Angels of Darkness Read online

  Noel said nothing.

  “Very well.”

  “So romantic.”

  There was a black edge to the words, but Nimra didn’t take it personally. Like the wolf she called him, he might yet show her his teeth. Trust was a precious commodity, one that took time to develop. Patience was something Nimra had learned long ago. “Romance,” she said, turning to head back to the house, “is a matter of interpretation.”

  Nothing from the man at her side, not until they were behind the closed doors of her suite. “No matter what the interpretation,” he warned, his body held with a rigid control that told her he was on the finest of edges, “it’s not what I’m going to give you tonight.”

  Touching her fingers to his jaw, she allowed the desire, so heavy and drugging in her veins, to show on her face. “And it’s not what I need.” What she’d done to Amariyah had been just, but it had marked her as it always did. Tonight she needed to feel like a woman, not the inhuman monster Amariyah had named her.

  A strong hand gripped her wrist. “Sex for sex’s sake?”

  Noel’s anger, his pain, was a raw blade, cutting and tearing, but Nimra was made of sterner stuff. “If I wanted that, I would’ve accepted Christian into my bed long ago.”

  Ice blue turned to midnight as his hand tightened. All at once, her pulse was in her mouth, on her skin. “You hunger,” she whispered as her blood sang to the haunting kiss of this vampire’s touch.

  His gaze went to the pulse that thudded in her neck, his thumb rubbing over the beat in her wrist. “I haven’t fed from the vein in months.” It was a harsh admission. “I would rip out your throat.”

  “I’m immortal,” she reminded him when he released his grip on her wrist to curve his fingers around that throat. “You can’t hurt me.”

  A laugh that sounded like broken glass. “There are ways to hurt a woman that have nothing to do with anything so simple as pain.”

  And she knew. Understood what she had to do. Pulling away to walk into her dressing room, she returned with a long silk scarf. “Then I,” she said, handing him the strip of peacock blue, “will have to trust you.” In saying the words, she found her humanity—it was the woman who offered him this, not a being with a terrible gift.

  Noel’s hand clenched around the soft fabric. It was a symbol, nothing more, Nimra’s power more than enough to permit escape should she wish it. But that she’d given it to him meant she’d seen the broken pieces he didn’t want anyone to see . . . and still she looked at him with a woman’s lingering appreciation. “No bonds,” he said, letting the scarf float to the floor in a grace of blue. “Never any bonds.”

  “As you say, Noel.” Holding his gaze with the promise of her own, she reached up to the clasps on her shoulders, flicked them open. Her gown shimmered over her body to pool at her feet, knocking all the air out of him.

  She may have been petite, but she was lush curves and feminine invitation, the smooth brown of her skin interrupted only by a triangle of lace at the juncture of her thighs. Her breasts were full and heavy against her slender frame, her nipples dark and, at this moment, furled into tight buds. Spreading her wings in invitation, she waited.

  The choice was his.

  As you say, Noel.

  Such a simple statement. Such a powerful gift.

  Reaching out, he cupped the erotic weight of one breast, had the satisfaction of feeling a tremor race across her skin. It awakened the part of him that had gone into numb slumber when his abusers had turned him into a piece of meat, crushed and broken. Tonight, that part, the one that had made him an adventurer who’d conquered mountains, caused women to sigh in pleasure, roared to the surface.

  It was instinct to thrust his hand into her hair, to slant his mouth over her own, to demand entrance. She opened to him, dark and hot and sweet, her power a lick against his senses as lusciously female as the body under his touch. Tucking her closer, he slid his hand up from her breast to grip her jaw, holding her in place as he explored every inch of that mouth he’d dreamed of tasting for longer than she knew.

  He wanted to move slow, to map every curve and every pleasure point, but her pulse, it beat a seductive tattoo against his senses, inviting him to take that which he hadn’t taken for months. Circling his hand around to her neck, he rubbed his thumb over the beating invitation of her. Her hands clenched on his waist, but she made no demur when he began to kiss his way down to the spot that was a siren song to the vampirism that was as much a part of him as his desire for her.

