Angels' Flight (28 page)

A groan. “You have your hand on my cock. If you called me an ugly git, I’d agree with you. Just.
Don’t. Stop.
”

His unashamed pleasure made her entire body melt. Not only did she continue in her intimate caresses; she began to suck and kiss at his neck until he slammed his mouth down on her own, tender control transforming into untamed sexuality. Demanding and aggressive, he thrust his cock into her grip in time with the thrust of his tongue into her mouth.

His hand fisted in her gown at the same instant, pulling up the material until it bunched at her waist. His fingers were underneath the lace that protected her an instant later, making her arch, cry out into his kiss. Taking that cry as his due, he tore away the lace to stroke her to quivering readiness even as he pulled her hand off him. “Enough.” A ragged word against her lips, heavy hair- roughened thighs nudging her own apart.

She wrapped her legs around his hips as he flexed forward and claimed her with a single primal move. Spine bowing, she clung to him, her nails digging into the sweat-slick muscle of his back. When she felt his mouth settle on the pulse in her neck, it made a tremor shake her frame, the spot unbearably sensitive.
Yes.
She fisted one hand in his hair, held him to her. “Now, Noel.”

His lips curved against her skin. “Yes, my lady Nimra.”

A piercing pleasure radiated out from the point where he drank from her, while his body, his hands, shoved her ever closer to the precipice. Then the two streams of pleasure collided and Nimra flew apart… to come to in the arms of a man who looked at her with a furious tenderness that threatened to make her believe in an eternity that did not have to be drenched in loneliness.

T
hree days later, she found herself frowning at Asirani.
“And there have been no other problems?” While she could believe her fellow angels wouldn’t have paid heed to the passing of a mortal, the vampires in the region had long dealt with Fen, understood the role he’d played. It defied belief that they hadn’t attempted anything while she’d been wracked by grief.

Asirani avoided her eyes. “You couldn’t quite say that.”

Nimra waited.

And waited.

“Asirani.”

A put- upon sigh. “You’re talking to the wrong vampire.”

Rather than chasing down the right one, Nimra decided to do her own probing. What she discovered was that “someone” had negotiated Fen’s passing with such skill that any ripples had been few and handled in a matter of hours. As far as the outside world was concerned, Fen’s decades of service had been forgotten as soon as he was gone, his death a mere inconvenience rather than a splintering pain that had ripped apart her chest, filled her eyes.

Later that day, she discovered that her reputation as an angel not to be crossed had in fact
grown
in the time she’d spent mourning her friend. “Why do I have a letter of apology from the leader of the vampires in New Orleans?” she asked Christian. “He seems to believe I’m an inch away from executing his entire kiss in a very nasty way.”

“His vampires misbehaved,” was the response. “It was taken care of.” His face, acetic and closed, told her that was all she’d get.

Intrigued at both the defiance and the realization that Noel and Christian appeared to have reached some kind of an understanding, she finally cornered the man responsible for a political game that had, from all indications, been played with none of Fen’s subtlety— and yet garnered excellent results. “How,” she said to Noel when she discovered him in the wild southern gardens, “did you acquire the title of my enforcer?”

He jumped up from his kneeling position with a distinctly guilty— and young— look on his face. “It sounded good.”

When she tried to look around him, and to whatever it was that he was hiding under the shade of a bush laden with tiny blossoms of pink and white, he shifted to block her view. Scowling, she tapped the letter of apology against her legs. “What did you do in New Orleans?”

“The vampires didn’t learn their lesson the first time.” Cool eyes. “I had to get creative.”

“Explain.”

“Heard of the word ‘delegation’?” An unflinching stare.

Her lips curved, the ruler in her recognizing strength of a kind that was rare… and that any woman would want by her side. “How are my stocks doing?”

“Ask Christian. He has a computer for a brain— and I had to give him something to do.”

Unexpected, that he’d shared power after taking it with such speed and without bloodshed. “Is there anything I need to know?”

“Nazarach’s hounds were nosing around about a week ago, but seems like they had to return home.” A shrug as if he’d had nothing to do with it.

