“That will be all for tonight, Montgomery.”
As the butler whispered away, Elena looked with growing suspicion at a large Chinese vase in one corner of the hall, opposite the stained-glass wall beside the door. It was decorated with a pattern of sunflowers that seemed oddly familiar. Letting go of Raphael’s hand, she stepped closer ... closer. Her eyes went wide. “This is mine!” Given as a gift by an angel in China after Elena completed a particularly dangerous hunt, one that had taken her into the bowels of the Shanghai underworld.
Raphael touched his fingers to the small of her back, a searing brand. “All of your things are here.” He waited until she looked up before saying, “They were moved to this house for safekeeping until your return.
“However,” he continued when she remained silent, her throat a knot of emotion, “it seems Montgomery could not help himself when it came to this vase. I’m afraid he has a weakness for beautiful things and has been known to relocate an item if he feels it is not being accorded the proper appreciation. Once, he ‘relocated’ an ancient sculpture from the home of another archangel.”
Elena stared down the corridor where the butler had disappeared in refined silence. “I don’t believe you. He’s too prim and proper.” It was easier to say that, to focus on the humor, than to accept the tightness in her chest, the feelings locking up her throat.
“You would be surprised.” Touching her lower back again, he nudged her down the hall and up a flight of stairs. “Come, you can look at your belongings in the morning.”
She dragged her feet at the top of the staircase. “No.”
Raphael measured her expression with those eyes no mortal would ever possess, a silent visual reminder that he had never been human, would never be anything close to mortal. “Such will.” Leading her to a room that flowed off what she knew to be the master bedroom, he opened the door.
Everything from her apartment lay neatly stacked, slipcovers over the furnishings, her knickknacks in boxes.
She froze on the doorstep, uncertain how she felt—relief and anger and joy all battled for space inside of her. She’d known she could never go back to the apartment that had been her haven and more, a furious rebuttal against her father’s abandonment. The place wasn’t built for a being with wings—but the loss had hurt. So much.
Now ... “Why?”
His hand closed around her nape with no attempt to hide the possession inherent in the act. “You are mine, Elena. If you choose to sleep in another bed, I will simply pick you up and bring you home.”
Arrogant words. But he was an archangel. And she’d made a claim of her own. “As long as you remember that goes both ways.”
Acknowledged, Guild Hunter. A kiss pressed to the curve of her shoulder, his fingers tightening on her nape just a fraction. Come to bed.
Arousal kicked her hard, her body knowing full well what pleasure awaited her at those strong, lethal hands. “So we can talk knives and sheaths?”
Sensual male laughter, another kiss, the caress of teeth. But he released his hold, watching in silence as she stepped into the room and lifted a slipcover to run her fingers over the delicately embroidered comforter on the bed that had been her own, then she moved to explore the vanity with its store of pretty glass bottles and brushes set tidily inside a small box. She felt like a child, wanting to reassure herself that everything was here, the need visceral enough to hurt.
As she gave in to the emotional hunger, her mind disgorged images of another homecoming, of the shock and humiliation that had burned her throat when she’d found her things piled up like so much garbage on the street. Nothing would ever erase that hurt, the pain of the knowledge that that was exactly what she was to her father, but tonight, Raphael had crushed the memory under the weight of a far more powerful act.
She had no illusions about her archangel, knew he’d done it in part precisely for the reason he’d given her—so she wouldn’t be tempted to treat her apartment as a bolt-hole. But had that been his sole motivation, he could as easily have sent her stuff to the dump. Instead, every single piece had been packed with care and moved here. Some of it had been exposed to the elements when her window shattered that night, and yet now everything looked pristine, speaking of meticulous restoration.
Heart aching at the wonder of being so cherished, she said, “We can go now.” She’d come back later, decide what to do with everything. “Raphael—thank you.”
The brush of his wing against her own was a silent tenderness as they entered the master suite. No one else ever saw this part of him, she thought, eyes on her archangel as he moved closer to the bed and began to strip without flicking on the lights. His shirt fell off his body, revealing that magnificent chest she’d kissed her way across more than once. Suddenly, the overwhelming weight of her emotions was gone, buried under an avalanche of gut-wrenching need.
Raphael looked up at that moment, his gaze glittering with an earthy hunger that said he’d sensed her arousal. Deciding to save the talking for later, she was raising her fingers to tug off her own top when rain—no, hail—hit the windows in staccato bullets that made her jump. She’d have ignored it, except the hard little pellets of ice kept smashing into the glass over and over again. “Must be a storm.” Dropping her hands, she walked to one of the windows after glancing over to ensure the French doors to the balcony were secure.
Lighting flashed in vicious spikes in front of her as savage winds began to pound the house with unremitting fury, the hail turning to torrential rain between one blink and the next. “I’ve never seen it come in this hard, this fast.”