Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(51)
Author: Nalini Singh

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Seeing the water sluicing off Naasir’s muscular body, Andromeda lost her mind for a second. Only when the upper curve of his buttocks was exposed did she squeak, and, placing a hand on the taut strength of his arm, hauled him back down. “You’re naked!” she reminded him.

He shrugged, looking at her with silver eyes that glowed white-hot. “I don’t care.”

“Well, I do.” Her heart was still racing at the sight of him. He was built like the most beautiful statue she’d ever seen, only he was flesh and blood.

“I’m cold. I want to be out.”

She’d forgotten the cold, she’d been having so much fun with him. “Oh.” Disappointment a lead weight in her stomach, she closed her eyes. “You can get out.”

He didn’t move. “Why did you laugh?”

“What?” Her eyes flicked open at his harsh tone.

Seeing the anger he made no effort to hide, she belatedly realized he’d taken her laughter in the wrong way. “My parents are incapable of being shocked,” she admitted with a shrug that hid the echoes of childhood hurt. “Ever.”

Expression altering to disbelieving fascination, Naasir leaned in close. “Even by me?”

“Even by you,” she assured him. “If there is a debauched thing on this earth, they’ve indulged in it.” Sex, brutal violence, rare narcotic substances, that was Lailah and Cato’s way of life, their compulsive desire to do more, feel more, endless. “They’ll probably proposition you.”

Frown lines on his forehead. “But I would be with you.”

“They have no boundaries.” She thought of the young angel with whom she’d been in puppy love, of how she’d walked into the great living room one day to find him and her mother naked and in the midst of copulating. Her father had been sitting in an armchair watching while a male vampire sucked on his erect penis.

Her gorge rising, Andromeda had to go under the water to wash off the memory. Some things no child should ever have to see. The awful thing was that the nauseating incident had been far from the first or the only one. Andromeda had too many such images stored in her mind, images that she resolutely refused to think about, but that would not fade.

Taking position beside Naasir again after wiping the water off her face with one hand, she went too close. So close that her arm pressed into his and her wing touched his back . . . but he didn’t push her away, instead looking at her with those wild eyes that were suddenly painfully incisive.

“I will not rut with your parents.” A solemn promise. “That would hurt you and I will not hurt you.”

Her eyes stung, her throat thick. She couldn’t speak for a long time. When she did, her voice came out husky. “The dinner is technically in my honor. It’s mandatory for those of my blood to return home on our four-hundredth birthday.”

She knew she should tell him she wouldn’t leave again for five hundred years, but the words stuck in her chest, hard and taunting. “I thought you’d make the dinner more fun.”

Naasir’s cheeks creased, his eyes glinting. “We’ll have fun,” he promised. “I’ll bring your parents a present.”

Her instincts shouted an alert. “Ah, Naasir—”

Laughing at her dubious tone, he pulled himself up and out of the water without warning. She saw the hard curve of his buttocks, the strong muscle of his thighs, the sleek strength of him as he stood on the bank and shook himself dry like a big cat. His silver hair glittered even in the darkness.

He began to turn toward her.

Skin so hot it seared her from the inside out, she forced herself to shut her eyes and go under the icy water, staying there until she was no longer in danger of combusting. When she came back up, she saw Naasir had pulled on his wet pants. He didn’t look happy about it, though. Nostrils flaring, he picked up a couple of things he must’ve left on the ground and slid them back into his pockets, then examined his T-shirt and finally started to pull it on, no doubt figuring it’d dry faster on his body.

“I won’t look,” he told her, keeping his eyes scrupulously on the trees in front of him.

Trusting him, she got out of the water and found her things. She stared at her panties, belatedly realizing he must’ve handled them earlier. Also remembering that he’d had no underwear. Skin hot again and breasts aching, she pulled on her heavily damp tunic. It hit her several inches below her butt, saving her modesty.

“I don’t want to wear the rest,” she admitted aloud.

Naasir glanced over, taking her words as permission. “Don’t. I’ll carry your things since you have the sword, and we can dry them in the sun after dawn.”