“Or you steal Apollyon’s,” she said and his eyes snapped up to meet hers, shock rippling through him. He amended his observation. She was more than a little wicked. She was positively mischievous. A blush of crimson climbed her cheeks. “They would be a perfect fit.”
“True, but I do not think the male would allow me to simply take his armour. It would be a more interesting way to complete my armour though.” He liked how she thought and how easy it was becoming to talk to her. He had witnessed mortals talking like this. Banter. He was making banter with her and he was enjoying it.
He also liked the idea of taking Apollyon’s armour, leaving him appearing incomplete.
“You would have to fight him for it. Are you good at fighting?” She narrowed her gaze on his, as if trying to see the answer in it.
He nodded and held his hands out. His two golden curved swords materialised in his hands. Her eyes widened.
“You can do magic too!” She smiled and then did something he hadn’t anticipated and that stole his voice so he couldn’t tell her it wasn’t magic as she knew it.
She reached out with her left hand and idly ran two fingers down the length of his right blade, stroking the metal and following the blunt curve. Her smile turned wicked and his heart missed another beat, and part of his anatomy that had never known a female’s caress stirred beneath his armour.
Asmodeus cleared his throat, sent his swords away and took a step back from her. Her smile faded into a frown and he could see she thought she had done something wrong again.
He had the oddest urge to reassure her.
What was wrong with him?
Had she cast a spell on him?
The way he reacted to her fascinated and disturbed him at the same time. She had somehow calmed him twice now, erasing his dark hunger to maim and destroy, and had brought to the surface feelings and a part of himself that he had buried deep.
The longer he was in her presence, the more comfortable he felt around her, and the more he wanted to remain, but he also felt uncomfortable and wanted to leave too, and he knew why.
He had never felt his failings before meeting Liora, and the more time he spent with her, the more keenly he felt them. He was born evil, everything dark, cruel and deadly in Apollyon distilled into him. He had lived his life in Hell, doing as he pleased, trained by his master to embrace his darkest nature and inflict pain and terror upon others.
He had been happy with that life.
Asmodeus stared down into Liora’s stunning eyes, losing himself in them all over again, forgetting his mission and feeling that part of him he had kept hidden for millennia stirring again.
There was no room for good in Hell. Good was weakness. Concern and care were faults. Affection was a sin. All of them made him a weak male, one undeserving of respect and the position he held. He did not need them.
He clenched his fists and struggled against them, battling them until they were subdued and he could shove them back into the place where they would remain secret, hidden from everyone. Hidden from his master.
The Devil would think him a failure if he knew of them.
Liora frowned and moved a step closer to him, stealing his attention and bringing it back to her.
What would she think of him?
She already thought him incomplete and false. A clone. Nothing but a shadow of Apollyon.
He tried to take a step back to keep some distance between them but his feet refused to move. He stood towering over her, his fists trembling at his sides, his thoughts running at a million miles an hour, bombarding him and threatening to unleash his softer emotions again. What was she doing to him?
She lifted her right hand and his heart set off at a dizzying pace, slamming against his ribs, making his limbs shake. Weak. She made him weak. He cast a nervous glance at her hand as she raised it towards his face.
He had never known a female’s touch.
There had never been someone he desired.
“Asmodeus?” she whispered and stared up into his eyes. “What are you thinking in there? Your eyes are swirling like gold fire.”
A product of his emotions. They were slipping beyond his grasp and he had the strangest desire to embrace them and the sliver of good he held locked deep within.
Because of her.
What did the Devil want with her? He had a feeling it wasn’t to breed with her. She was Serenity’s cousin. A witch. She would produce powerful offspring and might be strong enough to bring a child to term, but she would also be likely to fight the Devil just as Erin had and refuse to surrender her babe.
Her soft hand cupped his cheek.
His eyes closed against his will and he inhaled sharply. Heat spread outwards from where they touched, surging through his body and setting his feelings free and his blood on fire.
Whatever the Devil’s plans for her, they would not come to pass.
Asmodeus would not let him have her.
Liora would belong to him.
CHAPTER 2
Liora stared deep into the incredible swirling gold depths of Asmodeus’s eyes. She had countless reasons not to trust him, but she couldn’t bring herself to listen to them or her head where he was concerned.
The moment she had set eyes on him, loitering under the Eiffel Tower, looking as though he was contemplating tearing through the crowd with claw and fang, a current had run through her, setting her heart racing. She could sense the darkness in him, the incredible evil that flowed in his veins, but in the background, she could feel a faint glimmer of good. That tiny sliver had given her the courage to speak with him.
She had wanted to know him.
Her picture of him had been as incomplete as his armour before today. She had found out about him when she had overheard her cousin talking with Apollyon and they had realised she had been hiding in the hallway of their apartment, listening in. She had pressed Apollyon to tell her about Asmodeus.
