by Nalini Singh
“And Alexander considers that his position.” While the archangel was a great leader, he also had the arrogance of an ancient being of power, would’ve considered any such whisper a challenge.
“But,” she said, pouring hot water for some tea after she’d finished cleaning up, “we cannot discount Lijuan.” The oldest of the archangels after Alexander, Zhou Lijuan had committed atrocities it had chilled Jessamy to record in the secret histories she kept on each member of the Cadre. “She appears to have a partiality for Raphael, but her intrigues run deep.”
“Her troops are currently scattered across her territory, with no indication they’re planning to amass for an assault.”
Leaving the tea to steep, she looked up just as Galen shoved his hair back again. “You need to cut that.”
“I meant to do it last night.” Pulling off the knife at his belt, he hacked off a chunk.
“Galen!”
A questioning look.
Incensed, she grabbed the knife from him. “Sit down before you butcher all this glorious hair.” The color was so vibrant, it seemed to glow with life.
He obeyed with suspicious meekness, not saying a word as she trimmed his hair with care. It was only when she was halfway done that she realized she was standing in the middle of his parted thighs, his breath warming her through the thin material of her gown. A languid heat curling her toes, she finished and stepped back. “There,” she said, voice husky. “You can clean up.”
He stood instead, his face all hard, blunt lines, his body brushing her own… and his thumb rubbing her lower lip. The touch tugged at things tight and low in her body, until she ached, her breath coming in soft pants.
Galen had behaved for far longer than he’d thought himself capable of behaving where Jessamy was concerned. He’d flown with her so trusting and delighted in his arms, imagined her sleeping in his bed, and luxuriated in her presence as she filled his kitchen with warmth. It had taken all his willpower not to put his hands on her hips while she stood between his thighs, and tumble her into his lap.
Now…
Her skin was delicate under the roughness of his own, her breath sweet, and her lips when he claimed them parted on a soft gasp. Hand clenching on her back, he forced himself not to thrust his tongue into her mouth, not to maraud. Part of him was waiting for her to shove him away, and when she didn’t, he had to fight a roar of savage satisfaction. In its stead, he pressed down on her chin and slanted his mouth more fully over hers, his cock pushing against the fabric of his pants and into the gentle curve of her abdomen.
A flutter on his chest, a slender hand spreading over his skin as Jessamy rose on tiptoe to follow his mouth. Groaning at the feel of her high, taut breasts rubbing over his chest, he licked his tongue across her lips, wanting to know that he was welcome before he swept in to devour, to savor. Her nails dug into his skin, a tiny bite that made his entire body throb… before she pushed at him, turning her head away at the same time.
Freezing, he dropped his hand from her cheek and took a step back, making no effort to hide the jut of his arousal. “Should I apologize?”
Jessamy gave him an incredulous look out of those pleasure-smudged brown eyes… Then she laughed, the vibrant color of it filling his aerie, sinking into his bones. But the laughter faded between one breath and the next, her expression betraying a stark bleakness before she blinked and he was faced with warm elegance again, so gentle, so unimpeachable. “I’m the one who should apologize,” she said, fixing her gown though it needed no fixing.
His eyes narrowed. “Is it because I’m not learned?”
“No!” She reached out a hand, dropped it midway. “No, Galen.” Distress darkened her eyes, made her face pale.
There. A weakness, a chink in her armor he could use to batter his way inside. Except sometimes, it was better to allow your opponent to believe she’d won. “Perhaps I’m not learned,” he said, quickly cleaning up the area where she’d trimmed his hair, “but I understand I need to know what you can teach me. Will you?”
Jessamy hadn’t felt so turned around since she was a child. “I—of course,” she said, the answer instinctive. “Perhaps in the evenings after you’ve taken care of your own students.”
A nod. “So, Alexander, perhaps Lijuan. Anyone else who might find your knowledge problematic?”
