"At the rate I'm going, I'll be eighty by the time I can actually fly."
"It'll only take once," Illium said softly, his face lifted up to the moonlight. The beams played over him as if entranced, turning his skin translucent, his hair a thousand strands of liquid ebony dipped in sapphires. "That first flight is something you never forget - the rush of air as your wings spread, the intoxicating freedom, the sheer joy that dances in the soul from being all that you're meant to be."
Caught by the unexpected poetry of his words, she almost didn't see Raphael sweeping in to land. Almost. Because nothing and no one else could ever hold her attention when her archangel was in the vicinity. Barely aware of Illium going quiet beside her, she watched the devastating grace of Raphael's descent. Illium was as beautiful as a gleaming blade, but Raphael . . . Raphael was magnificent.
"Time for me to go, I think."
She felt Illium leave, but it was a distant knowledge, her eyes drawn inextricably to the archangel who'd landed before her. "How was dinner?" she asked, staring into those cobalt eyes full of secrets it would take her an eternity to unravel.
"I survived."
It should've made her smile, but all she felt was a violent possessiveness - honed to the most lethal of edges by the knowledge that right now, the green-eyed female archangel could kill her without even a modicum of effort. "Did Michaela mark you?"
"Why don't you check?" He flared out his wings.
Feeling stupidly vulnerable all of a sudden, she turned to grip the balcony railing. "It's none of my business if you choose to spend time with a woman who'd eat your heart and dance gleefully on your grave if it would mean she gained power."
"Oh, but I disagree, Elena." Strong arms on either side of hers, big hands closing over the railing. "Tighten your wings."
It took her a minute to figure out how to do that neat tucking into the body thing she'd seen other angels do with their wings. "That's harder than it looks."
"Takes muscle control." Words spoken against her neck as he pressed closer, her wings trapped between them.
It hurt . . . with a pain that made her skin shimmer in hunger, in need. Every shift of his body, every brush of his lips, it went straight to her core. But she'd been fighting her attraction to Raphael since the moment she met him - it had never made her an easy target. "What do you disagree about?" she asked, her gaze drawn to the wings she could see sweeping through the lush black of the night, heading for those isolated aeries.
Angels going home.
A strange thought, a strange sensation, to stand here in their most secret place when they'd always been shadows in the darkness to her.
"I consider it very much your business if I choose to spend time with Michaela."
She heard a dangerous undertone in his words, one that curled her toes even as it pricked at her hunter instincts. "Do you?"
"As I consider it very much my business that your wings are dusted with blue."
Eyes widening, she pushed away from the railing. Or tried to. "Raphael, let me go so I can see."
"No."
She blew out a breath. "Stop it. Illium didn't mean anything by it."
"Angel dust is not an instinctive act . . . unless one is in the throes of sex." His fingers plucked at the tight peak of her nipple, a shockingly sensual reminder that the Archangel of New York had once lost control in bed. "It's very much premeditated."
"If he wasn't down there," she said, fighting to speak through the slamming rush of need, "I'd smack him. He's jerking your chain."
Lips on her ear, his hand moving to cup her breast with devastating intimacy. "Illium has always had a wild disregard for his life."
She couldn't help it. She curved her neck to give him better access. "And yet he's one of your Seven."
"I think in this case, he knows he's your favorite." Kisses along her neck, hot and sexual in a way that told her he had only one thing in mind.
Giving a laugh husky with need, she reached back to run the fingers of one hand over his cheek. "Do I have that much influence over you?"
The graze of teeth. "If your Bluebell is alive tomorrow, you'll have your answer." His body pressed into her, hot, hard, and demanding, as his hands slid under her clothing to close over her bare br**sts.
"Raphael."
Finally allowing her to turn, he crowded her against the railing. Instinct drove her to spread her wings over the metal that was all that kept her from falling to the rocks below.