Apollyon had painted a bleak picture of his counterpart, telling her that Asmodeus was pure evil, without a shred of good in him. Had he lied to her and to Serenity?
Liora looked at Asmodeus again, recalling how Apollyon often referred to him as a creature, as if he didn’t deserve angelic, demonic or even human status.
As if he were an animal.
Something below their level.
There was darkness in him, she couldn’t deny that or the fact that the evil he harboured had come to the surface at times and the strength of it had shocked her enough to make her reconsider her desire to know more about him.
He wasn’t an animal though.
She couldn’t view him like that. He was as real as Apollyon and her too.
He was intelligent, powerful, and felt warm beneath her fingers. She had caught the flickers of true emotions in him. He had been shocked, dismayed and even offended by her questions and her observations so far. Her behaviour had intrigued, and possibly confused him.
He felt things.
He wasn’t as Apollyon painted him at all. Did Apollyon really know Asmodeus?
Had he never witnessed this side of his twin?
It was likely that Asmodeus had never had reason to reveal this side of himself to Apollyon. They had probably ended up locked in battle whenever they had come across each other.
He had revealed it to her though. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew that she liked it. She liked being around him and seeing how she affected him. It fascinated her.
“Rose?” The heavily-accented male voice jolted her and her heart skipped a beat, shock running through her blood at the sudden intrusion into her quiet moment with Asmodeus.
A young man offered a bunch of plastic-wrapped single red roses to her and then to Asmodeus and she lifted her hand from Asmodeus’s face, meaning to refuse the street vendor.
“Rose?” The man smiled at Asmodeus and then held his free hand out in her direction.
All Hell broke loose.
Asmodeus growled, his top lip peeling back to reveal short fangs,
and her stomach turned. The rise in the flow of power he constantly emitted was swift and startling, a crushing force that pressed down on her. His hand shot out and he grasped the vendor by his throat, yanking him away from her.
Liora’s eyes flew wide as Asmodeus’s golden irises brightened and then turned red. Not a normal colour and she wasn’t sure he could hide that change with a glamour.
The man choked and dropped his roses. He smashed his hands against Asmodeus’s bare arm and clawed at his fingers. Asmodeus grinned, his eyes narrowing darkly on the man, and began to squeeze. The man gasped, his eyes watered, and the veins in his temples popped to the surface as he turned red.
Liora pushed through shocked and straight into horrified. She leaped between them, shoving Asmodeus back and seizing his arm that held the man at the same time. Asmodeus snarled when she sent fire to her palm, singeing his flesh, and pinned her with a black, vicious glare as he released the man.
The man collapsed onto the grass.
“I’m so sorry.” Liora dropped to her knees and tried to check him over but he swatted at her, his fear and panic spiking.
He scrambled around, grabbing his roses, and she tried to lay her hand on him so she could heal his throat, but he shoved her in the chest and caught her off balance. Her backside hit the dirt and she could only stare as he broke into a dead run in the opposite direction to her and Asmodeus, heading for the towering trees that lined the edges of the park.
The oppressive wave of Asmodeus’s power only grew worse and wind gusted against her, the longest of his black feathers appearing in the edges of her vision as he beat his wings. Hell, no. She was not about to let him fly after the innocent street vendor and terrorise him. Not on her watch.
Liora shot to her feet, turning at the same time, and threw everything she had into her swing. Her palm connected hard with his left cheek, the slap ringing loudly across the area and drawing more attention to them than Asmodeus had when he had attacked that poor man for no good reason.
His head snapped to his right, his wild black hair falling down over his brow. The dark slashes of his eyebrows met in a scowl and his jaw tensed as he growled.
“You deserved that.” Liora drew in a deep breath to steady her racing heart and hoped she hadn’t just pushed this immense, extremely powerful male over the edge. The force of the power he emanated wasn’t growing weaker. If anything, it was getting stronger, and darker.
His red eyes slowly opened and locked on her, and he rose to his full height, towering a good eight inches taller than she was. He spread his black wings and bared his fangs at her, and it took every ounce of her will to stop her from backing off a step. She stood her ground, her knees trembling, and reconsidered her whole opinion of Asmodeus.
He was evil and dangerous, and as violent and cruel as Apollyon had said.
But there was still good in him.
The red in his eyes faded as he stared down at her, his bare chest heaving with each deep breath, and his expression slowly changed at the same time as the pressing force of his power lessened. Gold broke through crimson, his eyebrows relaxed, his jaw slackened and his breathing slowed to a steady tempo.
“Never strike me again, Female.” Those words were a vicious growl that told her he was serious and that there would be a dire consequence if she ignored his warning.
“Noted.” She brushed imaginary lint off her black jeans, unable to bring herself to look at him while he was staring at her as if he was still considering punishing her for raising a hand against him. “You were being an arse though. He only wanted to make a couple of euro selling you a rose for me.”
He huffed. “Noted… I am not accustomed to people selling me anything.”
