Guild Hunter 02 - Angels' Flight

with a heavy hunting knife. Galen ignored the scratch and the other male’s head was rolling off his neck to land on the floor with a wet thud the next instant, blood gushing out to spray the wall as the man’s body spasmed before collapsing.
     
    Damn.
     
    Jessamy would probably make him clean that up, he thought, watching the corpse continue to twitch. Vampires were almost-immortals, but—regardless of the sporadic motions of the body—they couldn’t survive decapitation. Still, he made the kill certain by walking over and thrusting his sword through the dead vampire’s heart, cutting it up into tiny pieces inside his chest.
     
    Only then did he turn to the woman who sat on the table,face white and eyes huge. Having wiped his sword on the vampire’s clothing, he slid it into the sheath on his back and crossed the distance between them to place his hands on either side of Jessamy’s slight body. “Look at me.”
     
    Jittery brown eyes met his. “You have blood on you.”
     
    Cursing inwardly at the evidence of vicious violence, violence that was an integral part of his life, but no doubt a stranger to her, he would’ve drawn away to take care of it—but she pulled off some kind of silky scarf thing from around her waist and began to wipe his face clean. It carried her scent.
     
    Locking his muscles, he stayed in place. His eyes fell to the graceful curve of her neck and to the straps that held up the bodice of her gown, the knot tied at her nape, eamers of fabric falling gracefully down her back. A single drop of blood marred the fine blue, but her gown had otherwise escaped damage.
     
    “Done?” he asked when she dropped her hand, raising his own at the same time to angle her face to the light so he could examine the cut on her temple. Already healing. Good. But he borrowed her scarf to wipe away the streaks of red that enraged him, the scent of her blood a vivid thread in spite of the carnage.
     
    Taking the cloth when he returned it, she reached out to run it over his chest. “Do you own any shirts?”
     
    Enjoying the tender touch quite unlike those of other warriors who might have sewn up dangerous injuries in battle so he could continue to fight, he said, “Yes. For formal occasions.” Though in Titus’s court, even those occasions hadn’t often required a shirt.
     
    Jessamy laughed… right before her face crumpled. Gathering her into his arms, he stroked his hand over her back as she wrapped her own arms around his neck and sobbed. He was careful to avoid the sensitive area where her wings grew out of her back, the feathers there a rich, evocative magenta that faded into blush, then pure cream in the body of her wings. To steal that intimacy would be to devalue its worth—he would wait until Jessamy invited the touch.
     
    Her breath, ragged and hot, blew across his skin as shetried to get even closer. Nudging his way between her knees, the gossamer skirts of her gown frothing around them, he cradled her tight. So slender was her body, so terrifyingly fragile. But not bony, he now realized, for all her appearance of painful thinness. It was as if her frame itself was so very fine that the flesh upon it need only be the gentlest of layers. There was a sensual grace to her, exquisite and beautiful.
     
    “He can’t hurt you now,” he said in her ear when her sobs quieted, her hair as soft as fur under his hand, against his face.
     
    A hiccupping breath before she sat up again, drawing her dignity around herself like a shield. “Thank you.” Glancing down, she colored at the way her knees spread on either side of his thighs.
     
    He stepped back so she could close her legs, settle her skirts. Barbarian or not, he understood that as a warrior needed his weapon, Jessamy needed her pride. “Who was he?”
     
    “I don’t know,” she said, wiping away her tears until her face bore no evidence of the emotional storm that had just passed. “He came into the house while I was in the kitchen—I thought it was one of my students. They know to knock, but the littlest ones sometimes forget.”
     
    “Did he say anything?”
     
    “That I knew too much,” Jessamy said, forcing herself back into the nightmare. “They couldn’t take the chance.” The vampire had fallen on her before she’d realized the import of his words. Driven by instinct, she’d managed to cut him with the small knife in her hand before he hit her head against the edge of the door he’d ripped open,