“There are no sins in pleasure.” It was something Dmitri had once said to him, a sardonic twist to his mouth, the mockery directed inward.
Mahiya’s soft laugh changed the words, turned them sensual and playful. “I think I shall make that my motto when I am free, and live the life of an unabashed hedonist.”
Images of her clothed in raw silks and exquisite cashmere, her body petted and smoothed with exotic creams, her lips closing over a delicious morsel as she lay on satin sheets flashed through his mind. Sliding a fingertip down her spine, he spread his hand on her lower back, his fingers just brushing the curves below. “I would be happy to massage you with scented oils.” Until her skin gleamed and she lay boneless beneath his touch.
Her laugh was startled this time, huskier. Rubbing her cheek against his skin, she said, “Dangerous man—I’m not certain I’d survive the pleasure.” Pushing up against his chest, she looked down at him, her hair tumbling over one smooth shoulder, her br**sts hidden by the sheet she’d pulled up to hold against her chest. Always so modest, though as a lover, she gainsaid nothing he demanded.
“Vanhi,” she said, expression becoming solemn, “said something else important. I forgot to tell you with everything else. She thought she might have seen the vampire with bone-pale skin and scarlet hair once. Long ago.”
Jason listened, added that fact to the information he already had.
“So?” she prompted when he didn’t respond. “I know you were out doing what you do earlier. What did you learn?” A scowl. “Do not think to keep me in the dark, Jason.”
He should’ve reminded her she held no cards to play, but he knew that would hurt her, and he didn’t want to hurt this princess with her heart strong enough to survive three hundred years with an archangel who saw her only as a means to an end. “There is plenty of moonlight.”
Making an exasperated sound, she dipped her head to kiss him, sinking her teeth into his lower lip in a bite that didn’t so much as sting. “This is not the time for spymaster humor.”
Were she another woman, he’d have thought she attempted to use the afterglow of sex to sway him, but this was Mahiya—who had grown up in a hotbed of lies but chose not to use those tactics. Caressing her with the hand he had on her lower back, he said, “I found a couple who remember seeing a vampire who fits the description in Neha’s court three to four hundred years ago.”
“They can’t be more certain?” she asked, a humming kind of tension in her frame.
“At five thousand years old . . .”
Mahiya sighed. “Like Vanhi, their memories are tucked away in secret corners of their minds.” A thoughtful pause, before she said, “Just over three hundred years ago, Eris was exiled to his palace, and my mother was executed.”
After being kept alive long enough to give birth to the child she carried in her womb.
The words hung unspoken between them.
“They weren’t the only ones,” Jason said, wondering how much she knew. “Those who had known of the affair and helped Eris and Nivriti were executed; others who were simply loyal to Nivriti were exiled.”
Mahiya pushed away from his chest to sit upright, her wing brushing across his body, the warmth of her suddenly gone. “A man on the edge of their circle,” she murmured, “would’ve been considered a hanger-on. Exile, then.”
“It’s a workable conclusion.” To focus only on one possibility when it wasn’t yet a certainty was to create blind corners where the enemy could hide. “The question is, why would he expose himself to you?”
“A sense of residual loyalty perhaps.” Tawny eyes vivid as a cat’s in the darkness met his, the potential locked within her body a luminous brilliance. “But there is another question.”
“Which is?” Jason got the same sense of power from Mahiya that he had from a young Illium. It might take her longer than the blue-winged angel to grow into that power—her mother’s daughter in that perhaps, but given room to breathe, to develop, Mahiya would become an angel to be reckoned with . . . and he had the sudden, blinding thought that he wanted to witness the change, watch her spread her wings.
“How,” she said now, “did he get the box to the temple?”
It was an astute question. “Some vampires can climb like spiders,” he said, having seen a grinning Venom scale the Tower one moonless night after he and Illium made a bet, “but the chances of being caught would’ve been very high.” Not only did angelic guards sweep the area, the sentinels who watched over Guardian Fort had a wide field of view.
“He could’ve used the tunnels—Venom said he didn’t see any other footprints along the route he used, but I’ve heard it’s a labyrinth.”
“I’ll have him check them again.” He reached for the cell phone he’d placed on the bedside table after pulling it from his discarded jeans.
“Now?”
“It’s the best time.” No one would worry overmuch over a vampire walking about in the night, much less one known to be favored by women.
As it was, he heard a soft female sigh in the background when Venom answered. “No problem,” the other man said. “I’ve just fed, have plenty of energy.”
Jason heard the satiation in the vampire’s tone, knew he’d fed from the vein—and assuredly from a very willing female. “Watch your back.” Sex could cloud even the sharpest mind, and while Neha liked Venom, he remained one of the Seven.
The sound of rustling, as if Venom was getting out of bed. “Don’t worry. She’s a delicious playmate, but all she wanted to pump was my cock, not my brain.”
“Will you be able to check every possible route up to Guardian?”
“I can get it done before dawn.”
Hanging up soon afterward, Jason said, “You think the box was flown there,” to the woman beside him, her expression pensive.
“Yes.” Mahiya took the sheet with her as she got off the bed, the filaments of her feathers a thousand soft kisses across his skin. Disappearing into her dressing room, she returned clothed in a vivid blue robe tied at the waist.
He’d already pulled on his pants, though he’d left off his shirt and sword—the latter within reach, as it always was. Putting his back to the solid wall beside a small window of stained glass, he watched her walk to open that window and look beyond, bathed in the moonlight.