Later.
After she'd made Raphael promise not to kill, maim, or torture her.
Locking the doors after checking on and watering her precious begonias-the yellow one was blooming like full summer wasn't a month past, which put a smile on her face-she pulled the curtains shut and slid the gun back under the pillow. Only then did she pick up the message tube and unscrew it.
The phone rang.
She considered ignoring it. Her curiosity was killing her. But a quick glance at the caller ID showed it was Sara. "Hey. What's up, Ms. Director?"
"I was going to ask you the same question. I had a really weird report last night."
Elena bit her lip. "From who?"
"Ransom."
"Figures," she muttered. The other hunter had the strangest hobby, considering his fascination with guns and weaponry. The fact that they lived in a major metropolitan city full of light pollution didn't seem to faze him. "He was stargazing, wasn't he?"
Sara blew out a breath. "With his super-duper high-powered gee-whiz telescope. And he told me you were, um, flying?" The last word was an incredulous question.
"I'll have to thank Ransom for calling me a star."
"I don't believe this," Sara whispered. "Oh, my-You were up there? Flying?"
"Yep."
"With an angel?"
"Archangel."
Pure silence for several long seconds. Then, "Holy shit."
"Uh-huh." She started unscrewing the lid again.
"What are you doing? I can hear you breathing."
Elena grinned. "You're such a nosy friend."
"It's in the best-friend rule book. Spill while I try to get over my shock."
"I had a delivery by angel a few minutes ago."
"What is it?"
"I'm just trying to . . ." Her voice trailed off as she succeeded in removing the lid. Fingers trembling, she stared at the contents of the tube, a tube that was lined several times over with cushioning material. She had a feeling baby-angel had been meant to make his drop with far more care. "Oh."
"Ellie? You're killing me."
Heart in her throat, she extracted the exquisitely crafted sculpture with careful fingers. "He sent me a rose."
A disappointed snort came through the telephone line. "I know you don't date much, sweet pea, but you can get those for five bucks at the corner store."
"It's made of crystal." Even as she spoke, light reflected off the rose in a distinctive fashion and her mouth fell open. "No way."
"No way, what?"
Disbelieving, she opened a nearby drawer, found a high-tensile cut-through-anything blade she didn't use much because the weighting was slightly off, and tried to gently scratch a tiny part of the stalk. The knife made no impact. But when she tried it in reverse, the rose scratched the blade's "scratch-proof" surface. "Oh, shit."
"Ellie, I swear I'm going to beat you to a pulp if you don't tell me what's going on. What is it? A mutant blood-sucking rose?"
Biting back a laugh, she stared at the indescribably lovely thing in her hand. "It's not crystal."
"Cubic zirconia?" Sara asked dryly. "Oh, wait, plastic."
"Diamond."
Absolute silence.
A cough.
"Could you please repeat that word?"
Elena held up the rose to catch the light. "Diamond. Flawless, one piece."
"That's impossible. Do you know how big it would have to be to carve out a rose? Is it microscopic?"
"Width of my palm."
"Impossible, like I said. Diamonds aren't carved. Really, it's impossible." Except Sara sounded a little breathless. "The man sent you a diamond rose?"
"He's not a man," Elena said, trying to stop the quintessentially female part of her from reacting in sheer delight at the wonder of the gift. "He's an archangel. A very dangerous archangel."
"Who's either besotted with you or tips his employees really well."
Elena laughed again. "Nah, he just wants to get in my pants." She waited until Sara had stopped choking on the other end to continue. "I said no last night. I don't think the archangel likes the word 'no.' "
"Ellie, my darling, please tell me you're messing with me." Sara's tone was a plea. "If the archangel wants you, he will have you. And-" She cut herself off.
"It's okay, Sara," Elena said softly. "If he takes me, he'll break me." Archangels weren't human, weren't close to human. When they were done with their pleasures, they cared nothing for their toys. "Which is why he'll never have me."
"How do you plan to ensure he doesn't come after you later?"
"I'm going to make him swear an oath."
Sara made a hmming sound. "Okay, I have the files up. Angels take oaths seriously. As in dead seriously. But you have to word it exactly right. And it's give-and-take. He'll want his pound of flesh. In your case, probably literally."
Elena shivered, the idea no longer wholly unappealing. And it wasn't the diamond. It was the eroticism of the night before. Dark, stroked with badness, but also the most potent sexual flirtation she'd ever experienced. Her body had sung for him and he'd barely touched her. What would happen if he drove himself inside of her, hot and hard . . . and again?
Her cheeks flushed, her thighs pressed together, and her heart was suddenly a drumbeat in her mouth. "I'll return the rose." It was extraordinary, a remarkable creation, but she couldn't keep it.
Sara misunderstood. "That won't be enough. You have to have something to bargain with."
"Leave that up to me." Elena tried to sound confident when the truth was, she had no idea of how she was going to bargain with an archangel.
He'll want his pound of flesh.
Her mind hiccuped without warning, and Sara's words mixed with the reawakened memory of Mirabelle's violated body. Her soul chilled. What if Raphael's price was something worse than death?
Chapter 11
She put the message tube on Raphael's desk. "I can't accept this."
He lifted a finger, keeping his back to her as he stood by the windows, phone to his ear. It seemed odd to see an archangel with such a modern device, but her reaction made no logical sense-they were masters of technology, no matter that they looked like something out of fairy tale and legend.
How much truth was in those legends, no one knew. For all that angels had been part of mankind's history since the earliest cave paintings, they remained shrouded in mystery. Since man, as always, hated a vacuum, those of her kind had spun a thousand myths to explain the existence of angelkind. Some called them the scions of the gods, others saw them as simply a more advanced species. Only one thing was certain-they were the rulers of the world, and they knew it.