Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(61)
Author: Nalini Singh

Janvier’s hand curved over her nape. “I could hold you for eternity.”

Closing her eyes on that bittersweet vow, Ashwini just lay wrapped in him, and when sleep came, she went into it warmer and safer than she’d ever been. Yet the darkness lapped at the edges of her mind, showing her things she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see. A vampire with skin a shade darker than her own and vivid black eyes, his razored black goatee paired with hair braided tight to his skull, used a whip on the white, white skin of a woman who screamed, welts rising over her breasts and her stomach.

Two strokes broke the skin, drew fat droplets of blood.

Yet when the vampire used the handle of the whip to violate her, the woman’s scream was that of orgasm. Heavy lidded in the aftermath, she begged for him to release her from her bonds. He laughed, gave her what she wanted . . . and she crawled to abase herself at his feet, begging to pleasure him.

“Master, please.”

Laughing again, he put his booted foot on her shoulder and pushed her to the floor, where he shifted his foot to her throat and held her down while he kissed a golden-skinned girl with ripe young breasts and innocence in her eyes. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen and she wore only her skin and a fine gold chain around her hips. Closing his hand around her throat, the black-eyed man began to squeeze.

The girl’s face went pink, then red, her eyes bloodshot. When she scrabbled at his arm in a final panic, he smiled and kissed her and continued to squeeze. Too soon, she was limp in his arms and he used his grip on her throat to throw her onto the black-sheeted bed in the center of the room. Taking his foot off the woman on the floor, he made her unzip him, then used her mouth with a vicious lack of care before kicking her in the ribs.

She curled up into a ball, her eyes wet and worshipful, but he ignored her in favor of the limp, lifeless girl on the bed. Covering her with his body, he began to feed, his throat moving in long, deep drafts . . . and his hips in a way that said he wasn’t only feeding.

“No!” Coming awake on a scream, Ashwini grabbed Janvier’s phone where he’d left it on the bedside table. “Call Trace,” she said to Janvier, who’d woken when she did. “Find out what Khalil’s done to the girl.”

Janvier didn’t question her, just made the call. “Adele had already entered the room after security alerted her,” he said once the conversation ended, his features grim. “The girl is alive. Barely. Trace says she’s twenty and a regular at Masque, extremely popular because of the illusion she gives of being even younger.”

Heart thudding and skin damp, Ashwini nonetheless didn’t break away from Janvier’s side, his arm around her and her own around him. “Did she know she was about to be choked almost to death then sexually used when she went into that room with Khalil?”

“He has used her similarly before.” Janvier put his phone back, his movements jerky, his voice rough. “I have no argument with adults who choose to play on the edges of sexuality, but in times past, when the mores were different, Khalil targeted the true innocents.”

Ashwini caught a grinding anger she rarely heard in Janvier’s tone. “You knew someone he hurt.”

“A girl from the bayou, maybe fourteen and awestruck by the wealthy vampire who showed an interest in her. Six months after she ran away from home to be with him, the piece of shit returned her, hollow eyed, addicted to opium, and broken on the inside.” His voice shook. “A year after she drowned herself, her father told me that Khalil had said she was trash, worth a little amusement but not for keeping.”

“Bastard.” Eyes narrowing, she focused on what Janvier had remembered. “He used the word ‘trash’ specifically?”

“Or something very similar.” Janvier wrapped himself fully around her again. “But I wouldn’t put all my faith in that, cher. There are too many old vampires who see humans as disposable . . . But Khalil has the cruelty to do what was done to Felicity, and the wealth and experience to hide his deadly perversions. I will make sure he is constantly under watch.”

“You might not even need spies,” Ashwini muttered. “I seem to have a direct surveillance feed to his life, thanks to a simple brush of skin.” She banged her head against his breastbone. “I don’t mind sex dreams—but why can’t I have sex dreams that don’t make my blood run cold and my hand itch for a gun?”

Kneading the back of her neck, Janvier shifted slightly until he was on top of her. His kiss was wet, his body weight delicious, and his skin so hot her own blood ignited. “I’m not a sex dream, but perhaps this poor Cajun will do as a substitute?”

Ashwini pretended to consider it. “It’d work even better if you took off your T-shirt.”

Janvier complied. Straddling her, he said, “I’d say the same.” It was a dare.

Not about to break her streak of never once turning down one of his dares, Ashwini managed to strip off her shirt. It left her dressed in a demi cup bra in polka-dotted black with pretty yellow detailing along the edges. When he scowled and gently ran his finger over her scar, she said, “It doesn’t hurt and the vamp who did this is dead.”

Janvier’s scowl turned into a brutally satisfied smile. “Did you hear how his head bounced down the steps? Thud, splat, thud, splat.”

Laughing at a conversation only the two of them would ever have in bed, she reached back and unhooked the bra.

She wasn’t sure quite how it ended up off her. All she remembered was Janvier coming down over her, and then they were kissing and touching and whispering and driving each other to madness. He palmed her breasts with blunt possessiveness, bit and suckled. She ran her nails down his back and sucked a mark on his throat that made him rock his cock against the juncture of her thighs and call her a witch.

Laughter turning into a moan as he did something very naughty involving his fangs and her nipple, she bit down on his biceps. He retaliated by blowing a cool breath over her kiss-wet nipple, teasing her until she flipped their positions and did the same to him, the salt and maleness of him her new favorite dessert.

Her jeans stayed on. So did his.

But they were both sweaty and satisfied by the time they fell asleep again.

This time, she rested in peaceful warmth, the visions defeated for one night at least.

27

Ashwini woke to early morning birdsong tangled up in a man. She knew who he was at once—there was only one man with whom she’d ever been tangled. Easing gingerly away from his side, she looked at Janvier’s face to find him watching her. “Hey,” she said, the possessiveness in her veins a molten heat.