“Yeah.” His face was as grim as she knew hers must be.
Ice wasn’t one of the Fal en, as she and Charron were. He was a mortal who’d been Changed, which meant he was photosensitive. Regardless of his overeager nature, he should’ve checked in before sunrise. Now he’d have to hunker down somewhere until dusk came or Char found him, whichever came first. A few sips of Char’s potent Fal en blood would afford a temporary immunity that would get the errant minion home.
“Have you considered,” she began, pul ing back, “that it might be wise to let him stew it out? How wil he learn, if he never faces the consequences?”
“Ice isn’t a child.”
Vash shot him a look that chal enged that pronouncement. Ice might be nearly as broad and tal as her mate, but he lacked Char’s steely control, leaving him as impulsive as a kid. “I think you’re projecting traits onto him that he doesn’t have.”
“And I think it’s about time you trusted my judgment.” His returning gaze dared her to keep pushing.
It was a look no one else would even consider giving her, and not just because of her rank. While it goaded her obstinacy, she appreciated her mate’s wil ingness to confront her when he felt strongly about something. It was his ability to separate how he treated her as a superior officer and how he treated her as a woman that first stirred deeper feelings in her, during a time when the humanity she’d been sent to observe had begun to spread like a stain inside her.
She couldn’t pinpoint when her feelings for him had deepened. One day, Charron had been just another Watcher angel like her, one of the seraphim sent to earth to report on man’s progress to the Creator. The next, his smile had taken her breath away, and the sight of his powerful y graceful body had caused places low in her bel y to clench. His gilded beauty—his gold-and-cream-colored wings, his tawny skin and hair, and his piercing, flame blue eyes—had morphed from being a mere testament to the skil of the Creator to being an irresistible lure to her newly awakened feminine hunger.
Hiding her new awareness of him had been torturous, but she’d done it for a time, embarrassed by her mortal weakness and unwil ing to taint him with it. When he’d succeeded in cornering her, then seducing her, he’d taken her with white-hot determination, and she had fal en from grace into his arms with ful awareness of the consequences. She hadn’t shed a tear or made a sound when the avenging Sentinel angels had severed the wings from her back, turning her into the Fal en bloodsucker she was today. She had, however, begged and pleaded for mercy for Charron, and she’d cried the sobs of the heartbroken when they’d stripped him of his gorgeous wings, too.
His touch on her face brought her out of her memories, returning her to the present and the man whose eyes were now the gleaming amber of a soul ess vampire. “Where do you go,” he asked softly, “when you drift away from me like that?”
Her mouth curved on one side. “I was tel ing myself how stupid it is to be irritated by your compassion and desire to mentor when I fel in love with you for those very traits. Among many others.”
Char fisted his hand in her long hair, bringing the crimson strands to his lips. “I remember you in flight, Vashti. When I close my eyes, I can stil see you with the sun at your back, its light shining off your emerald feathers. You were a jewel to me, with your ruby hair and sapphire eyes. I ached whenever I saw you. The need to touch you, taste you, push inside you was a physical pain.”
“Poetry, my love?” she teased, although the levity in her tone was marred by the huskiness of deep emotion. He knew her so wel . Read her thoughts so easily. He was her other half, the best part of her. While she was temperamental and capricious, he was levelheaded and constant.
When she was impatient and easily frustrated, he was reassuring and forward thinking.
“You are far more valuable and desirable to me now than you were then.” His forehead dropped lightly to hers. “Because now you’re mine. Total y and completely. As I am yours. With al my faults and traits that annoy you.”
Catching him with a hand at his nape, she took his mouth in a deep, lush kiss that curled her toes and quickened her breathing.
“I love you.” The words were spoken against his lips, her hands clutching him with the strength of al the joy inside her. It was too much sometimes, overflowing and clogging her throat with tears of gratitude. She was embarrassed by the strength of her feelings for her mate. He was in her thoughts at nearly every waking moment and many of her sleeping ones as wel .
“I love you, my dearest Vashti.” He crushed her naked body to him. “I know you’ve given me considerable leeway with Ice, against your better judgment. I think it’s time I repaid you by listening to your counsel and reining him back.”
She adored that about him, too, his sense of fairness and ability to bend when appropriate. “You deal with him, I’l deal with Torque’s problem, and tonight we’l drop off the map for a couple days. We’ve both been working hard lately. We’ve earned a break.”
Wrapping his hand gently around her throat, he smiled. Eyes bright with sensual promise and affection, he murmured, “With an incentive like that, I’l make damn sure I’m home early.”
“We’l see how cooperative Ice is with that. He might have his ass hidden in the most out-of-the-fucking-way place imaginable.”
He arched a chastising brow for her ribbing, but vowed, “Nothing could keep me away.”
“Better not.” She turned away and wiggled her ass at him. “Neither of you wants me hunting you down…”
By noon, Vashti was sashaying into Syre’s office with a memento from her latest hunt in hand. The vampire leader wasn’t alone, but she felt no hesitation in interrupting. The woman with him was one of countless human females who’d caught Syre’s eye and lost it just as quickly. It didn’t matter if they were forewarned or not; they never believed he was completely unattainable until they experienced his dismissal firsthand. He was a passionate man, but physical enthusiasm was no sign of deeper interest. Syre had lost his wings for love, then he’d lost the woman he had given them up for.
“Syre.”
He glanced at her with the heavy-lidded gaze that drove women crazy. He stood with arms crossed and his hip canted into the short built-in bookcase behind his desk. Dressed in black tailored slacks and black silk tie paired with a crisp white dress shirt, he was both elegant and devastatingly attractive. His inky dark hair and warm, caramel-hued skin made him exotic in a way that was impossible to classify. Eastern European, some guessed. Syre had been favored once, much loved by the Creator. It was why, she believed, their fal had been punished so harshly—he’d had a very lofty perch to tumble from.
“Vashti,” he greeted, his voice as throaty and warm as whiskey. “Things go wel ?”
“Of course.”
The blonde who’d been overstaying her welcome shot daggers at Vash, as most of his lovers did. They mistook the connection between her and her superior officer as something far more than it was. Their relationship was personal and priceless, but it wasn’t intimate or romantic. Vash would give her life for Syre’s in an instant, but the love she bore him sprang only from respect, loyalty, and the knowledge that he would die as readily for her.
She gave the woman a sympathetic smile, but spoke bluntly, as was her way. “Don’t cal him; he’l cal you.”