Now His Highness kept talking in a low murmur. Irritated, she started prowling around the room. The deep shelves on the side wall caught her attention. Made of a wood that was either a true ebony or had been treated to appear that way, they displayed treasure after treasure.
An ancient Japanese mask of an oni, a demon. But this one held an edge of mischief, as if it had been made for a children's festival. The artwork was precise, the colors brilliant, though she felt the age of it like a heavy weight in her bones. On the shelf next to it sat a single feather.
It was an extraordinary color-a deep, pure blue. She'd heard rumors of a blue-winged angel in the city over the past couple of months, but surely those rumors couldn't be true? "Natural or synthetic?" she whispered almost to herself.
"Oh, very much natural," came Raphael's smooth voice. "Illium was most distressed at being stripped of his prized feathers."
She turned, lines marring her forehead. "Why did you damage someone so beautiful? Jealous?"
Something sparked in his eyes, hot and certainly lethal if let out. "You would have little interest in Illium. He likes his women submissive."
"So? Why take his feathers?"
"He needed to be punished." Raphael shrugged, walking to stand less than a foot from her. "It was being grounded that really hurt him-the feathers grew back within a year."
"A blink of time."
The danger level seemed to lessen at her sarcasm. "For an angel, yes."
"So, were his new feathers like before?" She told herself to stop staring into those eyes, that no matter what he said, such contact had to make it easier for him to invade her mind. But she couldn't look away, not even when those flames turned into what looked like tiny whirling blades. "Were they?" she repeated, her voice rough with sudden hunger.
"No," he responded, reaching out to trace the shell of her ear. "They grew back even more beautiful. Blue edged with silver."
Elena laughed at the scowl in his voice. "That's the color scheme of my bedroom."
Naked heat sizzled between them. Powerful. Vibrant. His eyes still locked with hers, Raphael trailed his finger down her jaw to her neck. "Are you sure you don't want to invite me in?"
He was so utterly beautiful.
But male, very male.
Just one taste.
It was the darkness in her, the small core conceived on a blood-soaked kitchen floor the day she lost her childhood.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
"Come here, little hunter. Taste."
"No." She jerked away, palms damp with a thin sheen of fear. "I just came to return the rose and ask you if you had any more information about Uram's whereabouts."
Raphael lowered his hand, his face contemplative when she would've expected fury at being denied. "I'm good at vanquishing nightmares."
She stiffened. "And creating them. You left that vampire out in Times Square for hours." Stop, Elena, her mind ordered. For God's sake, stop! You have to make him give you an oath of safety-but her mouth wouldn't listen. "You tortured him!"
"Yes." Not even a tinge of remorse.
She waited. "That's it? That's all you have to say?"
"Did you expect guilt?" His expression stilled, became cold as frost. "I'm not human, Elena. Those I rule are not human. Your laws don't apply."
She clenched her hands painfully hard. "The laws of common decency, of conscience?"
"Call it what you will but remember this"-he leaned in, speaking in an icy whisper that cut across her skin with whip-lash cruelty-"if I fall, if I fail, the vampires go completely free, and New York drowns in the blood of innocents."
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
She reeled under the impact of those brutal images. One a memory. One a possible future. "Vampires aren't all evil. Only a small percentage of them ever lose control, same as the human population."
His hand cupped her cheek. "But they're not human, are they?"
She remained silent.
His hand was hot, his voice glacial. "Answer me, Elena." The arrogance he displayed was breathtaking, but what made it worse was that he had every right to it. The power of him . . . it was beyond staggering.
"No," she admitted. "Bloodlust-ridden vampires kill with a viciousness that's unique-and they never stop. The death toll has the potential to reach thousands."
"So you see, iron control is necessary." He came even closer, until the fronts of their bodies touched and his hand slid down to her waist. She could no longer see his face without tilting back her head. It seemed like too much effort at that moment. All she wanted was to melt. Melt and take him with her, so he could do erotic, luscious things to her aching body.
"Enough of vampires," he said, his lips on the shell of her ear.
"Yes," she whispered, her hands stroking up his arms. "Yes."
He kissed his way down past her ear, along her jaw, before answering. "Yes."
Ecstasy laced her bloodstream, a biting pleasure she had no desire to resist. She wanted to peel off his clothing and find out if an archangel really was built like a man, to lick his skin, mark him with her nails, to ride him, possess him . . . be possessed by him. Nothing else mattered.
His lips touched hers and she moaned. The hands on her h*ps tightened as he lifted her without apparent effort and began to kiss her in earnest. Fire traveled through the raw eroticism of the openmouthed kiss to curl her toes, coming to pool in the vee between her thighs. "Hot," she whispered when he let her breathe. "Too hot."
Ice silvered the air and it was a cool mist that surrounded her, seeping into her pores in a stroke of possession. "Better?" He kissed her again before she could answer, his tongue inside her, his body hard and perfect and-
Nothing else mattered.
The words were wrong. The thoughts were wrong.
Sara mattered.
Beth mattered.
She mattered.
Raphael's lips traveled down her neck and to the flesh exposed by the open buttons of her shirt. "Beautiful."
I have not taken a human lover in eons. But you taste . . . intriguing.
She was a plaything.
To be toyed with and discarded.
Raphael could control her mind.
Giving a scream of pure rage, she kicked off him hard enough to send herself sprawling. The shock of pain as her tailbone connected with the floor snapped the final tendrils of a desire so visceral, so addictive, it made a fool out of her even now. "You bastard! Is rape what turns you on?"