Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Azazel’s motherregarded me with open curiosity, impossibly alive.

Stunned speechless, I could only stare back.

They’d lied to him. They told him she died, and for two thousand five hundred fucking years, Lucifer and Daevi and who knew how many others kept Naamah’s continued existence a secret, let Azazel and Azmodea believe their mother was gone.

Why?

The sheer, naked cruelty of it chilled my soul.

“Who are you?” she asked, stroking my cheek with her free hand, the other still holding my wrist. “You taste fragile.”

“Zoe,” I breathed. “I—I’m bonded to Azazel.”

I didn’t know if she’d understand if I explained about the marriage thing, but surely putting it in terms of a bond like Lucifer and Lilith had would make sense to her.

“Yes,” she murmured, her eyes mapping my face. “You carry his scent in your skin.”

She abruptly let me go and turned away, humming under her breath. Letting her fingers glide over the drapes on the wall, she strolled into the next room, the loose gown she wore billowing around her hips.

Baffled, I followed her. She was standing at the easel, mixing paint on a palette. The canvas held a work-in-progress, a painting of bold strokes and vibrant colors reminiscent of expressionism. Humming, she added more color, her back turned to me.

I watched her for a few minutes, waiting for her to acknowledge me again. When she remained focused on her work, I ventured softly, “Excuse me?”

She stilled, slowly pivoted on her heels and pinned me with a look. “Who are you?”

I exhaled a shaky breath, my heart breaking in understanding.

“Zoe,” I said, my voice hoarse from how my throat was closing up. “I’m bonded to your son.”

Her lips parted, and she dropped the paintbrush. “Azazel? How is he?”

Tears prickled at the back of my eyes. “He’s great. Strong, confident, stubborn.” My voice broke. “He’s the bravest male I know.”

Her throat muscles worked as she swallowed, her gaze swinging to the side. “Does he remember me?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

Her eyes held a sheen as she looked up again. “Not just the bad?”

I shook my head, inhaled a breath that hurt all the way in and out. “Have you been here all this time?”

“How long?”

Oh, God.

“Two thousand five hundred years,” I said in a small voice.

She closed her eyes, opened them again. Her face contorted, her energy flaring hot. “They think I broke because of him,” she said harshly. “Because of how he left. As if a male could shatter me.” Lips quivering, agony etched into her features, she added in an anguished tone, “It was me. It’s always been me. Something’s not right in me.”

My vision blurred, tears filling my eyes. I furiously blinked them away.

Naamah rubbed her temples, pressed the heels of her hands against her head. “I can’t get it out. I can’t make it right.”

The pain in my chest felt like shards of glass digging into my heart. I wanted to help her so badly, hug her until she was okay. But all the hugs in the world wouldn’t be enough to make her okay.

She uttered a tormented sound that tore at my soul, then sank down on the floor. Eyes vacant, she brushed her fingers over the rug, back and forth, back and forth.

“Naamah?” I asked softly.

No reaction. She continued stroking the rug, her gaze unfocused.

At a loss for what else to do, I knelt down next to her, tentatively touched her arm with my left hand. I sucked in a sharp breath when the flare of pain at the contact reminded me that my fingers were a bloody mess.

Without looking at me or my hand, Naamah tilted her head and laid her hand over my fingers. “Broken,” she muttered.

Warm tingles spread through my hand, up my arm and through the rest of my body. The pain vanished, not just the one in my hand, but the throbbing in my ankle and the dull hurt inside my skull as well.

“Thank you,” I whispered, wishing so hard I could return the favor.

Naamah hummed, her eyes unseeing, lost in her own world.

A commotion outside the room made me snap up my head, look to the closed door leading out of these chambers. Sounds of metal clanging came from the other side. Fighting?

I had a brief moment of wide-eyed confusion, and then the door burst in as if blasted by an explosion.

A demon barreled inside. For a hopeful second, I thought it was Azazel.

But no, this was someone else. Someone with wild eyes, blood all over him, and a raised dagger. “I found her!” he yelled.

And then he threw the blade.

I didn’t even have time to startle. The knife embedded itself in flesh with a nauseating thunk. Next to me, Naamah toppled over backwards, the dagger protruding from her chest, rendering her unconscious.

No!

The demon was already striding toward us, giving me a cursory glance. My hand curled around the hilt of my dagger, hidden from his view next to my thigh.

