Chapter 12

Chapter 12

It was a dam breaking,wild ocean waves thrashing under a tornado burgeoning in the jet-black sky above. Diel could feel the control snapping from him piece by piece. He could feel his blood boiling, pure molten magma scalding the thinning walls of his veins. His bones vibrated with newly injected energy, and his muscles expanded like a condor flexing its wide black wings as it caught the current of a gale-force wind.

And Diel had no control over any of it.

His heart beat too fast, his lungs contracting and expanding in an erratic rhythm as they tried to keep up with the speed. But it was futile. Without the collar he was a fucking newly dropped nuclear bomb—detonated, irreversible, his sadistic wants and needs unable to be tamed.

Diel’s skin grew so hot that sweat poured down his face and neck. He had never had the collar off his neck. Gabriel turned it down when he went on kills, but his older brother always stayed near, ready to increase the voltage when the monster got too strong, too fast, too dangerous, and needed to be reeled back in.

But Gabriel wasn’t here now.

Diel’s vision flickered as he stared at Noa standing stoically before the blazing fire like a fucking pink-haired demon. He looked past her and saw the collar slipping further into the mountain of ash in the hearth, the key already lost to the splintering wood. It was the only collar they had. And she had destroyed it. She had fucking destroyed Diel!

His breathing grew even faster, and he felt his monster charging at the cage he had forced it into. The minute Noa had taken the collar from his neck, his monster had roared in victory. It had already craved the woman; her long pink hair and leather-clad body were his greatest fantasy come to life. My reward, it chanted whenever she was near. My reward for all the years in Brethren hell.

Diel felt his hot body break out in shivers, as if the flu held him in its grip, like how he had felt after he had been branded by the Brethren’s hot irons, as Father Quinn watched his body fight the resulting infection with zero medication—delirious, yearning for reprieve.

Diel looked down at his hands, as if they should appear different. He had only a second to take a single breath before the monster melted into the black mist that made up its previous form and infected Diel, a plague-like virus racing through his cells and blood and bones, shredding his muscles as it fought for control.

“No,” Diel spat out, teeth gritted and jaw aching. He tried to push the monster back, but without the threat of the collar’s electric shock, it was as stubborn as the devil, a demon intent on complete possession, finally overriding the last bastions in Diel’s body that had resisted its pull for too long.

Even in the high intensity of that moment, Diel remembered his younger self, the confused boy who dreamed of the day that the chains were torn from his body and he got to embrace the monster. But now that fantasized moment was here, born in reality, a spike of true fear splintered through his skull. He never fucking felt fear. Nothing scared him after the hell he and his brothers had been put through.

But as the monster seeped too deep into his body to ever be removed, like a malignant tumor too advanced to conquer, Diel felt that spark of fear stab down his spine like the plunge of an archangel’s fiery sword.

Diel had spent a lifetime searching for an outlet from who he was. The monster had been his shield against the fucking war the Brethren had raged on his young, fragile body. But now he was in jeopardy of losing all that he was to the monster he had once viewed as his savior, he didn’t want Diel the man, himself, to die. He didn’t want to suffocate under the monster’s fists.

He wanted to fucking live.

He wanted to fucking fight.

Diel realized that his legs had buckled and he was on all fours on the floor. He was wrenched away from his inner thoughts to find himself staring at the folly’s ancient stone beneath his palms and knees. The monster felt like a ten-ton weight crushing down on his back, threatening to snap his spine. He gasped for breath, trying to stop it from taking control, when he heard, “Don’t resist it.”

Those three words were like a rope being tied around his chest, pulling tight and guiding him through the quicksand to stand. Diel’s head lifted, his torso straightening some despite the slicing of claws along the flesh of his back. His eyes clashed with a familiar brown gaze.

Noa. Noa had done this. She had fucking done this! Diel’s head shook with rage, and he bellowed out the full force of that anger, his voice echoing around the room. Noa didn’t even flinch. She stood before him, decked in black leather and heavy black boots, her long pink hair a curtain around her curvaceous body. “You were never meant to be apart,” she said, not one bit bothered by the fury pulsing from Diel in her direction.

She did this. She fucking did this!

