Archangel's Blade

25

Her nails dug into the back of his nape. “A whip?”

“A velvet whip,” he murmured, kissing his way up over her jaw, but not down her throat. She wasn’t ready for that yet. “I’ll stroke it so soft and easy over your skin, cause only the most exquisite pleasure-pain.”

Deep green eyes filled with a sense of age, of knowledge no mortal should possess. “You’ve always been like this, haven’t you?”

Fascinated by the enigma of her, he held that haunting gaze even as he stroked and petted her, getting her used to his touch, his body. “Like what?”

“Ready to mix a little pain with your pleasure.” She made a deep sound in the back of her throat as he rubbed his thumb over her nipple. “It doesn’t have anything to do with your vampirism.” Her words awakened another memory, wrenching him back to a past that no longer seemed content to remain buried.

“Dmitri . . .” A nervous tremor in the voice of the naked woman laid out like a sacrifice before him, her breasts taut and high, her hips wide, her body all soft curves and temptation—and her hands tied to the posts of the bed he’d carved knowing she’d share it with him.

“Shh.” Lying down fully clothed beside her, he gentled her, his hand on her breast, his fingers tugging at her nipple with sensual knowledge gleaned over their courtship and marriage. “I’d never hurt you.”

“I know.” The absolute confidence of her statement would have made him hers if she hadn’t already owned his soul. “I just . . . No one ever talks about such things.”

Moving his hand down to push between her thighs, to discover her folds plump and wet for him, he touched her with leisurely strokes, felt her hips begin to rise and fall for him. “Are you telling me,” he said, “that you discuss our bedroom play with the other wives?”

Red filled her cheeks, but she continued to move against his hand, as generous with her sensuality as she was with her heart. “Of course not. I’m not sure anyone would believe me about you.”

He laughed and kissed her, this woman who was willing to indulge his need to play games that might well have driven another woman to fainting hysterics. Of course, he’d never wanted to play such games with anyone else. Only Ingrede.

Tangling his tongue with hers, he raised his hand from between her thighs and laid a soft, playful slap on that same delicate flesh. She whimpered . . . raised her hips for more. He gave it to her. Gave her everything. Because while she might have been the one with her hands tied, he was the slave.

Her slave.

“Yes,” he said, answering Honor’s question even as he curved his hand over her thigh. “The vampirism simply allowed me to refine it, indulge it to the nth degree.” As the seasons changed, as the ruin of the cabin disappeared into the mists of time, the sexual playfulness had become touched with a deep vein of cruelty.

His bedmates went home with whip marks more often than not and came back begging for more. Sometimes he tortured them in bed because it pleased him. Sometimes he did it because it amused him. But never did he do it because it gave him the same gut-clenching pleasure as when he’d tied up his wife in their simple bed in a cottage on a forgotten field where the wildflowers now bloomed.

“What was her name?” Honor sat up, raw emotion burning her throat at the terrible bleakness she’d glimpsed. “The woman who puts that look in your eyes?”

“Ingrede.” Nothing in his voice, and that was an answer in itself. “We have to get going.”

She clambered back into her own seat, reaching up to redo her ponytail. “Ingrede,” she said, unable to drop the subject, “she was your wife, wasn’t she?”

He stared out of the now-clear windscreen, but whatever he saw had nothing to do with the verdant grass beyond. “Yes.” Then, when she thought he’d add nothing else, he said, “My wife . . . and mortal.”

Dmitri’s business with Sorrow took only a few minutes, and Honor had the feeling he was checking up on the young woman more than anything else. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said to Sorrow when Dmitri stepped aside to speak to Venom. “About the self-defense lessons.”

“I can wait.” Sorrow’s expression was fierce, her eyes vivid with a ring of brilliant green. “I hope you find each and every one of the bastards who hurt you and make them scream.”

Back in the car, she turned to the vampire beside her—the vampire who had once had a wife. A wife he’d loved with such devotion that he protected her memory with vicious strength even now. His expression had shuttered the instant after he spoke of Ingrede’s mortality. It was clear he regretted telling her even that much.

His loyalty . . . it staggered her.

Honor had never been loved like that, never even believed it possible. “Venom found something?” she said, conscious he’d give her nothing more about Ingrede. Not now.

“The first one of the vampires Jewel named,” he said, his tone once again that of the most sophisticated of creatures, “has a long-term male lover and has never shown any interest in women.” A shake of his head that made his hair gleam blue-black in the piercing sunlight. “I’m not sure how that slipped past me, but quite aside from that, the vampire is far too ‘bourgeois,’ as Valeria would’ve put it, to have been offered an invitation.”