Having reached us, he grabbed my hair and pulled me up. Pain shot from my scalp all the way through my body, and I screamed, pawing at his grip with my free hand. The flash of a blade, cold steel against my throat.

The demon peered at me. “You’re Azazel’s, hm?” He clucked his tongue. “Didn’t expect you here, but you’ll be a nice bonus.”

Focus, Zoe.I breathed, stilled the shaking of my hand. Muscle memory took over. Weeks of training, repeating the same movement over and over, guided my stroke. With an exhale, I yanked the dagger up and shoved it forward, straight into the demon’s chest.

His eyes widened, his features going slack. His grip on my hair spasmed, eased. I fell to the floor at the same time he dropped his blade. A second of frozen shock, then I rolled over and stumbled to my feet.

The demon lay on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling, mouth agape. The dagger sat in his chest, bull’s eye in his heart—incapacitating him for now, just like Azazel had taught me.

I let out a rugged breath. My hands were shaking, my heartbeat a jackhammer in my chest. What now?

More sounds of fighting from the hallway. Shit, shit, shit. He’d yelled to someone earlier. He had backup.

My gaze fell on Naamah, still lying there with the dagger in her chest. I rushed to her, grabbed the handle, and yanked the blade out. That should speed up the healing, shouldn’t it? And when she woke, she’d be able to fight, right? Right?

Just then another demon ran into the room, sword raised. All the blood drained from my head, making me dizzy. Too soon. Naamah was still out. I hadn’t even raised the dagger yet when the demon stood over me, the tip of his sword under my chin.

No way could I repeat my earlier move now, not with me on my knees and him standing. I swallowed.

A rush of air was the only warning. The demon jerked, his chest bowed outward, and then the bloody tip of a sword emerged from inside him. Muscles loosening, he fell to his knees, then slumped to the side, the sword still embedded, the handle sticking out his back.

Behind him stood a dark-haired female demon in the black-and-gold livery of Lucifer’s guards, blood-streaked and half-shredded, a second sword in her hand. Her eyes took in the scene.

A demon with a dagger in his chest. Naamah on her back, the front of her dress bloodstained. Me, on my knees over her, a blade clutched in my hands.

My eyes widened. I dropped the dagger and pulled my hands up in the universal pose of surrender. “It wasn’t me!”

The guard’s brown eyes narrowed.

“Okay,” I said frantically, “I did him. But not her!” I jerked my head toward Naamah. “We were just talking. Then this guy ran in and knifed her. He came for me too, and I stuck him with my dagger. That’s all, I swear!”

“How did you get in here?”

“I was lost and there were these rats and I had to run, but there was no other way, so I used a sigil, it’s the only sigil I know, from Azazel, I had no idea where it would lead me, but then it opened up here and—”

“Stop,” the guard barked. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she added in a murmur, “Hell’s bells.”

Apparently dismissing me for the moment, she stalked past me to the first demon—still down for the count—hauled him up by the throat, and slashed off his legs with two horribly efficient strokes of her sword.

I winced and crawled backward.

The guard proceeded to chop off the demon’s arms at the shoulder as well, then dropped him unceremoniously. All through the butchery, the demon hadn’t moved, still unconscious. Swinging the sword in her hand, the guard strode to the second demon—also still knocked out—and yanked him up by the throat too.

I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to keep the bile from rising up. Averting my eyes didn’t help much. The sounds of her cutting off the limbs of the demon painted a vivid enough picture in my mind, given I’d just witnessed what it looked like.

Naamah stirred. Gasping, she rolled over and into a crouch. Her eyes roved over the bloodbath in the room, flicked from me to the guard.

“My lady,” the guard said with a bow. “Please excuse the mess. Someone will come by shortly to clean up. I suggest you retreat to your bedroom.”

Naamah frowned at the floor. “That was my favorite rug.”

“I apologize, my lady. It couldn’t be helped. I’ll be sure to ask His Grace to replace it.”

“Don’t bother.” With a disdainful sniff, Naamah rose and strode into the adjacent room.

The guard loosed a sigh and went to lug both demons out into the hallway just as another guard came running. They conversed in hushed whispers for a moment. When the female guard returned, she pointed her sword at me.

“You. Come with me.”

