Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,34
the surface, but when they broke the kiss this time, Raphael’s eyes blazed the blue at the heart of a flame and his chest heaved. “Come up with a solution,” he said instead of just breaking things off—that would’ve hurt.
As it was, she kissed him hard before saying, “I have to be on top.”
He flipped their positions . . . and she saw that her body was covered with tendrils of golden lightning that had fallen from him. His entire body, in turn, was riddled with cracks of gold.
Fisting one hand in her hair, he hauled her down for a kiss.
Breathtaking power in his every heartbeat, in his every touch. White fire licked over his wings once more, fell on her body when he curved his wings around her. His unhidden possessiveness undid a knot inside her she hadn’t even known had formed: the icy fear that without wings, she was no longer the woman with whom Raphael had fallen in love.
Stupid. Her archangel had chosen her when she’d been a breakable mortal. Theirs wasn’t a love that was brittle and conditional. It was forever and it was brutal in its need. No matter their physical state.
He thrust his tongue inside her mouth, molding her breast with one hand. She moaned and gripped at his hair, rubbing her body against the sleek muscle of his. She was covered in so much of his power at this point that she could no longer tell when it sank into her. It was electricity over her skin, living electricity that tasted so deeply of Raphael that she had no compunction in laying herself bare to it.
A moment to gasp in a breath, Raphael’s voice harsh as he said, “Does it disconcert you? The lightning?”
And she realized the same stupid fear gnawed at the deadly archangel who held her. “If you’re into a mildly glowing skeleton,” she said against his kiss-wet lips, “I’m into a sexy archangel painted in lightning.”
Their next kiss was a slow and erotic thing infused with piercing love. When Raphael nudged her into the right position, she held her breath and sank down on him. Her inner flesh was slick with need and swollen with arousal, her hands braced on his chest, his holding her hips. It was a tight slide but she didn’t take it slow—she couldn’t, not the first time. Her pelvis met his, his cock held possessively inside her.
She shuddered in a relief so deep that it brought tears to her eyes.
Raphael sat up, cradling her against him as she straddled his body. They pressed their foreheads together, Elena’s fingers brushing his jaw and his hand stroking up her spine. “I love you until I can’t breathe.”
“It will only ever be you for me, Elena. I am yours.” His wings came around her, enclosing them in a cocoon of white-gold energy so brilliant that the only other thing she could see was the violent blue of his eyes.
They began to move together. Far slower and with more care than they’d ever before done, but this wasn’t about wild sex. Their need was far more visceral. When tears rolled down her face, Raphael kissed them away. And when he buried his face against the side of her neck and squeezed her painfully tight, she stroked his hair and kissed his temple and whispered that they’d make it, that nothing would tear them apart.
When the wave broke, it did so in a blaze of white-gold that caused dazzling afterimages behind her eyes. Holding on to her archangel, Elena allowed his power to burst into every cell in her body. Fear had no claim on her anymore.
Not here. Not with her archangel.
Cold Cascade power or not, no part of Raphael would ever hurt her.
Lightning cracked her skin and exploded from her pores.
17
The Legion
The Legion saw searing light pour out of every window of the Tower suite that was the aeclari’s and they saw angels all over the city land on any available surface. High on the Tower, the Blade ran inside from where he’d been standing on the balcony, and the Viper ran in with him.
In the streets, mortals looked up, and froze.
But the Legion didn’t rise, didn’t head to the Tower. Instead, the Primary stretched his mind and spoke to the Blade. Stop.
No response, but thirty seconds later, the Blade returned to his balcony. Hard, dark eyes landed on the Primary—who had flown on silent wings to crouch on the edge of that space.