Diel heard a crack from the fire and saw the remnants of his collar tarnishing to black in the ever-climbing flames. Gritting his teeth so tightly he felt they would shatter, he fought back against the smothering weight of the monster on his back and shakily got to his feet. His torso unfolded as if it had been hunched over, lain dormant for a century and had forgotten how to offer any kind of muscular support to his body.

The minute he was standing, his monster attacked, thrashing and knocking Diel from side to side. His body was pushed left and right, his unsteady feet stumbling as Diel fought to keep balance. All the time he kept Noa in his sights. She remained unmoving. Just watching him with the dark stare that dared him to try and take her down.

“You!” he snarled, his voice broken and weakened as any energy he possessed drained out of him as if his skin were a sieve. “YOU!” Diel shouted and, despite his unsteady feet, he lunged at Noa. As he approached her, the monster hooked an arm around his neck, wrenching him back. Just as he was about to drop to his feet, Noa’s hand shot out and gripped his cheeks. The monster instantly calmed, groaning as the woman it wanted took him in her firm hold.

Diel’s lips curled back, but as he looked at Noa, he felt it. He felt the monster’s overwhelming attraction to her, its desire to fuck her, to have her clawing at his back and screaming their name. Diel’s throat tightened as he suddenly saw the fantasy the monster conjured in their brain like a movie reel. He felt Noa’s hair dusting across his chest. His dick twitched, and he fought to keep hold of the disgust he felt toward the idea of fucking her in any way. Of anyone ever touching him like that.

“He’s you,” Noa said, voice curt and words direct. Diel’s body stilled, like her voice was another leash he couldn’t escape from, the omnipotent voice of God that he couldn’t unhear. Her long fingers were tight on his cheek, her nails digging into his stubbled skin. She thrust him forward to keep his attention. “You are one and the fucking same. You don’t have a monster living within you. You never have. He is you and you are him.” She wrenched him closer, and a long groan slipped from his parted lips at her forceful action. His muscles heated, and he wasn’t sure from where it came—him or his monster.

Diel’s head rolled under Noa’s hold; he didn’t know if he was preening under her touch or trying to wrench himself away. Everything was a fucking thick fog. A great fog of black smoke that choked his lungs and eradicated anything from his sight but her. Noa with her pink-hued hair that shone like a fucking sun blazing in the middle of a nuclear winter.

She only kept hold of him tighter.

Lowering her head to his, nose to nose, she said, “He stepped forward when you were a child to shield you from all the pain.” She shook her head. “He isn’t a fucking demon. He’s you. He’s the warrior within you that, as a child, you didn’t even know you could be. He became the warrior you needed. He doesn’t deserve your punishment or censure.”

Diel’s heart smacked against his ribcage, almost like it was trying to escape too. But he knew it was just her words penetrating deep that was breaking him apart. Crushing any excuse he had ever given himself as to why the monster had appeared to him in Purgatory, how it had crawled from the darkness in the depths of night and protected him from the agony of the rack, the pain of the priests’ cleansing punishments and the evil members of the Brethren fucking him over and over like a dog.

Noa’s hand moved into his hair and pulled harshly. “His blood is your blood. His breath is your breath. His thoughts are yours. His needs, his lack of fear, his incredible strength, his fucking roars, they are all you.” Noa yanked at the strands even harder. “Embrace him, Diel. Fucking embrace him. Feel his darkness seep into your bones and make them stronger. Feel him invade your muscles and see them grow. Let his thoughts splice with your thoughts. Let his fucking half-soul merge with yours. Light and dark, both you and him. Embrace him. Protect him. Fucking love him!”

Diel shook so hard at the crescendo in Noa’s voice that he screamed. He thundered out a bellow so fucking loud he thought it would shake the world down to the final circle of hell. But as he released years and years of pent-up frustration of fighting the monster in his heart, and with Noa holding on to his hair, he rid himself of the chains that held him and his monster back from one another, two fighters circling the same ring, forced to tear the other apart, only to find out they’d been allies all along. He fucking ripped down the walls that kept them separated, and they crumbled to rubble at their feet. And with every brick and every piece of cement that fell away to gray dust between them, he felt the consolidation of his two individual parts. He felt the unification, the amalgamation of fear and strength, of evil and good, of light and dark—monster and man. One fucking formidable beast that enemies should fear and loved ones should hold close.