Oh, boy.

* * *

The guardeasily hauled the two dismembered demons all the way through the palace and into the throne room by the cuffs of their shirts, intermittently barking at me to keep up. At some point the delinquents woke and began screaming, which the guard solved by re-stabbing them each to render them unconscious again.

I might have had a girl crush on her.

The throne room bustled with activity, though different from the exuberant and erotic revelry from earlier. The crowd was gone, instead hordes of lower-level demons like the merihem were scrubbing floors, pillars, and walls, and I blinked in bafflement at the few who were currently…hand-vacuuming tapestries, trying hard to remove the pink glitter that stuck to everything like some hellish fairy dust.

Oh. So that hadn’t been an amrit-induced hallucination after all. Azmodea really did set off glitter bombs. I bit back laughter. How fiendish.

My amusement vanished like a popped bubble when the dais came into view. Lucifer and a handful of his courtiers as well as Lilith were present. Anxiety rocked through me, making my skin crawl. The memories of how he forced me to drink the amrit and took advantage of my drugged state played out vividly in my mind. My skin flushed hot. He’d humiliated me in front of his court with such easy cruelty, and my visceral reaction at seeing him again was to turn and run.

Especially since he was in the process of punishing someone.

A demon knelt before him, straining as if trying to move against shackles, though I saw none. Lucifer laid a hand on his head and spoke a word I couldn’t make out from where I stood. The demon screamed, and his wings erupted from his back.

“Please don’t,” the demon pleaded.

Placing one hand on the demon’s left shoulder, Lucifer grasped his right wing—and yanked. Flesh and muscles ripped, bones broke, as the wing tore away from the demon’s back. More ear-splitting screams, blood spraying in a gruesome rain.

Humming, Lucifer handed the ripped-off, blood-dripping wing to an attendant next to him. Cracking his knuckles, he went for the other wing.

I gagged, the bile I’d tried so hard to keep down after the guard dismembered the demons finally forcing its way up my throat. Bending over, I retched and puked the sparse contents of my stomach onto the floor.

A merihem scurried over and mopped the vomit right up, ranting and raving at me all the while in their impish language.

I winced, my stomach aching, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

The guard threw the two demons on the floor in front of the dais and went down on her knee, bowing her head. “Your Grace.”

I remembered protocol with a start and quickly knelt as well, lest I give Lucifer more reason to punish me. I was probably in boiling hot water with him already anyway.

“Timira,” Lucifer said. “Rise. What have you got for me?”

“Two insurgents who broke into Naamah’s rooms and attacked her, sire.”

The entire hall hushed, even the whimpers of the punished demon died down.

“What?” Lucifer’s whispered question held all the more menace for how quiet it was.

Timira gulped audibly. “It seems two of the insurrectionists made it past the guards stationed outside her quarters. I arrived on the scene after hearing the commotion from several corridors over, while dispatching another insurgent. The two guards outside her room were incapacitated, the door smashed in. Inside, I found these two demons, one of them immobilized by a dagger through the heart, the other with his sword at her throat.”

She gestured to me, and I ducked and furtively glanced around, searching for a hole to crawl to and hide in.

Timira went on with a succinct report of the scene and my own statement, after which eerie silence again descended over the throne room. I chanced a look at the dais and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Cold fury vibrated around Lucifer, ice crystals forming in the air, frost licking over the floor, down the steps, until it reached my bare knees. I shivered. I knew what happened when Lucifer got furious as opposed to “just” angry.

“You,” he said, his voice chilling me to my bones.

An invisible hand grabbed me by the throat and pulled me up until my toes barely touched the ground. I gagged, pawed at my neck, unable to break the hold of a hand that wasn’t there. Little lights danced across my vision, darkness creeping in. I wheezed, struggled for breath, panic setting in.

“I should squash you like the bug you are.”

My mind was a white wasteland of fear.

“Lu.” A resonant female voice. “She saved your daughter’s life. You owe her a debt.”

The grip around my throat eased. My feet fully touched the ground, and I gasped for air.

On the dais, Lucifer turned to Lilith, his expression equal parts bewilderment and reproach.

“Lil,” he grated.

She cast him the best side-eye I’d ever seen. “I like this one,” she said.

“Why?” Lucifer looked like he’d sucked on two pounds of lemons.

