opened to him, dark and hot and sweet, her power a lick against his senses as lusciously female as the body under his touch. Tucking her closer, he slid his hand up from her breast to grip her jaw, holding her in place as he explored every inch of that mouth he’d dreamed of tasting for longer than she knew.
He wanted to move slow, to map every curve and every pleasure point, but her pulse, it beat a seductive tattoo against his senses, inviting him to take that which he hadn’t taken for months. Circling his hand around to her neck, he rubbed his thumb over the beating invitation of her. Her hands clenched on his waist, but she made no demur when he began to kiss his way down to the spot that was a siren song to the vampirism that was as much a part of him as his desire for her.
Lips against his ear. “Sip from me, Noel. It is a gift given freely.”
He’d never been a man who fed indiscriminately. When he hadn’t had a lover, he’d turned to friends, for the feeding didn’t need to be a sexual thing. Since the attack, he hadn’t been able to stand being that intimate with another being. Even now, with this woman who made him hunger in every way, and though his erection was a hard ridge in his pants, he said, “I can’t make it pleasurable.” Not because he’d lost the ability, but because he wasn’t ready for the connection forged by the sexual ecstasy his kiss could bestow . . . the vulnerability that came with allowing another being any kind of inroad into him.
She arched her neck in silent response.
His blood pounding in time to her own, he slid his arms around her, his fingers brushing her wings as he sucked a kiss over the spot before piercing the delicate skin with his fangs. Her blood was an erotic rush against his senses, the punch of power staggering. The hunger in him, the darkness that had turned into a furious rage during the events at the Refuge, rose to the surface, glorying in the taste of her. She saturated his senses, drowned him in sensation, and in spite of his earlier words, he was male enough to want her to feel the same.
Acting on naked instinct, he pumped pleasure into her system as he took blood from hers, felt her body arch, shudder—he hadn’t held anything back, hadn’t stopped with simple arousal. She came apart in his arms, her blood earthy with the flavor of her desire. Drugged to raw pleasure, he found he’d thrust his thigh between her own, splayed his hands on her back, his fingers touching the sensitive inner edges of her wings, her breasts crushed against his chest.
But as he halted in his gluttony to lick the small wounds closed, he discovered he didn’t flinch at having let her so near—and not only on the physical level. Perhaps it was because she’d ceded him the control he needed . . . or perhaps it was simply because she was Nimra.
Nimra lay boneless in Noel’s arms, conscious of him licking at the skin of her neck to heal the marks caused by his fangs. She didn’t tell him not to worry—the puncture site would’ve healed on its own in minutes—because it was an unexpected pleasure to know he wanted to care for her, this man who had left her body quivering in ecstasy unlike any she had ever before felt, even as his own flesh strained hard and unsatiated against her abdomen.
When he nuzzled at her before raising his head, the affection was another act she hadn’t expected, a sign of the man hidden beyond the shadows of nightmare. As she luxuriated in the feeling, he stroked one hand down the center of her back, just touching the sensitive edges where her wings grew out of her back. “Does that feel good?” he murmured, a difference to him that made her skin tighten over her flesh, her thighs clench on the rough intrusion of his own.
“Yes.” No angel allowed anyone but a trusted lover to caress her in such a fashion. “Are you not afraid?” she asked, echoes of her own past sliding oily and dark through the aftershocks of pleasure. “You saw what I did to Amariyah.”
Noel continued with the exquisite delicacy of his caresses. “You did what you did with thought and care. You aren’t a capricious woman.”
She’d given him her blood, her body, but his words, they were as precious. “I’m pleased you see me in such a way.” It was strange to be standing here unclothed, in the arms of a man who continued to wear his armor of cotton and denim—and yet she was, if not content, then oddly at peace.
Then Noel spoke, and his words carried within them the promise of splintering the peace to nothingness. “Will you tell me about your power?”
CHAPTER 8
What would you say if I told you it was a secret for me to keep?”
No change in his expression. “I’m patient.”
Laughing at the arrogance even as something very old in her grew still, quiet, she went to touch her fingers to his face, dropped her hand midway. “I would show you, Noel, but no.” It would be a violation for this man who’d had all choice stripped from him by the monsters who had stained the Refuge with their crimes, regardless of the fact that he’d feel no pain, only the same bone-melting pleasure he’d lavished on her. “I give back,” she whispered. “I give back what was given unto others.”
“Pleasure for pleasure,” Noel said, understanding at once. “Pain for pain.”
A solemn nod. “It is not the act itself, but the
It made him change his hold, shift her into the protection of his body. Yes, she was a powerful angel, but whatever it was her gift demanded from her, it haunted her. “That’s why Nazarach leaves you alone.” The other angel was renowned for his viciousness.
Nimra’s voice when it came, was hard. “We had a meeting when I first took over this territory. He thought to control me. He has never returned to my lands.”
Noel felt his lips curve in a feral smile. “Good.”
Noel’s body continued to hum with the taste of Nimra the next day. Her blood held such power that he knew he wouldn’t need to feed again for a week . . . though there were different kinds of need, he thought, as he began to go through the file Nimra had sent him that morning. It was a list of people she knew had had access to Midnight and who might wish her harm.
However, from what Noel understood of the people on the list—and what he was able to learn from Dmitri when he called the leader of Raphael’s Seven—none of them would have left anything to chance, especially given how difficult Midnight was to source. The fact that Nimra’s cat had died, betraying the game, spoke of an amateur. Of course, there was also the old adage that poison was a woman’s weapon.
Amariyah had convinced him with her confusion, and Asirani—no matter her unrequited feelings for Christian—seemed loyal. But Noel wasn’t about to write her off without further investigation. Knowing the vampire had a habit of coming in early to the small office she had on the lower floor, he decided to see if he could track her down. He was in the corridor leading to her office when he heard whispering, low and furious. It was instinct to soften his footsteps.
“. . . just listen.” Soft, feminine. Asirani.
“It will change nothing.” Christian’s stiff tones. “I don’t wish to hurt you, but I have no such feelings for you.”
“She’s never going to look at you the way you want.” Not bitter, almost . . . sad.
“That is none of your concern.”
“Of course it is. She might be our lady, but she’s also my friend.” An exhale that telegraphed frustration. “She plays with Noel, but it’s because he’s a vampire. There’s no chance of a serious relationship.”
“I will be here when she is ready for that relationship.”
Noel stepped forward until he could see the pair reflected in the antique mirror on the other side of the corridor. Asirani, striking in a sheath of emerald green, her hair swept up off her neck, was shaking her head, her expression solemn, while black-garbed Christian did his impression of a Roman statue. When the female vampire turned, as if to enter her office, Noel retraced his steps away from the couple.
Asirani’s view of his relationship with Nimra was hardly news. Many angels took vampiric lovers, but long- term relationships were far rarer. The fact that vampires and angels couldn’t have children together was one of the
