Read Online Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh - Free Book Online

Dmitri’s minute nod.
    Watching her go, he turned to Honor. “Now, you,” he murmured, having never lost awareness of the staccato beat of her pulse, the jagged spike of her breath, the subtle complexity of her scent. “You, I want to say those words to me.”
    A sucked-in breath. “I don’t sleep with men who get off on making me bleed.” A biting anger in those words . . . and something older, richer, darker.
    Having reached her, he smiled and knew from the look in her eyes that he’d let a little too much of himself bleed through, the blade too lethal. “Good,” he murmured. “It’ll make it sweeter when I do have you.”
    Spots of color on her cheeks, though he could hear her heart beating like a small, trapped creature’s, panicked and stuttering. “I don’t fuck.”
    â€œYou,” he said, wanting to place his mouth over her pulse and suck, “I wouldn’t fuck. Not the first time anyway.”
    Regardless of the words he’d chosen, Honor wasn’t sure Dmitri was talking about sex at all in that dark purr of a voice that was both the most sinful decadence and a deadly warning. He’d terrified Carmen with quiet, calculated menace, was feared by every other vampire in the city—and yet she found herself standing her ground, her courage coming from some hidden part of her she didn’t entirely understand.
    Maybe she’d collapse into a gibbering mess when she was alone, but she would not break in front of this vampire who’d looked at a former lover with the same detached distance as another man might an insect. “If you want to know what I found out, get the hell out of my personal space.”
    He didn’t move. “Pity you’re not one of the bloodhounds.”
    â€œScent,” she said, breath catching as she felt the faintest caress of black fur and diamonds entangling her senses, “Sara told me you can lure with scent.” It made her wonder how many hunters he’d called, naked and willing, to his bed with nothing but the intoxication of his ability. “I’m not hunter-born,” she argued, though it had just become clear that she may well have had one of them in her lineage.
    And Dmitri knew it.
    Those beautiful lips setting in the slightest curve, he angled his head toward the elevators. “Come, little rabbit.”
    Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to follow—though her heart threatened to punch out of her chest at the thought of being trapped in an elevator with him. Unfortunately, escape wasn’t an option. There was nowhere she could go in this city where he wouldn’t track her down.
    And he would, because she had what he needed. The fact that he wanted to sleep with her was an adjunct, a diversion. “Did your people discover anything else about the victim?” she asked, sweat beading along her spine as they reached the elevator.
    â€œHe died perhaps a day before the head was discovered.” Dark, dark eyes lingering on every curve and shadow of her face. “You need to slow down your pulse, Honor. Or I’ll take it as an invitation. And we both know just how much you’d enjoy my fangs.”
    Her stomach clenched, roiled. “Carmen was right. You are a bastard.” In the pit, one of the vampires had used his fangs to pump something into her bloodstream that was meant to make things pleasurable for the donor, forcing her to orgasm over and over again—a wracking rape of her senses that she couldn’t fight.
    She’d vomited after he finished, much to his disgust. Ice-cold buckets of water thrown over her had been her punishment. “I’d rather eat nails than let you near me.”
    â€œA colorful analogy, but I don’t have to force my food.” Extending his arm to keep the elevator doors from closing, he waited. “As you saw, it comes begging to my door.” He continued to hold the elevator even