She watched in silence as he strode to the cushions in the living area and sprawled with his hands under his head, looking up at a ceiling that glittered with the minerals embedded in the stone. Just like that, she thought, anger simmering in her veins, he’d moved past a kiss that had aroused her beyond need, beyond want. A lick more and she’d have allowed him to bare her to the skin, stroke those big hands anywhere and everywhere he pleased, pin her against the stone wall if he so desired… except it appeared only one of them had been so deeply affected.
Wanting to shake him and kiss her way across the muscled breadth of his chest at the same time, her emotions jerking between one extreme and the next, she went to take a seat on the stool, when he said, “It’s more comfortable here,” in a low purr of a tone.
It was a dare, no doubt about it.
Shoulders set and eyes narrowed, she crossed the distance between them to take a seat against the wall. It put her in the corner, but there was more than enough room that she didn’t feel constrained. As the sweet, spicy smell of the cake filled the aerie, she kept her eyes focused straight ahead rather than on the man beside her.
“There is also Michaela,” she said. The angel’s beauty was legend, so much so that it blinded people to both her capriciousness and the sheer power she carried in her bones. “If she has a vulnerability, she might not want it known so close to her entry into the Cadre.” Jessamy could think of nothing that would cause Michaela such concern, but she would research her files when day broke. “There is a flaw in your theory.”
A sense of movement, the caress of a hot, masculine scent that made her breath catch.
“No archangel,” she said, “or powerful immortal, would have sent a lone vampire if he or she had wanted to ensure my death. It would’ve been far more effective to have had a team of angels pick me up as I walked to my home and drop me into the gorge.”
Galen’s entire body went motionless—as if his very breath was suspended. It was then that she realized she was looking at him again. Not only looking, but admiring. Beautiful, infuriating creature. One who could kiss and forget in the blink of an eye, when her skin continued to burn with the sensory echo of his touch, when his taste—so wild, so male—lingered yet on her lips.
“Jessamy?”
Caught by the quiet, intense timbre, she said, “Yes?”
“I say this because I believe in giving fair warning.” His voice infiltrated parts of her he shouldn’t have been able to reach, they were so well hidden, so fiercely protected. “I’m very good at tactics. I know when to retreat, when to lull my opponent into a false sense of security… and when to launch a final, victorious strike.”
6
Drawing in a shuddering breath, she rose to her feet, ostensibly to check on the cake. “I’m not a campaign to be won, Galen.”
Her anger at her limited existence—and her visceral response to Galen—aside, flirting with what he was offering was pure lunacy. When Galen spread his own wings and flew from the Refuge in service to Raphael, perhaps for a decade, perhaps a century, it would hurt her. She’d known that when she walked out of the bedroom, been willing to risk it. But his kiss… oh, that sinful, addicting kiss had dangerously shifted the balance.
If she allowed this to go further, it wouldn’t just hurt her when he left. It would break her. “Don’t waste your efforts on me.” I have to live an eternity as I am, an earthbound angel. Don’t show me a glimpse of what could be, only to snatch it away.
Galen said nothing in response, but he ate the cake with open appreciation when she declared it done, and sat in silence while she read aloud from the book he’d packed in her bag—how had he known s
he couldn’t live without books, without words, this warrior barbarian? Later, she began to teach him the intricate power structure of the Cadre and, thus, of the world.
It was a strange, lovely night, a hazy dream.
Jessamy didn’t want day to break, but it did—in a spectacular splash of color across the skies. Flying her home, Galen walked with her through to the kitchen. It had been meticulously cleaned in her absence, until she could almost believe she’d imagined the arcing spray of darkest red.
“Do you wish to stay here, Jessamy?”
“Yes.” The night was gone, and with it, a mirage that could destroy her. This home was her haven, years of care in its making, and she would not allow it to be tainted or stolen.
Galen nodded, turning to head back to the courtyard. “It is defensible if you cooperate with your guard.”
“Of course.” The paving stones were warm beneath her feet as they stepped out into the morning once more, the kiss of wind from the black-winged angel landing a small distance away, cool. “Jason.”
