She didn’t even see Elena standing to the side of the cubicle, she was so focused on her man. “Ransom!” Stroking Ransom’s hair off his face where he sat on the bed, she checked his wounds with delicate, tender touches. “Baby, you’re so hurt.”

To Elena’s surprise, tough as nails Ransom didn’t shake off his lover’s hands, but instead leaned into the touch. It was the first time in Elena’s life that she’d seen him allow anyone to tend to him—and it made her deeply curious about the woman who’d captured his heart. That curiosity, however, would have to wait until another day. Keeping to the shadows, she slipped out while they were wrapped up in each other.

By the time she jumped off the chopper onto the wet green of the grass outside the house, it was well after midnight. “You bunking here tonight?” she asked Venom.

Shaking his head, he pulled the door shut in her face.

“Well,” she muttered, “goodnight to you, too.” Wings dragging like that of an exhausted angelic child, she walked straight into the arms of the archangel who waited for her. Those arms clamped around her as he shifted a few degrees to shield her from the wind generated by the rising machine.

Drawing the rain-laced scent of him into her lungs, she released a breath, then repeated the action until she felt something inside her sigh and lay down its weapons. “How was your night, Archangel? Mine was interesting.”

You carry marks on your skin, Elena. It was a demand for an explanation.

When they’d first met, she’d probably have bristled at that. Now ... it was kind of nice coming home to someone who bothered to notice that she’d gotten a little banged up on the job. “I’ll tell you if you feed me and let me use that decadent bath of yours.” The bath where they’d first touched each other in a hungry passion that still made her breath catch each time she thought about it.

“Come.”

Feeling a frisson of awareness at the sexual edge in that command, she slipped her hand into his as he drew her inside the house and toward their room. That was when she saw the blood on his shirt. “Hey!” She stopped. Or tried to.

When he kept going, she decided to beard him in the bedroom.

Soon as the door closed, she broke away and put her hands on her hips, the cuts on her palms no longer tender, though they didn’t look pretty. “Take off your shirt.”

Raising an eyebrow, he pulled the shirt over the top of his head, the wing slots sliding over the glory of his wings with a soft hush of sound. A second later, he dropped the shirt to the side, his expression moody in a way that made her want to push him to the bed and ride him until both their brains were scrambled. Fighting the temptation, she circled around to his back. “You’re hurt!”

Three massive gouges marked his skin.

Blinking, she looked closer, felt her mouth fall open. “They’re healing right before my eyes.” Which either meant the injury was recent, or the damage had been worse before. She glanced at his shirt, measured the blood, decided the injury had been worse.

“I’m an archangel, Elena. It is but a scratch.” Turning, he slammed her body to his. “Take off your top.”

It was suddenly difficult to think, but she sucked in a breath, found the will. “How did you get so badly hurt?”

Placing his hand on the shoulder of her long-sleeved black top, he gripped ... and tore. Her top was in shreds around her a second later, her breasts bare to his gaze since the bra had been built in. Abdomen taut with need, chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm, she licked her lips. “Feel better?”

His answer was to dip his head, bend her over his arm, and suck one tight little nipple into his mouth.

Shuddering, she thrust her hands into his hair and pulled. He used his teeth on her. She hissed out a breath. “Raphael.” It was meant to be an admonishment but it turned into a moan as he covered her other breast with his hand, squeezing and caressing with a confidence that turned her knees to butter.

That was when she thought, “Hell with it,” and arched her body into the voracious hunger of his mouth. It didn’t surprise her in the least when he moved the hand on her breast down to the front of her jeans . . . and tore them off. Her panties were next. A second later, she was being thrown onto the massive sea of a bed, her wings spreading out on the cool softness of the comforter even as Raphael gripped her legs at the knees and pushed up and out, baring her to him.

Searing blue met her eyes when she looked up. Then his wings began to glow. She hadn’t seen him get rid of his pants and cried out as his erection began to part her most delicate flesh. “Raphael.”

A kiss that demanded, his body all golden muscle and heat above her own.

“Faster,” she ordered, and when he continued to thrust into her slow and deep, she wrapped her legs around him, using her own strength to tumble him onto the bed.

“Elena!” He caught himself before he would’ve crushed her even as she screamed at the shock of sensation as his cock drove in all the way.

For an instant, they both lay unmoving, connected to each other with an intimacy Elena had never experienced before him.

Did I hurt you?

Never. Stroking her hands down the skin of his back, making sure to rub her knuckles along the sensitive undersides of his wings, she said, “Kiss me, Archangel.” At the same instant, she squeezed her muscles around the steely part of him that was lodged so deep inside of her.

Fisting his hand in her hair, he took her mouth as he moved his other hand to pin down her hip. The first stroke made her body arch, a scream pouring into his mouth. The second had her clenching convulsively around him as pleasure broke her into a thousand iridescent pieces.