Lilith’s eyes tracked to me. “She reminds me.”

“Of what?”

A small smile curved her lips. “What it was like to be human.”

Lucifer glared at Lilith for a long moment before he turned to me with the utter resignation of a man fulfilling his beloved’s whimsical bidding. If the circumstances were different, it’d have made him quite likable.

Noise from somewhere behind me drew Lucifer’s gaze. His eyes narrowed, and I dared a glance over my shoulder to see what was going on. My heart stopped, then launched into a wild gallop.

Azazel strode into the hall, flanked by two guards. He spotted me. His eyes widened. A tremor visibly went through him, and for a second, the beacon of his energy inside me pinged with a white-hot emotion.

Zoe, he said in my mind, are you—

His voice cut off like a disconnected phone call. The beacon of his energy faded away, as if muted.

“Ah, Azazel,” Lucifer drawled. “How fortunate of you to join us. It seems like you lost something.” He indicated me. “Or maybe that was deliberate? In the hopes an accident may befall her, to be rid of your unwanted wife?”

I jerked as if slapped. Lucifer’s words pierced something soft and raw inside me, scraped over old, festering wounds like claws, tore them wide open. I sucked in a sharp breath.

No. That wasn’t right. Azazel wouldn’t do that. Lucifer was just trying to needle me—however he knew exactly how to do that, I had no idea, but he was the devil for a reason.

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. All the things Azazel had done for me, the way he treated me, it had to count for something. He walked back into his own trauma for me, for fuck’s sake. You didn’t do that for someone you wanted to get rid of.

And yet, I couldn’t shake that small, insistent voice in my head whispering that this was before I’d unwittingly humiliated him in front of Lucifer’s entire court and gave them the ammunition to mock him for at least the next century. Azazel had been so hurt after, so withdrawn, the cold edge with which he talked to me chillingly fresh in my mind.

What if my blunder, however much it wasn’t my fault, broke the fragile thing that had grown between us? What if it soured his feelings for me…such as he might have had? He’d never told me if he did. We hadn’t talked about what we felt for each other.

And now…now I feared the tender thread between us frayed, threatening to snap. Resentment wasn’t rational, defied best intentions, and found cracks to slip inside and wedge wide open over time.

While I wrangled with my sobering thoughts, Lucifer spoke once more. “It seems I owe dear Zoe here a debt. I’d hate to have it hanging over my head, so allow me to settle it. I have just the thing, perfect actually—” he pointed at me and Azazel with a smile that was edged with a razor “—for both of you. It will make all parties happy.”

Inwardly, I cringed. Knowing Lucifer, whatever he was about to propose would be a double-edged sword. I pressed my lips together, bracing myself.

“My offer, darling Zoe,” he purred, giving me his undivided attention, “is to annul your marriage to Azazel and send you back home.”

If a freight train had barreled into me, I couldn’t have been more shocked or keeled over. Home.

“You’ll be back in your old life,” Lucifer continued, “with your friends, your job…your family. It will be as if none of this ever happened. No one will remember that you disappeared. People will think you took a long vacation volunteering on a llama farm in Peru, or whatever you kids do these days. And you won’t remember any of this.” He leisurely waved a hand at the entirety of Hell. “No harm done, everything back to normal. A wish come true.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Didn’t I wish for that? A way out of this nightmare, to go back to my ordinary, perfectly boring life, in a world that was familiar and safe…ish? Compared to Hell, at least. And to see my mom again…talk to her, touch her. My heart ached, and I rubbed over my breastbone.

But was it still? A nightmare, that is. However this started, hadn’t it become something else since then?

Before I could answer that question, Lucifer turned to Azazel, a glint in his eye. “Wouldn’t that be a gift for you as well? To be able to divest yourself of this unbidden burden, to rid yourself of this problem. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted?”

My breath got stuck in my throat. Every aching part of me hovered on the precipice of a great fall, painfully tense.

His gaze steady on Lucifer, Azazel said, “Yes.”

I never knew a single word could shatter my heart.

I gasped, my shoulders slumping. A thousand shards cut me on the inside, opened those barely scabbed-over wounds Lucifer just poked at earlier, and I bled, bled, bled. Whatever little belief I’d had in Azazel’s intentions crumbled to dust, along with any fledgling hope for something more.

