The look in her amber eyes promised him that she would always look at him this way, as though he was the centre of her universe, regardless of what he did. She knew. She knew all of him, every facet of the man that he was—the killer, the warrior, the protector, and the demon. She knew the good and the bad in him, and she accepted it all.
And by God did he love her for it.
Erin threw her head back and moaned his name, the sound so utterly delicious that he moaned too, thrilled by the pleasure he heard in it.
She bit her lip, white teeth sinking deep into soft flesh.
Veiron growled.
His focus zeroed in on her teeth and her lip. He wanted to bite her.
Her eyes fluttered open and dropped to meet his. No fear in them. Just quiet acceptance as she nibbled her lower lip and stared down at him, rocking her body on his cock, flooding him with heat and emotions that he had tried to stamp out so many times in the past few days.
He couldn’t break the spell she had placed on him.
His addiction to her ran deep in his veins, in his soul and his heart, and he couldn’t fight it. All he could do was hope that he wouldn’t lose her, that nothing would take away this woman that had become his life, because he would die without her.
She leaned over him and he raised his hips, clutching her bottom as he slid in and out, thrusting deeper as he captured her mouth again. Her moans deepened, filling his ears, mingling with his own. He needed more of her. All of her. He couldn’t get enough.
Erin gasped into his mouth and jerked, her body milking him, quivering and trembling around his cock. He groaned and moved her harder, plunged deeper, his possessive streak taking control again. He wanted to brand her body. Claim it as his and his alone. No other man would touch her. Never again. Erin was his now. No doubt about that. He would kill anyone who so much as looked at her.
She tensed her body around his and he groaned, his balls tightened and he thrust deep into her core, jetting his seed into her. He throbbed discordantly to her, each pulse stealing a little of his tension until he was limp beneath her, sated for now, but not for long. At the back of his mind, he already wanted her again, needed to have her in a different way, in every way imaginable until she knew that she belonged to him.
Erin settled on his chest, a contented sigh escaping her lips and making him smile.
Awareness of his surroundings slowly returned and with it came a cold prickling down his spine. Was five minutes to bask in their afterglow too much to ask?
“We need to move.” He tried to rouse her but she moaned and scrunched her nose at the order before curling up. “Erin. It isn’t safe here. We’re moving. Now.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond. He lifted her off him and gathered their clothes, tugging his on as he went and tossing hers at her. She sat up on the bed, alert now, the post-sex haze gone from her amber eyes. She hopped off the bed and went into the bathroom. Veiron finished dressing, grabbed his leather jacket from the desk and slung it on.
Erin appeared a moment later, a black holdall in her right hand and a pair of black army boots in the other. She dropped the boots and slipped her feet into them. Veiron paused to watch her, losing track of his surroundings as he set eyes on the real Erin for the first time.
She wore a purple tartan pleated short skirt over black leggings, a black baby-doll t-shirt trimmed with lace, and a black flared winter coat that only reached to the bottom of her skirt. Impish. And boy did he love it.
“Ready,” she said and straightened, and caught him staring. He expected her to blush and look away, to react the shy way she had when he had complimented her artwork. She didn’t. She twirled on the spot, one foot coming up off the floor, her coat flaring outwards, and stopped facing him. She smiled. “You like?”
Veiron growled his appreciation and then showed her just how much he liked her in her own clothes. He stalked towards her, slung his arm around her narrow waist and dragged her up to him for a long deep kiss that threatened to take them back to square one and back into her bedroom.
“Mmm,” she murmured against his mouth and he pulled back. Her smile was brilliant. “As much as I want to get wicked with you again, shouldn’t we be making tracks?”
Tracks. Right. Fleeing. Something that didn’t sit well with him but was necessary. He couldn’t fight without placing Erin in danger. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
He took her black bag from her and slung it over his right shoulder, and held onto her with his left. He guided her out of the apartment, waiting while she locked it and made sure it was secure, and then led her down the white hall to the lifts. They would be too obvious, so he took the stairs with her, his boots and hers pounding the concrete steps.
Veiron kept his senses on high alert. The prickling feeling of awareness was growing worse, meaning whatever was nearby was getting closer.
They reached the foyer without incident, crossed it and broke out into the night. The number of people on the streets had dropped but there were still enough that they could blend with them. He turned to his right, intending to head back the way he had come with Erin.
No sign of one of his kind.
What the hell had his senses blaring then?
Erin gasped and stopped dead, yanking back on his arm to stop him too.
Her eyes were wide when he looked at her, fixed beyond him. Veiron looked at the people milling around, going about their lives. No Hell’s angels. Just mortals.
A man raised his head and looked over the mortals at him.
White hair. Green eyes.
Those eyes flashed brightly and then a frown darkened them.
The man from Erin’s nightmare.
Her guardian angel.
CHAPTER 15
Erin didn’t wait to see if the man was friend or foe. She pulled on Veiron’s arm and ran in the opposite direction, heart pounding and lungs squeezing. Veiron grabbed her around the waist, swore a black oath under his breath, and leapt. He cleared the heads of the crowd, causing a stir. His right boot hit the roof of a parked car and he pushed up into the air.