Diel’s vision grew dark as he collapsed to the ground, depleted. Noa’s hand slipped from his hair, and he felt her take several steps back as his body splayed out on the cold hard ground. Recovering. He heard Noa’s rapid breathing even from across the room, like it was a living part of him too. Like she was another beat to his heart, a secondary throb to his pulse.

He lay motionless on the frigid stone, legs tucked into his stomach. His limbs throbbed and his head swirled with dizziness. But second by calm second, that dizziness ebbed and the throbbing in his limbs became a numb kind of slow burn.

Diel blinked. The room filled with the low light from the wall lamps, and its features became clearer the more he blinked—clearer than he had ever seen anything look before. He breathed, and his lungs filled with rejuvenating air, the expanding flesh crying out in sweet relief. As he exhaled, the muscles in his body that always ached and burned, twitched and jumped, filled with soothing life.

No pain. No aches. No more feeling like they existed in skin that wasn’t entirely theirs.

His torso wasn’t clenched. The monster no longer paced in its cage, causing Diel to be tense at all times, guarding against any attempted breech. He looked down at his hands. His fingers were relaxed, no longer curled into fists, and he could see every mark on them. He could see the texture on his broken nails, where before it had been like looking at life through a dirtied, blurred lens—all grayscale, no color. Everything was a riot of color now. He lifted his hand into the air. He could feel the mixture of warm and cold air kissing his damp skin, swirling in the atmosphere around him.

He … felt.

Diel had never felt much before. There’d been a tourniquet wrapped around his senses, depriving him of their full effects. He hadn’t known he’d been so numb to life, to emotions and senses and everyday fucking mundanity, until that very moment.

The ground was hard and rough beneath his body, but he relished the feel against his skin. He carefully moved his legs away from his torso. They stretched, and he moaned at the ache—as if he hadn’t stretched in years, as if he’d been stuffed into a box, chained shut, with no one returning to free him.

He paused. He searched for the monster’s presence inside him, the ghost that was an eternal shadow behind him, a constant dark whisperer in his ears. But there was nothing.

No, that wasn’t true. He felt its presence, its soul existing, surviving, at peace. But it was no longer separate to his.

It washim.

Diel’s chest suddenly felt light, without the constant burden of being split into two severed parts.

It had always been him. Them. Both. Conjoined twin souls occupying one body. Brothers in arms at the beginning, enemies for a time … now one complete force of nature.

Diel sat up, breathless with excitement, feeling as though he’d just been reconditioned as a man, upgraded, repaired … finally found after years lost in an abyss. Like an automatic download from the ether, memories from both monster and man filled his head. But they were no longer separate memories, of two distinct personalities swapping back and forth like the constant flicking of a switch. He realized that the memories and experiences had been made and lived by them both. And the memories rained down on him like blanket bombs. He felt rage and fury and disgust and pain as he recalled being under the Brethren’s control as a child. He felt happiness and freedom from the nights the collar was turned off and he made the kills.

And he felt the fatefulness of both the Fallen’s kinship and brotherhood and meeting the Coven and—

Noa.

He stilled, heat swelling his muscles, and he slowly rolled his neck. No collar. No motherfucking collar to inhibit his movements. Because of her. Because of—

Noa.

He recalled long pink hair and a palm touching his cheek, warmth shining in brown eyes. He felt her soft-skinned throat under his hand as he lifted her against the wall. And he felt the heavy attraction to her that blazed inside of him. He remembered seeing the sinful side of her too. The darkness that swirled in her pupils, like a mating call to the wicked that lived in him. His pulse raced faster and faster, a song building to a dramatic, drum-crashing climax.

Hello, pretty monster …

That voice. That fucking sweet, addictive voice calling to him, accepting all parts of him. He could smell her as if she were right before him. Lavender and sweet musk. Skin as soft as silk, hair a soft pink veil.

She had freed man and monster from their mutual prisons. She had reunited them, made him see that that they were never different entities. Instead, they had been one soul cleaved apart by the fucked-up men in red dog collars.

Because of her, they were finally whole.

