Guild Hunter 02 - Angels' Flight

land.
     
    “Good morning, Noel,” she said, folding back her wings as her feet touched the earth.
     
    In answer, he strode across the ground, his strides eating up the distance. And then he kissed her. Hot and hard and all consuming, his lips a burn against her own, his jaw rough against her skin. “You are mine,” he said when he finally allowed her to breathe, his thumbs rubbing over her cheekbones. “I don’t share.” A possessive statement from the core of the man he was, the veneer of civilization stripped away.
     
    The primal intensity of him was a blaze against her senses, but she coated her voice in ice. “Do you think I would betray you?”
     
    “No, Nimra. But if that popinjay doesn’t stop flirting with you, blood will be spilled.”
     
    Pushing off his hands, she took a step back. “As the ruler of this territory I must deal with many men.” If Noel believed he had the right to put limits on her, then he was not the man she’d thought him to be.
     
    “Most of those men don’t want to sleep with you,” he said in blunt rebuttal. “I reserve the right to introduce my fist to the faces of the ones who do.”
     
    Her lips threatened to tug upward. Raw and open and real, this indication of possession was something she could accept. It spoke not of a grab for power, but a territorial display. And Nimra was old enough not to expect a vampire of Noel’s ageto act in a more modern fashion. “No bloodshed,” she said, leaning forward to cup his cheek, claim his mouth with a soft kiss. “Christian is a useful member of my court.”
     
    T wenty minutes later, Noel leaned back against the wall beside Nimra’s writing desk and watched her walk to the armoire where she kept the Midnight. Her wings were an exotic temptation, reaching out to touch them an impulse he resisted only because neither of them was in the mood for play.
    Less than half a minute later, she turned, the vial of Midnight delicate even in her fine- boned hands. Walking to the window, she held it up to the light. Darkness crawled a stealthy shadow across her face. “Yes,” she murmured at last, “you are right. There is not as much Midnight as there should be.”
     
    He hadn’t wanted to be right. “You’re certain?”
     
    A nod that sent liquid sunlight gleaming over the blue- black tumble of her hair. “The vial is ringed with circles of gold.” She ran her fingers over and along those thin lines. “It is no more than an aesthetic design, but I remember looking at the bottle when it was first given to me and thinking of what some would do for this infinitesimal quantity of Midnight— it just reached over the third line of gold.”
     
    Noel crouched down by the window as she held the vial level on the sill. It took a bare few moments for the viscous fluid to settle. When it did, it became apparent that it now hovered
between
the second and third line. He blew out a breath.
     
    “I would that you were wrong, Noel.” Leaving the Midnight in his hands, Nimra walked across the room, her wings trailing on the amber- swirled blue of the carpet. “The fact that the assassin came into my chambers and took this means two things.”
     
    “The first,” Noel said, placing the vial inside the safe and locking it shut, “is that he or she knew it was herethe 01D;
     
    “Yes— I can count those who have that knowledge on the fingers of one hand, and not use up my fingers.” A desolate sadness in every word. “The second is that it means no other powerful angel was involved in this. The hatred is theirs alone.”
     
    Noel didn’t attempt to comfort her, knowing there could be no comfort— not until the truth was unearthed, the would–be murderer’s motives exposed to the light of day. “We need to get an evidence tech in here to see if there are any prints on the vial or the safe that shouldn’t be there.”
     
    Nimra looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “An evidence tech?”
     
    “It
is
the twenty- first century,” he said in a gentle tease, his chest aching at the hurt she would soon have to hide, becoming once more the angel who ruled this territory, ruthless and inhuman. “Such things are possible.”
     
    Her eyes narrowed. “Laugh at me at your peril.” But she didn’t resist when he tugged her into his arms.
     
    He ran his hand down her back, over the heavy warmth of her wings. “I can get hold of someone we can trust.”
     
    “To have such a person come into my