Naasir leaned in so close his nose brushed hers. “No,” he said with a playful snap of his teeth.
Elena wanted to strangle him. It was impossible to gauge his expression, separate truth from lie, but she wasn’t about to give up. “Are you a vampire?”
He drank deeply of the blood in his glass, the dark ruby of it swirling with secrets. “No.”
“I think I could be driven to bite you,” she muttered. “Hard.”
Naasir growled, but his eyes were laughing. “Enough?”
“No. I have three questions left.” Shooting a death glare at Dmitri when he asked her if she needed assistance, all false solicitousness, she turned her attention back to Naasir. “Do you truly eat people?”
“Only if I dislike them, or if I’m very hungry.” A solemn statement.
Remembering what he’d once told her about the angel who’d Made him—though she was certain he hadn’t been Made in any ordinary way—as well as what he’d said about Lijuan smelling like bad meat, she figured that was a truth.
“Do you have claws?” All vampires could extend their nails, some more than others. It was part of what allowed them to climb so well. But during the battle, when she’d bandaged up Naasir’s wounds, she’d thought she glimpsed a more dangerous ability out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t mean normal vampire claws. Actual claws.”
Putting down his glass, Naasir spread his hand between them. His fingers were long and strong, his skin that lush, rich brown with an undertone of gold . . . and where his nails had been, she suddenly saw wickedly curved claws as might appear on the paws of a tiger. They disappeared a heartbeat later, and she could almost imagine it had been an illusion.
“Truth,” she whispered, taking his hand to examine his nail beds when he didn’t seem to mind. She almost asked where his claws had gone, since there was no trace of them, but didn’t want to waste a question.
“Do this, Ellie,” Ash said from his other side, reaching out to playfully scratch the back of Naasir’s neck, his hair brushing over her skin.
He made a rumbling sound in the back of his throat, eyes closing.
Elena copied Ash’s action on his hand, got another rumble before he lifted the gorgeous, true silver of his lashes to say, “Last question.”
“Do you change shape?” Her words made Illium erupt in gales of laughter, but Elena wasn’t put off. Legends had to start somewhere. Why not with Naasir?
“Of course,” he answered, then turned his body to the right and curled his arm into his chest. “See, I have just changed shape.”
Making a strangling motion with her hands that had him throwing back his head and laughing in unhidden glee, Elena felt the clean kiss of the sea, of the rain in her mind. I see you and Naasir are becoming friends.
What did I tell you about this new sense of humor of yours? She took a bite of her dinner, which she’d ignored while questioning Naasir.
I was speaking only the truth. Naasir is currently playing with your hair.
He probably wants to scalp me and use my hair as a trophy.
True.
Elena looked up, eyes narrowed at the far too amused archangel across the table. I am so going to get even with you for this. Tugs on her scalp at the same instant, as if Naasir were curling the strands around his finger, then letting go.
She turned, intending to tell him to knock it off, but then she saw his face. He looked . . . absorbed. Like a cat with a ball of yarn. She didn’t care if he’d said no to the tiger question—there was something distinctly feline about him. Especially since he’d apparently talked Ash into scratching his nape again while he played his game with Elena’s hair, his eyes heavy lidded in ecstasy.
She was going to unearth the truth of him, even if it took her the rest of eternity.
• • •
Janvier saw Ash run her nails affectionately over Naasir’s neck and remembered the first time she’d done that. It had been about thirty minutes after meeting Naasir. Where he was standoffish and distant with most new people, Naasir had already decided he liked “Janvier’s hunter,” having kept track of their interactions over the years.
As a result, he’d been his normal self.
Instead of being startled by Naasir’s behavior, Ash had taken to him from the start, making no effort to avoid the physical contact the other male liked to make. “He’s different,” she’d said with a mystified shrug when Janvier asked her about it. “It’s hard to explain, but what I sense from him isn’t anything that disturbs me. I’m not sure I understand most of it.”
A few minutes after that, while the three of them had been crouched in a hidden access tunnel they’d been scoping out in the run-up to the battle, she’d reached out and absently scratched the back of Naasir’s neck.
Janvier, having previously seen how ferociously Naasir could react to unwanted contact, had been ready to fight for her life, but the other man had bent his head for more. Ash’s startled expression as she realized what she was doing had faded into affectionate puzzlement—and Janvier realized she’d reacted to an unvoiced need in the other male.
Her friendship with Naasir was as open and free of shadows as Janvier’s relationship with her was not. So much lay unsaid between them, but saying it would fix nothing. Ash knew he loved her, would always love her. Anything she wanted, he’d give her . . . except for her mortality.