18

His consort, Raphael thought as Elena lay quivering below him, his mate. Again, Hunter. Gritting his teeth against the urge to thrust, he flexed his cock within her, had the pleasure of hearing her gasp.

But she didn’t surrender. Eyes hazy, she kissed his jaw, his neck, before pushing at his chest. “My turn.”

He let her reverse their positions so that he lay on his back, his wings covering the bed on either side. Palms pressed to his chest, she rose up on him, a vision of breasts flushed a silky rose with passion; pale, winter-light hair tousled from the play of his hands; wings a stunning midnight arching above her shoulders; and sleekly muscular thighs. The rest of her legs remained covered—he hadn’t wanted to wait long enough to pull off what remained of her jeans. As for her feet . . .

Boots. She still wore her boots.

His consort, he thought again. Magnificent and wild, and his.

When she bent down to kiss him, the act lushly intimate within the cage created by the silken fall of her hair, he surrendered, let her take him. Her body moved in rhythmic counterpoint to the teasing strokes of her tongue, and he knew his hunter was about to push him over the edge.

Not without you.

Trying something he’d never before attempted in their lovemaking, he dropped his shields. She was a young immortal, didn’t know the rules, didn’t know how to keep her own shields up at such a time. He’d never invaded her—that was an intimacy to be given, not taken. But he allowed her mind to sweep out, to invade his.

Her body jerked above him, her beautiful eyes turning a pleasure-washed silver as she cried out and came in a clenching burst of damp heat. That was all it took. He fell, throwing up his shields only because the impact of that much sensation could hurt her—and even in this extremity of passion, he would not hurt her, this hunter with a mortal heart who held his own in her hands.

Elena didn’t say a word when Raphael scooped her up in those powerful arms—after she’d kicked off her boots and socks, the remainder of her jeans—and took her through to the bath, the water set at a bone-melting temperature. Sinking into it with a sigh, she felt her butt connect with one of the small ledges and figuring that was enough, let her head fall back, reasonably certain her eyes were still rolled up inside her head.

A wash of water against her skin, her archangel getting in with her.

Temptation rose, and she opened her eyes, ran her gaze over the muscular strength of his legs, the ridged plane of his abdomen. It was a very private pleasure, and one she intended to indulge in as often as possible. “How’s your back?”

“Healed.” He sank down into the water, bracing his arms on the rim of the bath. “A miscalculation on my part—I flew too close to the steel girders of a construction project in progress.”

Forcing her body to move, she floated over to sit next to him, placing her head on one of his shoulders, her palm over his heart. It was a position she’d never have taken with another man—but Raphael, in spite of the frustration he was causing her with the constant bodyguards, understood who she was, understood that a small surrender didn’t equal a larger one. “You don’t make miscalculations like that.”

He curled his arm around her, fingers painting lazy patterns on her skin. “We had a windstorm hit perhaps an hour after the earthquake shook part of Boston. I was able to compensate for the shove of wind, but not fast enough.”

That made more sense. “That quake was really weird, Raphael. It was so localized.” Reaching up, she ran her fingers along the arch of his wing with delicate precision.

Elena.

Smiling at the warning, she tilted up her head and brushed her lips over his jaw. “The earthquake?”

The endless blue of the deepest part of the ocean held her gaze before she dipped her head to kiss the line of his throat. His fingers clenched in her hair, but that big, powerful body remained relaxed, an archangel at rest in his consort’s arms.

“You say the vampires appeared to be drawn to that same general area?” His chest rose and fell in an easy rhythm underneath her touch, his heartbeat strong and certain.

“Yeah,” she said, using her teeth on the tendons she’d just kissed. “Even the one we found later seemed to have been heading in that direction.” Only to be overcome by a lust for blood that would allow no other thought. “But the thing is, the focus of the quake seemed to be the chopper.”

Not the chopper, you.

She made a face. “I was trying to avoid that conclusion.”

A tug from the hand fisted in her hair, her head being tipped back—but this time, there was no kiss. “Your face is severely bruised.” Raising his free hand, he gripped her chin and tilted her face to the side so he could assess the damage. “You’ve lost more than the upper layer of skin alone.”

Elena didn’t protest. After all, she’d ordered him to strip so she could examine his injuries. “It doesn’t feel that bad.” In fact, she had the sense the skin was already beginning to regenerate—way faster than it would’ve on a human.

A kick to the heart, that reminder, that knowledge that she was no longer mortal.

“It’ll take at least two days to heal on its own,” he said, releasing her chin. “There are bruises on your ribs and hips, too.”

“When did you have time to notice?” Rising to straddle him, she put her arms around his neck and nuzzled a kiss to his pulse, feeling affectionate in a way she’d never been comfortable enough to express with anyone else. “Seemed to me like you were far more interested in other parts of my anatomy.”