by Nalini Singh
The angel whistled. “Do I want to know?” He looked pointedly at the blades embedded in the walls.
“I was practicing my throwing.” Pulling out the blades one by one, he began to stack them on the table. “You’re fast. I need to practice trying to pin you.”
“Just ask,” the angel said without hesitation. “No one’s ever succeeded yet.” Flying up to some of the higher blades and wrenching them out, he dropped them on the table. “Jessamy finished her lessons, so Jason is escorting her back home—they’re probably there by now. He’ll keep watch until relieved. I can—”
“No.”
Golden eyes tipped with black lashes dipped in blue were suddenly looking into his as Illium came to a precise landing in front of Galen. “I like you, Galen, but I love Jessamy. Hurt her and I’ll gut you.”
Galen looked the angel up and down. “Bluebell, you couldn’t take me if I was blindfolded and had both hands tied behind my back.”
“Bluebell?” Illium narrowed his eyes. “That’s it, Barbarian.” Throwing two of the knives to Galen, he picked up two of his own.
And then they were moving. He’d been right. Illium was faster than him. Much faster. The blue-winged angel could also do things in the air that should’ve been impossible, except that Galen had the cuts on his back and the bruises on his chest to prove they weren’t. But he was more than holding his own… waiting only until Illium made one overconfident move too many to pin the angel to the ground with a blade through the tip of his wing, where the wound would heal by morning.
Cursing with unexpected creativity for someone so pretty, Illium glared at Galen. “You set me up.”
“I had to gauge how fast you were, what you bring to Raphael’s forces.” Releasing the other angel, he rose to his feet. “You’ll do, Bluebell.”
Illium swore at him in rapid-fire Greek. Galen replied in just as blue French, ordering him to come back for further sessions to improve a technique that was damn near flawless except for one thing. “You’re too cocky. Need to have some sense whacked into you.”
Illium snarled but agreed to return— “So I can put you on your ass.”
Separating from the angel once they reached the cliff, he flew down to his aerie to clean up and change before flying back up right as the rays of the setting sun blazed across the sky in innumerable shades of gold and orange, with the slightest edge of blush. It reminded him of the feather he’d secreted away with such care, the feather he’d been unable to discard even when he’d thought Jessamy’s lovely face that of a liar.
It still bubbled in him, the rage that had roared to the surface when he’d seen the healer with his lips touching her skin, her face lifted up to his in absolute trust. Galen had no right to expect anything similar from her after so short an acquaintance, but the logic of it didn’t matter, because he did.
Landing on the gray and blue tiles shimmering with flecks of hidden elements in the dark orange light, he relieved Jason with a curt nod, waiting until the other angel took flight—his inky wings a dramatic silhouette against the cascade of color—to walk inside Jessamy’s home, bolting the door behind himself.
“Jason, did you—” Looking up from where she sat behind a harp, the thick silk of her hair cascading over one shoulder, her gown now a plain sage green that curved lower across her chest than the gown she’d earlier worn, Jessamy’s welcoming smile faded, her expression turning guarded, solemn. “Galen.”
It twisted something inside him to know he’d put that look on her face. “I have a temper,” he said, because it had to be said. “A terrible one.”
Her fingers danced over the strings of the harp with exquisite grace, filling the air with a ripple of music, pure and sweet. “I’ve seen you practicing, sparring—you fight as if you have no emotions, a man utterly contained. Is that why?”
Remaining in a standing position, he clasped his hands behind his back when the urge to fist her hair and tilt her head so he could take her mouth with primal possession, as he shaped the delicate mounds hinted at by her clothing, threatened to overwhelm him. “My father told me at a young age that if I didn’t learn to handle it, it would consume me.”
“Your father was a wise man.” Another lilt of music. “Sit. Or do you plan to loom over me until I submit?”
No one who had seen him in a temper had ever dared tease him before. He wasn’t certain how he felt about it, but he allowed himself to lower his guard now that she’d accepted him in her space and—stripping off his sword and harness—took a seat in the large armchair in front and to the left of her. “I’ve become legend for the depth of my control. No one has witnessed me rage in well over a century.”
The music twanged, stopped.
“You say such things, Galen… and I’m not certain how to respond.” Aching vulnerability twined around Jessamy’s heart. He would mark her, this man. Mark her so deep and true it would become a scar. But she’d made her choice, would not permit fear to steal it from her. “It’s time for another lesson about the Cadre.” She continued to play, noticing how his shoulders relaxed as the lyrical sound filled the air.
Checking his sword harness with absent attention, he nodded. “It’s becoming clear to me how much more I need to learn.”
He was a cooperative pupil, his mind quick and agile. In the conversation, it came out that he spoke not simply Greek and French with a native’s fluency, but also the myriad languages of Persia and Africa. Fascinated and wanting no distractions as they spoke, she stopped playing to slide into a chair at the dining table. He moved into the one next to it the same instant, asking her perceptive question after perceptive question. Most people, she thought, quite likely severely underestimated his intelligence because of his ease with weapons and war, the way he talked, and dressed—or didn’t dress.