“I see.” And what she saw was a wonder. This strong male, who was very much a leader, had put himself in her service. Unlike Fen, Noel had intimate access to her, and yet even when she’d been at her most vulnerable, there had been no sly whispers in the sinuous dark, only a luxuriant pleasure that muted the jagged edge of loss.

Before she could form words from the fierce cascade of emotion in her heart, she heard a distinct and inquisitive “meow.” Heart tumbling, she tried to see around those big shoulders once more, but he turned to block her view as he crouched down. “You were supposed to stay quiet,” he murmured as he rose back up and turned to face her.

The two tiny balls of fur in his arms— comically colored in a patchwork of black and white— butted their heads against his chest, obviously aware this wolf was all bark when it came to the innocent.

“Oh!” She reached out to scratch one tiny head and found the kittens being poured into her arms. Squirming and twisting, they made themselves comfortable against her. “Noel, they’re gorgeous.”

He snorted. “They’re mutts from the local shelter.” But his voice held tender amusement. “I figured you wouldn’t mind two more strays.”

She rubbed her cheek against one kitten, laughed at the jealous grizzling of the second. Such tiny, fragile lives that could give so much joy. “Are they mine?”

“Do I look like a cat man?” Pure masculine affront, arms folded across his chest. “I’m getting a dog— a really big dog. With sharp teeth.”

Laughing, she blew him a kiss, feeling younger than she had in centuries. “Thank you.”

His scowl faded. “Even Mr. Popinjay cracked a grin when one of them tried to claw off his shoe.”

“Oh, they didn’t.” Christian was so vain about those gleaming boots. “Terrible creatures.” They butted up against her chin, wanting to play. “It’ll be good to have pets around again,” she said, thinking of Mimosa when she’d been young, of Queen. The memories were bittersweet, but they were precious.

Noel walked closer, reaching out to rub the back of the kitten with one black ear and one white. The other, she saw, had two white ones tipped with black. “I’m afraid there’s a condition attached to this gift.”

Hearing the somber note in his voice, she put the kittens on the ground, knowing they wouldn’t wander too far from the cardboard box where they’d evidently been napping. “Tell me,” she whispered, looking into that harsh masculine face.

“I’m afraid,” he said, opening his fist to reveal a sun- gold ring with a heart of amber, “the archaic human part of me requires this one bond after all.”

Amber was often worn by those mortals and vampires who were entangled in a relationship. Nimra had never worn amber for any man. But now she raised her hand, let him slide the ring onto her finger. It was a slight weight, and it was everything. “I do hope you bought a matching set,” she murmured, for it seemed she, too, was not quite civilized enough to require no bonds at all.

Not when it came to Noel.

His smile was a little crooked as he reached into his pocket to pull out a thicker, more masculine ring set with a rough chunk of amber where hers was a delicate filigree with a polished stone. “Perfect.”

“We won’t be able to have children.” He spoke the solemn words as she slid the ring onto his finger with a happiness that went soul deep. “I’m sorry.”

A poignant emotion touched her senses, but there was no sorrow. Not with an eternity colored by wild translucent blue. “There will always be those like Violet who need a home,” she said, rubbing her thumb over his ring. “Blood of my blood they might not be, but heart of my heart they will be.”

Eliminating the small distance between their bodies, Noel stroked his fingers down her left wing, a slow glide that whispered of possession. As did the arms she slid up his chest to curve over his shoulders. There were no words, but none were needed, the metal of his ring warm against her cheek when he cupped her face.

Her wolf. Her Noel.

Angels’
Dance

1

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO

S
he had seen empires rise and kingdoms fall, queens come
and go, archangels clash in battle and drown the world in rivers of blood. She had recorded the archangel Raphael’s birth; recorded, too, the disappearance of his mother, Caliane; the execution of his father, Nadiel.

She had watched her students take flight century after century, heading out into the world with dreams in their hearts and tentative smiles on their faces. She had read the letters they sent back from far-off lands of primeval forests and drenching rains, endless deserts and unforgiving winds. And she had celebrated the rare, joyful times when they themselves became parents to a little one.

