Angel’s Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(36)
Author: Nalini Singh

"Maybe it was a bad angle," she murmured. "Did I hit a major artery or something?" She knew all about vampire biology, but angels were another matter altogether. "Enough," she said when he offered her another bite.

He put down the fork. "You’ll have to ask Raphael those questions-if you still have your tongue, of course." Getting up, he disappeared a second time, returning with a bottle of water.

After drinking and managing not to dribble, she looked at him again. Still darkly sexy, still an inch away from ripping out her throat. "Thanks."

His answer was to lay one finger against the pulse in her neck. "So strong, rich and sweetly potent. I look forward to my own dinner-too bad it’s not you."

Then he was gone.

Elena watched the door with absolute focus as she began twisting in her chair, determined to get out of the ropes. Dmitri was protecting her against the others right now, but who knew how long that would last.

The only problem was, the ropes had been tied by an apparent master.

But with a master of the art, all pain is pleasure.

Bondage, that figured. Dmitri probably liked to tie his women up in all sorts of interesting positions. Her face flushed. She didn’t want him-not when he wasn’t throwing out that damn scent like a lure. But she melted the instant he turned on that talent of his.

She didn’t like melting against her own will.

Not even for an archangel.

Her jaw clenched at the memory of what had taken place in Raphael’s office. Now that she’d shot him, she felt a bit better about the whole incident. Like she’d evened the score. Of course, he probably took a dimmer view of the whole affair. He’d only tried to get her in bed-and try as she might to convince herself otherwise, she’d enjoyed the seduction . . . at least until it got to the mind-control part. In return, she might’ve crippled him.

Dear God, she’d destroyed half his wing.

Her eyes smarted and she realized she was horrifically close to tears. Blinking rapidly, she banished the unwelcome emotion. Hunters didn’t cry. Not even for an archangel. But-what if he didn’t recover?

Her guilt twisted into a heavy knot in her stomach, getting tighter and hotter and more destructive with every passing second. She had to get to him, see for herself how he was doing. "No hope in hell," she muttered, knowing that if she’d been in Dmitri’s position, she’d have done the exact same thing in isolating the possible threat.

Arms straining and calf muscles aching, she gave up trying to undo the bonds and relaxed into the chair. She wasn’t going to be able to sleep but she could try to rest enough that when Raphael woke and the showdown began, she’d be ready. But just as her muscles began to loosen, she remembered the gaping hole in her apartment wall. "Dmitri!"

He appeared a minute later and, from the look on his face, he was in no way pleased. "You called, my lady?" Had the words been any sharper, they would’ve drawn blood.

Blood.

Was she trying to get herself killed? "I interrupted your . . . dinner. I’m sorry."

He smiled, revealing no hint of the fangs she knew were there. "Are you offering yourself in reparation?"

"I want to know about my apartment-the wall, did you close it off?"

"Why should we?" He shrugged and turned away. "It’s only a human dwelling."

"You piece of-"

He snapped around, face different, lethal, unearthly. "I’m hungry, Elena. Don’t make me break my word to Raphael."

"You wouldn’t."

"Push me and I will. I’ll get punished, but you’ll still be dead." Then he was gone.

Leaving her alone with a racing heartbeat and a lancing pain in her heart. Her home, her haven, her damn nest was being destroyed right this second by the wind, dust, and rain if the heavens opened. It made her want to curl up and bawl her eyes out.

It wasn’t the individual things in the apartment that she worried about, it was the place itself. Home. She hadn’t had one for a very long time-after her father had thrown her out, she’d been forced to bunk permanently at Guild Academy. There was nothing wrong with the facility, but it wasn’t home. Then she and Sara had finished their training and shared an apartment for a while. That had been a home, a welcome one, but it hadn’t been hers. But the apartment, it was hers in every way.

A single tear streaked down her face. "I’m sorry," she said, telling herself she was talking to her ruined home. But the truth was, she was speaking to an archangel. "I never meant to hurt you."

A cool sea breeze in her mind. Then why were you carrying a gun?

Chapter 20

Elena went utterly quiet, much as she imagined a small mouse might in front of a very big, very bad cat with large teeth. "Raphael?" she whispered, though she knew that fresh, clean, rainy scent as well as her own. And that was something that made no sense at all-how could he have a scent inside her head?

Go to sleep, Elena. Your thinking is keeping me awake.

She took a deep breath. "How are you-the injury?"

Are you bound?

"Yes." She waited for an answer to her own question.

Good. I wouldn’t want you disappearing before we had a chance to talk about your penchant for weaponry.

Then the sense of him was gone from her head. She whispered his name again, but knew he was no longer listening. Her guilt soon morphed into anger. The bastard-he could’ve had her released, but he’d left her tied up. Her wrists were sore, her back hurt from the damn chair, and-"And he’s got a right to be pissed." Raphael had terrified her on that ledge tonight, but he hadn’t actually harmed her. Meanwhile, she’d shot him. If the man was furious, he had reason. That didn’t mean she had to like it.

And there was still the matter of his compelling her to have sex.

Humiliating as it was, she’d told him the truth tonight-if he’d only waited, it was highly likely she’d have crawled all over him voluntarily at the first opportunity.

Her cheeks burned. She was going to have Idiot tattooed on her forehead as soon as she got out of here. From the start she’d told herself to be wary, to never forget that she was nothing but a throwaway source of entertainment for Raphael. Apparently that didn’t matter to her hormones.

The archangel made her burn.

The worst thing was, she couldn’t blame the fascination on lust alone. Raphael was far too intriguing a male for anything that simple. But tonight, tonight he hadn’t been right. Or maybe, another part of her whispered, he had been-what if the stranger she’d shot had been the real Raphael . . . the Archangel of New York, a creature capable of torturing another being until that person was nothing but a screaming, destroyed piece of monstrous art.