Not after it had taken her so long to come back from the last time.
Her breath caught in her throat at her conscious acceptance of an impossible idea . . . except it wasn’t. It was as real as the Manhattan skyline in front of her, steel against a cerulean sky streaked with white. The memories had cascaded one on top of the other since she woke in the early hours of this morning, crying so hard that her chest remained sore, her eyes swollen and her throat raw.
He is my husband.
Perhaps not in law, but as far as her soul was concerned, Dmitri belonged to her.
Always.
When the door slid open at her back, she glanced over, expecting the man at the center of her thoughts. It wasn’t. She smiled at the hunter who came to sit beside her. “How did you get up here?” Security was airtight.
Ashwini swung her feet. “I sweet-talked Illium.”
“I didn’t know you knew him.”
“I didn’t. Now I do.” Dark brown eyes full of liquid intensity settled on Honor. “He said you needed a friend. I knew that already, but I pretended it was news. What’s wrong?”
Honor turned her face to the wind, letting it push back her unbound hair, tangle it into as wild a mess as Dmitri made of it in bed. “You’ll never believe me.”
A long silence before Ashwini said, “Remember the first time we met?”
The memory was crystal clear. It had been in a raucous bar filled with hunters and mercenaries. They’d laughed over drinks, eaten deep-fried everything, sowed the seeds of a deep, abiding friendship. And then, as they were walking out the door—“You called me an old soul,” she whispered. “A lost soul.”
“Still so old you make my chest hurt”—Ash leaned in so their shoulders touched for a moment—“but no longer lost.”
Shuddering, she braced her palms on the rough surface on which they sat. There would be no more whispers, she knew, from a life long gone—there was no longer any need, the barrier between past and present wiped out in the storm of her tears until she saw the woman she’d been as clearly as the one she was now.
The reawakened memories caused her agonizing pain. The thought of losing Caterina and Misha . . . she couldn’t bear it. But she’d remembered, understood something far more beautiful, too. Loved, she had been loved. And, she thought, remembering the arms that had held her so very tight this morning, she was loved again. He might never be able to say it, the lethal blade her husband had become, but she knew.
What she didn’t know was whether her beautiful, wounded Dmitri was ready to hear what she had to tell him.
Dmitri watched the two women sitting out on the balcony and checked for the third time to ensure the wing of angels waiting below were on alert to catch if necessary. “I should go out there and drag them both inside,” he said to Raphael when the archangel walked in to stand beside him.
“Yes,” Raphael said. “It should be a most amusing sight.”
Dmitri shot the archangel a dark look. “Your consort is a bad influence.”
“My consort is now joining your woman.”
Turning, Dmitri saw Elena come to a somewhat wobbly but safe landing on the balcony. She pumped her fist in the air before sitting down next to the long-legged hunter with the dark eyes who was Honor’s best friend—and, according to the reports they had on her, an extremely gifted individual when it came to those senses that weren’t accepted by most humans. Immortals, however, had been alive too long to dismiss such things as fancy. And so they kept watch on Ashwini. “Janvier courts her.”
“I think it’s time to pull him in.” It’ll give Venom a long enough period to ensure a smooth transfer.
Dmitri nodded, feeling a wild kind of peace within him when Honor laughed, her body half hidden behind the midnight and dawn spread of Elena’s wings. “It’ll be good for Venom to work alongside Galen.” The vampire was strong but young and could be impulsive; while Galen was as stable and centered as a rock.
“I agree.” Raphael’s own wings rustled as he resettled them. “I spoke to Aodhan—he hasn’t changed his mind.”
Dmitri thought about the extraordinary, fractured angel, wondered if he’d find what he sought in this bold, brash city with its pulsing heartbeat of life. “Do you think this is the start of his healing?”
“Perhaps.” A quiet pause. “We will be his shield, Dmitri.”
“Yes.” The young angel?
Resting. His will is strong—this won’t break him.
Good.
Outside, the women continued to talk, their hair tangling together in the playful wind, Elena’s brilliant near-white strands against Ashwini’s sleek black and Honor’s softer ebony curls. It was a sight that would make any man take notice. “We aren’t who we were even two years ago, Raphael.”
“Are you sorry about this change?”
“No.”
Honor challenged Dmitri to a sparring session that afternoon and lost. He took her to his bed that night, laid her out for his delectation. When she bit her lower lip and whispered, “I thought you said something about a velvet whip?” in a voice that held both anticipation and the tang of sensual nervousness, he took her mouth with a voracious need that had her scenting the air with the sweet musk of her arousal.
Drawing it in, he made her lie on her back—her unbound hands holding on to the bars of the headboard—and began to kiss, to taste, every tiny inch of her, from the smooth warmth of her brow to the hollow of her throat and the tight furl of her ni**les. There, he stopped, took his time, until her ni**les were wet and pouting, before moving to the dip of her navel, the quivering nub of flesh between her thighs, the curve of her knee, and finally, the graceful arch of her foot.