by Larissa Ione
“Are you gay?”
He snorted. “Hardly.”
Come to think of it, she’d never seen him with a male, either. So what was his deal? He was waiting for someone...someone specific? Was his vow––
She inhaled sharply. “You...you’re a virgin, aren’t you? You rejected me out of honor.”
His gaze narrowed, and his lips twisted into a nasty sneer. “Do not confuse my lack of sexual experience with innocence or kindness, and especially not honor. Not when you tried to use me to rid yourself of your own virginity.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I’ll just go now. But Zhubaal...I hope you find whoever it is you’re waiting for.”
As she hurried away, she swore she heard a soft, “I hope so, too.”
* * * *
Zhubaal watched Cat disappear around a corner, his heart heavy, his body numb. She had been his single moment of weakness, the only one in nearly a century.
It had been ninety-eight years since his beloved angel, Laura, had been cast out of Heaven. Ninety-eight years of searching for her in Sheoul and getting his own Heavenly boot in the ass in the process.
Cat had come to him in a moment of weakness, on a day when he’d despaired that he’d never find Laura. But even as he’d kissed Cat, touched her, started to undress her, Laura had filled his thoughts.
As young angels, he and Laura had made a blood-pact to be each other’s firsts, and he’d kept that vow, even after she lost her wings. He’d searched for her, eventually losing his own wings, but still, he remained faithful. And then, even after he discovered that she’d been slaughtered by an angel, he’d held onto that pact like a toddler with his comfy blankie. After all, her soul had been sent to Sheoul-gra, and he’d figured he could find her there, even if he had to get himself killed to do it.
At least they’d have been together in the Inner Sanctum.
But fate had intervened in the form of Azagoth, who had needed a new assistant, which gave Zhubaal access to privileged information about the residents of the Inner Sanctum.
Then fate threw him a curve ball.
He was too late.
Laura had, indeed, been a resident of the Inner Sanctum’s 1st Ring. Until Azagoth reincarnated her thirty years ago.
Pain stabbed Zhubaal in the chest. His Laura was out there somewhere. She was a different person with a different name, but she was still his, and he wouldn’t break his vow until he found her.
Unfortunately, he was now bound to Azagoth with a vow just as binding as the one he’d made with Laura. He could leave Sheoul-gra, but only for a few hours at a time, which made searching for Laura––or whatever name she went by now–– next to impossible. Especially since Azagoth refused to give any specifics regarding her status, her parents, or even her species.
As a fallen angel, she should have been born only to a fallen angel to become either emim or vyrm, but Z had learned long ago that there were very few rules that couldn’t be broken. For all he knew, his Laura could be feeding on offal and lurking in garbage piles as a Slogthu demon.
The big question was whether or not he’d recognize her. Surely their bond had been strong enough that he could see his Laura in whoever she’d become. And if she’d had the rare good luck of retaining her soul-memory, she could remember bits of her previous life. If so, she might even be searching for him.
Sighing, he went back inside his office, but he didn’t feel like working anymore. He wanted to be out in the world, scouring the realms for Laura. He was a fool and he knew it, but dammit, he’d made a vow, and even if he couldn’t have the angel he’d fallen in love with, he wasn’t going to break the pact with someone he didn’t love. He’d hurt Cat, and he felt a little bad about that, but he hadn’t loved her. Cat deserved better. Laura deserved better.
He wasn’t sure what he deserved, but he knew what he wanted.
He was just losing faith that he’d ever get it.
Chapter Eighteen
Cat spent the next two days plotting ways to convince Azagoth to lighten up on Hades. Lilliana had volunteered to help, and Cat gladly took her up on her offer. The trick, Lilliana said, would be to make him think it was his idea. As Cat had suspected, he could be incredibly thick-skulled when it came to certain things, like offering second chances.
She opened the door to her apartment, intent on paying Lilliana a visit. But instead of facing an empty hall, she found herself standing mere inches away from Hades. Heart pounding with surprise and excitement, she stared.
“Hades,” she gasped. God, he looked good, so good he stole her breath. Wearing nothing but form-fitting, color-shifting pants and black boots, he filled the doorway, his massive shoulders nearly touching the doorframe. “What are you doing here? You’ll get in trouble––”
He was on her in an instant. His mouth came down on hers as he swept her into his arms, crushing her against him. His hand came up to tangle in her hair, holding her in place for the erotic assault. Forbidden, shivery excitement shot through her, and her core went molten.
“I don’t care,” he said against her lips. “I need you. I burn for you.”
She moaned, her heart soaring at his words as he pushed her toward the bed. But as her knees hit the mattress and they both fell onto the soft covers, she wedged her hands between them and pushed him off.
“I can’t,” she said, and oh, how it hurt to say that. “I can’t watch you suffer because of me.”
Hades cupped her cheek in his warm palm. “I was going to go to Azagoth first, but I know him. He’ll say no.”
