Chapter 8

CHAPTER8

When I came to, I was surrounded by heat and darkness, and the most delicious scent. Leather, bonfire, and heavy spice. I knew that scent intimately. I fell asleep each night with my nose pressed into a cushion that smelled like this.

Like him.

Azazel.

I wriggled and realized that it was dark because my face was pressed against a hard wall of muscle. As soon as I moved, everything shifted. Azazel loosened his hold on me enough so I could gasp for air and look around. I found myself in his lap, his wings out in full splendor, obscuring the room around us.

“Zoe.”

Immediately, his hands framed my face, tilted my head up to meet his gaze. His eyes were wild, his expression stark with terror and a deep, dark kind of fury that made me tremble all over.

He kissed me before I could speak, claiming my mouth with equal parts raw need and tender relief. My hands found purchase on his shoulders as he peppered my face with more kisses that felt like they were more for the benefit of reassuring him than me.

I gasped as he crushed me tight to him, his wings trembling.

That was when I smelled the ash.

Peering out over his shoulder and the edge of his wing, I flinched when I saw the room.

Or what was left of it.

Ash particles floated in the air, sparks of barely extinguished flames flickered in the corners, the walls blackened by soot. The couch I’d been lying on was now a pile of burned fabric and charred wood and bent metal, and Azazel sat in the middle of it, holding me on his lap. The table was reduced to burned rubble.

And there, across from us, warped and melted plastic stood in place of the former entertainment system.

“The TV!” I wheezed. “You melted the TV!”

Azazel slowly drew back until he could skewer me with a look so dark it made me cringe.

“I come home,” he said, his voice a growl that skittered over my skin, “to find you here, alone, bloodied and unconscious, with a hole torn in your top and a freshly healing wound in your chest. I am out of my mind with worry for you, not knowing what the fuck happened, unable to vent my rage on whoever hurt you, and when you wake up after hours of me holding your broken body, you complain about theTV?”

I grimaced. “Okay, it does sound bad when you put it like that.”

His eyes flashed with lightning, his features harsh. “Who did this to you?” He laid a hand on my chest, right where I’d had a gaping hole not long ago, his gentle touch at odds with the promise of violence in his voice. “Whom do I need to kill?”

“Um.” My face scrunched up as I tried to navigate this carefully. I grasped his hand with mine. “That might be a bit complicated.”

“Who?” He bared his teeth.

“Lilith,” I whispered.

The widening of his eyes was the only sign of how stumped he was at that revelation.

“Look, she just gave me a piece of her power,” I hastened to add. “She wanted to help me, really. Granted, she did so in a gruesome, bloody way that was a lot more heart-to-heart than I would have liked, but she wasn’t out to hurt me, okay?”

He blinked at me, his face a study in bewilderment. “She gave you a piece of her power?”

“That’s what she said. A kernel, actually. Now, I have no idea what that really means. Like, will it strike tiny roots and grow? I have to tell you, I am worried that I’ll have a little Lilith power tree spreading its branches inside me and—will it bear fruit? Will I have to prune it? Does it need fertilizer? I have so many questi—”

He laid his hand over my mouth to shut me up. I’d have been mad at him for his high-handedness if it didn’t help me out of my panic spiral.

His gaze intent, he moved his hand to my chest again, and his power rose in the air. Probing for mine, I realized. We still had that neat bond between us from when we got hitched, and I now felt the touch of his energy along the tie that bound us.

“She really did,” he said after a moment, a note of wonder in his deep voice. “She gave you a piece of herself. I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Apparently, neither did she.” I rubbed my nose.

His eyes flicked up to mine, his dark brows drawing together. “What?”

“Uh, yeah, funny story… So it seems she had no idea what she was doing.”

Thunderstorms churned in his eyes.

“Or at least, she’d never done this before? That’s what she said.”

“So, Lilith decided it was a good idea to experiment on you? With something that has never been done? Not knowing if it might harm you?” He sounded like he was contemplating some experiments of his own. On Lilith.

I grimaced. “Her intentions were good, though?”

“You know what they say about good intentions, don’t you?”

Ha!

I patted his hand. “Look, I get why you’re mad—”

“Try murderous.”

“But in the end, no harm, no foul! I’m okay. All healed up.” I gestured at my chest. “I mean, I might have some nightmares about having a hand plunged into my ribcage—”

His eye twitched.

“But what if I get some cool new powers because of this? Really, you should thank her.”

His lashes half-lowered over stormy eyes. “Maybe I’ll show my gratitude the same way she bestowed her kindness on you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, quit it.”

