Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
It had hurt her to watch, and she knew it had hurt Raphael, too. They both honored the Legion for their sacrifice, but they also missed the otherworldly beings who’d emerged from the silent deep and become an integral part of New York.
The fade had, however, reversed itself over the past few months, until the two of them had begun to hope that the Legion would return. Or at the least, that the Legion still existed in some form in the cold embrace of the water from which they’d come.
“You look a goddess risen, Guild Hunter.” Another kiss pressed to the curve of her neck.
Goose bumps over her skin, her nipples tight points. “You’re the pretty one in this relationship,” she teased, though pretty was definitely the wrong word for Raphael. His face, for all its beauty, held an innate hardness, a sense of the martial.
Her lover was a warrior before he was an archangel.
His lips curving, he plucked at the fabric of her gown. “What is this? It feels almost as good as your skin.”
“I have no idea, but I love it.” Unlike the current rage in the Refuge, the gown was no frou-frou cloth marshmallow. Instead, it flowed over her in a slide of liquid silver-blue, sinuous and cool. The shoulders were narrow, the neckline plunging before it cut away to reveal her abdomen—but that entire top part was also so securely fitted that she was in no danger of revealing more than she wanted to reveal.
From the waist, it fell in what Montgomery told her was an A-line.
Elena hadn’t been sure about that—the sketch he’d shown her had looked far too prom gown—but as usual, the butler and his favorite tailor had been right. Constructed of seven separate panels, the skirt was higher in the front, the cut a sharp diagonal from the middle of her left thigh down to the calf of her right leg.
The design made movement easier—she could literally high-kick in this thing if required. They’d even worked with her penchant for wearing boots by giving her ones that matched the dress . . . while building hidden blade sheaths in both, then adding decorative touches in a deeper silver. Not only did the boots look badass striding out of the shorter front part of the dress, they were stable, wouldn’t throw her off in a fight.
Her arm sheaths were a glittering black against the dark gold of skin that was a testament to the Moroccan part of her heritage. Not as good as her usual sheaths, but they worked fine. On her upper arm sat the jeweled dagger that Raphael had given her—jeweled but more than functional if she needed to stab a snobby angel in the eye, as she so often dreamed of doing at these events.
But tonight, the dagger wasn’t the showpiece. Because from her neck down to her cleavage lived a black “tattoo” that Aodhan had painted onto her skin before she left New York. Again, it was a thing in vogue with angelkind and she had to admit it was more her style than the rest of current angelic fashion—especially since Aodhan had designed her ink to echo the mark on Raphael’s temple.
Hers was more elongated, with lines that seemed to hint at a powerful creature in flight, but that the two markings were a pair was indisputable.
“It’ll last a month,” Aodhan had told her after the work was complete, the dragon’s neck curving around her nape so that the creature lay with its head on her collarbone.
It was the closest she’d ever been to the angel whose entire body seemed to be composed of light, his breath brushing her skin as he leaned in to work. She’d wondered if it would feel odd even though they were friends. Then he’d started the piece and she’d realized that at that instant, she was nothing but a canvas to Aodhan.
“Canvases don’t talk back,” he’d muttered when she’d dared have an opinion, but his lips had quirked up.
Now, Raphael ran one finger down the lines of the tattoo, coming to a stop at the curve of her breast where it was exposed by the dress. “I do so enjoy how this looks when you are unclothed and wrapped around me.”
His wings rose above his shoulders, hers pressed to his body so only the black arches were visible, and it was them in the mirror. Two people whose loyalty was set in stone, and whose love was a slumbering inferno, hot and languid, until they wanted it to burn.
She and her archangel, they’d weathered a psychotic archangel, then a megalomaniacal one, a Cascade of fucking Death, and oh, just for fun, a vampiric uprising in the aftermath of a war that had devastated the world.
All of it side by side.
Raphael traced the line of the tattoo in the opposite direction, then slid his finger back down with luxurious intent, his eyes heavy-lidded as he caressed her.