I struggled to breathe. Pain flared in my chest, rapacious and furious. He couldn’t have hurt me more if he’d taken one of those daggers and thrust it straight through my heart.

I mentally grasped for my walls. Where were they when I needed them, when I’d rather close myself off than break apart in public? They’d served me so well in all the years past, but I’d taken them down for Azazel, and now I couldn’t seem to raise them again.

Azazel’s voice snapped my attention back to him. “But,” he said, still looking at Lucifer, “it’s not what I want anymore.”

Lucifer pressed his lips into a thin line, and his expression darkened.

Azazel caught my gaze, a storm of lightning in his eyes. “I want you to stay. You’re mine, and I’m claiming you.” He took a heavy breath, his voice harsh as he added, “You’re not a burden, not a problem to be rid of. You’re the reason I’ve smiled more in the past few weeks than I did in the last decades. Getting to know you is the best thing to have happened to me in a long while. I want you down here with me, as my wife.” A pause, then, softly— “If you’ll have me.”

Instant, crushing relief rushed through me with enough force to make me sway on my feet. I raised a trembling hand to my mouth, my eyes prickling hot. It should have scared me, how much his words meant to me, how fiercely I felt that breathtaking sense of relief and utter joy. And maybe it did, a little.

My walls, I guessed, had kept me from this, from feeling this deeply, from handing someone the power to hurt me. Because when you showed someone the vulnerable parts of yourself, you gave them the knowledge where exactly to cut to make you bleed.

As Azazel had given me. He told me of his scars, let me see the parts of him that were raw and hurting, gave me the knowledge to eviscerate him.

And it was because of this, as I stood there staring at him, that I knew what his declaration cost him, knew how much he risked. Not Lucifer’s scorn, not the mockery of the court, no.

My rejection.

He laid his heart at my feet, told me he wanted me to stay, when I was just as likely to go back to Earth as I was to remain here. Azazel couldn’t know how I felt. How would he, when I’d just figured it out myself?

He’d just sliced himself open and handed me that most vulnerable part of him, the piece that was battered and bruised by his father’s abandonment—who didn’t love him enough to stay in his life.

And I could hurt him just as badly now, if I chose to accept Lucifer’s offer and went back to Earth, with my mind wiped of every memory of Azazel. Gone all the moments we shared, the joy, the pain, the laughter, the sex…the love.

Heart aching from the choice laid out before me, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, it was to see Azazel waiting patiently for my answer.

And I found it wasn’t really a choice at all. My heart had known all along.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I’ll stay.”

His smile was sudden and blindingly bright, his eyes holding the hint of welcome surprise. He really hadn’t known. He’d been prepared to receive a crushing rejection and watch me walk out of his life.

Never, I vowed silently. Never would I give him up. He was mine, and I’d claim him as he did me.

I turned to Lucifer, who’d watched our exchange with a sour expression. His lip even curled.

“Your Grace,” I said. “As much as I appreciate your generous offer, I have to decline. I’d rather stay in Hell.”

He bared his teeth. “I will not have this debt hanging over my head. It needs to be settled now.”

I blinked. “That sounds like a you problem.”

“Zoe,” Azazel hissed.

I startled, clapped a hand over my mouth, and hastily bowed. “My apologies, Your Grace. What I meant to say was—I mean—”

Think, think, I urged myself. Propose something else.

“I want powers,” I blurted.

“Powers.” Lucifer regarded me like one might a yipping chihuahua. “What kind?”

The gears in my head turned in overdrive. What kind, what kind… Flying was out of the question.

Or was it?

I squinted at Lucifer. “Wings?”

He rolled his eyes. “How utterly predictable.” Crossing his arms, he added, “No. I can’t turn you into a demon, and I can’t give you wings.”

Well, it was worth a try.

“Healing,” I said after thinking on it for a few more seconds. “I want to heal as fast as a demon.”

“Obviously,” Lucifer muttered.

“And summoning!” I added with a raised finger, having thought of this one just now.

He sighed and casually waved his hand. “Done.”

A tingle ran through my body, and I inhaled sharply. Was that it? So easy? I raised a brow and scratched my arm hard enough to draw blood—just to watch the fresh wound begin to close almost immediately.

“Do you doubt my word?” Lucifer asked with quiet menace.