The hint of a smile whispered over his face, and his gaze heated. That was the thing with Azazel—as icily commanding and used to instant obedience as he was with most others, when I mouthed off to him? He secretly enjoyed it.

“So, about the TV,” I said and graced him with a pointed look. “You need to learn some control. You can’t keep incinerating entire rooms just because you lose your temper. Do I need to sign you up for an anger management issues cla—”

I never got to finish that sentence. My back met the cushiony ash of the couch remains, and I squealed from the sudden movement while Azazel rose above me, a vision of sin and temptation with fire-licked wings and molten heat in his gaze.

“I need to learn control?” he asked softly, his voice all seduction between silken sheets.

“Badly,” I whispered, my pulse already throbbing low in my core.

“The kind of control it takes to make you come a dozen times before I take my own pleasure?”

I bit my lip. “Yeah, you really need to practice that.”

“Hm.” That glint in his eye didn’t bode well. Still leaning over me, he stroked a single finger over my chest, right over the healed wound. “Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“Feel any discomfort?”

I shook my head. “Good as new.”

His smile was positively wicked. “In that case…”

He sat back on his heels and summoned a…rope? I didn’t even know we had any. Eyeing the ceiling, he threw one end of it up so it fell over one of the rafters up there and then caught it when it dangled down the other side.

“Um…” I said, rising up on my elbows and peering at the silken rope with a mix of anxiety and wayward anticipation. “Do I need to be worried?”

His mischievous smirk did all sorts of naughty things to my insides. “Maybe.”

Eeek.

The next moment I found myself hoisted up to my feet, my arms stretched over my head, and my hands bound with the rope with my palms facing each other and the rope wrapped around both wrists. It pulled me up onto the balls of my feet, and I had to strain to balance. He’d tied it loose enough that I had some give, but not so much that I could wriggle free.

My heart beat a rapid tattoo against my ribs, incipient excitement flooding my veins—only heightened by the way Azazel regarded me like a hungry lion would a tasty snack dangled right in front of him.

He laid a single finger on my chest, on the edge of the hole torn in the fabric of my tight-fitting T-shirt. Something dark flickered over his expression as he gently rubbed over the new skin there. His gaze caught mine, and I was so distracted by the raw, unfiltered anguish in it that I almost missed the spark of heat as it flared over my skin.

Breaking eye contact with him, I looked down. He was moving his finger over my T-shirt, burning the fabric in its wake. But the flames didn’t spread. He only seared away what his finger touched, flakes of ash falling down and baring my skin in stripes as he slowly prowled around me. He never lifted his finger off me.

I panted. Heat and cool air teased my skin in alternating whispers of sensation, and I squirmed, the rope rubbing against my wrists.

Stripes of my T-shirt fell to the floor as his rounds connected, and my upper body was now only covered in the last bits of T-shirt fabric over my shoulders, as well as my bra.

“It’s incredibly wasteful to keep burning my clothes,” I breathed.

“The T-shirt was ruined anyway.”

Flames danced over the rest of the fabric on my shoulders, then died down. Now behind me, Azazel leaned in until I felt his heat against my back, but instead of the touch I anticipated, his warm breath coasted over my right shoulder, blowing the ash off my skin.

I shivered.

He repeated that on my left shoulder, and my nipples pebbled. I pressed my thighs together, trying to soothe the ache between my legs.

Sliding his finger along the straps of my bra, he burned them clean off me and proceeded to trace the lacy filigree of the bra cups. My chest heaved with my fast breaths, and I couldn’t help following his maddeningly singular touch as he incinerated my bra one torturous caress at a time.

Each of my desperate little movements shifted my weight precariously as I balanced on the balls of my feet, making me hyperaware that my wrists were bound and I was helplessly dangling from the ceiling, at his complete and utter mercy.

It only kicked my arousal that much higher.

The last bits of ash from my bra flaked off my breasts, the ghostly whisper of touch as my skin was bared adding to the slow, sensual torture. Azazel, now in front of me, leaned in and gently blew on my breasts to remove any residue, and I uttered a soft moan.

Eyes of storms and lightning met mine, and then he placed a tender kiss on my lips. “All good?” he murmured against my mouth.

“No.”

He tilted his head in question.

“I need you to touch me,” I bit out.

I felt his smile in his insouciant kiss. “I have been touching you.”

That one finger again, now running down from the middle of my chest, over my belly, until it traced the waistband of my jeans.

