Guild Hunter 04 - Archangel's Blade

fight the rancid horror that stalked her dreams, Honor had often thought that faceless doctor had been right, but tonight the memory incited another emotion.
    Anger.
    A dull throbbing thing that caught her by surprise.
    I’m alive. I fucking made it. No one has the right to take that from me.
    Her astonishment at her own fury was such that it carried her through the elevator ride—trapped in a small cage with a vampire who wore an Armani suit and had an aura of contained power that said he was no ordinary guard.font>
    When the doors opened to deposit them on a floor carpeted in thick black, the gleaming walls painted the same midnight shade, she sucked in a breath. There was a sexual pulse to this place that hummed barely beneath the surface—the roses were lavish and bloodred against the midnight where they stood in their crystal vases atop small, elegant tables of lustrous black, the carpet too lush to be merely serviceable, the paint shimmering with glints of gold.
    The artwork along one wall was a fury of red that drew her with its cruel ferocity.
    Sensual.
    Beautiful.
    Lethal.
    “This way.”
    Blood pounding through her veins in a way she knew wasn’t safe in the company of the Made, she followed two steps behind her guide—so she’d have warning if he swiveled, went for her throat. Her gun was tucked into a shoulder holster concealed under the faded gray of her favorite sweatshirt, her knife in a sheath openly on her thigh, but she had two more hidden in sheaths strapped to her arms. It wouldn’t be enough, not against a vampire who instinct and experience told her had to be over two hundred, but at least she’d go down fighting.
    Stopping in front of an open door, he waved her through before turning back toward the elevator. She took a step inside . . . and froze.
    Dmitri was standing on the other side of a heavy glass desk, the Manhattan skyline glittering at his back, his head bent, strands of silken black hair caressing his forehead as he scanned the piece of paper in his hand. Her mind rolled back. Before . . . before . . . she’d been fascinated by this one vampire, though she’d only ever seen him from a distance or on the television screen. She’d even made a scrapbook of his movements—to the point that she’d started to feel like a disturbed stalker and burned the whole thing.
    It hadn’t gotten rid of the strange, irrational compulsion she’d felt toward him as long as she could remember. Nothing had gotten rid of it . . . until the dank, filthy basement and the terror. That had numbed everything, but now she wondered if she hadn’t always been slightly unhinged, she’d been so obsessed by a stranger who was whispered to have a penchant for sensual cruelty, pleasure cut with pain.
    Then he looked up.
    And she stopped breathing.
     
     
    Dmitri saw the woman in the doorway in a kaleidoscope of images. Soft ebony hair clipped at her nape, but promising a wildness of curls. Haunting— haunted —eyes of deepest green tilted up at the corners. Pale brown skin that he knew would turn to warm honey in the sun. “Born in Hawaii?” he asked, and it was a strange question to ask a hunter who’d come to do a consult.
    She blinked, long lashes momentarily shielding those eyes that spoke of distant forests and hidden gemstones. “No. In a nowhere town far from the ocean.”
    He found himself circling the glass and steel of his desk to head toward her. For an instant, he thought she would stumble backward and out into the corridor, but then she stiffened her spine, held her position. He was aware of the fear—sharp and acrid—skittering behind her eyes, but still he shifted around her to push the door shut.
    Allowing her to leave wasn’t an option.
    When he stepped back to face her once more, the ugly ripple of fear had been brought under rigid control, but her breathing was jerky, her gaze skating away from his when he tried to capture it. “What’s your name?”
    “Honor.”
    Honor. He tasted the name, decided it fit. “Hunter-born?”
    A shake of her head.
    Not surprising. Elena had likely warned the Guild Director about his ability to use tendrils of exquisite scent to seduce and lure those hunters who were born with the bloodhound capability to scent-track vampires. Sara would hardly send him fresh prey. But this woman, this Honor . . . he wanted to use luscious strokes of scent on her until she was flushed and limp, her arousal an unmistakable musk against his senses.
    It was