Angels Dance

she’d entered in an elegance of cool yellow, he picked up his broadsword and began to go through a complicated routine that would’ve left his opponents in tiny pieces in the blink of an eye. People often misjudged his speed because he looked big and heavy. In truth, the only one of Raphael’s people who might be faster, he thought, was Illium.
    “I’ll have a class of disappointed babes if you force me to wait any longer.” Her voice was quiet, but it tore through the air of the salle, nails on his skin.
    “Say what you have to and leave.” He forced himself to slow his movements so he could hear her past the whipping cut of the blade.
    Silence.
    If she thought he’d halt for her, she was very wrong.
    “So”—a soft murmur—“this is the flip side to your determination and loyalty. Utter, obdurate stubbornness.” A rippling laugh. “I’m rather glad to find you have a flaw.”
    Galen clenched his jaw because she was right. He was stubborn, a tenacity he’d made into an asset, but one that had often gotten him into trouble as a child. And he did have a tendency to hold on to his anger, but he was justified here. Jessamy had allowed him to taste her lips, allowed him to believe he might court her, when she belonged to another man.
    Halting with the edge of the blade a hairbreadth from her neck, he growled, “That was a singularly stupid thing to do.” Coming up behind him was never a good idea.
    Neither fear nor apology in eyes of lush brown he’d wanted to see soft and hazy in his bed. “I know you heard me.”
    He lowered the blade, put distance between them, the warm, earthy scent of her threatening to compromise his honor all over again. “What is it you wish to say, Lady Jessamy?”
    Jessamy’s heart thudded at the naked fury on Galen’s face. All heavy muscle and gleaming skin, he made her think thoughts that were not the least bit civilized. And fear . . . yes, it lingered, but not of him. Of this, what she was about to do. It might well go down as the worst mistake of her life, but she knew there was no other choice. Not when it destroyed her to have Galen thinking her disloyal.
    “Keir,” she said, and saw the heliodor-green turn molten, “is my friend. My best friend. He has been thus for thousands of years.” Continuing to speak when he didn’t so much as blink, much less soften, she continued. “He invited me to his bed once, a long time ago. He wanted me to experience such intimacy.” It had been the heartfelt gesture of a young healer who could find no way to heal his friend. “But I said no—if I share a man’s bed, it will be because of passion, nothing less.”
    Still no response from the angry, stubborn creature who fascinated her so. Realizing he was too deep in his anger to hear her—yes, his temper was another flaw—she turned to leave. The last thing she heard was the whir of his sword cutting through the air once more, vicious and precise.
    * * *
    D renched in sweat and with his shoulder muscles aching from holding his wings too tight to his back, Galen finally stopped moving when Illium walked into the salle.
    The angel whistled. “Do I want to know?” He looked pointedly at the blades embedded in the walls.
    “I was practicing my throwing.” Pulling out the blades one by one, he began to stack them on the table. “You’re fast. I need to practice trying to pin you.”
    “Just ask,” the angel said without hesitation. “No one’s ever succeeded yet.” Flying up to some of the higher blades and wrenching them out, he dropped them on the table. “Jessamy finished her lessons, so Jason is escorting her back home—they’re probably there by now. He’ll keep watch until relieved. I can—”
    “No.”
    Golden eyes tipped with black lashes dipped in blue were suddenly looking into his as Illium came to a precise landing in front of Galen. “I like you, Galen, but I love Jessamy. Hurt her and I’ll gut you.”
    Galen looked the angel up and down. “Bluebell, you couldn’t take me if I was blindfolded and had both hands tied behind my back.”
    “Bluebell?” Illium narrowed his eyes. “That’s it, Barbarian.” Throwing two of the knives to Galen, he picked up two of his own.
    And then they were moving. He’d been right. Illium was faster than him. Much faster. The blue-winged angel could also do things in the air that should’ve been impossible, except that Galen had the cuts on his back and the bruises on his chest to prove they