I jerked my head up. “No! Of course not, Your Grace. I would never, I swear. I was just—I mean—there was an itch—all that glitter—”

Azazel’s hand closing over my mouth effectively cut off my babbling as he pulled me to him with his other arm around my waist. “She meant to say thank you, Your Grace. The debt is paid, and we’ll be going now. If you’ll excuse us.”

And with that he lifted me and whirled around, already striding toward the doors to the lobby.

“Wait!” I yelled, reaching back to the dais. “My dagger!”

I’d be loath to leave that beautiful stabby thing here, lodged as it still was in the chest of the demon I’d stuck with it. The insurgent in question had woken in the meantime, along with his comrade, though they’d been smart enough not to scream in Lucifer’s presence.

Azazel growled and turned back around, just as Lucifer strolled down the dais, grabbed the dagger and yanked it out of the demon. The guy didn’t even wince. Then again, the move probably barely registered over the pain he must be in from his severed limbs.

“This one here?” Lucifer asked, weighing the blade.

“Yes,” I squeaked weakly.

“Hmm.”

With a move too fast for my eyes to follow, he threw the dagger right at me. It thudded into my shoulder with enough force to thrust me back against Azazel’s chest. Pain exploded in my upper body, and I screamed.

“To test your new healing skills,” Lucifer purred.

Azazel snarled, his energy vibrating so violently, it crawled over my skin and let the air shimmer around us. His wings unfurled with an aggressive whoosh.

“Careful, boy.” Lucifer clucked his tongue. “I’m in the mood for blood. You should take your leave as long as you can.”

Azazel glowered at him, but I tapped him on his arm around my waist.

“Let’s just go,” I whispered as I pulled the dagger out of my shoulder, cringing at the fresh pain.

With a rough exhale, Azazel tucked his wings back in. Hefting me up in his arms, he pivoted and marched toward the doors.

A push and pop in my head, but instead of Azazel, it was Lucifer who spoke directly into my mind. Oh, and Zoe?

The intensity of his energetic presence made me tremble.

Not a word about Naamah, he went on. To anyone. Including your brooding husband.

My lips parted. That was—no. Azazel needed to know. I couldn’t do that to him.

If you want to leave here, Lucifer said, his mental voice a threat wrapped in silk, I’ll need your binding vow not to reveal what you know about Naamah.

Your Grace, I stammered. Please.

Vow it.

I looked up at Azazel’s achingly beautiful face, his features drawn tight as he carried me, and I closed my eyes.

I vow not to reveal what I know about Naamah.

Good, Lucifer crooned. This is your friendly reminder that vows are binding, and breaking them has consequences. A heavy pause. You do not want to find out what they are.

Understood, I whispered.

See you around, kid. His voice dripped with wry amusement.

The next instant, his mental presence receded, leaving me alone with a terrible secret and a heaping amount of guilt. But what choice did I have?

I wrapped my arms around Azazel’s neck, careful to keep the dagger away from him, and buried my nose in the curve of his neck. Clutching me tighter, he hurried on.

I shared in his urgency—I didn’t want to spend one minute longer than necessary in this palace. I still couldn’t believe we were getting out of here at all.

We were just crossing the lobby, when a shout made Azazel pause.

“There you are!” Azmodea called, descending one of the staircases. “I’ve been looking for you all over. Are you okay?”

She shook off what looked like a tiny reptile that had sunk its teeth into her right calf, and picked something out of her hair that fluttered away on leathery wings, before she joined us on the floor of the lobby.

“I’m fine,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

“Oh, thank Hell. This place is the worst.” She patted my cheek. “So glad you’re in one piece, darling.”

Falling into step with us, she gave me a once-over, her eyes lingering on the bloody dagger in my grip. “So, what’d I miss?”

“Later,” Azazel said.

I released a rough exhale and laid my head on his shoulder, glad for the delay.

Because I had no idea how to explain what happened without mentioning Naamah.

* * *

We didn’t speak againuntil we entered Daevi’s territory. The moment we flew over the border—marked by patrols and a line of fire on the ground—Azazel’s shoulder muscles lost some of their tension under my hands.

Azmodea took her leave soon after, promising to come over later to compare notes—after a thorough shower, as she said, to wash off any vermin residue and persistent glitter.

We flew on, the harsh landscape of Hell zooming by underneath us.

