She had never felt so safe, not since her parents had died.
Asmodeus would protect her.
Her gaze drifted down the straight slope of his nose to the firm line of his lips, and they parted to reveal blunt white teeth.
“Hold on,” he murmured, his deep husky voice sending a shiver of heat across her skin, and she couldn’t resist snaking her hands around his strong neck and teasing the ends of his short black hair. He gritted his teeth, his jaw tensing, and a quiet growl escaped him.
His fingers flexed against her, drawing her closer, and she felt wicked because she liked how he clutched her as if he was never going to let her go.
She was playing with fire.
The Hell kind.
The problem was, she didn’t care if she got burned.
Asmodeus spread his glossy black wings, bent at the knee and pushed off. She clung to him for a whole different reason as each powerful beat of his wings carried them higher into the warm evening air. She hadn’t exactly thought about what she was asking.
Flying had sounded charming and fascinating. Now it was beginning to look frightening.
It was already a long drop to a very painful death.
“You will not fall, Liora,” Asmodeus whispered against her ear and she melted in his arms.
Someone so evil shouldn’t have a voice that could do wicked things to a woman like his did.
Or perhaps it was perfect for him, made for seducing and getting his way.
Was he a seducer?
She drew back to look at him and his grip on her tightened, his scowl re-emerging at the same time. His golden gaze shifted to her and then back to the distance. She studied his face as he flew, trying to figure him out by replaying everything that had happened. He had never left Hell but he had met mortals, and there were plenty of demons who looked human. She didn’t think there was a Mrs Asmodeus waiting for him back in Hell though.
She had made him blush by touching his cheek, had sparked desire by touching his sword, and had caught the passion that flared in his eyes whenever he looked at her.
He didn’t have a steady relationship but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a seducer. He could be playing her right now, performing perfectly to lure her in with practiced reactions designed to get him what he wanted from a woman.
“Why do you stare at me?” Asmodeus said and she tapped into her power, channelling it into him in the hope of discovering whether his awkwardness was real or an act.
She could sense no falseness in him. Her staring genuinely confused him.
“I’m trying to figure you out.” There was no point in hiding her intentions. The more honest she was with him, the more liable he was to be honest with her.
“And?” A playful edge entered his eyes and she wasn’t surprised to find the corners of his lips curling into a wicked smile.
“I’m getting nowhere.” She cocked her head to one side and narrowed her gaze on him. “Are you evil?”
“Yes.”
A very blunt and honest answer. “Evil because everyone expects you to be evil… or because you really are that way?”
He frowned at her and then switched his focus back to the skies ahead of him. “I was born evil.”
“I know the story,” she said and he flicked another glance at her, a touch of surprise in his eyes now. “You’re everything evil in Apollyon… blah, blah, blah… but I’m not convinced that you’re only evil.”
His golden eyes darkened and crimson edged them. She was pushing his buttons again. He didn’t like her mentioning Apollyon or comparing them in any way. She could understand why. She hated it whenever her coven mentioned how she should strive to be more like Serenity—all good and graceful. Serenity had never lived through hell as she had. Serenity had no reason to have darkness and hatred inside her.
Liora looked down as he glided around the top of the beautiful white domes of the church of Sacré-Coeur with her and then brought them down in the square below. She expected at least a bump as they landed, but it was smoother than any touch down she had ever experienced.
He carried her to the iron fence edging the square and stared out over the city. Dusk turned the elegant stone buildings and the ribbon of the river pink and gold, making them more beautiful than ever.
Asmodeus gently set her down.
“You’ve really never left Hell?” she said while watching him absorb the view of the city with wide eyes.
He looked like a man who had never witnessed such a view. She had asked Apollyon about Hell. His answer had been that it was black and grim, and that the only colours in the bleak landscape were the boiling rivers of lava.
“Never.” Asmodeus narrowed his golden gaze and shifted it down to her. “Have you ever left the mortal realm?”
She shook her head, the loose tangled waves of her chestnut hair brushing her shoulders. “Never… what’s it like where you live?”
“I have a castle I built.”
“A home.” She looked out over the city, enjoying the view even though she had come here often during the first two weeks into her stay with Serenity and Apollyon. It was nice to escape them sometimes, finding her own space so she could think and be herself.
“I do not think of it as a home.”
Liora frowned and looked across at him. He stood with his profile to her, his eyes drifting over the city, the sinking sun bringing out their colour but not warming them. They were cold and empty again. Where had his thoughts taken him?
The more she looked at him and thought about what he had said, the more she felt he was lonely but didn’t realise it. He had never left Hell and he refused to view his castle as his home.
Did he have no love and light in his life?
“So what are your friends like? Are they all bad-ass demons or are you mates with the Devil?”
Asmodeus’s gaze locked on a distant point and then flicked straight to her. “I have none.”
He had no friends.
He had no home.
What sort of lonely life was he leading in Hell? She was beginning to wonder how there was even a sliver of good in him. He had no reason to feel that or any positive emotions at all.