Turning where he sat, Diel spotted Noa still standing near the fire. Energy surged through his body. He jumped to his feet and swung to face her. Sweat dripped from his body, droplets trickling down his taut chest, over the Brethren brand that connected them both. His breathing was quick, and his cock jerked in his jeans at just the sight of her standing before him like an offering.

She was fucking beautiful.

Diel’s feet were anchored to the ground. Noa watched him closely, then after raking her eyes up and down his body, she met his gaze once again. A smile formed on her full red lips. “Welcome back, pretty monster.” Her smile grew wider.

Her pretty monster. He was her fucking pretty monster.

That was all it took for Diel to charge. He rushed across the room, the new weightless feeling inside him making it akin to flying. In seconds he had Noa in his arms and pressed, once again, against the folly’s jagged wall. But this time it wasn’t to kill her or wrap his hand around her throat. There was no murderous intent within him anymore, at least not toward her.

Noa’s warmth breath fanned across his face. He closed his eyes and breathed in her intoxicating scent. As he opened them, it was like seeing her face for the first time. And it was as stunning as a church’s stained-glass window. Every part of her was complex and enslaving.

Noa’s eyes weren’t simply brown. They were ochre, the color of a fall leaf on a low-hanging branch, clutching on to its final days of life. Her skin was milky white, as if she’d been carved from marble. A batch of freckles were scattered across her nose like spilled cinnamon on a baker’s countertop. And her hair … Diel moved his head closer and pressed the soft strands against his cheek. Vibrant. She looked celestial, like she was not of this world.

To him, she was as powerful as a motherfucking deity.

Diel’s breathing was ragged, but he didn’t give a fuck about lost breath. Noa was pressed against him, and he felt every exaggerated curve of her body. Noa lifted her hand and moved back a strand of black hair that had fallen over his left eye.

He tensed with need as Noa smiled and whispered, “There he is.” Her hushed comment made his heart swell so big he thought it might rip out of his chest. Then her hand traveled down his face, leaving a river of heat in its wake. Diel bit his lip at her touch, his monster’s memories showing him just how much they’d craved it. How the man had had nothing to fear from her. She was like them. God had made her just like them. At that thought, Diel rolled his hips forward, but he froze when her fingertips drifted to the scar around his neck.

Diel held his breath, closing his eyes. He became completely still, a veritable statue, as Noa ran the top of her nail over his mangled and mutilated skin. Diel exhaled in stuttered bursts from his nose as her finger traveled to the nape of his neck, then back to where his collar had sat against his Adam’s apple. He opened his eyes, chest aching. Noa was breathing heavily too, her pupils blown. Her back arched off the wall, and she pressed her leather-covered breasts against Diel’s slick, naked chest.

Groaning savagely, Diel pinned her harder against the wall. Noa smiled as her breath hitched at the contact. Her cheeks burst with redness, and her wet tongue licked her slightly parted lips. Then she leaned forward, and, clutching the back of his head, threading his messy dark locks through her fingers, she flicked out her tongue once more and traced it over the ruined skin where his collar once sat.

Diel roared at the maddening feel of her hot tongue lapping at his biggest scar, then he wrapped her hair in his hand and crushed his mouth to hers. He didn’t overthink it. He just took and took and tasted Noa in his mouth, his tongue thrusting against hers.

He’d never kissed anyone before. Never known how to even do it correctly. But instinct took the lead, and he devoured her mouth with the same intensity as he would make a kill—completely, thoroughly, and with blood swelling his cock and darkness thrashing in his veins. Inexperience didn’t matter at that moment—it was lust and the magnetic pull of her and him and all the soul-scalding fire that raged like an inferno between them.

Noa’s responding moan swirled around them, and Diel’s hips thrust forward, searching to take her further, deeper, to swallow her whole. Noa shifted her body closer still. Jumping high enough to wrap her long legs around Diel’s waist, she threaded her arms around his neck, yanking him as close as she could.

That was the breaking of the floodwall, the dropping of any barrier the old Diel had failed to destroy.

