Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

I skidded out into the hallway, turned right, and counted the doors as I ran.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Yanking the handle of the door, I threw it open, my eyes scanning the room. A dining hall, it seemed, with a long table and multiple chairs, and there, in front of a fireplace on the opposite wall, stood Azazel.

His eyes widened as he saw me.

I uttered a high squeak.

The next moment, I’d jumped right over the table in the middle of the room, and I launched myself straight into his arms. He caught me with a strangled sound—half laugh, half growl, with something desperate just underneath it.

His wings erupted with a whoosh, and he wrapped them around me as he pressed me close, burying his face in my neck. I tunneled my fingers through his hair, breathed in his scent, soaked up his warmth, drank in his energy.

“I’ve missed you,” I choked out. “I’ve missed you so much.”

And I wasn’t just talking about the past days since I’d discovered his demon nature in that cave and he’d been taken into custody.

The yearning I felt, that echo of something vital in my life that had been lacking, the sensation of having lost something precious to me, it had been there all throughout my life as an angel. All these years without my memory, I’d still felt the hole deep within me where his love had been ripped from my consciousness.

“Even when I didn’t remember you,” I said hoarsely, “I still felt the loss of you.”

He let out a shuddering breath, drawing back to frame my face with his hands, his expression ravaged with pain. “You will never know the anguish in my soul during those years I didn’t have you in my life. Every day, the only thing that made me endure was the thought of finding you again. Of getting you back. I am nothing without you.”

I shook my head in his gentle grasp, my eyes clouding over. “Don’t say that. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You’re kind and funny. You’re capable and driven. Don’t ever think you’re nothing. I mean, you’ve fought your way up to archdemon .”

Storms in his eyes. “For you.” His thumbs stroked over my cheeks. “I did all that for you, and I am all of that because of you. Without you with me, I am a shadow of the male I could be.”

“Stop,” I whispered, and then I kissed whatever next words he wanted to say right from his lips.

He let me.

And then he took over.

Spearing his fingers into my hair, he grabbed me just so and angled my head to properly kiss me. The touch of his lips against mine was a claim to my heart, my soul, my life. I sighed into his mouth and melted against him, ready to give him all that he asked and more.

His teeth grazed my lower lip, nipping at it, then he soothed the ache with a hot swipe of his tongue. He deepened the kiss, invading my mouth, licking at me, teasing me, until my breathing turned ragged and desire kindled in my blood.

I burned for him.

His power buzzed against my skin, a note of desperate urgency to it. The sound he made echoed with it, too, and I moaned as he slid one hand down to my breast. Not caring about anything but feeling his touch, I arched into his palm.

Still kissing me, he stroked his thumb over my hardened nipple, and a zap of pleasure arrowed down to the apex of my thighs.

Oh, God, I needed this.

Needed him .

I must have spoken that thought, because he murmured a “Yes” against my neck, his lips trailing hotly down my throat. Brushing the strap of my tank off one shoulder, he pushed the top and my bra down, baring one breast.

And then his mouth was on my nipple, hot and wet, making me cry out in pleasure. My world zeroed in on that touch, that sensation, and I undulated against him, completely lost to lust.

His licks and teasing nips became more aggressive, his movements impatient. I tugged at the tunic he wore, seeking the heat of his skin, needing to feel his body on mine with no barriers between us.

He growled and released his grip to help me, and the next seconds were nothing but heated breaths and the frantic disposal of several layers of clothes. As soon as we were both naked, we crashed together again in an explosion of unbridled want.

It felt like fire ignited everywhere my skin touched his. I pushed against him, pressed as close as I could get, as if my survival depended on leaving as little space as possible between us. We devoured each other with kisses that turned the air around us to boiling.

His hands roamed over my back, down to my waist, over the curve of my ass, and when he lifted me, I slung my legs around his hips, holding on to his shoulders. He walked a few steps and then set me on the table, and before I realized what he intended, he’d already pulled my hips to the edge, nudged me flat on my back, pushed my knees apart, and lowered his mouth to my core.

