Angels Dance

her feel a hateful creature.
    Her chest ached.
    She wished she could go back to that lonely, self-conscious girl and tell her it would be all right, that she’d build a life for herself that would give her contentment. Her hand fisted. No, perhaps she didn’t wish to go back—what girl would want to hear of “contentment” when she dreamed of searing joy and shimmering passion?
    That yearning hadn’t died so much as been crushed under the weight of truth. Oh, she’d realized as she’d grown older that she could find a lover if she so chose, someone who would teach her the secrets that flirted in the eyes and on the lips of other women, but she’d also understood that any such relationship— even if there was true desire involved—would be a temporary one. It would end the instant her lover understood that she was bound to the Refuge.
    Unlike him, she could never fly beyond the mountains, never live in the outside world—because the angels could not be seen as weak. Mortals had an awe of the angelic race that kept them from attempting insurrection that could only ever end in the deaths of thousands. An angel so imperfect . . . it would shake the foundations of that awe, lead to bloodshed as mortals thought to see in her a truth about the angelic race that didn’t exist. Jessamy was one of a kind.
    Better, she’d long ago decided, far better that she assuage her painful hunger to see the world through the pages of books, than to incite mortals into an act that would stain the ground darkest red. As for intimacy . . . Her hand clenched on the sheets again, on the bed of an angel unlike any other, one who stirred things in her that could not be allowed to be stirred, not if she was to survive the millennia to come.
    Because her beautiful barbarian, too, would one day fly away, leaving her behind. And still she rose, pushed the curtain aside, and padded on bare feet to the living area . . . where Galen, dressed in nothing but those pants of some tough brown material, his wings held tight to his back, was lying parallel to the floor with his palms flat on the ground, his entire body a straight line. As she watched, he pushed up, veins standing up on his arms as his muscles strained, went down, repeated.
    “You’re already strong,” she said, her eyes lingering on the bunch and release of an unashamedly powerful body that made butterflies flitter in her stomach. “Why do this?”
    “A warrior who considers himself the best,” he said, never pausing in his actions, “is a fool who’ll soon be dead.”
    A blunt answer from a blunt kind of a man. He wasn’t like the scholars she spent the majority of her time with, wasn’t even like the lethal archangels. Raphael, with his power honed to a cruel edge, was as different from this man as she was from the angel Michaela—the scheming, intelligent ruler of a small territory whose strength had grown so acute, Jessamy was certain the stunning immortal was on the verge of becoming Cadre.
    “You should rest,” he said when she didn’t reply.
    She scowled. “I’m older than you are, Galen.” No matter if she appeared breakable, she could go for even longer periods without sleep. “Perhaps you’re the one who should rest after this exertion.”
    A hitch in the smooth rhythm of muscle and tendon, a small pause as he caught her gaze with eyes of some rare, precious gemstone that seemed to see into her soul. “Are you inviting me to bed, Jessamy?”

5
    “No.” It came out a croak, and she was so frustrated with herself for letting him rattle her that she said, “I am not a carnal creature,” her words made a lie by the slumberous heat that lingered in her even now.
    Pushing up and to his feet in a smooth motion that belied the bulk of his body, Galen shoved back his hair. Then he took a step forward. Another. And another. Until she thought he’d back her against a wall . . . but he stopped with a single breath between them, the dark, hotly potent scent of him overwhelming her senses. “Are you sure?” Reaching out, he ran his hand over the arch of her right wing, the twisted reality of the left hidden behind the fall of her hair.
    “Even in Titus’s court,” she said, fighting the excruciating pleasure that threatened to ripple over her skin, “that would’ve been an unacceptable act.” It was a touch permitted only to a lover.
    Hands at his sides once more, he raised an eyebrow. “If you aren’t a carnal creature”—a