  Lips against his ear. “Sip from me, Noel. It is a gift given freely.”

  He’d never been a man who fed indiscriminately. When he hadn’t had a lover, he’d turned to friends, for the feeding didn’t need to be a sexual thing. Since the attack, he hadn’t been able to stand being that intimate with another being. Even now, with this woman who made him hunger in every way, and though his erection was a hard ridge in his pants, he said, “I can’t make it pleasurable.” Not because he’d lost the ability, but because he wasn’t ready for the connection forged by the sexual ecstasy his kiss could bestow . . . the vulnerability that came with allowing another being any kind of inroad into him.

  She arched her neck in silent response.

  His blood pounding in time to her own, he slid his arms around her, his fingers brushing her wings as he sucked a kiss over the spot before piercing the delicate skin with his fangs. Her blood was an erotic rush against his senses, the punch of power staggering. The hunger in him, the darkness that had turned into a furious rage during the events at the Refuge, rose to the surface, glorying in the taste of her. She saturated his senses, drowned him in sensation, and in spite of his earlier words, he was male enough to want her to feel the same.

  Acting on naked instinct, he pumped pleasure into her system as he took blood from hers, felt her body arch, shudder—he hadn’t held anything back, hadn’t stopped with simple arousal. She came apart in his arms, her blood earthy with the flavor of her desire. Drugged to raw pleasure, he found he’d thrust his thigh between her own, splayed his hands on her back, his fingers touching the sensitive inner edges of her wings, her breasts crushed against his chest.

  But as he halted in his gluttony to lick the small wounds closed, he discovered he didn’t flinch at having let her so near—and not only on the physical level. Perhaps it was because she’d ceded him the control he needed . . . or perhaps it was simply because she was Nimra.

  Nimra lay boneless in Noel’s arms, conscious of him licking at the skin of her neck to heal the marks caused by his fangs. She didn’t tell him not to worry—the puncture site would’ve healed on its own in minutes—because it was an unexpected pleasure to know he wanted to care for her, this man who had left her body quivering in ecstasy unlike any she had ever before felt, even as his own flesh strained hard and unsatiated against her abdomen.

  When he nuzzled at her before raising his head, the affection was another act she hadn’t expected, a sign of the man hidden beyond the shadows of nightmare. As she luxuriated in the feeling, he stroked one hand down the center of her back, just touching the sensitive edges where her wings grew out of her back. “Does that feel good?” he murmured, a difference to him that made her skin tighten over her flesh, her thighs clench on the rough intrusion of his own.

  “Yes.” No angel allowed anyone but a trusted lover to caress her in such a fashion. “Are you not afraid?” she asked, echoes of her own past sliding oily and dark through the aftershocks of pleasure. “You saw what I did to Amariyah.”

  Noel continued with the exquisite delicacy of his caresses. “You did what you did with thought and care. You aren’t a capricious woman.”

  She’d given him her blood, her body, but his words, they were as precious. “I’m pleased you see me in such a way.” It was strange to be standing here unclothed, in the arms of a man who continued to wear his armor of cotton and denim—and yet she was, if not content, then oddly at peace.

  Then Noel spoke, and his words carr
ied within them the promise of splintering the peace to nothingness. “Will you tell me about your power?”

  CHAPTER 8

  What would you say if I told you it was a secret for me to keep?”

  No change in his expression. “I’m patient.”

  Laughing at the arrogance even as something very old in her grew still, quiet, she went to touch her fingers to his face, dropped her hand midway. “I would show you, Noel, but no.” It would be a violation for this man who’d had all choice stripped from him by the monsters who had stained the Refuge with their crimes, regardless of the fact that he’d feel no pain, only the same bone-melting pleasure he’d lavished on her. “I give back,” she whispered. “I give back what was given unto others.”

  “Pleasure for pleasure,” Noel said, understanding at once. “Pain for pain.”