Even that small foray toward the epicenter of my lust was enough to make me moan again.

But instead of burning my pants right off like I’d hoped, he brought his hand up again, the same excruciatingly teasing way back as he’d gone down before. While he grasped my neck with his other hand and went in for a kiss that turned my brain to mush, he circled one of my nipples with that damned finger, his touch light and coaxing and driving me mad.

Uttering a vile curse against his lips, I strained and pushed my chest forward, right into his hand. Touch me, dammit.

His grip on my neck tightened, he bit my lip and pinched my nipple—hard.

Sensation shot through my body, all the way down to my swollen core. I cried out, wanting less, wanting more, perfectly confused and delightfully needy.

He seemed to enjoy me that way.

I rubbed my thighs together, trying to get the firm material of my jeans to press against my aching flesh and give me some more pleasure.

Without so much as a warning, he laid his hand right over my mound, cupping me hard enough to make me go on tiptoes.

“Want that?” he asked, his voice stirring the flames inside me.

“Fuck, yes!”

He rubbed hard over my core, heat flaring from his touch, making me gasp and squirm. His fingers met my slick flesh without any fabric between them and slipped inside me.

I jumped and gasped, straining against the rope holding my wrists. Oh, fuck—he’d burned my jeans and panties right out of his way.

The next second, all thoughts melted away in a firestorm of pleasure as he masterfully brought me to a climax with just a few, targeted strokes. I threw my head back and rode his hand, surrendering to the explosion of pleasure inside me.

Leaving the rest of my jeans in place—which made for an interesting feeling with my heated core bared—he started trailing his mouth down my throat, over my collarbone, to my breasts. Cupping them with both hands, he leaned in and closed his mouth over the nipple he’d pinched.

A strangled moan escaped me, and I jerked at the intense sensation of his heat and tongue and the suction of his mouth. More delicious, aching pleasure between my legs, as if there was a direct line between my nipple and my core. That fire there was barely even banked, and now he merrily poured gasoline on it, the fiend.

He switched between my breasts, bestowing equal time and care to both, working my nipples and sensitive skin until I squirmed yet again with need. Holding me in place with one hand splayed over my back, he continued lavishing his attention on my breasts while his sinful fingers found my slick flesh once more.

I couldn’t say for sure later how many times he made me come like this, but I suspected it was close to what he’d promised earlier. Azazel was nothing if not thorough.

He slid his hands up my arms, his forehead pressed against mine. “Still good?”

I blinked against the haze of pleasure he’d inflicted on me, and checked in with myself. My arms felt the kind of strange that limbs did when suspended for longer than a minute, but not in a concerning way.

“Yep,” I whispered.

His energy wrapped around me as he smiled. “Good girl.”

And there I went, shivering with new arousal.

Before I could draw my next breath, he sank down in front of me, roughly pulling my ruined jeans and panties along. He helped me step out of my shoes and clothes, and then he lifted one of my legs to his shoulder and dove right in.

I jolted when his mouth met my sensitive, swollen skin. Wobbling, I almost lost my balance, trying to steady myself on my other leg. He grabbed my hips and held me in place for his oral enjoyment, making sure I couldn’t twitch away from his ravenous mouth. Sensation pounded through me, twirling and coiling in twists of pleasure and helpless bliss.

Always, always, he ate me out like I was his own personal brand of drug and he couldn’t get enough. The sounds I uttered would have made me blush scarlet if I heard them later on, but right here and now, I didn’t give a fuck. I was too lost in the spiral of pleasure, too stripped down to a creature that existed on nothing but lust and wanton enjoyment of the moment.

He did that to me. Broke me down into my most primal parts, until nothing else mattered but his touch, the feel of him, the way he made me feel, and that connection between us.

I came again with a hoarse cry, and while my orgasm was still ebbing, he stood up, divested himself offhis shirt and opened his pants.

My toes curled in anticipation.

His heated gaze caught mine just as he lifted me up, aligned us just right—and then thrust inside me. My moan this time mixed with the sound of his own, and my thoughts all scattered as I relished how he stretched me just to the edge of pain.

“Zoe,” he whispered, his voice deliciously husky, his expression tight with pleasure.

Panting, I leaned forward and kissed him. Desperate. Needy. Seeking. “Let me touch you.”

The rope holding my wrists went up in flames and then fell off as ash. Instantly, I framed his face with both hands, my arms tingling, and tunneled my fingers through his silky hair, pulling him to me for an urgent kiss.