Erin expected to fall.
Instead, they lifted off and she looked back to see that Veiron had unfurled his wings and was now wearing his armour. Her bag was gone too. Where?
He beat his crimson wings and shot higher with her. Erin looked down as the ground fell away and her eyes widened.
“He’s following,” she shouted over the wind and Veiron swore again.
She looked at his hands on her waist and the city below her. The exact same view she had seen in her nightmare only London had been burning and it had been the other angel holding her, flying with her, not Veiron.
What did that mean?
Had they already done something to change that future into this one?
Veiron set her down on the same rooftop as the other angel had in her nightmare and she trembled, shaking down to her bones, and scoured the sky. She tried to remember what had happened. The man had wanted her to go with him and Veiron had appeared behind him, high in the air and coming down fast to attack the man.
“Veiron!” Erin sprinted for him where he stood in the middle of the flat black roof and he turned towards her.
Giving his back to the angel who appeared behind him, silver-blue wings bright in the crisp moonlight, his sword flashing as he raised it above his head.
Erin reacted on instinct.
She ran at Veiron, grabbed his arm and pulled him behind her, placing herself where he had been. The angel’s sword came at her and her heart stopped, eyes as round as the full moon suspended above her. Before it could strike her down, Veiron’s red curved blade was there, blocking its path to her.
“I should have put you down when I had the chance,” Veiron snarled and shot past her, clashing with the angel in mid-air.
This was all wrong.
The angel knocked Veiron aside and then kicked him hard in the chest, sending him crashing into the roof. He tumbled across it, wings b
ending at angles that made Erin flinch, and hit the low wall near the edge.
“Veiron,” Erin whispered and raced towards him.
The angel followed, landing hard on the roof and stalking towards her. She wouldn’t let him attack Veiron again. Veiron pushed himself off the black tar and growled, shaking his head as though trying to clear it.
Erin had to protect him until he was able to fight again.
She did the only thing she could.
She picked up Veiron’s double-ended black and red spear and faced the angel.
The man halted and stared at the weapon in her hands and then at her, a frown drawing his pale eyebrows together, confusion in his jade irises.
Erin braced her feet shoulder width apart, a warrior’s stance that Veiron had taken many times in her presence, and held the short staff in both hands. It was heavy. Incredibly so. She wasn’t sure how Veiron could wield it so easily. The broadsword weighed nothing compared to this weapon.
“You will fight me, Erin?” the man said, voice as cold and emotionless as it had been in her nightmare.
She nodded. “I will if you try to harm him.”
This didn’t seem to make sense to the angel. He frowned again.
“You would choose to side with evil over good?” His fingers flexed around his sword, the action causing the muscles in his toned arms to ripple. He drew a deep breath, raising the rich blue chest plate of his armour. The moon glinted off the silver edging.
“I’m not siding with good or evil. I’m siding with Veiron over you.” She held her ground. A shuffling noise behind her signalled that Veiron had found his feet as much as the black glare the angel directed over her shoulder.
“I came to assist you,” the angel said, calm and sweet now. He had clearly spent a lot of time practising his charming voice, the one designed to make mortals comply with his every command and believe in him.
It didn’t work on Erin.
He frowned again. “Step aside and I will slay the Hell’s angel.”
Erin shook her head. The staff in her hands suddenly shot outwards, until it was four times its original length. The red blades at either end gleamed wickedly. She looked down and saw Veiron’s hand on it, close to hers, and relief burned through her.
He stepped up behind her, until their bodies touched.
“How about I slay you?” Veiron said, all darkness and menace, a black promise that she knew he would keep if she let him. He would fight this angel, not because he was a threat to himself but because he was a threat to her.
“You had your chance when we were in the street and I had not noticed you.” The angel lowered his weapon and turned his attention back to her. He actually smiled. “I mean you no harm, Erin. I am here to protect you. I am your guardian angel.”
“You keep saying that but I don’t believe it.” Erin straightened and tipped her chin up, anger pouring like acid through her veins now. “If you are my guardian angel, where were you when I was taken to Hell?”
He flinched as though she had slapped him and recoiled. “I would not set foot in that realm, not even if my master commanded it. I was given orders to wait. It had been foreseen that the demon would seek to rescue you and would succeed, and that I would be granted this opportunity to take you into custody.”
Custody. That was a strange word to use. Just as she had felt there was something wrong about him in her dreams, she felt it again now.
“Take me into custody?” She tightened her grip on Veiron’s weapon. “By force, I presume?”
“If necessary.”
“Do not listen to him, Erin.” Veiron banded his free arm across her chest. “He speaks foul words.”
“Quiet, Demon,” the angel snarled, as vicious and dark as Veiron had ever been. He smiled again when he returned his attention to her. “I am your guardian, Erin. I only desire to protect you.”
“You will have to get through me first.” Veiron tensed and tried to take the weapon from her but she gripped it harder, refusing to let him fight. He growled but she didn’t heed it.