It was impossible not to caress the ridged plane of his upper body with her gaze when he sat so close, his wing spread over the back of her chair, the heavy warmth of it a silent touch. The possessiveness of the act wasn’t lost on her, but she found herself spreading her own wing a fraction, so it would whisper against his.
“I am only a man.” It was a rumbling murmur, his eyes on her mouth. “If you continue to play with me thus, I’ll forget I came to apologize for my behavior, and act in a fashion that’ll have you angry with me all over again.”
Her lips felt swollen, her breasts tight, but she found the wit to say, “And when will I hear this apology?”
Shifting his focus, he held her gaze with eyes she knew she’d never forget, not if she lived ten thousand years. “I am sorry for doubting your honor, Jessamy.” A pause. “I’m not sorry for wishing to separate Keir’s head from his body.”
“Galen!” Laughter bubbled out of her, bright and unexpected and so very real that it brought tears to her eyes. “Oh, you are a barbarian.”
His cheeks creased, one hand coming up to play with her hair, twining strands around a thick finger. When he tugged, her stomach dropped, but she leaned forward. She expected to feel his mouth on her own, but he angled his face and brushed his lips over the top of her cheekbone. Shivering, she curled her hand around his nape, the feel of the tendon and muscle moving beneath the heat of his skin a seductive intimacy as he continued to brush kisses down the edge of her face, until he reached her neck.
“Oh.”
8
He nuzzled the place he’d kissed, the skin so sensitive that the hot gust of his breath made her toes curl. A fraction of a moment later, the pleasure and power of him were replaced by a shock of air as Galen ripped himself from her and retrieved his sword in a single savage motion. Attempting to quiet her gasping breaths, she stared around his battle-ready form, saw nothing. An instant later, a footfall sounded on the front path, followed by a knock.
“Wait,” Galen said when she would’ve risen. “It may be a ruse.”
He was gone the next instant, moving with predatory menace to greet a visitor who could mean her harm. Standing, she looked for a weapon to aid h
im if needed, and had settled on a small statuette when she heard the sounds of male voices in conversation. Recognizing the second voice, she replaced the statuette and stepped out into the hall. “Raphael.”
The archangel with his eyes of impossible blue and hair of midnight silk was pure male beauty. Next to him Galen was all hard, rough edges, a warrior who had lost none of his raw power in the face of Raphael’s strength. He watched with cool eyes as the archangel walked forward to take the hands she held out.
“Have my people been looking after you well, Jessamy?”
“Always.” Rising, she brushed a kiss over his cheek, but concern had her asking, “What are you doing here?” Alexander was fully capable of using Raphael’s absence to force his way into Raphael’s wild new territory.
“Alex, as Illium calls the vaunted Alexander”—a gleam of humor—“is currently in seclusion with his favorite concubine, and appears to have no willingness to leave his palace. I will have warning if he or his army look to be preparing to move.”
Something about the report on Alexander sang a sour note to her, a harp string damaged, but she couldn’t reason why. Abandoning the thought for the present when it stayed frustratingly out of reach, she released Raphael’s hands. “I’m glad of your visit. Come, tell me of your lands.”
As they sat and spoke, Galen stood guard by the doorway. Neither by look nor word did he betray to his archangel what he and Jessamy were becoming to each other… and a seed of doubt bloomed in her mind. His reticence could be born of any number of reasons, including the fact that Raphael was certainly here to evaluate the man who would be his weapons-master, but she kept circling around to a single horribly painful con-clusion.
Shame.
He might have taken her flying, but that could be explained away as a gift given out of pity. He hadn’t actually done anything in public that would make people talk, regard them as a couple. And it was an ugly image when she considered it without the blinders of hope—her, deformed wing and stick-thin frame, paired with Galen’s primal power and raw mascu-linity.
No, she thought, no, beyond angry with herself. She had to stop this. Galen did not deserve to be tarred by such fear-driven suspicions. He’d never lied to her, not even about his temper. Wanting to laugh at the giddiness of her relief, she promised herself she would make it up to her barbarian.
Galen watched in silence as Raphael bid Jessamy good night before nodding at Galen and rising into the stars glittering against a night sky so pure, it was ebony. Galen understood the silent command. A weapons-master held considerable power and influence in an archangel’s court, and Raphael would give the position to no one he didn’t trust on every level—tomorrow, Galen would be judged.
He felt no anxiety. He knew his own strength, knew he would not fail. And he knew he would judge Raphael in turn, for this was the man for whom he’d lift his sword for centuries to come, perhaps until the end of his immortal life. It was no light choice for a warrior.
Jessamy’s gaze tracked the archangel until his wings disappeared beyond the mountains, and he could almost taste the keen edge of her hunger. It angered him that she didn’t ask him for what she needed, but he tempered the response—it would take time for her to understand that he would fly her anywhere she wanted to go, whether they had harsh words between them or tender.
