She went motionless at his question. The wind ... it carried a scent. Faint. So, so faint. And so unusual that she couldn’t pinpoint it—except she knew it was the same thing she’d scented the instant her wings crumpled. What is that?
A rare black orchid found in a rain forest deep in the Amazon.
She shivered. “It truly is her?”
So it would seem.
When the rage of wind final y died away with a last cutting whip, she looked up and brushed midnight strands of hair off Raphael’s face, revealing the incredible masculine beauty that had the power to make mortals weep. “She isn’t that strong yet.” The entire thing had only lasted a minute at most.
“No.” But it appears she has noticed my consort.
“God, I’m slow today.” That blast of wind on the Hudson hadn’t been a chance gust. It had been an arrow meant to shatter her bones when she hit the water at high velocity. “So she’s conscious?”
Raphael shook his head. “I’ve had Jessamy doing some research,” he said, mentioning the woman who was the repository of angelic knowledge, the keeper of their histories . . . and one of the kindest angels Elena had ever met. “Come, we wil speak of it inside.”
They walked into the house, turning in the direction of the library, a room that sang to the curious heart of her nature. The first time she’d entered it, she’d noticed only the books arranged on the wal -to-wal shelves on the ground level, the fireplace to the left, the gorgeous wooden table and chairs set below the window.
But like al angelic rooms, this one had a soaring ceiling—and that ceiling was a work of art, the wooden beams carved with painstaking attention to detail and inlaid with darker pieces that were perfectly contoured to fit. “Aodhan?”
“No,” Raphael said, fol owing her gaze. “That was done by a human, a master at his craft.”
“Amazing.” She wondered at the pride the man must’ve felt to build such a room for an archangel.
Raphael stroked his hand down her hair, his touch oddly tender.
“Archangel?”
“I’m far more powerful than when Caliane disappeared.” His words held a haunting sense of pain, of memory. “But I am stil her son, Elena. Thousands upon thousands of years younger.”
Elena shook her head. “You were younger than Uram, too. Yet you won.”
“My mother is beyond Uram, beyond Lijuan.” Raphael’s words sent a chil down Elena’s spine. “She lived as an archangel for tens of thousands of years. There is no knowing what she has become.”
Thinking of what Lijuan had done to Beijing, the stench of smoke and death that was said to linger over the empty crater than had once been a vibrant, living city, Elena felt fear attempt to take a clawhold on her heart. She refused to al ow it, her love for this archangel far stronger than any imagined foe.
“She doesn’t know what you’ve become either, Raphael.”
Her archangel’s expression didn’t change, but she knew he’d heard her. “Jessamy,” he said, “tel s me that Caliane is likely in a half-dream state at present. She has some semblance of consciousness but may have no real knowledge of the acts she’s committing.”
“She could think this is al a dream?”
Closing his hand around the back of her neck, he tugged her closer. “Yes.” His kiss was more than a little dangerous. But we did not come here to talk about Caliane.
She pressed her lips to the hard angle of his jaw, anticipation burning away the last vestiges of the fear she’d felt as she fel . “Let’s get sweaty.”
15
An hour later, Elena was a hell of a lot more than sweaty. Raphael had given her the no-holds-barred combat she’d asked for—and more. “You know what makes me real y mad?” she said, hands on her knees on the other side of the rough practice circle they’d set out on the lawn.
Raphael, shirtless chest gleaming with the lightest film of perspiration, pushed back his hair. “Enough talking,” he ordered. “Up.”
She bared her teeth at him. “It’s the fact that you’re not even breathing hard while I feel like I got done over by a pack of vamps.” But she rose to her ful height, because if she could learn to hold her own against Raphael for so much as a second, she’d be unbeatable against most vampires and humans.
He came at her without warning, a blur of speed. She wrenched out of the way and went down hard. Galen’s earlier training kept her from landing awkwardly on her wings, but they got crushed into the grass nonetheless as Raphael swept down to pin her. “Galen didn’t teach me that,” she said, chest heaving underneath him as he pinioned her hands above her head.
“What?” Heat blazed off him, his eyes glittering in a way she usual y only ever saw in bed.
She couldn’t help it. Arching up, she kissed him, flicking out her tongue to taste the aggressive maleness pumping through his body. “The thing you do with your wings.” Instead of answering, he kicked her legs wider and suddenly the position was a hel of a lot more intimate. “Raphael”—a husky censure
—“Montgomery is probably keeping an eye on us.”