Liora placed her hand over his on the black metal railing and he looked down at them, his eyes slowly widening in that way that made her feel that there was something about Asmodeus that would surprise everyone who saw him if they knew about it.
He had always been alone.
No one had ever shown him compassion or care.
No one had ever touched him like this, as a friend would, offering comfort and support.
He was a clone of Apollyon, everything evil distilled into its purest and most vicious form, but he was a product of his environment too.
He had been starved of good and driven to do bad. He had never been given a chance to be anything else. The Devil had moulded him into this man before her and for some reason she wanted to be the one to show the world that they were wrong about Asmodeus, and he could be something more than they believed him to be.
“Do you have no companions at all?” She looked up into his eyes, her eyebrows furrowed and a tiny flicker of hope in her heart.
He lifted his gaze to lock with hers and his thumb brushed hers, causing her heart to leap and race.
He swallowed hard and hesitated, and she thought he wouldn’t answer as he averted his gaze, fixing it far below them at the base of the hill and the street there. His eyes tracked something, turning distant at the same time. She looked down and frowned when she saw an old woman walking two miniature poodles.
“I have Romulus and Remus,” he said in a gruff voice and she raised her eyes back to his. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “They are not quite like those canines. Hellhounds are larger, and live far longer.”
He had dogs. Companions. Hellhounds were an evil angel’s best friends.
“What are they like?” She couldn’t picture hellhounds at all. Images of Cerberus, the three-headed hound sprang into her mind. “D
o they only have one head?”
He smiled and her heart lifted at the sight of it and the way the cold edge left his golden eyes. “Yes, they only have one head. They are black and very large, coming to stand with their shoulders around here.”
He held his hand palm down just above his hip and Liora’s gaze disobeyed her direct command and drifted across to the taut ripped muscles of his stomach and the sexy dip of his navel, and the dusting of dark hair that led her eyes downwards. Her pulse picked up again and it took all of her will to drag her gaze back to his hand.
It was trembling.
Her eyes shot up to his and he looked away again, but she caught the flicker of desire that still darkened his gaze.
“What do they look like? Are they hairy?” Curse her voice for shaking. She had been around men she felt attracted to before and had never reacted like this whenever they had flirted with her or shown their interest. She sidled closer to Asmodeus and butted her hand up against his to measure their height against her own body.
According to his measurements, these hellhounds would reach shoulder height on her if she included a modest addition for their heads.
“Hell is hot and rather filled with fire. Hair is not a good thing in that sort of environment. They are shorthaired and somewhat resemble a canine of this world… a Great Dane. Do you know of it?”
“Scooby Doo? You have demonic Scooby Doos?”
“Scooby Doo?” He frowned. “I am not familiar with this Scooby Doo.”
“He’s a cartoon… like moving drawings with sound.” She wasn’t sure he knew what a cartoon was. She doubted you could pick up satellite or cable in Hell. “But he’s brown. The right breed though…”
She measured Asmodeus’s guide height against her again.
“I’m guessing yours are bigger than our version.” She waved her hand around the height she imagined them to be.
“And broader… and they have red eyes.”
“I could have guessed.” She really could have. It didn’t surprise her at all. Even Asmodeus had red eyes whenever he was losing his temper.
When coupled with the way she could feel his power rising or ebbing with his emotions, she had a barometer for Asmodeus.
At least she could tell when he was about to unleash Hell on the poor unsuspecting population of Paris.
“And I can talk to them.”
That, she hadn’t guessed possible. “They talk?”
Asmodeus casually shrugged, causing his black wings to shift against his bare back. “They communicate with each other in their own language using telepathy, but I do not have that ability so I have taught them to understand me and I can understand their responses. They are clever creatures and picked up an understanding of the demonic language quickly.”
So he could communicate with his two hellhounds. Romulus and Remus. Who no doubt lived at the castle that wasn’t a home.
Something came back to her, something she had heard Apollyon say to Serenity when she had been listening in on them and Serenity had asked why Asmodeus had given him information he could use against the Devil.
Asmodeus was complicated.
Liora stared at him.
Complicated and gorgeous, and she wanted to unravel the mystery that he wore like a protective cloak.
She wouldn’t stop until she knew the truth of Asmodeus.
Until she knew the real him.
The one he was fighting to hide from her.
CHAPTER 3
Asmodeus was on edge. He stared out over the darkening city of Paris, his senses stretching around him, mapping everything that moved and was therefore potentially a threat to the female beside him.
He didn’t like the mortal world.
Already one male had attempted to harm her and others in this area kept glancing her way, and he did not trust any of them.
In Hell, no one would have dared try to harm her while she was with him. He had half a mind to cast a portal and take her down to his castle and keep her there, only the other half of his mind wasn’t sure why he felt such a fierce need to protect her.
She was a witch and could most likely take care of herself, without his assistance.
Asmodeus idly rubbed his left cheek. Her strike had caught him off guard and had stung for long seconds afterwards, while she had thrown verbal barbs at him that had confirmed he had done something wrong.