  A solemn nod. “It is not the act itself, but the intent behind it that determines what someone will feel when I use my power.”

  It made him change his hold, shift her into the protection of his body. Yes, she was a powerful angel, but whatever it was her gift demanded from her, it haunted her. “That’s why Nazarach leaves you alone.” The other angel was renowned for his viciousness.

  Nimra’s voice when it came, was hard. “We had a meeting when I first took over this territory. He thought to control me. He has never returned to my lands.”

  Noel felt his lips curve in a feral smile. “Good.”

  Noel’s body continued to hum with the taste of Nimra the next day. Her blood held such power that he knew he wouldn’t need to feed again for a week . . . though there were different kinds of need, he thought, as he began to go through the file Nimra had sent him that morning. It was a list of people she knew had had access to Midnight and who might wish her harm.

  However, from what Noel understood of the people on the list—and what he was able to learn from Dmitri when he called the leader of Raphael’s Seven—none of them would have left anything to chance, especially given how difficult Midnight was to source. The fact that Nimra’s cat had died, betraying the game, spoke of an amateur. Of course, there was also the old adage that poison was a woman’s weapon.

  Amariyah had convinced him with her confusion, and Asirani—no matter her unrequited feelings for Christian—seemed loyal. But Noel wasn’t about to write her off without further investigation. Knowing the vampire had a habit of coming in early to the small office she had on the lower floor, he decided to see if he could track her down. He was in the corridor leading to her office when he heard whispering, low and furious. It was instinct to soften his footsteps.

  “. . . just listen.” Soft, feminine. Asirani.

  “It will change nothing.” Christian’s stiff tones. “I don’t wish to hurt you, but I have no such feelings for you.”

  “She’s never going to look at you the way you want.” Not bitter, almost . . . sad.

  “That is none of your concern.”

  “Of course it is. She might be our lady, but she’s also my friend.” An exhale that telegraphed frustration. “She plays with Noel, but it’s because he’s a vampire. There’s no chance of a serious relationship.”

  “I will be here when she is ready for that relationship.”

  Noel stepped forward until he could see the pair reflected in the antique mirror on the other side of the corridor. Asirani, striking in a sheath of emerald green, her hair swept up off her neck, was shaking her head, her expression solemn, while black-garbed Christian did his impression of a Roman statue. When the female vampire turned, as if to enter her office, Noel retraced his steps away from the couple.

  Asirani’s view of his relationship with Nimra was hardly news. Many angels took vampiric lovers, but long-term relationships were far rarer. The fact that vampires and angels couldn’t have children together was one of the most powerful reasons why. But regardless of what Asirani believed, Nimra didn’t play games. For now, she was Noel’s. As for the future—his first priority was to ensure her safety.

  That thought had him circling back to Asirani.

  There had been unhidden care in her tone when she’d spoken of Nimra, a distinct vein of empathy. Disappointment, too, along with a touch of anger—both directed at Christian, but not even an undertone of the kind of resentment she’d need to feel to want Nimra dead. All of which left him with no viable suspects.

  Christian could be a prick but he’d swallowed his antagonism and cooperated with Noel when it came to Nimra’s interests. Exeter had spent centuries by her side, Fen decades. He couldn’t see either man developing such a deep hatred for her without her being aware of the change. As for the two older servants, quite aside from all else, they had proven quietly devoted.

  Frowning, he headed out into the breaking day in search of Nimra—because there was one thing they hadn’t considered, and it was the very thing that might hold the answer. He half expected to find her beside Mimosa’s grave, but midway to the wild gardens where her pet was buried, something made him look up . . . and what he saw stole his breath.

  She was stunning against the slate gray sky streaked with the golds, oranges, and pinks of dawn, her wings backlit with soft fire, her body shown to lithe perfection in the layered gown of fine bronze silk that the wind kissed to her skin. Leaning against the smooth trunk of a young magnolia, he indulged in the beauty of her. Seeing her wings spread to their greatest width, her hair whipping off her face as she glided on the air currents reminded him of the Refuge, the remote city that had been his home for so long.