“All the more reason to not do this.” She heard the sound of the plea in her voice, the weakness in the face of Hades’s desire. She needed to be stronger, but she wanted him so badly she shook with the force of it.
He leaned forward and brushed his lips across hers in a feathery, tender kiss. “All the more reason to do it. How does that old saying go? Better to seek forgiveness than ask permission from some asshole who’s going to tell you no?”
Damn him, this wasn’t funny. “Hades––”
“Shh.” He silenced her with another kiss. This one deeper. Harder. “Just this once, Cat,” he murmured. “I need this to hold onto when I’m alone at night.”
She might have argued some more. She might have shoved him away. She might have done a lot of things if he hadn’t slid his thick thigh between her legs as he untied her corset and freed her breasts. If he hadn’t dipped his head to take one aching nipple into his mouth.
“Hades,” she moaned.
He opened his mouth fully over her breast, his hot breath flowing over her skin as he worked the buttons of her jeans. His tongue teased her as he dragged it low, under the swell of her breast before laving attention on the other one.
Against her thigh, she felt his immense arousal pressing into her, a hot, unyielding presence that she’d never felt in the one place she needed it to be. Arching, she twisted so his erection settled between her legs, but her damned jeans and his pants––
As if Hades was thinking the same thing, he reared up and made fast work of removing her pants. “I love that you don’t wear shoes,” he said, his voice all breathless and needy. “Nothing to catch your jeans on.”
He tossed them to the floor, kicked off his boots, and then stripped away his own clothing, leaving him beautifully, gloriously, naked. His cock jutted upward from the plump sac between his legs, the broad head glistening at the tip. Unbidden, her hand reached out, but he seized her wrists and pinned them over her head as he stretched his body over hers.
“Not yet,” he said as he nuzzled her neck. “If you touch me, I’m a goner. Embarrassing, but true.”
Okay, she’d let him off the hook. For now. But later, she wanted to touch him. Smell him. Taste him. She had a lot to learn, and she was going to use whatever time they had wisely.
“There you go,” he murmured. “Relax. Close your eyes. I’ll make this good for you.”
Relax, huh? It was weird how her body felt wound tigh
t and liquid at the same time. In the dark behind her eyelids, she imagined the expression on his face as he kissed his way down her body.
His tongue circled her navel, and the tightness ramped up a notch. Anticipation made her squirm, but he put a lid on that quick, clamping down on her hips to force her into blissful submission. Her limited ability to move jacked up the intensity of every sensation until she was clawing at the bedspread and silently begging him to make her come.
But no, Hades was indeed a master of torture, and he took his time scooting lower, his tongue trailing along her abdomen and skimming her mound. She jerked upward, her body instinctively following his mouth as he kissed the crease of her leg.
“You okay?” His voice was a deep, sexy growl that sent stabs of pleasure shooting through every nerve ending.
“Uh-huh,” was all she could manage.
He chuckled as he spread her legs and settled between them. The brush of his hair against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs made her hiss in pleasure, and then that soft, prickly Mohawk shifted, finding her center. She moaned as Hades bobbed his head up and down between her legs.
“Oh...my,” she breathed. “How...naughty.”
He nodded, sending a silky caress over her sex. “There is no part of me that can’t bring you pleasure,” he purred, the vibration adding to the amazing sensations that cascaded over her in an erotic wave.
His hands slid up and down her legs, circling her ankles and tickling her calves as he brushed his hair over her sex in slow, decadent sweeps. Tension built, a writhing knot of need that grew hotter with every erotic bob of his head. She needed more, and he knew because his head came up and his tongue came out and her eyes went wide when she realized what he was about to do.
“Yes, please,” she whispered.
With a raw, erotic curse, he spread her with his thumbs and dipped his head. His mouth met her core, engulfing her in heat as his hot breath fanned the flames. She cried out at the first tentative touch of his tongue. The tip flicked whisper-light over her oh-so-ready knot of nerves before he used the flat of his tongue to lick all of her at once, from core to clit.
She fell back with a strangled moan and drove her fingers through his silky hair to hold him there, to keep him doing exactly what he was doing so perfectly. He lapped at her, starting with long, lazy licks before changing up and swirling his tongue between her folds. But when he pushed his tongue inside her and curled it firmly as he pulled back, she bucked so hard he had to pin her with his hands on her thighs so he could do it again.
Relentlessly, he drove his tongue inside her and licked his way back out, over and over, until the steam building up inside her exploded. The orgasm he’d given her in the shower had been amazing, but this...this made her not only see stars, but join them. The supernova of ecstasy sent her hurtling into the heavens––where she’d never felt like this.
The pleasure rolled over her in great waves, and just when she thought it was over, Hades did something with his fingers and tongue that sent her spiraling out of control again. She heard a distant shout...his name. She’d screamed his name...