Using his chest to keep her pinned against the wall, he smashed his lips to hers, unable to stop ravishing her mouth, and moved his hands to the hem of her leather shirt. Noa’s strong thighs kept her hooked to his body as he reluctantly reared back and peeled the leather shirt over her head, tossing it to the floor behind him. Then he looked down and stilled, just taking in the sight of this woman against him. His quick breaths were crashing waves in his ears, drowning out anything but the two of them suspended in that surreal moment.

Diel looked into Noa’s eyes, and he saw something new in her stare. Now that his vision was unclouded and the ever-present fog had cleared from his mind, he caught Noa swallowing deeply. Color dropped slightly from her lips and cheeks. She found him watching, and her chin lifted high, bravado concealing the subtle flicker of fear.

Something unknown pulled in Diel’s sternum. His head tipped to the side as he tried to search for what it was … a piece of string. A piece of invisible string that sprouted from his chest and pierced through Noa’s. As she breathed, he felt it move. As she shifted, it twisted and turned. And then it twanged. Beat after quicker beat. Twang, twang, twang.

Diel’s eyesnarrowed on Noa, studying her features to find what was wrong. Something was really fucking wrong. Then he saw it. Felt it. The string twanged again. Shaking. Trembling. Terrified.

Diel saw his hand rising to her face, like some outside force was controlling his body. But he lived every second of it. Felt Noa. She was nervous. She was scared. Her brown eyes were glistening, but she wouldn’t let it show on her stoic expression. Diel’s fingers reached her cheek and skirted over her skin. It was cold. Then his hand stilled. He stared down at his own fingers.

They were shaking too.

As if a hidden trapdoor had been wrenched open inside him, thoughts of the last time he had been touched flooded his brain. Diel gritted his teeth, fighting to chase them back. Trying to repel the memories of the rough hands of the old priests as they pushed down his shoulders. As they forced open his mouth, as they held him down to the ground and lowered themselves between his spread legs …

His eyes flew open at the sound of Noa’s gasp. Her steely gaze was locked on his. And on a deep inhale, she reached for his hand and slowly placed it on her left breast. Diel went to wrench it away, too fucked in his head to do this, fingers shaking too much, but—

“No,” Noa said, her voice the commander to his soul once again. Her voice shook, and the sound sliced his heart in two. Noa was strong. She was unbreakable. She had faced both the man and his monster head on and, like a necromancer, brought them back to life as one strong, unyielding being—who they were always meant to be.

Noa’s lips were pale, but she kept her head high, cradled his cheek and whispered, “We won’t let them take this from us.” Diel’s eyes closed momentarily, and that invisible string between them twanged over and over as their tarnished memories bled out from their old Brethren-inflicted wounds onto the floor between them.

“We can’t …” she said, voice breaking. The sound crushed something in Diel too. But it wasn’t him breaking down, succumbing to the Brethren’s evil that still tried to drag them back to hell even years after they’d fled. It was the chain of that part of his past shattering into a cloud of metallic splinters before crashing to the ground, discarded, useless, irretrievable.

“Touch me,” Noa said, a commandment once again, her voice growing in strength along with his own rebuilding will. Diel looked down at the hand over her breast, his scarred fingers cupping the full but soft flesh. And he touched her. He felt her. Felt her body’s heat under his palm, her tight pink nipple under his fingers.

The material of her bra was thin, but it wasn’t the act of seeing her almost naked that was the victory. The victory was in taking pleasure from an act that had been forced upon them and sullied by the Brethren. Diel’s mouth grew dry as Noa’s inhales became stuttered, her eyes fluttering shut as he rolled her nipple between his fingers, and a glorious pink color flooded back into her pale cheeks.

Diel’s hips rolled as Noa’s ground against his hard cock. Like storm clouds clearing, the agony of their tortured pasts was cast out of the room, and it was just the two of them again. Diel and Noa. An accused witch and a fallen angel. Both dark and light, and each needing the touch of the other—destined, split souls matched …

… found.

“Take me,” she said. Diel’s body stilled at the request. He searched her eyes for any sign of hesitation, but her autumnal gaze was solid and strong, and he once again saw that Noa had returned. The pink-haired witch who tamed monsters. The fucked-up heart who had been made to match his.