As our lips met, I reveled in the knowledge that I was the only one allowed to touch him like this, that it was my privilege to caress him, to be this close. Thousands of years he’d lived, thousands of partners he’d undoubtedly had, but it was me he’d chosen in the end.

It was me he chose, every day anew.

Just like I chose him.

I love you, I whispered into his mind.

His power rose around us, trembling, pulsing, wrapping around me in a full-body caress as he held me tight, our bodies joined most intimately while he kissed me with a tenderness bordering on awe.

It broke me a little inside.

I’d burn the world for you, was his reply, dark conviction behind every word.

He rarely told me outright that he loved me. I found it wasn’t necessary, when I could read it in the things he did say, when his actions spoke loud enough that I never had to wonder.

“No need for that,” I murmured in between kisses. “What I do need right now”—I rolled my hips and squeezed my inner muscles—“is for you to fuck me.”

His fingers tightened on my ass, lust darkening his eyes. I knew how much he enjoyed it when I talked dirty, when I shed any veneer of decency and propriety and showed him my raw, unvarnished need.

Lifting me until he almost slipped out of me, he then slammed me back down, thrusting his hips forward at the same time. I moaned at the rough friction, the slide of his cock inside me.

Never enough. I would never get enough of this.

I held on to him for dear life as he moved my hips up and down to meet his thrusts without even straining a little, as if holding me up like this while standing was the easiest thing. My breaths had long turned to panted moans, and I wasn’t even the one doing all the work.

He took me with deep, thorough strokes, measured in a way that told me he still held on to his control, hadn’t reached that place yet where he truly let go and surrendered to his own fierce need.

With my fingers tangled in his hair, I buried my face in the crook of his neck, licked him—and then I bit down. Hard.

My back hit the wall, all breath knocked out of me, his body pressing mine against the smooth stone. His energy a storm of lust and pleasure and possessive need around me, he pounded into me, his tethers snapped and his control in shreds.

I relished every deliciously hard thrust that drove my own pleasure higher and higher. He ground against me with each shove, and the pressure on my clit sent me over. My orgasm raged through me, and I honestly lost part of my soul in that firestorm of bliss.

Azazel came with a deep groan that sparked more aftershocks of pleasure inside me. With his face against my neck, he nipped at me in an echo of how I’d bitten him, and I shuddered with delight.

“Hold on,” he muttered and stepped away from the wall, still grasping me tight around my waist and ass.

The next moment he sank down on a freshly summoned sofa with me still straddling him, his wings folding around me. I smiled against his neck. He knew how much I loved his wings, and he displayed them in front of me quite often, even though he still gave me a big side-eye when I called them pretty. According to him, they were “magnificent harbingers of death,” not pretty.

With Azazel casually stroking my back, I now shifted so I could run my fingers over the sleek black of his feathers while my heartbeat and breathing returned to normal.

“They really are pretty,” I said with a grin, just to get a rise out of him.

He growled, and I felt the vibration of it where I lay sprawled across his chest.

“Pretty and…” I faltered as my eyes fell on a light spot among the shining sable of his feathers. “White?”

He sat up so fast I almost toppled off his lap. With a frown, he extended his wing so he could see the offending feather. When he spotted the single white plume amid the black, he gritted his teeth and shook his wing, his power sparking. The white feather turned black as if photoshopped.

“What the—” I pointed at the spot on his wing. “What did you just do? What was that?”

“Come back here,” he said in lieu of an answer, and pulled me down to his chest again, tucking my head underneath his chin and refolding his wings around me.

“Oh, no, no, no.” I flailed and fought against his hold. “You’ve got some ’splaining to do, mister. What was that?”

I managed to rise enough to glare at him, straight into a face of pretend nonchalance.

“What was what?”

Narrowing my eyes at him, I poked my finger into his wing, right where he’d just magicked away some incriminating evidence. “That was a white feather.”

He extended the wing in question and regarded it with an earnest expression. “Looks all black to me.”

“Oh, come on!” I huffed. Pursing my lips, I asked with teasing amusement drenching my voice, “Is your angel side getting stronger?”

Given that his father, Azrael, had sired him before he’d fallen from grace, when he’d still been an angel, both Azazel and Azmodea were technically only half demon. Something Azazel liked to be disgruntled about, with me teasing him mercilessly.

Consequently, at my mention of his angel heritage, he shot me a pointed, dark look.

“Are your wings partially turning angel white?” I asked with a big grin, poking him even more.

A muscle flexed in his jaw, but then he sighed and made a displeased face. “They’ve always been that way.”

