He appeared in the doorway, a being she'd once shot in terror. A being who now held her very soul in his hands. "You have need of me?"
"How much do you know?" she asked him. "About my family?"
"The facts. I had you fully investigated before the Cadre decided to hire you."
She'd known that, but now she met his gaze, walling up her suddenly vulnerable heart.
He could hurt her so much. "Have you taken more than the facts from me?"
"What do you think?"
"I think you're used to taking what you want."
"Yes." A slow nod.
Her heart threatened to break.
"But," he said, "I'm beginning to learn the value of that which is freely given." Walking across, he ran one hand over the acutely sensitive arch of her wing.
She shivered, caught by the magnetism of an archangel who'd never be anything close to mortal. And then he spoke, his eyes the infinite blue at the deepest part of the ocean, endless and pure beyond description. "I haven't taken your secrets, Elena."
Everything crashed open, emotion threatening to tow her under. "That's not the answer I expected."
Picking up a towel, he moved behind her and began to dry her wings with slow, soft strokes. Too late she realized that with her holding the towel to her front, her entire back was bare to his eyes.
"The color sweeps up your back." He slid her hair over one shoulder, pressing a kiss to the delicate skin of her nape.
She shivered, tried to lift her wings so she could slide the towel around her body.
"No." Stroking his hand down the curve of her spine and over her bu**ocks, he trailed his fingers back up.
She found herself rising on tiptoe to escape the delicious torment. "Raphael."
"Will you tell me your secrets?"
Her feet lowered to the ground on a ripple of pain and fear. Leaning back into him, she let her head fall against his chest. "Some secrets hurt too much."
He ran his hand down her wing again, but this time, the sensation felt more like comfort.
"We have eternity," he said, one arm coming around her neck from the front.
She felt her heart skip a beat at the certainty in his tone. "In that eternity, will you tell me your secrets?"
"I haven't shared my secrets for more sunrises than you can imagine." He tugged her even closer. "But until I met you, I'd never claimed a hunter, either."
There was something strange about scent-tracking through the Refuge. It wasn't only that she seemed to be developing the ability to track angels - that came and went, the new scents static in the back of her mind - it was that she could feel eyes on her every step of the way. "You'd think they'd never seen a hunter before," she muttered under her breath.
Illium, walking beside her, vivid interest in his own eyes, took her words for a question.
"Many of them haven't."
"I guess." She frowned as she caught a hint of a scent that tugged at her instincts, but it whispered away so fast, she couldn't pinpoint the elements that made up the whole.
"Maybe they're just checking you out." Bare-chested and with the lithe muscle of a man who knew how to use his body, he was, as Sara would put it, "deliciously bitable."
A wicked smile. "Your wings are trailing in the snow."
Glancing behind her, she saw the white tips encrusted with ice. "No wonder they feel numb." She pulled the wings back up, realizing they'd entered one of the main thoroughfares. It bustled with activity, but beneath it all was a hum of lethal anger. "Do all vampires know about this place?"
"No, only the most trusted."
Which made the assault on Sam all the more egregious. But of course, everyone knew the vampire had been nothing but a tool. It was the angel who mattered, the angel who'd be put to death in the most painful way known to immortals - and they'd had a long time to come up with methods of torture. Catching a minute hint of citrus, she angled left, to a section almost free of angelic eyes. "Any orange groves in this direction?"
"No. They're in Astaad's and Favashi's parts of the Refuge."
Chocolate. Oranges. Faint, so faint.
Going down on one knee, she brushed aside the snow with her bare hand, having learned that while she felt the cold, she was in no danger of frostbite.
"I could dig for you," Illium offered, crouching across from her, his forehead almost touching hers as he leaned in. One of his feathers floated to the ground, an exotic accent against the pristine white. "Should I?"
She shook her head. "I need to go down layer by layer, in case the snow trapped his - "
Her fingers scraped against something hard, colder than the snow. "Feels like a pendant or a coin." Brushing off the white flecks that melted at contact with her skin, she angled it to catch the light.
Her breath turned to ice in her chest.
"That's Lijuan's symbol." Illium's voice was low, hard, her laid-back escort replaced by the man who'd amputated his enemies' wings with clean efficiency.
"Yes." She'd never forget that kneeling angel with a deaths-head face as long as she lived. "What kind of an archangel uses that as her personal symbol?"
Illium didn't answer, and she hadn't really expected him to. Fighting her instinctive urge to throw the disturbing thing into the deepest crevice she could find, she brought the medallion to her nose, and drew in a long breath.
Bronze.
Iron.
Ice.
Oranges glazed in chocolate.
"The vampire touched this." Wanting no further contact with the artifact, she placed it in Illium's outstretched hand. "Let's go."