He held out his hand. “Come.”
She hesitated.
Unwilling to let anything go when it came to this complex, lovely woman who was a mystery that compelled him, he closed the distance between them. “Have you not yet forgiven me for my rage?”
“You apologized.” Laughter tugged at lips he wanted to suck and bite, but she didn’t come into his arms.
“Then what? I am not the most sensitive of men”—a weakness he’d realized long ago—“so you must make it clear.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you always so blunt?”
“No.” He could play games—he had grown up in an archangel’s court, after all. “But I have no liking for games, would rather not ever play them with you.”
Reaching out, she spread her hand over his heart, the touch going straight to his cock. “You have a way of destroying my foundations.” Stroking her fingers down his body with luscious concentration, her lashes obscuring her expressive eyes, she moved close enough that their bodies aligned.
His rigid cock pushed demandingly into the curve of her abdomen.
“Galen.”
“Jessamy.” When she didn’t break the intimate contact, cuddling even closer, he wove his fingers into her hair, wanting to push, to urge her to put her mouth on his skin. “You’re seducing me to get your own way.”
A husky laugh. “It’s quite pleasurable.” Another petting caress. “I do believe I should have bad thoughts more often.”
Realizing he’d been beaten, he decided on a strategic retreat—for tonight. “All right, keep your secrets, Jessamy mine.” Shifting his hold without warning, he swung her up into his arms.
“Galen!”
Three powerful wingbeats and they were in the air, Jessamy’s arms locked around his neck, her body tucked into his chest. “You can’t just trick me into flight every time,” she said, but she was laughing.
“I’ll always fly you. No matter what happens.”
She, in place of an answer, nuzzled her face into his neck. Her touch was welcome, her avoidance of his declaration not, but this night was too beautiful to mar with arguments, and so he swept her across the glittering landscape of the Refuge, and toward the east. As he rode the air currents with her slight weight in his arms, what he felt was nothing he could name. It was simply there, a quiet, deep knowledge, a sense of inexorable rightness.
It was much later that he took them down to land on a promontory that overlooked the Refuge, the lights within the homes a thousand fireflies in the dark, the majority of the residents wakeful yet. “This is my favorite vantage point,” he said, taking a position behind her, his arms around her shoulders. Her wings were soft and warm between them, the feathers silken against his skin.
Continuing to hold her with one arm, he used the hand of the other to stroke the twisted line of the wing that had never formed correctly, felt her stiffen. “I once lost my leg,” he told her, not breaking the touch. “I was young—it took years to grow back. The same could happen again in battle. Would you repudiate me?”
The stiffness of her didn’t abate. “It’s not the same, Galen.” A raw kind of pain in her words. “Eternity is a long time to live broken and malformed.”
He didn’t do her the insult of disregarding the suffering that had forged her. “Many would have chosen Sleep.” Decades, centuries, even millennia could pass while an angel Slept. “Yet you chose to live.”
“I’m not brave,” she whispered. “I just didn’t want to give those who pitied me the satisfaction of seeing me give up on life.” Turning in his arms, she wrapped her own around his waist, pressing her cheek to his chest. “I didn’t want to be seen as weak.”
One hand on her nape, beneath the warm fall of her hair, the other on her lower back, he bent his head to speak with his lips brushing her ear. “Many a young warrior has gone into battle with the same motivation. There is no shame in fear that drives.” He widened his stance to tuck her even closer, and he thought that, perhaps, she had shown him a secret part of herself. “I was,” he said, revealing the same within him, “one of those young warriors.”
Tanae had always been so unflinching in her courage, and Galen had never wanted to shame her. “My mother looked at me with disgust when the blood and gore and horror of my first battle had me emptying my stomach, and I didn’t know how to tell her that I had never tasted true fear until that moment. Instead, I learned to be harder, better, stronger.”
“Your mother… she sounds a harsh taskmaster.” It was a hesitant statement.
“She is a warrior.” Galen had no other words, because the words he’d already spoken described Tanae’s soul.
It wa
s Jessamy’s hand that stroked him now, her touch tender and careful over his wing, and he was startled at the realization that she was attempting to comfort him. It was a strange sensation. No one had ever coddled him after he’d snarled at the flitterbies, determined to become tough.
Jessamy would probably not handle snarling well, so he’d bear the gentle petting. “Jessamy?”
“Hmm?”
Fisting his hand in her hair, he tilted back her head. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
As the stars flickered overhead, icy gemstones lit with cold fire, he took her mouth the way he’d wanted to from the first. He demanded entrance and she opened for him, the softness of her his to ravage. Mystery, that was what Jessamy tasted like. Sweet and dark and with depths it’d take a man an immortal lifetime to explore. Gripping her chin with his free hand, he angled her just as he liked and then he devoured her.
A tiny push, a hint of teeth.