Noa reached up to the straps of her bra and pulled them down, pushing the cups aside until her breasts were freed. Diel’s heart boomed like thunder. She was perfection. Scarred and branded perfection. She clutched the back of his head and, following her silent instruction, he brought his mouth to her nipple and ran his tongue around the tip. Her sweet taste burst on his tongue, and he never wanted to taste anything else.

Diel groaned loudly as he lapped at her skin. Noa’s strong legs tightened around his waist and her head fell back, a high-pitched moan soaring into the domed ceiling above them. A motherfucking ecstatic war cry against the evil men who had tried to keep them pushed down. This was an act of rebellion, and the thought only drove him on further. Noa’s hands clutched at his hair, and Diel treasured the burn, the pain and the pleasure and the throbbing of his cock.

He sucked her nipple into his mouth, then released the flesh and moved to her other breast. Noa’s head lowered as he looked up, his hips bucking forward in need. Her eyes were half closed, filled with need too. Making sure he heard every word, she repeated, “Take me.”

This time there was no doubt, no fucked-up past causing them to pause or shake or tremble. It was just them. Noa loosened her legs from around his waist and placed her feet on the ground. He looked down as she unbuttoned her leather pants. His breathing was labored, but he was transfixed. Her long fingers pulled down the zipper, slowly, driving him fucking insane.

Diel lifted his hands and placed them on the wall on either side of Noa’s head. The world didn’t exist right then. The folly faded away to nothing. This was their small piece of paradise, and Diel never wanted to leave it.

She pushed down the leather, taking her panties with it. Her boots came off next, and she stood back up and faced him. The minute her pussy was bared to his eyes, a long growl tore out of his throat. He had wanted this so badly. Ever since the monster had seen Noa in the tunnels, he had wanted to own her, possess her, fuck her. The monster had recognized the determination and grit that existed inside her when the man had been blinded by fear and self-preservation.

Noa pushed her pants to the floor, kicking them away. She held her head high, naked in more than flesh before him, her ruined skin a roadmap of survivor beauty.

It was the most beautiful sight Diel had ever been privileged to see.

Noa’s chest rose and fell as she waited for him to act, to respond to her revealing all of herself. He lowered his arms from the wall and wrapped them around her waist. Noa’s breath caught in her throat at the skin-on-skin contact, and Diel had to pause. He splayed his hands on her back, his fingers roving over her body.

His head ticked to the side, the habit too ingrained to shake. Noa lifted her hands, and with the softest of movements, she pressed them onto his chest. His muscles jerked under her warm palms. His eyes rolled closed and he took in several deep breaths. She was touching him. Noa was touching him. He never thought he could have this. He never believed he could want this.

But … Noa.

Noa had come along, and his wrecked and split soul had allowed her to tear him apart and rebuild him into something stronger. Someone stronger. Who he must have been before Purgatory. No memories before that hellhole had resurfaced, of his childhood before Holy Innocents. But this … this whole and entire being was who he must have been before that. Before they tore him in two in the name of a God Diel was sure would despise them.

Noa’s hands journeyed down his torso, taking him out of his head, until they landed on the waist of his jeans. Diel opened his eyes. Noa was watching him. She leaned forward and rested her forehead against his. He breathed in her lavender-and-sweet-musk scent, letting it seep into his bones. An elixir. A tonic for any nerves that threatened to rise.

Then she unfastened the buttons of his jeans, one by one. He wore no underwear. Noa pressed a soft, fleeting kiss against his lips. As she broke away, she eased the jeans down his thighs, letting go only when they pooled at his feet.

The air between their bodies rose in temperature, as if they had entered the hearth that blazed with soaring, climbing flames across the room. His boots were removed next, discarded in the pile along with her clothes.

Noa ran her hands across Diel’s tapered waist and around to his back, then down to the cheeks of his ass. He groaned as she moved her touch to his hips, then finally to his hard cock, which was already leaking against his stomach. He noted the slight shake of her hands as they ghosted past his lower abdomen. When she took his length in her hand, he slapped his hands against the wall again, just to keep himself standing.

“Noa …” he growled, thrusting into her tight fist.

“Diel,” she said, for once using his name. It sailed into his ears, piercing his brain and driving him fucking insane. Noa placed her mouth at his ear and whispered one more time, “Take me.”

