Shadows fading, Aodhan’s eyes filled with a rare light. “It took me a hundred years of daily sparring to earn these. You have time yet.”
“Perhaps we should go to the Refuge if you are so eager to see Galen,” Raphael murmured.
“I warned you about that sense of humor, Archangel,” Elena said darkly while Aodhan struggled to hide a smile.
They walked for an hour but didn’t get anywhere near the library, where Jessamy had told Elena she’d find the historical archives; neither did they discover what had happened to the art. Back at their suite, Aodhan sat down and began to draw out the designs so they could all learn the map.
His hand moved strong and sure, the lines that flowed from his pen without flaw.
“This should give us a good start,” he said after he was done. “To get back to the suite if you get disoriented, follow this symbol in this grouping.” His eyes met Elena’s, shattered pieces of green and blue glass spiking out from a jet-black pupil. “There are further symbols I don’t yet understand. We will explore Lumia together, unearth their secrets.”
Elena nodded, hoping once again that hidden within Lumia would be some small piece of knowledge that might solve the mystery of her ancestry. And if it felt as if she was searching for a way to find her mother through time . . . was that such a terrible thing?
* * *
“I want to shower,” Elena said after Aodhan left to return to his own room until dinner. “I feel dusty from the flight over the mountains.” Despite his consort’s words and though she’d already removed her weapons and boots, she hesitated to undress.
Raphael held out a hand.
When she took it, he led her to the bathing chamber and shut the door. There was no shower, but someone had already partially filled the large stone bath with cold water, minerals swirled into the clear liquid. It was a normal angelic courtesy to ensure guests didn’t have to wait too long for their bath to fill.
Finding the handle—old but functional—that made the hot water start to gush out from a spout in the wall, Raphael turned it on.
By the time it filled to the top, it would be the correct temperature.
Then he threw his glamour around them both; they were now effectively invisible from any eyes that might seek to watch. His instincts didn’t prickle in this particular space in the suite, but regardless, no one was going to see what was his and his alone to view.
“Did we go poof?”
Cheeks creasing because she did that to him, made the capacity for fun come alive inside him, he nodded. “But you must stay close to me for the glamour to encapsulate you.”
“What a terrible, terrible hardship.” Turning, she lifted her hair off her neck, exposing the soft skin of her nape. “Can you unbutton me?”
There were only two buttons, one each at the top of her wings, the dress designed to be pulled on from the bottom, with wings sliding into the slits created for them, then the dress buttoned into place at the top. Raphael knew that because he’d watched his consort dress, seen her pull the fabric over the black lace panties she wore underneath.
There was no bra, the support built into the dress, so when he undid the buttons and she began to slither the dress past her hips, he, of course, had to curve his arms around her body and cup her breasts. “Just helping keep them in place,” he said, kissing her neck.
Husky laughter. “You really are a very helpful lover.” Another push and the dress pooled at her feet.
He kept on kissing her neck, his hands bluntly possessive on her breasts.
Shivering, she leaned back into him, raising her arms to loop them around the back of his neck. “You make my bones melt.”
He smiled against her skin, moving one of his hands from her breast, down the sleek, strong curve of her abdomen, past her navel, and into her panties. She gasped at the sudden intrusion, her breath coming in rapid pants as he used his fingers to bring her to the edge, her delicate flesh slick under his touch.
Holding her there, he said, “Turn your head.” His voice was gritty.
She angled her head to him, met his kiss with primal hunger—and he pushed her over. Body arching as the shudders of her release rocked her, Elena never broke their kiss. And when her eyes opened, they danced with wildfire. “Raphael.” A lazy, sated smile. “You’re better than a shower. Way better.”
And he smiled again.
Scooping her up into his arms, he placed her in the bath, which was nearly full, then stayed right next to her as he undressed. His arousal was heavy and thick, and when he stepped into the bath after shutting off the water, she flowed onto his lap, her arms around his neck and her wings half floating in the water.
This kiss was sweetly tender, two lovers who had total trust in one another taking a moment out of time. Sliding his hands down the sides of her body, he lifted her, brought her down. Had Elena not wanted him to do either, she’d have made it clear. But she smiled against his lips, and when his cock nudged at her heat, she put her hands on his shoulders and bore down.
His back was the one that arched this time, his throat the one that was kissed, his body the one that was petted and caressed. She moved on him slow and sinuous, the sleek muscle of her flexing under his touch. But there was only so much an archangel could take. Holding her hip tight with one hand, his other hand gripping her hair, he took over their intimate dance.
And his consort with the wildfire eyes, she smiled a wicked smile and leaned in to kiss him deep and hot and without restraint as her body clenched around him in a tease that could have only one end. As his spine locked under a slamming kiss of desire sated, he felt the Legion mark go active, felt his wings turn to white fire.
They wrapped around his hunter until the two of them burned up in the heart of flame.
12
An hour after their shared bath, a towel-clad Elena had dried her hair using the dryer Montgomery had packed. As shown by the electric lights in the suite and in the hallways, Lumia had undergone a certain level of modernization at some point, so there had been an electrical outlet his hunter could use for the dryer.
That done, and still protected by his glamour, Raphael seated on the edge of the bath only inches from where she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, he watched her slip into one of the more formal gowns Montgomery had packed for her. She’d made him go out and fetch the gown, saying she felt “creeped out” dressing or undressing in any other room in the suite.
He’d gathered his own clothing at the same time, changed into it before settling down to watch his consort.
It hadn’t been a difficult task to find any of the items, since Montgomery packed in a pattern with which Raphael was long familiar after having the butler so long in his employ. Their baggage had arrived while he, Elena, and Aodhan had been exploring Lumia, having been flown in from the airport by a small unit of the Luminata’s angelic guard carrying a net for that purpose.