“Translation: he’s happy with his lover and doesn’t need to abuse someone else to beat the boredom.”

Dmitri gave a clipped nod. “The second individual did nothing of note while under surveillance, but from what I know of his habits, he may well have been involved. I’ve sent Illium to question him.”

“Illium seems far too pretty to be dangerous.” Dmitri’s male beauty, by contrast, was a darker, edgier thing.

“No one ever expects him to take out a blade and slice off their balls,” he said with lethal amusement in his tone as he drove them toward the George Washington Bridge. “He does it with such grace, too.”

Honor wasn’t shocked, because while what she’d said was true, she’d long ago learned that appearances could be deceptive. “Did you cultivate your reputation on purpose?”

He laughed and it was a thickness of fur across her breasts, her body seeming to have become more sensitized to the scent lure. “I was too busy soaking battlefields in blood and fucking women who were drawn to violence to cultivate anything.”

Honor didn’t even consider letting it go, because as of this morning, they belonged to each other, even if that belonging would be a fleeting thing. “You’re so angry.” Honed and blindingly sharp, that anger was a cold, cold thing. “Tell me why.”

A long, still silence. “My memories are my penance, Honor. To share them is pointless.”

“I’m never going to be an ornament, or a bedmate content to stay in that sphere.” She couldn’t be, not when the depth of her draw toward him was nothing sensible, nothing rational.

“And I,” he said, reaching out to grip her thigh, “am never going to be—”

“—manageable,” she interrupted in a sudden burst of humor. “I guess I can’t say I didn’t know that going in.”

Dmitri gave her the strangest look as they stopped for a red light. “Why choose that word?”

“It seemed to fit.” Realizing there was no way he’d reveal any vulnerability until he trusted her on a level it would take time to develop, she decided to return to their earlier topic of discussion. “What about the third vampire?”

Taking his eyes off her after another probing look, he eased the Ferrari onto the bridge. “That’s who we’re going to see—she’s out in Stamford,” he said, explaining why they were heading back into Manhattan. “It appears she’s been bunkered down in her home for at least five days. Been feeding off blood junkies who come to her door.”

“I don’t know that term.” Though she’d heard “vamp-whore” used to describe those who were addicted to the kiss of a vampire.

“Blood junkies come in pairs,” Dmitri explained. “The only way they can get aroused enough to have sex is if a vampire feeds from either one or both in turn. So in effect it’s a threesome—only a subset of the Made finds this even mildly attractive.”

Honor nodded. “The majority of mortals don’t come close to the beauty bestowed by vampirism.”

“The deal breaker is that the vampire is relegated to being a conduit, not the center.”

No old vampire would enjoy that. “The woman we’re going to see—”

“Jiana. She’s not known to be into the junkie scene, but there’s no doubt she’s been indulging lately,” he said, making his way to the Bronx once they cleared the bridge. “Look in the dashboard.”

Reaching forward, she opened the compartment to reveal an envelope. Inside were a number of large, glossy black-and-white photographs. “When were these taken?”

“Early this morning.”

The first one was of a fresh-faced twosome, blond and scrubbed, straight out of a casting call for the “All-American Couple”—the only thing missing was the dog. Hand in hand, they walked up the steps of a gracious old home, wisteria falling from the balconies and the world swathed in black.

The next shot was of the two leaving the house. Both were flushed, their lips swollen, hair messed up—the man’s shirt was buttoned wrong while the woman was missing her thin floral scarf. “Is this something a wife does for her husband and vice versa?”

“They have their own subculture,” Dmitri told her. “Marry within it. Makes everything go smoother.”

Putting away the photos, she tried to get her head around the idea as Dmitri drove them out of the Bronx into Westchester and toward Connecticut. It was as they were passing from Greenwich into Stamford that she remembered something she’d meant to mention about another strange subculture. “I had an e-mail from Detective Santiago,” she said, realizing she felt no dread in spite of the fact that she’d been held and brutalized a bare hour outside of this city—the area was so different as to be on another planet. “They’ve already arrested someone for the murder yesterday morning.”

“The victim’s boyfriend and another member of the club,” Dmitri said. “I made it a point to keep an eye on the situation.”

Honor knew that that subculture would soon be getting a visit from the scary kind of vampire. “Old-fashioned sex and jealousy, according to Santiago.” All three had been involved in a sexual relationship with each other.

“And a good dose of stupidity.” With that pitiless statement, he turned in through a set of open gates that fronted a long, winding drive lined with mature sycamores. The Ferrari was almost to the door when it opened to disgorge another couple. Honor winced.