His gaze lost focus as he replayed what had happened, trying to understand what he had done wrong and why she had been angry with him.
He turned his back on the city and watched the mortals milling around the square instead, snapping photographs of the white domed church on the mount above him or pictures of the city at sunset behind him. They interacted with each other, using a series of facial expressions and touches, neither of which he truly understood or could decipher.
Even here, the mortal world was a bombardment of scents, sights, tastes and sounds, and feelings.
He had never felt so out of place and unnerved, and unsure of himself.
He didn’t know how to function in this world and found it impossible to behave as expected of a mortal because he wasn’t one. He didn’t understand how they worked.
He didn’t understand how Liora worked.
Men glanced her way as they passed, disgusting eyes lingering on her shapely form without her knowing, possessing curves that were not theirs to study.
He scowled at them all, feeling a growing urge to lift his glamour and reveal his true appearance to them in order to scare them away. The only reason he wasn’t surrendering to that wicked desire was because he had already frightened Liora with his violent behaviour near the tower.
He had only been trying to protect her.
Asmodeus rested his elbows on the black railing behind him, tilted his head right back and stared at the colourful cloud-strewn sky, trying to figure out why he had received a hard slap as payment for protecting her from the male.
He wanted to understand this world and the protocols, and somehow find a way to learn the right reactions to situations.
He didn’t want to scare her away.
His senses shifted entirely to her, locked and focused, feeling her close beside him, her power wrapping around him like warm arms. She had felt soft and light when he had carried her, warm against his flesh. She had stared at him until he had been intensely aware of her gaze on his face.
On his lips.
He had wanted to kiss her.
He still wanted to even though she was full of light and purity, and she was so warm and friendly, filled with beautiful concern about everyone. Even strangers.
Even him.
He had never witnessed such good in anyone before.
It left him feeling there really was no good in him and made him wish more than ever that there were.
He had told her that he was evil and she had seen the darkness in him, the violence he was quick to embrace and the cruelty, but she had remained with him, asking him to take her somewhere else, somewhere quieter.
He had expected her to leave and she had wanted him to stay.
He didn’t understand her at all.
Asmodeus raised his left hand above him, stretched his fingers out with his palm facing the sky, and stared at it.
He had told her that he had no friends and she had held this hand, squeezing it against the railing and showing him compassion. Why?
There was no room for friendship in his life. It was a weakness. Good was a weakness. Affection was a sin. Compassion and care were flaws.
So why did he want to feel these things?
He didn’t. He clenched his teeth and his fingernails transformed into sharp black claws and his fangs lengthened. He had no weakness. No soft emotions to leave him open to attack. No vulnerabilities.
He felt Liora’s gaze on him and ignored her, struggling with his feelings and trying to subdue them again. He was wasting time here. He should take her down to the Devil and be done with it. All he was doing was worsening the
punishment his master would deal when he returned with her, and he would return with her. The Devil would see to that.
He was weak.
Vulnerable.
Unable to fight his master’s orders.
The Devil had absolute power over him and eventually he would tire of waiting and command him to return, and Asmodeus would not be strong enough to fight that order.
“How long have you had Romulus and Remus?” Liora’s tone was soft and soothing, calming the growing tempest within him until it subsided and he forgot his fear and lowered his gaze to her.
New fear grew in its place.
He had never talked about himself to anyone before. No one had ever wanted to know about him, but she was genuinely interested and for some reason he was finding it hard to deny her. It was strange to talk to her about his life. Strange and dangerous.
It left him feeling uncertain and more on edge than the males who loitered in the square and were potentially a threat to her.
If she knew the things he had done and the person he was, she wouldn’t want to know about him anymore.
“Several centuries.” He kept his response short and before she could ask another question, he changed tactics on her. “Have you been a witch all your life?”
This was new to him too. He had never wanted to know about anyone before, but he wanted to know all about her.
She nodded, her chestnut waves bouncing against her shoulders. “Ever since I was born. I’ve lived with a coven the whole time.”
The area began to empty, the single males dwindling in number and the couples moving away into darker corners. Asmodeus tried not to look at them as they embraced or kissed.
Liora ran her fingers along the metal railing and her arm brushed his, sending a thousand volts jolting up it and through his body. His gaze whipped around to her and found her looking out at the city, not at him. He could have sworn she had been watching him a second ago.
“Are you as powerful as Serenity… or less powerful?” He couldn’t resist turning her earlier question against her, or staring at her. The streetlights illuminated her face, softening her features further. Her beauty entranced him.
She smiled, rosy lips curling slowly into it, and a light entered her eyes, a twinkle that he knew he had put there. He had never made anyone smile like that before and he found he liked it and wanted to make it happen again. He just wasn’t sure how. He had zero experience of being amusing or entertaining, unless you were the Devil. He could entertain his master no end by torturing demons for his viewing pleasure.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Complete Series Box Set Page 77