His body tensed. He drew his hands back from the wall and studied her face. Nothing in the fucking world had ever made him feel the way she did right then. No fucking sunset or sunrise could ever match Noa’s beauty. She lifted one of her bare legs to his waist, her thigh brushing against his as it passed. The friction was like a live wire being dragged across his skin.

Using his wide chest, he pushed Noa back against the wall. His dick twitched when she moaned at the contact. He lifted her other leg to wrap around his waist, pulling back his ass enough to place his cock at her entrance. He ran his fingers down her pussy, groaning at the warmth that greeted him, the wetness, her readiness for him. Noa’s hands threaded behind his head, her fingers locking together like a clasp.

She didn’t want to let him go.

Diel met her eyes; she was already waiting for him. The moment hung suspended between them. It was like the pause before he made a kill. The tension that built between him and his victim, before Diel’s pleasure would be met by the sacrifice of their soul. By their spilled blood. By his stealing their life with his knives and bare hands.

But he wasn’t stealing anything from Noa. She was giving herself to him freely. He had already given himself over to her. She might not have known it yet, but he was all hers, and he’d fucking tear anyone apart who ever dared tell him it wasn’t the case.

“Take me,” Noa said again, her voice barely above a whisper. Diel took hold of his cock and pushed inside her. His jaw was clenched to the point of aching. But this was a good ache. Noa threw her head back as he tunneled inside her, inch by inch. A long moan fell from her lips, and her forehead fell forward to rest against his. Diel’s arms shook as he took hold of her thighs around his waist, and he pushed himself to the hilt, a growl slipping from his mouth when he was fully inside her. He panted, trying to just fucking breathe. Noa’s hands were iron around the back of his neck. Heat rose between them.

“Noa …” Diel said through gritted teeth. He was inside her. He was finally inside her … and he became acutely aware that he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known fucking could ever feel like this. He hadn’t expected it.

His chest expanded and made room for her in its space. Noa stepped inside, and Diel knew that she would remain there forever. He was inside of her and now she was inside of him, welded like two melted metals fused into one indestructible compound.

Then Noa rolled her hips, and he fucking saw stars. Her eyes were dilated and her skin glistened as she rolled her hips again, her eyelashes fluttering to touch the top of her cheek. As she went to roll her hips again, Diel thrust forward, catching her off guard. She moaned and gasped and dug her fingernails into the top of his neck.

His pulse soared and he stilled, waiting for the collar’s warning shock. But none came—none came because it had gone. The collar had fucking gone. As if reading his mind, Noa ran her fingers along the deep scar the collar had left behind, one that would remain.

He drove into Noa deep and fast, his pulse firing into a sprint. It pounded and thudded faster and faster, and Diel’s eyes closed at the twin ecstasies of taking Noa, sinking into her pussy, and the fact that no shocks would take him down. He was free and fucking and it felt so good.

He gripped Noa’s thighs and stared into her brown eyes. They were molten and heavy-lidded, and a smile played on her lips. “Harder,” she cried, and he drove into her deeper, quicker, over and over, until he was sure that not only had his monster and man merged but that Noa was one with them too.

Darkness and light swirled around them. The heat built and built, and their skin was slick as they slid against each other, her nipples dragging over his hard chest. Noa’s pussy began to clench. With her nails in his neck and her forehead against his, eyes trapped in one another’s hold, her lips parted and she screamed out her release.

Thighs shaking and balls tightening, Diel pressed against Noa harder, wanting to crawl under her skin and into her mind. He roared out into the folly as his orgasm rushed through him like rapids, crushing any fucked-up Brethren experience from his past, any hand that had ever been laid on his body.

It was all Noa—her scent, her taste, how he felt locked inside her. Diel’s hand raked into her hair, and he clutched the strands as he thrust the final remnants of the orgasm from his body. Noa’s back scraped against the wall, his chest crushing her between him and it. But her smile was wide and her tight body jerked in the aftermath.

Diel dropped his head against the crook of her neck, fighting to regain his lost breath. And as he did, something washed over him. He didn’t recognize it. Hadn’t ever experienced it.

But he wondered if it was … peace.

