Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter 4)

Her body continued to smolder from the slow burn of his kiss, his touch. Not even the fact that they’d gone little further after her flashback could mute the impact of it. His sensuality was potent, as raw as it was sophisticated, as dark as it was patient.

Lulling her. Seducing her.

Honor knew full well he was managing their encounters, accustoming her to his touch, his kiss, his strength. She had no quarrel with exploring her sensuality with a man who knew more about pleasure than she could imagine; she trusted him in bed. Of course, she thought with a smile as she got up to prepare breakfast, she had no intention of allowing him to continue to lead the dance once they became lovers in truth.

She’d finished her cereal and was walking to refill her tea when someone knocked on the glass wall that fronted her apartment. Twisting on her heel, she went for the gun tucked into the back of her jeans . . . and saw wings of silver-kissed blue backlit to brilliance by the rising sun. Illium jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the Tower.

Nodding, she watched him drop down, then sweep over the city in a breathtaking show of color even more startling against the dawn sky. When his wings were joined by those of midnight and dawn, she drew in a stunned breath, still utterly fascinated by Elena’s transformation. Rather than holding a hover beside Elena, Illium executed a sharp vertical dive that had Honor’s heart in her throat, before he turned to rise, then fly back up at the same speed to circle around and beside Elena, a playfulness to his movements that said the two of them were friends.

That was one wake-up call she’d have to share with Ashwini, she thought with a grin as she headed to change into a less ragged T-shirt, having showered when she woke. But when she stepped into the bedroom, she found herself discarding the T-shirt in favor of a short-sleeved, scoop-necked top that painted itself to her body and was a bright, stop sign red. It wouldn’t impede her movements, didn’t even show much cle**age, but it was the sexiest thing she’d worn since after the assault. It felt good. Brushing on a bit of makeup, including poppy red lipstick over her mouth, she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and strapped on her weapons.

It was too hot to cover the shoulder holster with a jacket, the temperature having spiked overnight, so she shrugged and left it at that.

There was a topless red Ferrari idling at the curb when she stepped out of her building. “I didn’t realize I rated the pickup service,” she said to the vampire in the driver’s seat.

24

Dressed in a crisp white shirt, open at the collar, and black suit pants, he looked like some high-paid executive on his way to a breakfast meeting, his eyes shaded by mirrored sunglasses she wanted to rip off so she could read his gaze.

“I haven’t gotten what I want out of you yet.”

It could’ve been a joke. It could also have been the absolute truth.

“Have you eaten?” he asked, pulling out into the traffic.

“Yes.” Speaking of breakfast—“Who do you feed from?”

“Careful, Honor.” A tenor to the words that rubbed her the wrong way. “I might start to think you were the jealous, possessive type.”

She never had been, but then, he was the only man who’d become an obsession. In the early morning hours today, she’d dreamed not of her faceless dream lover, but of Dmitri, with his experienced hands and sinful touch. “Yes,” she said, knowing she was asking for something he might be incapable of giving. “I think I am.”

Swerving to miss a Town Car that was attempting to nose its way out into the manic traffic, he took his time replying.

“There was a particularly luscious blonde on offer last night. She called me after I left your apartment.”

Honor’s hand tightened on the door frame, her arm braced along the edge. She knew he was provoking her on purpose—he was in a mood, that much was clear—and yet she couldn’t fight the primal possessiveness of her response. “I’d have thought,” she said with manufactured calm, “that you’d have learned your lesson about blondes with Carmen.”

He turned, taking them toward the Lincoln Tunnel rather than the Tower. “Ah, but the sweet, hot taste of blood can mask the most unattractive qualities.” Displaying no impatience with the traffic backed up before the tunnel, he pulled off his sunglasses to place them in a compartment below the dash. “Honor.”

Anger a burn in her veins, she turned her head to find herself sucking in a breath at the intoxicating sensuality of him. The dawn sun, the traffic, none of it did anything to mute the intensity of those dark eyes, the harsh planes of that beautiful face.

“I,” he said in a tone that was pure rough silk, “am possessive, too, little rabbit. Lethally so.”

Her anger transformed into something far more visceral. “That doesn’t scare me,” she said, laying her hand on his thigh, the hard strength of muscle flexing under her palm. “But I’ve seen how vampires your age operate.”

“How is that?” A low purr of a question that might as well have been a stiletto slicing over her skin.

“Moody, aren’t you?” No answer, as he nudged the car forward. “I know,” she continued, “the sexual mores are much more . . . relaxed.” She’d once walked in on an orgy in progress during a hunt. Limbs tangled in sexual abandon, necks arched for a bite, and sighs whispering into air perfumed with the musk of sex, it had been erotic as hell, but she’d had not the slightest inclination to join in—even when propositioned by a pair of ripped Scandinavian-blond male twins, something straight out of a naughty fantasy.

“That’s not me,” she said, because while such fantasies were fun, in reality she fell very solidly into the fidelity camp. “This, between us, has crossed a line.” A line that gave her the right to demand what she was about to demand. “I’ll never accept that you might have other lovers—whether for blood or sex—and if you expect it, then we have to stop this right here, right now.”

Walking away from Dmitri would destroy something vital inside her, but worse would be to watch him bend that dark head over the neck of some other woman. “However long we’re together”—and she wasn’t naïve enough to think she could hold a man like Dmitri forever—“it needs to be exclusive.”

When she would’ve withdrawn her hand from his thigh, he covered it with his own for a second, holding her to him. “Blondes, it seems, have lost their appeal,” he said, increasing speed as the snarl eased.