With one shake of his wings, white sparked all over them, a rolling tide of change that painted his feathers in a mosaic of black and white. I gasped, my eyes roving over the new landscape of his wings.

Snow-white feathers now gleamed among the familiar glossy black, both colors evenly represented, though in clusters that drew beautiful patterns of speckles and lines. A painting of contrasts, artfully combined.

I squealed my delight, both hands covering my mouth. “Oh, my God!”

He cleared his throat.

I sent him a sheepish look. “Sorry. Let me rephrase that. Oh, magnificently speckled Azazel!”

My choked-down giggles erupted into laughter as he unceremoniously shoved me off his lap and dumped me next to him on the sofa. The twinkle in his eye betrayed the stern expression he wore.

I caught my breath and grinned at him. He was so cute, all pretend grumpy and peeved. “How come I’ve never seen this before?”

He shrugged one massive shoulder, the accompanying wing flexing slightly. “I always mask it.”

“So, you can change the color?”

He inclined his head. “A simple illusion.”

My gaze on the black-and-white dotted wings, I frowned. “So what happened just now? Your illusion failed?” I met his eyes again. “It’s never done that before, has it?”

He looked thoughtful. “No.”

I sat up, unease worming its way into my amazement. “Are you…changing?”

He was silent for a long moment, his eyes on the wing where his illusion had faltered. “I think,” he said slowly, quietly, “that you are changing me.”

I blinked rapidly, drawing back. “Excuse me, what?”

When he looked at me, it was with unfiltered, raw openness, so much of him laid bare that it stole my breath. “I have been hiding my wings for two thousand five hundred years, Zoe. My mask never slipped. It’s become second nature, an instinct I never questioned anymore. I haven’t even seen my true wings in so long, I’d forgotten their pattern.” He leaned forward, holding my gaze with an intensity that made me tremble. “And then you came along. And you pull up parts of me that I thought long buried.”

I swallowed, uncertainty weaving through my breath. “Is that good or bad?”

He studied me for a few heartbeats, a glint sparking in his eyes. “I could be cheesy right now.”

I choked on a surprised laugh. “You? Cheesy? What would that sound like?”

A subtle smile warmed his features. “Like me telling you that you’re making me whole.”

My breath hitched. “Oh.” I cleared my throat. “That, um, yes, that’s very cheesy,” I loftily said, rubbing over my breastbone where it felt like something was melting inside.

He grasped my hand and laid it on his chest instead, where his heart beat strong, steady. “All my life, I separated myself into two parts, one of which I’ve denied and suppressed. It seems you’re bringing it back to the fore.”

My eyes mapped his face, drinking in the sheer beauty of his features, the depth of his personality that lay beneath that beauty. “But it’s not making you weaker, is it?” I asked quietly, voicing the thread of worry that had unfurled inside me.

“I’ve never felt stronger in my life.” He lifted my hand and kissed my palm. “You bring out the light in me.”

“Stop it,” I whispered, my face blazing with heat. “You’ll make me lactose-intolerant.”

His deep chuckle coaxed a smile from me.

“So,” I asked, walking my fingers up his stunningly speckled wings, “can you turn them all white?”

His power vibrated darkly. “Why would I want to look like one of those fools?”

“So you can.” I grinned. “Will you show me? Please?” I gave him my best begging pout.

He seemed unaffected, the callous brute.

“I can’t imagine what they look like all sparkly white,” I said with a pleading note. “Can I see? Pretty please?”

He stared at me for a few pulsing heartbeats while I batted my lashes, and then he looked toward the ceiling with a long-suffering sigh.

“Hell is testing me,” he muttered, but he shook his mighty wings once—and gleaming white washed over the feathers.

I had to blink hard against the blinding light, like silver glinting in the sun. When I beheld the whole splendor of his snowy white wings, I inhaled sharply. They were fucking gorgeous.

Immediately, I reached out to run my fingers over the white plumage, and silver sparks followed in my wake, like lightning tracing the filigree of the feathers.

With a gasp, I yanked my hand back. “Oh, no!”

Azazel looked alarmed. “What?”

I slapped the back of my hand against my forehead and dramatically turned away. “Devil take me! I’m having sinful thoughts about an angel!”

“Zoe.” A deep, deep growl.

“Oh, my dirty soul! I’m plagued by filthy fantasies about defiling a messenger of the Lord!”

The last thing I heard was my own laughter and a snarled “I’m going to defile you” before I was dragged underneath a massive body and right back into another round of mind-melting sex.