Can you hear me?Azazel’s voice in my head.

Yes! What happened earlier—it felt like you were cut off.

Lucifer. Azazel’s mental voice held a growl. He blocked me.

Such a cock-block.

Azazel barked a laugh, and warmth bloomed in my chest.

I love hearing you laugh, I whispered.

You’re the reason I do.

I smiled into his neck, the happy warmth spreading to every part of me.

Did you get him?I asked after a moment. My dad?

I hadn’t had a chance to check in with Azazel earlier, to see if he’d made it. I’d been out of commission during most of the mission, thanks to the forced nap time after I drank the amrit.

Yes.

My next exhale was perilously close to a sob, relief making me tremble in his arms.

Thank you. I kissed his neck. Thank you. His jaw. Thank you. The corner of his mouth.

You can thank your way down my body later if you’d like.

Don’t worry.I grinned. I’ve got lots of gratitude left over.

Hmm. The corner of his mouth kicked up.

I raised my hand and traced the curve of his lips, my heart painfully open. He caught my finger and nipped at the tip.

I’m sorry, I said. About earlier.

He frowned. What?

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. When Lucifer made me drink the amrit. The things I said—

That wasn’t your fault, he cut me off harshly.

I know.I curled my hand in his shirt. But still... I’m so—

He snapped his wings tight to his body, making us plummet at neck-breaking speed. The scream that wrenched its way out of my throat could have woken the dead.

There we go, he murmured in my mind.

“Stop it! Azazel!”

Of course, he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he rolled us in the air so we torpedoed like a damn bullet. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

Azazel laughed, the fiend.

“Stoooooop,” I yelled, and then, when he ignored me like the brute he was, I added, “How unbecoming of an angel!”

“That’s it,” he said. “I’ll drop you.”

“Don’t you dare!” I clutched him tighter than a Black Friday shopper at Costco did the last iPhone on sale.

He pinwheeled across the sky, alternated between powerful, ascending wing beats and sudden, stomach-dropping free falls, until my screaming turned to whooping laughter, and he kissed me breathless.

I only noticed we were close to home when he landed on the balcony outside his suite. Not even pausing to set me down, he shifted my weight and unlocked the door with the sigils, then briskly walked inside.

The door had barely fallen shut when he had me pinned against the wall, his kiss a bruising thing of passion. Arousal flared in my core, rolled outward in lush waves of lust as I slung my legs around his hips.

He broke the kiss, breath heavy, and laid his forehead against mine. “You’re here,” he rasped. “You stayed.”

For me.He didn’t add that last part, but I heard it clearly, understood how much it meant to him.

“You’re mine.” I stroked his cheek, tunneled my hand through his hair. “I’ll never give you up. You’re stuck with me now. I’ll cling to you like that glitter.” I nodded at the pink dust covering him.

His husky laugh did all sorts of sinful things to me. “I’ll be finding glitter on me fifty years from now.”

“Try a century.”

His eyes full of lightning, he murmured, “How about forever?”

“Are we still talking about glitter?” I bit my lip.

A sensual smile snuck onto his face, his energy a caress over my skin. “No.”

“In that case,” I said, booping him on the nose, “I want a ring.”

“A ring.”

“Don’t make me quote Beyoncé!”

He grinned as he kissed me. A ring it is, he spoke into my mind.

And then his kiss turned into a firestorm of urgency.

Licking and nibbling, he took my mouth with the kind of desperate hunger of someone who’d tasted the threat of starvation. I shivered, arched into him, and held on tight as I let him devour me. I was just as hungry for him.

He could have lost me today, and his kiss was testament of how much that had rocked him. A thousand words were packed into that kiss, the ones he’d spoken to me as he asked me to stay, and so many more that were yet to be said.

Tasting them on his tongue was enough for me right now.

I met him lick for lick, nip for nip, my blood afire. His hand on my hip made me suck in a sharp breath. With clear intent, he pulled the material of my dress out from between us.

I broke the kiss to protest. “I’m a bloody mess!”

He tilted his head. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t bloody care.” Holding me in place with one hand under my ass, he slipped his other hand between my legs and found me wet and swollen.

“Azazel!” I gasped. “Your bathroom is right there. We should take a shower first—”

“I need you,” he said, his gentle strokes over my intimate flesh in stark contrast to the harshness of his tone. “I watched you be pulled into a hole by a filthy hellrat and spent the next hour thinking you’d died.”

