Archangel's Storm

of anyone else who is known to have that ability, but some angels are secretive about their strength.”
    Yes, Jason thought, especially if the impact of the Cascade was rippling beyond the Cadre. “Did you discover anything?” She’d spent the last hours navigating the maze of afternoon and early evening court functions.
    “A sense of unease,” she said. “Everyone is scared he or she will be the next target, and a number are making plans to leave the fort, but that’s all hot air. Neha will not forgive desertion, and they’re too self-obsessed to lose their place in the court.” She blew out a breath, rubbing at her forehead with her fingertips. “My head hurts from the inanity of it, and I have not one good piece of information to show for my efforts!”
    “Enough,” Jason said. “We both need to spread our wings. Come.”
    He allowed Mahiya to set the pace, to set their direction, shadowing her vibrant wings as she swept across the skies with the ease and grace of someone who knew the vagaries of the winds in the mountains, understood how the land interacted with the sky. She wasn’t the most technically accomplished flyer, but there was a lingering happiness to her every movement that was impossible to miss and that made her striking to watch.
    “Free,” she said to him when they came to a stop on a high hill overlooking the twinkling lights of the city. “In the sky, I have always been free.”
    Observing the naked pleasure on her face, Jason had to fight the urge to wrap her in his wings, hide her from the sight of those who would turn that joy to despair, using her love of the sky to torture her. “Be careful.”
    Closing the small distance between them, Mahiya put a hand to his chest in a gentle feminine invitation he knew he had only to step back to reject. In spite of her vivid emotions, she wasn’t a woman who would pursue a man who made it clear he didn’t want her . . . or one who knew that in taking her, he might destroy the very brightness of spirit that caught him in delicate chains, agonizingly painful in their hope.

28
    “I am,” she said, “always careful, but you . . . now I know why you are such a great spymaster.”
    He didn’t understand her meaning, the warmth of her touch seeping through the thin black shirt he wore to linger on his skin. Drinking in the sensation, he ran his fingers down the line of her neck, hot satisfaction in his blood when she shivered. There was a deeper pleasure in this, in knowing what made her sigh, learning the intimacies of her body. Yet it was a pleasure he’d denied himself for hundreds of years.
    “Jason?” Wounded eyes, blue and wet. “You’re leaving?”
    “I told you I couldn’t stay.” Couldn’t give her his heart.
    Fist clenching in the sheet she held to her breast, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I thought . . . when you kept returning . . .”
    He’d been so young then, very good at his job, but far behind his peers when it came to emotions, to relationships. He’d thought that long-ago lover had understood he spoke the naked truth, never realizing the secret dreams brewing in her heart. A heart he’d broken without meaning to, without even knowing he held the power to do so. It had soon healed for she’d been young, too, and he thought that she might no longer even remember the black-winged angel she’d once pleaded with to stay with her.
    But he’d never forgotten the lesson, and he wondered if Mahiya had truly heard what he’d said to her the night before or if she, too, harbored dreams of fixing the broken pieces of him. The truth was, no matter how she compelled him, she would soon realize what was shattered in him was nothing that could be healed, the damage done at such a young age that it had become part of his very psyche.
    Yet instead of backing off, he did a selfish thing then. Lowering his head, he claimed the lush intoxication of her kiss, his hands thrusting into her hair to tumble black silk over his skin. She opened for him with a sweet sensual generosity that enticed without design, made him want to caress her every secret pleasure point until her desire was a shimmer across her skin and he knew her like no other man ever would.
    “Jason? You’re leaving?”
    Tugging back her head with the hand fisted in her hair, he forced himself to release lips swollen from his kisses. “Open your eyes.” It was a harsh order.
    Thick lashes rose to reveal tawny eyes hazy with passion. “I see