tired when she returned.
Noel was with the vampire when she finally woke, her eyes hollow, her bones cutting against skin gone dull and lifeless. “Any other person who dared such an act,” he told her, “would be on the street right now, but because your father doesn’t know of what you did, you’ll be permitted to remain here.
“But,” he added, “step one foot out of line, and I will personally ensure true death.” It was a harsh statement, but his own loyalty was to Nimra, and more, he understood the predator that lived beneath the skin of every vampire, had glimpsed a twisted darkness in Amariyah that enjoyed causing pain to those who were helpless to fight back.
Whatever the other vampire heard in his voice— or perhaps it was the echo of her punishment— had fear creeping across her face. “My father is the only reason I’m still here,” she whispered, her voice raw. “I’ll be gone from the house of this monster the second he leaves me.”
Nimra stood at the window of her private sitting room, watching Amariyah’s unsteady progress through the dusk to the cottage. Christian had arranged for Fen to be out, so Amariyah would have time to clean herself up. “Fen is very intelligent,” she said to the man who’d entered the room without knocking. “I’m not sure he’ll accept the story about a business trip once he sees her gaunt appearance.” Blood and sleep would revive Amariyah, but it would take hours.
“Christian just sent me a message to say he engineered a delay from the city— they’ll spend the night.”
“Good.” She kept her back to him, knowing he had questions to which he deserved answers. Not because he was her wolf, but because he was becoming more, becoming something she’d never expected.
Now he said, “I brought you some food.”
Turning as Amariyah disappeared from sight, she met that gaze so startlingly bright in the shadowy light of day fading into night. “Do you think you’ll simply wear me down to your way of doing things?”
“Of course.” An unexpected smile that burned through the cold that had lingered in her veins ever since the punishment, as her body remembered that she was not only a being of terrible power, but a feminine creature. “I am a man, after all.”
Knowing she was being charmed, but unable to resist, she walked with him to the informal dining area— where he’d placed a tray full of fruit, sandwiches, and cookies. “This is no meal fit for an angel,” she said when he pulled out a chair.
“I see your smile, my lady Nimra.” A kiss pressed to her nape, a hot intimacy she had not given him permission to take.
“You walk a dangerous road, Noel.”
He rubbed his thumbs along the tendons that ran down the back of her neck, his touch firm and sure. “I never was one for taking the easy path.” His lips against her ear, his body big and solid around her own as he slid his hands down to brace them on the arms of her chair. “But first you must eat.”
When he moved to sit beside her, lifting a succulent slice of peach to her lips, she should’ve reminded him that she was no child. An angel could go without food for long periods and not suffer any ill effects. But the past few days had cut jagged wounds inside her, and Noel, with his rough tenderness, spoke to a part of her that had not seen the light since centuries before Eitriel.
Inexplicable that it should be this vampire, damaged on such a deep level, who should have so profound an impact on her… or perhaps not. Because beyond the shadows in the blue, she glimpsed the wary hope of a brutalized wolf.
So she allowed him to feed her the peach, then slices of pear, bites of sandwich, followed by a rich chocolate cookie. Somewhere along the way, she ended up sitting with her knees pressed up to his chair, his legs on either side of her own. Her hands spread on his thighs, the rock- solid strength of him flexing taut and beautiful under her touch.
Other parts of him were taut, too.
But though his eyes lingered on her lips, his thumb brushing off crumbs that weren’t there, he didn’t seek to come to her bed, this wolf who was starting to entangle himself in her life in a way no man had ever dared to attempt.
Noel didn’t sleep again that night, his mind full of the echoes of evil, the laughter of those who had debased him until he was less than an animal.
“It is done,” Raphael had said to him after it was all over, his face merciless in judgment, his wings glowing with power. “They have been executed.”
At the time, Noel had said, “Good,” with vicious pleasure, but now he knew vengeance alone would never be enough. His attackers had marked him in ways that might never be erased.
“Noel.”
Jerking up his head at that familiar feminine voice, he found Nimra had stepped out into the corridor where he paced in a vain attempt to outrun the laughter. “I woke you.” It was well past midnight.
“Sleep is an indulgence for me, not a necessity.” Eyes of brilliant topaz glimmering with streaks of amber, vivid against the cream of a fluid gown cinched at both shoulders, she said, “I would walk in the gardens.”
He fell into step with her. She said nothing until they reached the beautifully eerie shadows of the woods where the stream originated. “An immortal has many memories.” Her voice was an intimate caress in the night, her words poignant with ancient knowledge. “Even the most painful of them fade in time.”
“Some memories,” he said, “are embedded.” As the glass had been embedded in his flesh. As… other things had been embedded in his body. His hand fisted.
Nimra’s wing brushed against his arm. “But is it a memory you wish to shine like a jewel, keep always at the forefront?”
“I can’t control it,” he admitted through a jaw clenched so tight, he could hear his bones grinding against one another, drowning out the whispering secrets of the warm Louisiana night.
An angel’s perceptive gaze met his under the silver caress of the moon. “You will learn.” There was utmost confidence in her voice.
His laugh was harsh. “Yeah? What makes you so sure?”
“Because that is who you are, Noel.” Stepping forward, she raised her hand to touch his cheek, her wings arcing at her back.
When he flinched at the contact, she didn’t pull back. “What was done to you,” she said, “would’ve broken other men. It did not break you.”
“I’m not who I once was.”
“Neither am I.” She dropped her hand, and he found he didn’t like the kiss of the night against his skin now that he’d felt the softness of her. “Life changes us. To wish otherwise is pointless.”
The pragmatic truth of her words affected him more than any gentle reassurances. “Nimra.”
She looked at him with those inhuman eyes. “My wolf.”
So breathtaking, he thought, so dangerous. “There are other ways to blunt the impact of memory.” It was a sudden, primal decision. Too long—he’d been hiding in the dark too long.
Nimra knew what Noel was asking, knew, too, that if she acquiesced, he would be no easy lover— either in the act or in his temperament afterward. “I have not taken a lover,” she murmured, her gaze on the rough angles of his face, “for many years.”
Noel said nothing.
“Very well.”
“So romantic.”
There was a black edge to the words, but Nimra didn’t take it personally. Like the wolf she called him, he might yet show her his teeth. Trust was a precious commodity, one that took time to develop. Patience was something Nimra had learned long ago. “Romance,” she said, turning to head back to the house, “is a matter of interpretation.”
Nothing from the man at her side, not until they were behind the closed doors of her suite. “No matter what the interpretation,” he warned, his body held with a rigid control that told her he was on the finest of edges, “it’s not what I’m going to give you tonight.”
