept her from falling to the rocks below.

No, she thought, on the heels of that thought. Raphael would never let her fall. And if she fell, he'd fall with her. "Kiss me, Archangel."

"As you wish, Guild Hunter." His lips met hers, harshly masculine and earthy in a way that paid lie to any myths about angels being too "evolved" to indulge in such physical pleasures.

Moaning in the back of her throat, she wrapped her arms around his neck, rising on tiptoe to meet him kiss for tangled kiss. When his hand brushed the side of her breast, she shivered from the pleasure of it. Biting at his lower lip, she opened her eyes. "Now."

"No." Another hotly sexual kiss.

Breaking it, she ran her hand down the muscled plane of his chest, lower. He gripped it before she could close her fingers over the rigid length of him. "I'm not that weak," she protested.

"You're not that strong either." Power ringed his irises. "Not for what I want."

She stilled. "And what is that?"

Everything.The sea and the wind. Clean and wild . . . and inside her mind.

"I'll give you my hunger, my heart," she said, fighting to retain her independence, and more - to build a foundation for their relationship that would last an eternity. "But my mind is my own. Accept that."

"Or?" The cool question of a being used to getting exactly what he wanted.

"I guess you'll have to wait and see." Leaning back against the balcony, her body aching, unfulfilled, she simply looked at him, at the exquisite balance of beauty and cruelty, perfection and darkness. His own hunger had turned his face acetic, that flawless bone structure dramatic against his skin. But he made no move to kiss her again.

"I'll break you."

The words he'd spoken earlier came back to her, an invisible wall between them.

Knowing he was right, she blew out a breath. "I have a question."

He waited without impatience - as if he had forever and she was the only woman in the universe. It threatened to take her breath away. How had she, Elena Deveraux, a common hunter according to her father, ended up with the right to ask questions of an archangel?

"What do you know about Lijuan's pets?"

A slow blink was all the indication he gave that she'd surprised him. "Dare I inquire how you knew to ask that question?"

She smiled.

His expression changed, holding an intensity that seared her through and through. "As I said" - eyes turning to chrome - "you'll make eternity far more interesting."

That was when she noticed the light coming off his wings. Bright, lethal, just enough to make him seem precisely what he was - an immortal who held enough power in his body to level a city. Instinct had her muscles tensing in preparation for flight, the adrenaline rush so strong, it was difficult to form words. "You're glowing."

"Am I?" Fingers undoing her hair, threading through the strands. "Lijuan's pets are the reborn."

Startled at getting a straight answer, she sucked in air through lungs that protested the effort - struggling past the pressure of Raphael's presence, his power. She didn't call him on it, intensely conscious that he wasn't doing it to intimidate her. He was simplybeing .

And if she planned to dance with an archangel, she had to learn to deal. "Something to do with vampires?"

"No. As archangels age," he said, the glow beginning to fade, though his eyes stayed that metallic shade no human would ever possess, "we gain power."

"Like your mental abilities," she murmured, her heart still racing. "And the glamour."

Paranoia would run rampant if it got out that some archangels could walk among the populace unknown, unseen.

"Yes. Lijuan is the oldest among us, and as such, has the greatest store of abilities."

"So these reborn are something only she can create?"

A nod that sent the coal black strands of his hair sliding over his forehead.

Reaching up to push them back, she lingered, playing with the heavy silk. "What are they?"

"Lijuan," he said in a voice touched with midnight, "can make the dead walk."

Her heart stopped for a second as she read the truth in his eyes, processed the awfulness of what he was saying. "You don't mean that she can somehow bring people truly back to life, do you?"

"I would not call it life." He bent his head, pressing his forehead against hers.

Sliding her hand around to the back of his neck, she held him close as he told her things no mortal knew.

"They walk, but they do not talk. Jason tells me that for the first few months of their existence, they seem to have some semblance of sentience, that it's possible they know what they are - but with no power over their reborn bodies. They are Lijuan's puppets."

"Dear God." To be trapped in your own body, knowing you were a nightmare . . . "How does she keep them alive?"

"She awakens them with her power, but they then feed on blood." Raphael's voice twined around her, filling her cells with horror. "The old ones, the ones who went to the earth long ago, feed on the flesh of the recently dead to keep their own bones clothed in flesh."

Her soul grew cold, so cold. "Will you gain that ability?"

Chapter 7

Raphael threaded his hands through her hair once more.

"Our abilities are tied to who we are. I would hope I never become capable of creating the reborn."

Shivering, she slid her arms around his torso. "Have you gained any new abilities in recent years?" Because she knew him, knew how thin the line he'd skated. Not that long ago, he'd broken every bone in a vampire's body while the pitiful creature remained conscious. It had been a punishment Manhattan would never forget. "Raphael?"

"Come." He rose into the air.

Yelping, she shifted her hold to around his neck. "You could've warned me."

"I have faith in your reflexes, Elena."After all, if you hadn't shot Uram, New York might yet be drowning in blood.

She snorted. "That wasn't all me. I seem to remember you throwing fireballs at him."

"Angelfire," he murmured. "One touch and it would've killed you."

Rubbing her face against his chest as he flew them over the lethal beauty of the massive mountain range that surrounded the lights of the Refuge, she said, "I'm hard to kill."

"Take care, hunter." Dipping, he swept down toward the edge of a crashing waterfall.

"You can still be hurt."

They were so close she could skim her fingers along the glittering beauty of the water, the droplets diamonds trapped under moonlight. Wonder burst to life inside of her.

"Raphael!"

Rising, he flew them back up into the icily clear night sky, each star cut in crystal.

"You said a strong vampire could kill me," she said, feeling the cold color her cheeks as the wind ripped through her hair. "Angelfire, I can guess. What else am I vulnerable to?"

"Angelfire is the easiest method, but those archangels who can't create the fire have other means."

"I wasn't planning on hanging out with the Cadre, so that's good."

Lips against her ear, a touch that seared her to the toes, but his words . . . "Disease is no longer your enemy, but fellow angels can also kill you. You're so young that if you were partially dismembered, you'd die."