Galen spoke several quiet words to Jason before returning his attention to Jessamy. “He will watch over you this day. I’ll return to tell you once it’s safe for you to teach at the school.” With that, he spread his wings and rose into the sky, a creature of pure, raw power… one who hunted those who would’ve silenced her in the cruelest fashion.
A rustle of wings.
Wrenching her attention from the now empty sky, she said, “I’ve kept a new book for you,” to Jason, this angel who was another one of those she hadn’t taught—he had simply appeared in the Refuge one day as a boy full-grown.
Jessamy had never asked Jason what his life had been before he arrived in the Refuge, but she knew it had scarred him, damaging his emotional growth to the extent that he had trouble forming bonds of attachment. There was a piercing loneliness in him that resonated with her own, but the enigmatic angel kept his distance even from the women who would’ve lain with him given the slightest encouragement, preferring to court the shadows.
“Thank you.” The light glanced off the shine of the hair he wore to just above his shoulders, the ebony strands cut in layers that shadowed the clean lines of his face and the swirling mystery of the dramatic tattoo that covered the left-hand side. “The vampire who attacked you has been tracked to Alexander’s court. His people deny all knowledge of the male’s actions.”
“What is your opinion?” she asked, because Jason—in spite of his scars, or perhaps because of them—had a way of seeing through to the heart of things, not blinded by prejudice or emotion. In many ways, he was Galen’s opposite, as subtle and cunning as Galen was blunt and direct.
“I know when to retreat, when to lull my opponent into a false sense of security… and when to launch a final, victorious strike.”
She’d told him not to waste his efforts on her, but deep in the most secret part of her lay a small, reckless voice that wanted him to push, to pursue, to force his way through the defensive barriers she’d put in his path. Dangerous, it would be heartbreakingly dangerous to give in to him in any way, but to be so wanted, it might be worth the agony to come.
“I think,” Jason said, his voice sliding into her consciousness like dark smoke, “that Alexander’s court tells the truth in this. He has his stable of assassins. Even the worst of them is ten times better than the vampire Galen executed.”
“Raphael knows to be careful?” As the keeper of their histories, Jessamy should have been a neutral party in the looming war, but she had a soft spot in her heart for the youngest of the archangels. He’d had such a delighted laugh as a boy… at least until his father’s inexorable madness, and his mother’s terrible decision—to end the life of the mate she loved with every breath in her body.
Even when it became clear at a very young age that his power far outstripped her own, Raphael had always, always, treated her with respect. Though he, too, was changing. Perhaps it was inevitable, the cold arrogance that came with that much power. Each time he returned to the Refuge, she saw less of the boy he’d been, and more of the lethal creature who was one of the Cadre.
“Dmitri,” Jason said in response to her question, “has made certain no spies are able to get in close enough to cause concern.”
“And you have ensured Raphael has his own spies in Alexander’s court.”
Jason kept his silence on the point, his face—marked by the haunting curves and lines of a tattoo he’d never explained, and that could be either a tribute or a reminder created in exquisite pain—remaining unchanged in expression, but she’d known him too long to be fooled.
Holding her gaze, he said, “Galen has no wife, no lover, has made no promises to another.”
She’d long ago stopped being startled at how Jason knew what he knew, but his words made her breath catch, her heartbeat accelerate. “Am I so transparent?” she asked, feeling vulnerable, exposed.
“No.” A pause. “But Galen has made his claim patent.”
Stroking his finger over the creamy feather touched with the faintest hint of blush that he’d stolen, Galen considered what he’d learned about the dead vampire’s loyalties from Dmitri. Alexander was unlikely to be involved, but someone in his court had a bone to grind with Jessamy. The problem, of course, was that Alexander’s territory was vast, his court a sprawling hive. It wouldn’t be easy to narrow down the target—but Jessamy was safe, would remain protected so long as it was necessary.
