Or perhaps, I am simply that to you.
She flinched, snapping out of the fascination. And this time, she knew he hadn't been messing with her mind-that thought had been her own stupidity at work. "Simply what?" she asked, just to keep him talking.
Beautiful.
She snorted. "Believe me, angel boy, you turn female heads wherever you go."
Most women see cruelty in me, too much for beauty.
Caught short by that apparently honest assessment, she found herself staring at him with new eyes. Yes, there was cruelty in him. He wasn't pretty, wasn't handsome, wasn't anything so tame. He was dangerous and strong, the epitome of what appealed to her hunter senses. All her life, she'd been too strong, too fast, too unfeminine for human men. They liked her, but after a while, most claimed she made them feel emasculated.
She'd never let on how much that hurt, but it did, it hurt a hell of a lot. Maybe she wasn't a tiny doll like Beth, but she was very definitely female. And she appreciated the male of the species, most especially this male. "You're capable of cruelty," she agreed quietly, "perhaps even horror, but you haven't crossed over into evil."
Haven't I?
Her palm lay sweaty on the gun. "No."
You sound very certain. And yet you accused me of rape this morning.
Her temper spiked. Ignoring the warning cry of her own common sense, she pulled out and held the gun openly at her side. "This morning, you tried to take by force something I might've given you freely had you waited."
A long pause filled only with the sound of her adrenaline-spiked breaths. She wondered what he heard out there, in the velvet darkness of the night, with the streets so far below.
Such honesty.
"I said 'might.' And buddy, your chances went down the drain the instant you pulled that stunt. I won't be manipulated into sex." Not even by a sex-god of an archangel.
He seemed to be thinking that over. His eyes met hers through the glass. He shrugged. Sex is fairly pointless anyway.
That made her blink. It didn't fit at all with the darkly sensual man who'd devoured her like his favorite candy that very morning. "Are you alright?" she asked, wondering if he was on some sort of angelic drug.
His response was to blow out the plate-glass window between them. It happened so fast, she barely had time to throw up her arm to shield her eyes. One second the window was there, the next, it was lying in several neat pieces on her carpet. Not a sliver had touched her. When she dropped her arm, she found herself looking out at a huge square of darkness, the wind sliding into her apartment on smooth, silky wings.
Raphael was nowhere to be seen.
Scared, but not for herself, she looked down at the gun in her hand. With trembling fingers, she clicked on the safety again. She'd fired in instinctive self-defense, aiming not for Raphael's face, but for his wings as Vivek had advised. An angel without wings . . .
"Oh, God." Stepping carefully over the large shards of glass-eight perfect triangular pieces-she made her way to the edge and glanced down.
A whisper of wind from behind her. "Definitely no problems with vertigo."
She might've fallen had he not had his hands securely on her hips. "You bastard! You scared me to death!" Twisting, she tried to get away.
He held her still, wrapping both arms around her waist. "Behave, Elena."
The oddness of his tone clanged a serious alarm bell in her head. She couldn't help but think of her earlier thoughts-there were a lot of things worse than death. "Are you planning to drop me?"
"You just told yourself that I won't kill you, that I'm more likely to torture you."
Something snapped. "Get. Out. Of. My. Head!" Squeezing her eyes shut, she shoved outward with every ounce of will-power she possessed. It was a stupid, human reaction, but she was human in every way that mattered.
Behind her, Raphael sucked in a breath. Startled, she intensified her attempts to block him, even as the spiraling emptiness of a deadly fall spread out in front of her. Elena didn't look away-she'd rather face death than have her mind invaded, for what was that if not another form of crawling? But she damn well wasn't going to go without a fight. She switched the way she held the gun. This time, she would purposefully aim for his wings.
"Well, well," Raphael said against her ear. "It seems the hunter-born have another skill."
Her head was starting to ache. But she kept up the pressure, hoping her brain would learn to do this automatically after a while. Of course, that wasn't going to be an issue if she didn't get away from Raphael. It was becoming clearer by the second that whatever was wrong with him it was very, very dangerous for her. "Why are you here, doing this? Is it because I cut Dmitri?"
"He was under orders not to touch you."