Pleasure, sweet and sharp and intoxicating, shot through me, wrenching a cry from me as I arched my back.

“Azazel,” I gasped, tangling my fingers in his hair.

A devastating lick up my core, his tongue swirling around my clit. “Say it again,” he murmured against my most intimate flesh, his power pulsing over my thighs in sensually destructive waves.

“ Azazel ,” I hissed, every nerve stretched with the anticipation of the rush of ecstasy waiting just around the corner.

His satisfied growl vibrated over my sensitized skin, just before he sucked on my clit and pushed two fingers inside me.

Without fail, he hit that point that made me go feral.

I came with a drawn-out moan, pulling hard on his hair, my thighs shaking.

He’d already risen over me by the time my orgasm ebbed, and now he leaned down to seek my mouth in a kiss that let me taste myself on his lips and tongue, wickedly stoking my barely banked desire once more.

He pushed my legs farther apart, and his cock rubbed over my slick flesh, once, twice, coating himself in my juices. When he thrust inside me, my head fell back on the table, and a groan of pure bliss escaped me.

I clutched him to me, my nails digging into his back, and I relished the feel of him. Having him this close, this intimately connected to me…and remembering exactly who he was to me. Who I was to him.

My heart drew tight, a sob of happiness and sorrow all rolled into one wrenching itself free from my throat. We’d lost so much time. All these years, we could have been together, but we’d been worlds apart, separated by a twist of fate that had saved my life but torn us asunder.

“No,” Azazel murmured, cupping my cheek, his thundercloud-colored eyes lit by lightning. “None of that. Not here. Not now.” A gentle kiss that caressed my lips, coaxing me to let go. “Just you and me. Together. Nothing else matters. You’re mine.” Another kiss, another claim to my heart. “And I’m yours. That’s all there is.”

“Yes,” I whispered against his mouth, my fingers tracing the lines of his face, of this beautiful male that was mine, all mine.

And then I gave myself over to this moment, enjoying the closeness, the pleasure of feeling him inside me. Our kiss turned heated again, and desire coiled in my core. I clenched my inner muscles around him and rolled my hips to meet his quickening thrusts.

He grabbed my thigh to hold me in place as he pumped into me with just the right amount of force to drive my arousal even higher. The table underneath me scooted over the floor, the air filling with my moans and Azazel’s sounds of pleasure.

Our movements became frantic, greedy, as if neither of us could get enough of each other, of chasing that feeling when both of us collided like this. From deep within me, my power rose to the surface, a new kind of darkness to it, a raw, primal, feral force that made me shake and tremble.

I wanted to mark him, to make him my own for all to see. Wanted to possess him, body and soul, until his every breath whispered my name.

Such hunger roared inside me, a deep, savage need to take, to claim, to bind him to me.

Nothing should ever come between us again.

An unfamiliar ache punched through my gums, and the next instant, a sharp pain pierced my lips and I tasted blood. Half dazed, I ran my tongue over my unnaturally long canines—which had just accidentally sliced open my own lips.

Azazel lifted his head from where he’d been kissing my neck, and his thrusts slowed as he beheld my shiny new fangs. A roguish grin stole onto his face, just before he leaned in and took my mouth again, sliding his tongue over the points of my canines.

I groaned at the intense shot of arousal that arrowed down from that touch.

“I want to bite you,” I ground out, surprised at that admission. “Is that even possible?”

He stilled, his gaze intent on mine. “It’s a way to bond.”

“As in…?”

“Linking souls by blood and pleasure.”

“ What? ”

His thumb grazed my lips. “We don’t usually do that because most of us don’t want that kind of union. It’s very intimate and permanent.”

I gripped his hair. “Are you telling me there’s a demon-marriage type thing?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Yes. But we don’t call it that. It goes beyond the concept of marriage.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “Our bond. The one from when we got married. It’s gone, isn’t it? My death severed it.”

His expression darkened, his voice rumbling when he said, “Yes.”

I gripped his hair tighter and pulled him closer. “I want a new bond.”

