Archangel's Kiss (Guild Hunter 2)

"He fed me Belle's blood." It was a husky whisper, as if her throat was torn from screaming.

"Tell me."

"My sister's blood. He kissed me, feeding me Belle's blood." Rage and horror and a bewildered kind of pain. "I tried to spit it out but he covered my mouth, my nose, and I drank it. Oh God, I drank it."

Sensing the hysteria beginning to retake hold of her, he tugged her head from his chest, taking her mouth in a kiss that was pure, untrammeled demand. She froze for a fractured instant before her hands thrust into his hair, before her body twisted until she slid beneath him, her legs wrapping around his waist.

There was a wild kind of desperation in her kiss, a kiss flavored with the salt of her tears.

She wanted to forget. He'd do anything in his power to help her find what peace she could. He took her as hard as she wanted, pinning her wrists to the sheets with one hand, shoving her thigh aside with the other, and sliding into her welcoming sheath in a single thrust.

Her scream echoed into his mouth. He kissed her through the taking, through the raw, almost painful emotion of their joining. He kissed her until she gasped for breath, until her eyes went blank with pleasure, with passion, with ecstasy. And then he kissed her as she came down from the peak.

"Again," he whispered into her mouth.

She met him stroke for stroke, her h*ps rising in welcome, in demand. Tugging her hands free, she held him to her, trailing her mouth over his cheek, his jaw, his neck. At the end, she buried her head in his neck and simply held on . . . let him hold her, let him protect her.

It was her trust that brought him to his knees, that shoved him over the edge and into her arms.

"Thank you." Elena refused to let Raphael move off her body, her lips brushing his ear as she spoke, the dark silk of his hair cool against her flesh. "Thank you."

"I would take your nightmares, Elena."

"I know." And that he hadn't forced them from her when she could feel the savage need he had to wipe away her pain, it made her heart expand impossibly more. "But they're a part of the package."

She hadn't voiced the question, but he knew.

"It's a package that belongs to me." No hesitation, no sense of him pulling away.

"I'm so messed up. Doesn't that bother you?"

"You have lived." Untangling his arms, he used them to brace himself above her, his forearms forming a bracket around her head. "As have I. Would you throw me back?"

The idea of losing him was a violent pain in her heart. "I told you - you're mine. No getting away now."

Lips on her own, a slow, so slow, kiss that curled her toes, made the nightmare seem a lifetime away. Her br**sts rubbed against his chest as she drew in deep, trembling breaths. "Something in this place . . ." Shaking her head, she pushed damp strands of hair off her face. "The death, all this death. It's fertile ground for my imagination."

"You don't believe it was a true memory?"

"I don't want it to be." A whisper, because deep inside she knew it wasn't just a figment of her mind. "If it's true . . ." Her eyes burned. "He came for me and he left a piece of himself inside me."

"No." Raphael forced her to meet his gaze, the cobalt having overtaken his irises until it was all that remained. "If he made you drink your sister's blood" - he spoke through the cry she couldn't hold back - "then you carry a piece of her."

"How is that any better? I can taste her." Her hand went to her own throat. "It was thick, rich, full oflife ." The horror of it was a noose around her neck.

"Even my mother," Raphael said, one hand cupping her face, "no matter what she became at the end, never blamed me for that which couldn't be changed. Your sister, I think, was a far gentler creature - one who loved you."

"Yes. Belle loved me." She needed to say that, to hear it out loud. "She used to tell me all the time. She would've never called me a monster." It had been her father who'd done that.

"I will not have a child of mine become an abomination!" Hands shaking her, shaking her so hard she couldn't speak. "Don't ever bring up that scent nonsense again.

Understood?"

"Tell me something about your mother," she blurted out, her soul too brittle to handle the memories of the night her father had first hurt her with his words.

It had been a month after they buried her mother. Awash in a black wall of anguish, she'd brought up something she hadn't even whispered about for three long years. Her hunter sense had been the only constant in her life by then, and she'd thought Jeffrey would understand her need to cling to it. But his anger that night . . . "Something good,"

she added. "Tell me a good memory about your mother."

"Caliane had a voice like the heavens," he said. "Not even Jason can sing as beautifully as my mother."

"Jason - he sings?"

"His is perhaps the most magnificent voice in all angelkind, but he has not sung for centuries." He shook his head when she glanced up. "Those are his secrets, Elena.

They're not mine to tell."

It was easy to accept that - she understood about loyalty, about friendship. "Did he learn from your mother?"

"No. Caliane was long gone by the time Jason was born." He dropped his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling in the most tender of intimacies. "She used to sing to me when I was but a babe, a child who could barely walk. And her songs would bring the Refuge to a standstill as every heart ached, every soul soared. They all listened . . . but it was me she sang to.

"I was," he said, falling into memory, "so proud to know that I had that right, the right to her song. Not even my father fought me for it." Nadiel had already been losing pieces of himself by then, but there were a few joyful memories of the time before the madness stole him from Raphael, from his mate. "He used to say that my mother's song was so beautiful because it was formed of the purest love - the kind of love only a mother can feel for her child."

"I wish I could've heard her."

"One day," he said, "when our minds are able to truly merge, when you're old enough to hold your own, I will share my memories of her song." They were his most precious treasures, the biggest gift he had to give.

Her eyes shone even in the darkness, and he knew his hunter understood.One day.

They stayed that way, entangled in each other for the rest of the night. She turned to him more than once, and he willingly gave her the oblivion she sought.