concubine, and appears to have no willingness to leave his palace. I will have warning if he or his army look to be preparing to move.”
Something about the report on Alexander sang a sour note to her, a harp string damaged, but she couldn’t reason why. Abandoning the thought for the present when it stayed frustratingly out of reach, she released Raphael’s hands. “I’m glad of your visit. Come, tell me of your lands.”
As they sat and spoke, Galen stood guard by the doorway. Neither by look nor word did he betray to his archangel what he and Jessamy were becoming to each other… and a seed of doubt bloomed in her mind. His reticence could be born of any number of reasons, including the fact that Raphael was certainly here to evaluate the man who would be his weapons-master, but she kept circling around to a single horribly painful con-clusion.
He might have taken her flying, but that could be explained away as a gift given out of pity. He hadn’t actually done
No, she thought,
Galen watched in silence as Raphael bid Jessamy good night before nodding at Galen and rising into the stars glittering against a night sky so pure, it was ebony. Galen understood the silent command. A weapons-master held considerable power and influence in an archangel’s court, and Raphael would give the position to no one he didn’t trust on every level—tomorrow, Galen would be judged.
He felt no anxiety. He knew his own strength, knew he would not fail. And he knew he would judge Raphael in turn, for this was the man for whom he’d lift his sword for centuries to come, perhaps until the end of his immortal life. It was no light choice for a warrior.
Jessamy’s gaze tracked the archangel until his wings disappeared beyond the mountains, and he could almost taste the keen edge of her hunger. It angered him that she didn’t ask him for what she needed, but he tempered the response—it would take time for her to understand that he would fly her anywhere she wanted to go, whether they had harsh words between them or tender.
He held out his hand. “Come.”
She hesitated.
Unwilling to let anything go when it came to this complex, lovely woman who was a mystery that compelled him, he closed the distance between them. “Have you not yet forgiven me for my rage?”
“You apologized.” Laughter tugged at lips he wanted to suck and bite, but she didn’t come into his arms.
“Then what? I am not the most sensitive of men”—a weakness he’d realized long ago—“so you must make it clear.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you always so blunt?”
“No.” He could play games—he had grown up in an archangel’s court, after all. “But I have no liking for games, would rather not ever play them with you.”
Reaching out, she spread her hand over his heart, the touch going straight to his cock. “You have a way of destroying my foundations.” Stroking her fingers down his body with luscious concentration, her lashes obscuring her expressive eyes, she moved close enough that their bodies aligned.
His rigid cock pushed demandingly into the curve of her abdomen.
“Jessamy.” When she didn’t break the intimate contact, cuddling even closer, he wove his fingers into her hair, wanting to push, to urge her to put her mouth on his skin. “You’re seducing me to get your own way.”
A husky laugh. “It’s quite pleasurable.” Another petting caress. “I do believe I should have bad thoughts more often.”
Realizing he’d been beaten, he decided on a strategic retreat—for tonight. “All right, keep your secrets, Jessamy mine.” Shifting his hold without warning, he swung her up into his arms.
“Galen!”
Three powerful wingbeats and they were in the air, Jessamy’s arms locked around his neck, her body tucked into his chest. “You can’t just trick me into flight every time,” she said, but she was laughing.
“I’ll always fly you. No matter what happens.”
She, in place of an answer, nuzzled her face into his neck. Her touch was welcome, her avoidance of his declaration not, but this night was too beautiful to mar with arguments, and so he swept her across the glittering landscape of the Refuge, and toward the east. As he rode the air currents with her slight weight in his arms, what he felt was nothing he could name. It was simply there, a quiet, deep knowledge, a sense of inexorable rightness.
It was much later that he took them down to land on a promontory that overlooked the Refuge, the lights within the homes a thousand fireflies in the dark, the majority of the residents wakeful yet. “This is my favorite vantage point,” he said, taking a position behind her, his arms around her shoulders. Her wings were soft and warm between them, the feathers silken against his skin.
Continuing to hold her with one arm, he used the hand of the other to stroke the twisted line of the wing that had never formed correctly, felt her stiffen. “I once lost my leg,” he told her, not breaking the touch. “I was young—it took years to grow back. The same could happen again in battle. Would you repudiate me?”
The stiffness of her didn’t abate. “It’s not the same, Galen.” A raw kind of pain in her words. “Eternity is a long time to live broken and malformed.”
He didn’t do her the insult of disregarding the suffering that had forged her. “Many would have chosen Sleep.” Decades, centuries, even millennia could pass while an angel Slept. “Yet you chose to live.”
“I’m not brave,” she whispered. “I just didn’t want to give those who pitied me the satisfaction of seeing me give up on life.” Turning in his arms, she wrapped her own around his waist, pressing her cheek to his chest. “I didn’t want to be seen as weak.”
One hand on her nape, beneath the warm fall of her hair, the other on her lower back, he bent his head to speak with his lips brushing her ear. “Many a young warrior has gone into battle with the same motivation. There is no shame in fear that drives.” He widened his stance to tuck her even closer, and he thought that, perhaps, she had shown him a secret part of herself. “I was,” he said, revealing the same within him, “one of those young warriors.”
Tanae had always been so unflinching in her courage, and Galen had never wanted to shame her. “My mother looked at me with disgust when the blood and gore and horror of my first battle had me emptying my stomach, and I didn’t know how to tell her that I had never tasted true fear until that moment. Instead, I learned to be harder, better, stronger.”
“Your mother… she sounds a harsh taskmaster.” It was a hesitant statement.
“She is a warrior.” Galen had no other words, because the words he’d already spoken described Tanae’s soul.
It was Jessamy’s hand that stroked him now, her touch tender and careful over his wing, and he was startled at the realization that she was attempting to comfort him. It was a strange sensation. No one had ever coddled him after he’d snarled at the flitterbies, determined to become tough.
Jessamy would probably not handle snarling well, so he’d bear the gentle petting. “Jessamy?”
“Hmm?”
Fisting his hand in her hair, he tilted back her head. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
As the stars flickered overhead, icy gemstones lit with cold fire, he took her mouth the way he’d wanted to from the first. He demanded entrance and she opened for him, the softness of her his to ravage. Mystery, that was what Jessamy tasted like. Sweet and dark and with depths it’d take a man an immortal lifetime to explore. Gripping her chin with his free hand, he angled her just as he liked and then he devoured her.
A tiny push, a hint of teeth.
Listening, he gave her a bare instant to breathe before he plundered her mouth again, her sensuality a deliciously slow-burning ember that had her nails digging into his nape, her tongue stroking against his with carnal
