Guild Hunter 02 - Angels' Flight

Galen’s skin and hair, she knew that, driven by a self-protective instinct that had become a second skin, she’d behaved badly. Galen meant what he said and said what he meant. She had no right to judge him against the example set by weaker, worthless men.
     
    Hand clenching on the handle of her bag, she tried to think of how to make amends, couldn’t quite find the words, settled for seeing if he was too angry to speak to her. “You don’t have many things.” The stool off to her left, a small table, a thick rug with comfortable-looking cushions in one corner of the polished stone of the floor.
     
    “I need little,” he said, no coolness in his tone. “But there is a bed through there.” He lit more lamps as he nodded to the back of the aerie. Walking closer, she saw the “bedroom” was another corner of the single room, but one with a heavy curtain that could be pulled across for privacy. The bed was a large one, as befit someone of Galen’s size.
     
    “I’m taking your bed,” she said, a strange discomfort in her blood that had nothing to do with stealing his rest.
     
    He shrugged. “I have no plans to sleep.” Leaving her beside the bed, he walked back to the living area, and slid off his sword and harness. The movement of the leather across his sun-kissed skin caught her eye, held it, the shift of muscle beneath his—
     
    Coloring when he looked up and caught her staring, she pulled the curtain shut and, kicking off her sandals, sat downon the bed. She couldn’t recall ever reacting in such a way to a man, until she didn’t know who she was anymore, this woman whose mind was overwhelmed with naked emotion, whose blood ran so hot, whose hands still bore the imprint of a firm male chest.
     
    Perhaps she might have felt such need as a young girl, but she didn’t think so. Back then, she’d still been walking with her head downbent, angry and torn by an envy that had made 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, onewho 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