His eyes flashed, and he wrapped his hand around my throat, his thumb caressing my carotid artery. “If you want to spill my blood, you can just say so. I’m not squeamish.”

“Bite me,” I said with a wicked smile.

A glint of humor in his eyes, eclipsed only by the fierce hunger on his face. “You need to be sure,” he murmured. “I will gladly bind myself to you for eternity, in soul and heart and mind. But I need you to be sure it’s what you want. We’ll be bonded on the deepest level, feeling what the other feels. It’s irrevocable. Once we do this, there’s no turning back from this.”

“Good,” I said with conviction steeling my voice. “I don’t ever want to lose that kind of connection to you again.”

Emotion played over his face, deep and harsh and gentle all at once. “Then I claim you as mine.”

Tilting my head to the side, he leaned down to lick over my throat—and then he bit.

I jerked at the twinge of pain lancing out from where his fangs punctured my flesh. The next second, though, a hot, heady wave of pleasure rolled through me as he sucked hard. I moaned, my legs twitching as I canted my hips to push against him. Need pulsed in my core.

With a groan of his own, he started thrusting again, and the combined sensation of his hard cock pumping into me and the pull of his mouth as he sucked my blood sent me hurtling over into the most exquisite orgasm. My thoughts dissolved, all feelings wiped away except for how he filled me while he took from me, how my soul stretched to meet his, my heart reaching out.

He released me long enough to give a rough command. “Now you.”

“I claim you as mine,” I murmured, and then I arched up and buried my fangs in his throat.

Underneath my hands, his muscles turned to stone, his entire body vibrating as if close to combustion. His blood hit my tongue, and I groaned at the taste. Lush, heavy, intoxicating, his essence poured down my throat, fusing with mine in a way that stripped me bare, tore me apart, and bound me back together at the same time.

And his power…oh, my God.

I’d gotten a sliver of it when we’d bonded through marriage. This, here, eclipsed it all.

His strength pumped into me, into every cell, every nerve, my entire being buzzing with his energy. And there was so much. So, so much. Holy shit. If this was still but a part of what he contained…how was he even holding himself together? He had to be bursting at the seams with the amount of power he carried within.

That was how I felt right now.

His taste was so addictive that I wanted to drink more, pull even deeper from the well of power that was his blood, take more of him inside me, but it was too much. I felt close to exploding with the sheer strength throbbing through me, like my physical body wasn’t enough to hold all of it, like my skin might burst under the pressure.

With a gasp, I tore my mouth away from his neck, and the next second, Azazel tilted my head to capture my lips in a kiss. The iron tang of blood lingered on our tongues—his blood and mine mingling together in a fusion of hearts and souls and bodies.

Our power, combined and fortified, pulsed outward in waves that rocked the air, rattled the room. I barely noticed the sounds of crashing and crunching around us, all my attention on the male with whom I’d joined in the most complete way possible.

We moved together, locked in a rhythm of lust and love, and I felt his pleasure as I felt my own. It was like an echo, a ping of sensation that I recognized as coming from him, and each time it throbbed through me, it drove my own arousal even higher. Which prompted yet another, stronger pulse of pleasure from him.

We were mirroring and reflecting each other’s ecstasy back and forth between us, heightening it every time, and it built, built, built, until it reached a combustion point.

I came with a hoarse cry, my body convulsing around him, and he followed me over the edge almost instantly. The room shook, the air whirring with heat, the scent of smoke stinging my nose.

My entire body feeling raw and soothed at the same time, I blinked, trying to regain my vision. Azazel came back into focus, lying half on top of me, holding his weight off a little so he wouldn’t crush me.

He regarded me with such open love, the echo of which I felt like a coruscant explosion in my heart. I’d seen the depth of his feelings for me written on his face before, had felt the force of his power gentling when he touched me, and I’d heard him clearly voice his love for me. Now, though, I felt what he felt. My lips parted on a hitching breath, my chest drawn tight with happiness and bliss and the deep affection for this extraordinary male I was lucky enough to call my own.

“I love you,” I whispered as I reached up and traced his lips with my fingers.