  He’d been placed in the angelic stronghold after completing his hundred-year Contract, when he’d chosen to remain in service to Raphael. There, he’d been part of the guard that helped maintain the archangel’s holdings in the Refuge, as well as watching over the vulnerable who were the reason for the existence of the hidden mountain city. However, he’d soon been drafted into a roaming squad that took care of tasks all over the world.

  New York, where Raphael had his Tower, had been a wonder to a lad who’d come out of the untamed emptiness of the moors. With its soaring buildings and streets buzzing with humanity, he’d been at once overwhelmed and exhilarated. Kinshasa had stirred the explorer’s soul that lived within him, the part that had led him to dare the challenge of vampirism in the first place. Paris, Beirut, Liechtenstein, Belize, each place had spoken to him in a different way . . . but none had sung the soft, sultry song that Nimra’s territory whispered to his soul.

  A caress of jewel-dusted wings against the painted sky, cutting across the air with breathless ease. His heart squeezed, and he wondered if she knew he watched her, if she flew for him. A fraction of an instant later, he caught a glimpse of another set of wings and his mood turned black.

  Christian flew to cut under and around Nimra, as if in invitation to dance. His wingspan was larger than hers, his style of flight less graceful, more aggressive. Nimra didn’t respond to the invitation, but neither did she land. Instead, as Noel watched, the two angels flew in the same wide sky, cutting across each other’s paths on occasion, and sometimes seeming to time their turns and dives to a hairbreadth so as to just miss one another.

  Anger simmered through his veins.

  It wasn’t cold and tight and hard as it had been for so long, but hot, spiked with a raw masculine jealousy. He had no wings, would never be able to follow Nimra onto that playing field. Gritting his teeth, he folded his arms and continued to keep watch. Maybe he couldn’t follow, but if Christian thought that gave him the advantage, he didn’t know Noel.

  Troubled to a depth she hadn’t been for decades, since the day she learned of Eitriel’s betrayal, Nimra had come to seek solace in the skies. She’d found no answers in the endless sweep of dawn, and now discovered she was being watched by the very same eyes that had caused her disquiet. It was a compulsion to fly for him, to show him her power, her strength.

  Noel had taken only her blood, not her body, in the dark heat of the night’s intimacy, and yet he’d touched her too deep all the
same. She’d been ready to offer surcease, find some peace for herself. But somehow, he’d wrapped a wolf-strong tendril around her very heart. Nimra wasn’t certain she appreciated the vulnerability. It had nothing to do with the scars left by Eitriel, and everything to do with the strength of the draw she felt toward the vampire coming ever closer as she flew in to land.

  “Good morning, Noel,” she said, folding back her wings as her feet touched the earth.

  In answer, he strode across the ground, his strides eating up the distance. And then he kissed her. Hot and hard and all consuming, his lips a burn against her own, his jaw rough against her skin. “You are mine,” he said when he finally allowed her to breathe, his thumbs rubbing over her cheekbones. “I don’t share.” A possessive statement from the core of the man he was, the veneer of civilization stripped away.

  The primal intensity of him was a blaze against her senses, but she coated her voice in ice. “Do you think I would betray you?”

  “No, Nimra. But if that popinjay doesn’t stop flirting with you, blood will be spilled.”

  Pushing off his hands, she took a step back. “As the ruler of this territory I must deal with many men.” If Noel believed he had the right to put limits on her, then he was not the man she’d thought him to be.

  “Most of those men don’t want to sleep with you,” he said in blunt rebuttal. “I reserve the right to introduce my fist to the faces of the ones who do.”

  Her lips threatened to tug upward. Raw and open and real, this indication of possession was something she could accept. It spoke not of a grab for power, but a territorial display. And Nimra was old enough not to expect a vampire of Noel’s age to act in a more modern fashion. “No bloodshed,” she said, leaning forward to cup his cheek, claim his mouth with a soft kiss. “Christian is a useful member of my court.”