In that moment, he believed he had found some morsel of peace.

A droplet of sweat ran from Noa’s neck and past his lips. He flicked out his tongue, and the salty drop burst into his mouth. He sighed, replete. Maybe even happy. Noa’s arms moved to cradle his head, and his chest pulled tight as she dropped a kiss on his hair.

Diel finally drew back and met her eyes. Her face was flushed, but he saw the same happiness he felt reflected back at him. Noa smoothed his hair back from his face. She searched his eyes, then pressed her lips to his. Diel wanted her again, his cock twitching as it still lay inside her. When she broke away, she held his cheeks with her hands, keeping her thighs tightly wrapped around his waist.

“You’re finally free.”

Diel’s stomach rolled. Noa ducked down and kissed along his scar. He leaned his head to the side, allowing her access to his neck. Shivers exploded along his body. When she pulled back, he held her by the legs and walked across the room to the fire.

He dropped to his knees on the cold hard ground, gently placing Noa on her back. He lay above her, unwilling to let her go, and combed his fingers through her hair. She ran her hand down his cheek, his neck, and placed it on his chest, right over his brand. She stared at the angel wings, at the upturned cross now fashioned into the Fallen’s sword.

When her eyes met his again, they were shining. “They took so much from us,” she whispered. “So fucking much.”

Diel’s anger was quick to rise. It was instant. Just the thought of the Brethren fucking Noa as a child—at any age—sent his darkness spiraling, the need to kill clawing to the surface. “Breathe.” It was Noa’s voice that helped him cap his fury. Where once it had been the crackling heat of the collar’s voltage, now it was her.

He breathed deeply, calming. When his pulse had slowed, Noa shifted, making him groan. “You’ll get used to controlling the bursts of rage.”

He tipped his head to the side. “Your voice stops it.”

Noa brushed her fingertips over his lips. His cock was iron again inside her, and he began to rock forward, slowly, softly. Her eyes fluttered, but she managed to say, “You will stop yourself.” She moved her hands around his neck again, and he towered above her, increasing his thrusts. Noa moaned but, ensuring Diel was looking at her, said, “You control the darkness within you, no one else. It doesn’t control you. No one will ever control you again.” Diel thrust faster and faster, needing to feel her pussy tighten around him. Needing her moans to hit his ears and her nails to scrape along his back.

He leaned down and took her mouth, groaning as her tongue clashed with his. But Noa ripped away from his lips, breathless, cheeks flushing. “Youcurb the darkness. You wait until you need it. It’s both your shield and your sword. The greatest weapon you will ever possess.”

Noa began to thrust her hips too, and their fucking grew harder and harder, faster and faster, until pressure built in Diel’s thighs and his dick swelled even more. Noa’s nails dug into his skin, and her legs tightened around his back, her heels digging into his ass.

Noa groaned loud and free and tipped her head back. Diel pushed and pushed until she clenched around him again, choking his dick. He groaned and came inside her, breath held and muscles tensed as she drained every ounce of pleasure from his body.

They were breathless, panting in front of the fire into the old, cold room. Diel dropped his forehead to hers.

“It lives inside of you,” she said. “Exists within you. Feel its heartbeat pound, feel its energy fueling your body.” Noa’s hands were in his hair; her lips peppered kisses along his cheeks between each word—along his neck, his scar—until she met his eyes once again. “It’s your strength, a huge part of who you truly are. And when the time is right, when we face the Brethren …” Noa smiled wide. “You unleash all hell on them. You blanket them with your evil, and you blot out their sun.”

Diel’s exhilaration rose as he imagined taking on their enemies. “And you? Where will you be with your own darkness?” He leaned down and sucked her nipple into his mouth. Noa gripped his messy black hair and brought his attention from her breast right to her face. And then he saw it. He saw her conjure it to the surface, felt it in the racing of her heart against his chest.

“I’ll be right beside you.” Her eyes flashed with uncontained excitement. “I’ll be unleashing my darkness right alongside yours.” She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. A smile formed on her lips. “Just imagine that glorious sight.”

Diel groaned. The image she projected almost made him come again. And then he kissed her. Kissed every inch of her. The woman who had set him free.

He wasn’t sure he would ever stop.