Catching it, Dmitri laughed. “Appetites don’t decrease with age, Honor. You should know that.”

“It’s easier to accept with vampires,” she murmured, watching the elderly pair get into their aging car. “I always think of the younger ones as having an extended adolescence.” Stepping out after the couple drove away, she drew in a breath of the fresh spring air. “It’s a pretty place.” More trees backed the house, while the drive featured a delicate fountain. Landscaped lawns and gardens flowed off on both sides and into the distance, beds of colorful blooms nodding in the wind that whispered down the slight rise to the right.

“Michaela, too,” Dmitri said, coming around the car to join her by the fountain, “has the most gracious of homes.”

Honor had only ever seen the female archangel in the media, but there was no denying that Michaela was both beautiful and vicious. “What about Favashi?” she asked and it was only because she was looking right at Dmitri that she caught the tightening of his jaw.

“That one looks soft and gentle, and all the while, she’s grinding her enemies beneath her boot.” A brutal summation.

Not long ago, she’d discovered Dmitri had once had a wife he had loved. Now she realized he might have had an archangelic lover. “Bad breakup?” Jealousy turned her words razor sharp.

A raised eyebrow. “Perceptive, little rabbit.”

Yes, he knew how to push her buttons. But oddly enough, she knew how to push his, too. “I guess being dumped by an archangel would bruise the male ego.”

“I didn’t realize rabbits had claws.”

The door to the house opened before she could reply to that amused comment. Looking up, she saw a tall, thin vampire with the bones of a supermodel, the pillowy lips of a screen siren, and mocha skin that glowed in the sunlight—all of which was displayed to perfection in a lace and satin robe of exquisite bronze that barely hit midthigh. “Do none of these women own clothing?” she muttered.

“We did interrupt her during a feed,” Dmitri drawled as they walked up the steps.

Jiana blanched at their approach, but she wasn’t staring at Dmitri . . . and the knowledge in her eyes was damning. “I didn’t know.” A whisper, her hand clenching on the doorjamb. “When I accepted the invitation, I didn’t know. And when I saw you there, I didn’t hurt you. Please, you have to remember.”

Honor put a hand on Dmitri’s forearm, stilling his forward motion. “That scent.” Rich and sweet and speaking of wealth. “Yes, I remember.”

“I’m sorry. Here, would you like some water?”

Drinking because her captor, the one who controlled the others, hadn’t bothered to give her any water or food that day, she took in as much as she could. “Thank you.”

“No, it’s nothing.” Muted sobs. “I can’t help you. Please don’t ask me to.”

Honor heard the panicked tremor of fear in that voice, knew there would be no deliverance at those slender hands. “Who are you afraid of?”

“Who are you afraid of?” she asked again, meeting eyes dark as onyx.

Jiana seemed to collapse in on herself. Hugging her arms around her trembling body, she stepped back in silent invitation. Inside, the house was as elegant as the grounds were harmonious, the décor relatively modern—light dominated, the walls painted a lush cream.

A skillful portrait of Jiana hung on one wall. It was a nude, beautifully done in its languid eroticism and framed with a simplicity that drew the eye to the art, not the surroundings. The décor flowed flawlessly from the hallway to the room into which Jiana led them, bright splashes of color provided by the furniture.

Collapsing on one of those jewel-toned sofas, Jiana braced her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. “I haven’t slept since the day I left you there.”

Honor experienced the same strange mix of anger and pity she’d felt in that basement. “I was the one who was tied up, but you were weaker.” Even now, it seemed impossible. Then, it had made her laugh in near-hysterical amusement.

Dmitri leaned against the armchair on which Honor took a seat, a tiger on no leash but his own. He said nothing, but from the expression on Jiana’s face, the female vampire knew exactly what she faced.

“Always so weak when it comes to him,” she whispered, tears rolling down the sublime perfection of her features. Her despair made her appear even more vulnerably feminine.

The hairs rose on the back of Honor’s neck. Was she being expertly played? Or was Jiana’s startling attractiveness nothing but a distraction to the grief that seemed to be tearing her apart?

“Even when I saw what he’d done,” the woman continued, “I couldn’t betray him.”

“Who?” Honor asked. “You can’t keep his secret any longer, Jiana. He’s planning to do it again.”

A sob rocked through the vampire’s thin frame. “I know.” Wiping her tears, she reached into the drawer of a little end table to pull out the by-now-familiar textured envelope. “He sent me this.”

Honor knew what she’d find, but she took it and slid out the enclosed card anyway.

Perhaps this one will be more to your liking. I haven’t told the others, but it is to be a pair, a man and a woman. You will enjoy that, will you not, Mother?