All this she had experienced from the craggy peaks and glimmering beauty of the Refuge, an earthbound angel, her wings never meant for flight. The first thousand years after her becoming had been hard, the second heartbreaking. Now that more than half of the third had passed, and with the specter of another devastating war a stealthy shadow on the horizon, she felt only a bleak acceptance.

“Jessamy! Jessamy!”

Turning from the edge of the cliff where she stood, looking up at a crystalline blue sky she would never touch, she crossed the rocky earth with quick steps to meet the child hurtling toward her, the girl’s wings dragging along the ground. “Careful, Saraia.” She knelt and captured that small, sturdy body dominated by wings of pure chocolate brown streaked with filaments of bronze that glittered under the piercing mountain sunlight.

The bronze echoed the colors of both Saraia’s skin and her hair—messy and tangled around her face, the shiny ribbon her mother had undoubtedly tied with care this morning straggling over her shoulder.

Unfazed, the little girl threw her arms around Jessamy’s neck with loving exuberance. “You have to come!” Flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, the scent of sticky sweets and shimmering excitement. “You have to see!”

Jessamy had been a teacher of angelic young for more than two thousand years, yet a child’s smile had the power to cascade light, joyful and luminous, over her senses still. Shaking off the melancholy that had cast a heavy weight over her as she watched a flight of angels dive and soar across the jagged, echoing gorge that ran through the center of the Refuge, she pressed a kiss to the plump softness of Saraia’s cheek and rose, taking the child with her.

Saraia’s wings hung over her arm, silken and warm, but the weight was one Jessamy could bear with ease. It was only her left wing that was twisted and useless, an alien ugliness in a place of power and dangerous beauty. The rest of her was as strong as any angel. “What must I see, sweetling?”

Saraia directed her toward the archangel Raphael’s section of the Refuge, and to the area that held the weapons salle and training ground. Jessamy frowned. “Saraia, you know you’re not permitted there.” The risks could be lethal for a baby angel uncertain of her wings and balance.

“Illium said we could stay this one time.” The explanation came out in a rush. “I asked, promise.”

Knowing Illium would never endanger the children, she continued on.

However, it wasn’t the young angel’s distinctive wings of a startling, unbroken blue that she saw when she turned the corner toward the windowless wooden salle and the practice ground of beaten earth in front of it, but the dark gray wings of an angel with a far more muscular body, his stunning hair a red so pure, it was a flame, his hand holding a massive broadsword. Steel clanged as that sword slammed up against one held by Dmitri, Raphael’s second.

Jessamy’s arm tightened instinctively around Saraia’s body.

Dmitri might not be an angel, but the vampire was
powerful
, the most trusted of Raphael’s advisors. And the most lethal. But this big angel with his wings reminiscent of some great bird of prey’s, white striations visible in the gray when he snapped them out for balance, was taking the vampire on in a brutal session of combat. Feet bare and chests uncovered, their skin gleamed with sweat.

Dmitri had on flowing black pants, while the angel was wearing a garment that reminded her of that worn by the archangel Titus’s men, the rough black fabric around his hips held up by a thick leather knife-belt in the same color, and reaching three-quarters of the way down his thighs. It was only when he moved that she realized the garment was heavy, as if sheets of beaten metal lay behind the first layer of fabric… part of a warrior’s armor, she realized. He’d simply chosen not to wear the metallic breastplate or the arm or leg guards.

It was impossible not to look at those legs, not to watch the flex and release of raw muscle beneath gilded skin covered by a scattering of hair that glinted in the sun. Then he shifted again and her eyes flew to the magnificent breadth of his shoulders, the primal power of him a fiercely controlled thing that birthed a wild, unexpected fascination in her.

“Who,” she said to Illium, when the golden-eyed angel reached over to take Saraia and perch the girl up beside her friends on the fence in front of him, “is that, and why is he antagonizing Dmitri?” Even as she spoke, she didn’t take her eyes off the angel, who looked as if he’d be right at home in the backroom of some rough vampire tavern.

Illium’s wing brushed her own as he leaned his arms on the fence. It was an overly familiar act, but Jessamy didn’t reprimand him. There was no subtext to his touch, nothing but an affection rooted in childhood—to him she would always be the teacher who had threatened to tie him to a chair if he didn’t stop fidgeting and read his history books.