Galen didn’t trust easily, but he’d known of Jason before he arrived at the Refuge, seen the shadow-cloaked angel fight with that strange black sword of his, a lethal, violent storm. It was the only reason he’d left Jessamy in the other angel’s care. He had every intention of being the one on duty at night.
No other man was going to sit in her kitchen and watch her move with a graceful economy of motion as she cooked… and fought not to look at him. Each stolen glance had been a caress, a crack in the wall of her armor. He’d wanted to haul her flush against his rigid cock, tell her she could touch him as often as she pleased, and that he’d be her slave if she’d use her mouth, too.
Everywhere.
Vowing he would one day glide his hand over those subtle curves, that silken skin, while she writhed beneath him, helpless in her pleasure, he slid the feather safely away and snapped out his wings. It was nearly time for him to take flight with a group of the warriors Raphael had stationed in the Refuge, the first step in evaluating their battle readiness.
However, a tall, sleek angel with skin of lush ebony and wings patterned akin to those of a butterfly famed for its orange and black markings landed on the path in front of him before he could rise. “Sir.” Folding back her wings, she inclined her head in a small, respectful bow, her mane of tight curls braided close to her skull.
“I’m no longer your commander, Zaria.”
Small white teeth flashed in a gamine smile, dimples forming in both cheeks. “In Raphael’s territory or in Titus’s, you are my commander. Augustus agrees.”
He had hoped that some of those he’d led would follow him, but had not expected it of such experienced warriors, both of whom held high posts in Titus’s army. “You are welcome,” he said, clasping her forearm in a familiar greeting, “but you will have to prove your loyalty to Raphael.”
A raised eyebrow. “You think me a spy?” No insult, only the curiosity that made her such a gifted scout.
“I think being weapons-master has far more nuances than I ever before understood.” He nodded at her to follow him back into the stronghold—she was too dangerous in her strength not to be brought immediately to Dmitri’s attention. “How is Orios?”
“Content. Proud as a father.” Another sparkling smile. “Titus is a wounded boar torn between the same pride and fury at being stripped of your skill, but the flitterbies know how to soothe him.”
Children were rare, so rare among the immortals, and Titus had none of his blood, but he’d adopted the children of his warriors who had fallen in battle,
given the little ones lives that had resulted in their becoming spoiled, indulgent adults who were nonetheless sweet of nature. “They do have their uses.” It was only once he and Zaria were inside the cool stone walls of the stronghold that he said, “My parents?”
“Your father keeps an eye on Alexander’s forces.”
Galen had expected as much; his father was Titus’s second.
“Your mother”—Zaria deliberately touched her wing to the stone, as if testing the texture—“has begun to train the new crop of recruits.”
Tanae had to have known of Zaria’s decision to defect—it was an expected and watched-for consequence on the departure of a commander—and yet she’d sent no message with the scout. His father, Galen had never expected anything from beyond his warrior’s education, but he’d spent decades trying to earn a word of praise from his mother… all the while knowing the quest to be a futile effort.
The fact of the matter was that Tanae was an anomaly among angelkind. A warrior, talented and proud, she had never wanted a child. To her credit, she had raised Galen with scrupulous care, and while the flitterbies had attempted to make a spoiled pet of him—an attempt he’d repudiated with childish fierceness—it was always Tanae he strove to impress. Until he’d understood that her indifference wasn’t feigned to motivate him to greater heights. It ran bone-deep.
The realization had broken the heart of the boy he’d been.
“I’ll need to return to Titus’s court to take my formal leave,” Zaria said, her tone telling him she’d thought nothing odd of his questions. “I can carry a letter back to your parents.”
The wounded boy he’d once been was long gone, replaced by a man who had never hidden from anything, no matter how devastating. “No, there’s no need.” So distant from the court his mother called home, he could finally give Tanae the one thing she’d always wanted—the liberty to forget she’d ever been forced into despised weakness by the child she’d carried in her womb.