“Easier done than said.” The angel smirked at him. “I have orders to kill you anyway. Heaven desires you dead. You and those you have collaborated with. The female and Marcus.”
Female? Amelia?
Erin was the one to growl this time. “You stay away from my sister!”
“Your sister?” The angel turned his smile on her, genuine amusement in his jade eyes. “My, we have been deluding ourselves.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t listen to him, Erin. Amelia is your sister, but she is a reincarnated angel. The original angel. Heaven and Hell sought her blood to seal the other realm. It is all a vicious game. She survived with the help of Marcus, and myself and others.” Veiron’s words weren’t a comfort.
“And now you are all wanted men. I will fulfil my orders, Demon, starting with you.” The angel launched himself at them, his sword a bright silver arc.
Veiron snatched the spear from her and attacked, evading the angel’s strike and knocking him backwards. They clashed again, harder this time, each slashing and snarling with effort, taking their fight high into the night sky. Erin couldn’t watch but she couldn’t take her eyes away either. Her heart lodged in her throat and a strange sensation settled in her fingertips, heat prickling there.
The angel beat his wings, slammed into Veiron and sent him careening backwards through the air.
Erin’s heart beat harder.
Her hands grew hotter.
The heat stole into her veins, until her arms were burning, boiling, and her head felt fuzzy. Her vision blurred but focused as the angel struck at Veiron, cutting across his obsidian chest plate and catching his arm. The smell of his blood hit her, the sight of it spilling down his arm and the smug look on the angel’s handsome face causing rage to coil in her chest.
“I told you,” Erin said and breathed hard, struggling to contain the heat blazing out of control within her. “If you harmed him... I would kill you... bitch.”
The angel looked at her, the expression on his face saying he was going to laugh at her threat. His smile faded. Veiron looked at her too.
Erin felt dizzy.
She looked down and her eyes shot wide, her heart leaping high into her throat. Dark red flames licked up her arms and fluttered over her hands. She swiped at them, trying to put them out, afraid they would burn her, and then calmed.
Not burn her.
They hadn’t in her dream.
She had used them as a weapon.
Her weapon.
Erin screamed and launched her hands forwards, towards the angel where he hovered ten metres above her. A dazzling crimson ball of fire blasted from between her palms and shot towards him. White light filled her vision, shooting down from the starry sky, and the world exploded so brightly it blinded her.
The light faded. Erin’s head spun and she shivered, so cold that her bones ached and her fingers were stiff.
“Erin?” Veiron’s deep baritone soothed her ears and warmed her from the inside out.
She slowly opened her eyes to find him above her, looking down at her, concern in his red eyes. Fear too. She scrambled up in his arms, her backside hit the flat roof and she threw a glance around, searching for the angel. Gone. The sky was black and still, the moon bright and drowning out the stars so they were faint. The city lights cut upwards around the building, glowing orange, and the sound of cars and people rose from below.
“What happened?” she said and swallowed to ease her dry throat. She thought back. Veiron had fought the angel. The angel had hurt Veiron. She had lost her temper and somehow called some sort of fire that she had used to blast the angel away. “Is he dead?”
Veiron shook his head. “He called a pathway to Heaven before you hit him with... whatever that was. What was that, Erin?”
“I don’t know.” She sat up and stared at her hands, trying to call the flames again and failing. “A power?”
She looked ove
r her shoulder at Veiron. He frowned, red eyebrows pinched tightly above narrowed eyes that were focused on her hands. He took hold of them, turning them over, inspecting them. Her fingers warmed in his.
“Amelia can produce blue balls similar to that which you made.” He sounded distant. Thinking aloud. It comforted her that Amelia had a power like she did and she clung to that as the explanation she desired.
“So I’m like her? An angel?” It sounded incredible and too good to be true.
Veiron reinforced that feeling. He shook his head. “I don’t know what you are, Erin, but you’re not like Amelia. Amelia is the reincarnation of the original angel. Only one was created before Heaven realised its mistake and created my kind instead, granting us less power and less freedom.”
“So what am I?” Her voice shook and she cursed it for making her sound weak. She trembled inside, afraid of what was happening to her. “If I’m not like Amelia, what am I?”
“I don’t know.” Veiron rested his palm against her cheek, the soft look in his eyes conveying how much he wished he had answers for her. His hand was hot against her, calming her and soothing her pounding heart as much as the tenderness in his gaze and the knowledge that he wanted to help her. “You’re something else... but we’ll find out, I promise you. Was this what you did in your vision that scared you?”
Erin wished he wouldn’t call her dreams and nightmares that. It made her recall what had happened in the second nightmare. She didn’t want to have to watch Veiron dying before her eyes and be unable to do anything to stop it from happening. The whole scenario this evening had been similar to the first nightmare but all wrong, with the world different and the angel and Veiron’s roles reversed. She hoped that meant that the second one would be different too now.
She nodded and he wrapped his arms around her. Erin leaned her head against the cold black armour protecting his chest and sighed. “The Devil hurt you and I wanted to stop him. I was so angry... consumed by rage... it was instinct.”
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Complete Series Box Set Page 49