I exhaled roughly, my chest squeezing at the pain in his words.

“I need to feel you,” he continued, his finger circling my clit. “I need to catch your breaths with my mouth, hear you cry my name when I make you come. I need to feel you hot and wet and ready when I take you so hard that I’ll be stamped into every cell of your body.”

My toes curled, and I arched into his touch.

“And, no,” he said with a growl, “this can’t wait. Not even five minutes.”

“Okay,” I wheezed, my pulse thundering, his caresses a firebrand on my skin. “Okay.”

I surrendered to the heady sensation of his fingers parting my lips, grazing my entrance. A moan tore itself from my throat as he slid two fingers inside me while pressing his thumb to my clit.

He was right. This couldn’t wait, and I needed this as much as he did. I didn’t want to imagine my life without him in it, without his touch, his laughter, his love. The thought alone hurt as much as a physical blow, and I clung tighter to him, pushed into his caress and caught his lips with mine, needing to drown out pain with pleasure.

He pumped his fingers in and out, stroking over my clit, until I rolled my hips with frantic need.

His mouth at my ear, hot breaths on my skin. “Come for me.”

I tipped over the edge with a drawn-out moan, losing myself in the explosions of bliss, the feel of his lips on my neck. The waves of my orgasm were yet crashing over my senses when the blunt head of his cock pushed inside me.

He stretched me with a delicious edge of pain, the movement as he sank home stoking the fires that had barely begun to simmer down. His throaty moan did me in completely. I came again, my head falling back against the wall, my hands buried in his hair.

“You feel perfect,” he groaned.

I clenched around him, sought his mouth, and found him eagerly meeting my lips. His kiss was demanding, possessive, greedy, and I gave him my breath, my heart, my all. Whatever he desired, it was his for the taking.

And take me he did.

Slinging one arm behind my back to cushion me against the wall, he grabbed on to my thigh with the other hand—and fucked me. Hard.

All I could do was hold on to him with my hands around his neck as he slammed into me again and again, claiming me more with each powerful stroke. His energy pushed and pulled on my skin, and the exquisitely raw friction of his body meeting mine coiled the tension in me tighter and tighter.

I felt him everywhere, inside and out, his words proving true. He really stamped himself into every cell in my body, and I reveled in the sensation. I wanted him imprinted onto my very soul.

Clutching my thigh, he plunged into me faster, harder, until my teeth rattled with the force of his thrusts. Not that I cared. Not when I needed his ferocity with a relentless greed of my own. I clenched my legs around his hips, dug my nails into his back, bit the curve of his neck. I’d never before held on to anything as desperately as I did to him.

His energy licked over my clit, and that was it.

Pleasure burst in my core, coruscant explosions of bliss that stole my breath.

“Azazel,” I moaned, riding the cresting wave of my orgasm, riding him.

He clamped me tight with his one hand around my back and buried the other in my hair. Tugging my head back, he exposed my neck, placing a hot kiss on my racing pulse, while he continued pumping into me. One, two, three more thrusts, and he followed me over.

Hearing his husky moan as he found his release made me shiver with delight. I could become addicted to that sound, to the feeling of him inside me when he groaned like that, knowing I gave him this pleasure.

Well, to be honest, I could become addicted to him.

Chests heaving with our fast breathing, we shared the air between us, lingering in this moment of blissful intimacy.

My hand on his cheek, my heart on my sleeve. “I love you,” I whispered.

Raw and open, I bared myself to him more than to anyone. I’d never said these words before, not to someone who wasn’t family or my best friend. And yet now they seemed barely enough to express what I felt for him.

It was enough for him. His eyes flashed lightning, his energy a cascade of heat over my skin, his touch reverent as he traced my mouth with his thumb. “Tell me every day.” His hand was warm where he cupped my cheek. “Tell me again and again, until I kiss the words from your lips.”

With a smile, I murmured, “I love you.”

His hand on my throat.

“I love you.”

His fingers gliding over the swell of my breasts.

“I love you.”

His thumb flicking my nipple.

“I love you.”

His lips on my jaw.

“I love y—”

His mouth on mine, stealing the words.

I love you too, he spoke in my mind, and I melted into his kiss.