Liora tried not to smile inside at that. “Where have you been all your life that no one has ever tried to sell you anything?”
“In Hell.” His deadpan tone made her lift her gaze from her jeans to his to see if he was serious.
He had never looked more serious.
“You’re telling me you’ve never left Hell?” Liora knew she sounded a little backward having to ask that but she wanted to be sure she wasn’t mistaken.
He nodded and preened his huge black wings. “I have never left Hell before now.”
Her eyebrows rose high on her forehead. “Am I the first mortal you’ve met?”
He shook his head and kept his eyes downcast, his long black lashes shuttering them so she couldn’t read them at all. She didn’t need to see them in order to know why he was only offering her a shake of his head as a reply, rather than an explanation.
He had lived in Hell for his whole life. Any mortals he had met must have been taken there for some terrible reason and Asmodeus had been the one to deal with them, or had at least watched someone else do the work.
Liora looked him over, trying to see him for all that he was and telling herself all the terrible things he had probably done in the years he had been alive, in Hell, working for his master.
Apollyon had told her that Asmodeus shared his blood, and that he himself had been created for destruction and violence. If Apollyon had been brought into this world in order to rain destruction down upon mortals, and everyone could view him as good and kind, then she had to at least try to give Asmodeus the chance his twin had been offered.
She had to discover whether there was good in him or whether she had been imagining it.
“Would you have killed the street vendor if I hadn’t stopped you?” She managed to keep the tremble out of her voice as she asked, afraid of what his response would be because part of her already knew the answer to that question.
Asmodeus drew in a deep breath, his broad bare chest expanding with it, tipped his chin up and stared down at her, no trace of guilt in his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why?” She swallowed to wet her dry throat and shift the lump from it.
He had to have a reason. He wasn’t a mindless killing machine for the Devil, not like Apollyon said he was. She had seen his keen intelligence and his feelings playing out in his eyes. There was good in him. There was reasoning and calculation behind his every action. He had a reason for attacking the man. He had to have one.
Asmodeus lifted his hand between them, flexed his fingers and then lowered it back to his side. He stared off to his right, into the distance beyond her, and was quiet for so long that she feared he would never answer and she would never know the truth of him.
She wanted to see beyond the name and the stories, and the things she had been told, to the real Asmodeus. The one she had glimpsed earlier before he had locked it down and brought his guard back up.
He closed his eyes and lowered his head a fraction. “I thought he meant to harm you.”
Her hazel eyes widened.
Asmodeus frowned and clenched his fists at his sides. “I felt you tense and heard your heart jump, and your power flared. You were scared. I only meant to remove the source of your fear.”
He had been protecting her.
Liora glanced skywards to give herself a moment to absorb the revelation. This powerful male that everyone told her was cruel and evil, and had no good in him, had wanted to protect her. It was all the proof she needed that there was a sliver of good in him and it reinforced her desire to know more about him.
The sun was setting though and that meant more rose sellers and people around the Eiffel Tower to see it as it lit up. If she wanted to continue her time with Asmodeus, she would need to take him somewhere it would get quieter, not busier.
She dropped her gaze to his. “Will you fly me somewhere?”
He looked beautifully startled, his eyes going round and falling to her body. A touch of colour crept onto his cheeks and his pupils expanded, gobbling up the gold in his irises. Was he thinking about carrying her when he looked so flushed with desire?
A warm shiver raced through her blood and she swept her tongue across her lips, not even bothering to deny that she felt that same burst of desire whenever she raked her gaze over him, e
ven when she knew she shouldn’t.
He nodded. “Where?”
Liora turned and pointed towards the basilica of Sacré-Coeur where it stood on the hill in the distance, the three white domes of the grand church illuminated by golden light. “There. It will get quieter there as night falls.”
His throat worked on a hard swallow and he opened his thickly muscled arms to her. “I will fly you there.”
Liora slipped the strap of her small black bag over her shoulder so it fell across her front and took a deep breath as she stepped into his arms. Serenity was going to kill her for this but she didn’t care. Something about Asmodeus had her going against convention and everything she knew she should do. She felt a connection between them, a link she had never experienced with another, and she felt as if she could be wild and free around him and he would never judge her or tell her what to do.
He would let her be herself.
He would be right there with her.
He dipped his body, slipped one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back, and effortlessly lifted her into his arms. She settled her right palm against his chest and stared into his eyes. They were even more beautiful up close.
Flecks of black and rich amber swirled amongst liquid gold. His heart thundered against her palm and his breathing quickened as she continued to look deep into his eyes.
Awareness grew within her, stealing her focus away from the world until it was all settled on him. She could feel his large hands pressed into her ribs and clutching her knee. She could feel his powerful body pressing against her side, shifting with each heavy breath. Each of those breaths washed over her, moist and sweet, bringing her heart to a gallop.
His power flowed around her, a protective shield that allowed hers to recede for the first time in what felt like forever.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Complete Series Box Set Page 76