He grasped my hand, turned his head, and placed a kiss on my palm. A surge of warmth rushed through me—adoration and devotion, the reflection of what he felt—a second before he roughly said, “I love you.”

So rare, these words from him. Though I supposed he’d have even less need to voice them now, given the new bond between us that allowed tendrils of our emotions to reach each other.

It was hard to wrap my brain around what had just happened.

Between us, a new connection had grown, much stronger than the bond we’d had before. I now felt him almost like an extension of myself. His power, his energy, the heave and fall of his breaths, the depth of his soul, his emotions—it all pulsed at the periphery of my awareness, a steady ping to my senses.

“I’ll have to get used to feeling you this way,” I muttered.

His gaze was fathomless as his eyes mapped my face. “Regrets?”

I fought a smile, and lost. “Do you need to ask? Aren’t all my feelings laid out to you now?”

His grin was swift and brilliant and left me breathless. “They always have been.”

I narrowed my eyes.

He didn’t even have the good grace to look sheepish, the rascal. “Love, you were an open book when you were human. Your feelings were written all over your face, informed your scent, or steered your thoughts that you used to throw around like confetti.”

I gasped. “I did not!”

“You tossed them about like the Mardi Gras floats throw their beads.”

“That is an oddly specific comparison. Have you been to Mardi Gras? Did you mingle in the crowd? I can’t even imagine you doing that.”

His smirk caused my stomach to make a cute little somersault. “I don’t usually show myself when I visit Earth. I tend to get…swarmed.”

I squinted at him with suspicion. “By lusty women?”

His grin was answer enough, and I was about to go on a rant about handsy women who should keep their paws off my man when he stole the words from my lips with a scorching kiss.

“The point I wanted to make,” he said after he’d efficiently scrambled my thoughts, “is that I have always been privy to your feelings. Though not like this. Not through experiencing them as if they were my own. It’s…far more intimate than I’d thought.” He played with a lock of my hair. “But I wouldn’t change a thing. I appreciate the deeper insight into what makes you tick. And feeling the way you get jealous about me is just?—”

He made a chef’s-kiss gesture, the rapscallion.

I growled at him. Actually growled, like some intimidating beast. Whoa, I could do that now?

Azazel laughed, his eyes alight with humor, and the echo of his amusement—drenched with love—reverberated within me. “That is the most adorable snarl I’ve ever heard.”

Biting my lip, I played with the soft hair at the nape of his neck, my eyes on those strong shoulders of his. “The most?”

“Hands down.”

I preened.

When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, his affection touched with a serious note. “You make the most amazing demon.”

There was a suspicious amount of hot liquid in my eyes all of a sudden. “Do I?”

His hand cupped my cheek. “Zoe, I loved you as a human, and I loved you as an angel. You were perfect in either form. But this…” His thumb softly stroked over my lips, slipping between them to graze over my fangs that had not yet withdrawn again completely. “This might be my favorite iteration of you. The you that you were always meant to become.”

I blinked to clear my eyes of tears, my smile wobbly. “So what you’re saying is that I’m basically a Pokémon?”

“What?”

“You know, I’ve been evolving. My starting form was human, then my first evolution was angel, and this is my second and final evolution—demon.”

He hung his head, his silky black hair falling forward, and though I didn’t see his face, I felt the ping of his amusement inside me.

I grinned, stupidly happy at making him laugh. It was by far one of my favorite pastimes.

He raised his head again, his gaze suddenly becoming laser-sharp. With a rough note that made me shiver deliciously, he said, “Show me your wings.”

The next moment, he turned us both around, with me straddling him. The move came so fast that I squeaked in surprise and steadied myself with my hands on his chest.

“Show me,” he ordered, and boy, when he gave a command in that sensual tone, I was ready to melt.

I extended my wings with a thought. Azazel’s eyes tracked over my shoulders, where my shiny new appendages rose in the air, and his face softened in awe.

“Even more beautiful than I imagined,” he murmured.

Butter me up and call me a biscuit, but I definitely melted at that compliment.

A crack sounded to my right, followed by a crumpling crash.