Somewhere deep inside her it occurred to her that someone might have heard, but as Hades brought her back to Earth with a series of gentle, slow licks, the danger they faced slipped away until all that was left was the big male prowling back up her body, his lips glistening, his eyes smoldering with the promise that there was more to come.
* * * *
Hades had never in his entire life been this turned on. As an angel, he’d had a couple of sex partners, but he’d been overeager and underexperienced. The encounters had been nice, but all these years later, he could barely remember them.
As a fallen angel, he hadn’t had much opportunity to get down and dirty, but when he had, he’d taken advantage of it. The rare times when Azagoth allowed him out of Sheoul-gra, he’d hit every succubus he could find, visited every demon pleasure palace he could get to in his allotted time.
He’d learned a few things, for sure, but one thing he’d never learned was to care. To take the time to enjoy a female with not only his body, but his mind and soul. Maybe because he’d always known he couldn’t get attached to anyone, so he’d kept his distance, used jokes and a carefree attitude to breeze through a one-hour stand.
But Cat changed all that. She’d wormed her way into his heart like a dire leech, and all he could do was hope she’d drain him.
Bracing himself on his fists, he looked down at her as she lay panting, her face flushed, her lips parted to reveal just a hint of pearly teeth and tiny, pointed fangs. As the tip of his cock prodded her wet opening, she gasped and rolled her hips, inviting him in.
“I’ve never done this before,” she said. There was no shyness, no self-consciousness, just a plain and simple fact that left him speechless for a second.
“But...Zhubaal,” he finally blurted.
She shook her head, making her hair shift in shiny red waves on the pale yellow bedspread. “Nothing happened.”
Oh, great, so he’d been a jealous jackass for nothing. It was probably a good thing he hadn’t given in to his desire to rip Zhubaal’s head off and shove it up his ass every time he saw him, too.
Hades looked into her gorgeous, guileless eyes, loving that she was trusting him to be her first. Pride swelled, but close on its heels was shame. This might be the only time they had, and to take the gift of her virginity, knowing they might never again––
“Knock it off.” She dug her nails into his shoulder, the little pricks of pain snapping him out of his train of thought. “I can see your mind working, and I know what you’re thinking. I’m capable of making my own decisions, and even if we can’t be together again, I want to always have this, same as you.”
Ah, damn, she was a gift. This was going to be worth anything Azagoth put him through as punishment. Anything.
Reaching between them, he gripped his cock to guide it inside her, but once again, she clawed him. “Wait. I want to...” She trailed off, a burst of pink blooming in her cheeks. “I want to taste you.”
At those words, his cock damned near humiliated him. It jerked in his hand, all, yes, please, and do it now.
“Okay,” he said, proud of how he didn’t sound completely strangled with lust, “but only for a second. You’ve got me way too worked up.”
Her cocky grin made him regret agreeing to this as he climbed up her body and kneeled next to her head. He barely had time to push his unruly erection down when she lifted her mouth to it and flicked her tongue over the bead of pre-come at the tip. He hissed at the contact, hissed louder when she did it again.
And then the crazy little angel swallowed his cock from the head to the base and sucked like she’d been born to do this. A sound somewhere between a shout and a bark escaped him as she slid her mouth upward and swirled her tongue around the crown. Holy hell, she was no tentative kitten lapping at a bowl of milk. This was a she-tiger with an appetite for man, and––
He pulled back and squeezed his cock so hard he lost his sight for a heartbeat. A hot climax pulsed in his balls and his shaft, and there was no way he was blowing down her throat. He needed to be skin-on-skin with her, body to body, sex to sex.
For the first orgasm, anyway.
“Not nice,” he scolded, but she just gave him a wide-eyed doe look he might have bought if he hadn’t just experienced the rabid carnivore she really was.
“I thought I was being very nice.” She batted her eyes, still playing innocent, which only made his cock throb harder.
Time to teach her a lesson.
In a quick motion, he flipped her onto her belly and dove between her legs again, lifting her hips for prime access as he stabbed his tongue into her dripping sex. She cried out in surprise and pleasure as he licked her, this time not even trying to be gentle. He growled against her core, nibbling and feasting as he ground his cock against the mattress to keep the bastard happy.
Then, just as her cries and breaths signaled that
she was on the edge, he rolled her again. Her legs flopped open, spreading that beautiful pink flesh wide for him. He wanted to lick her some more, but the foreplay had set him on fire, and the bed-humping had fanned the flames.
Time to burn.
He positioned himself between her thighs and pushed against her opening. She arched, giving him even more access, and his head slid into her warmth.
“Tight,” he groaned. “Ah, damn, you’re tight.” Her eyes caught his, held them as he pushed in a little more. Like many angels, she didn’t seem to have a barrier, but the invasion still couldn’t be comfortable. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” she breathed. “It just feels...right.”
She couldn’t have said anything better. Throwing back his head, he thrust deep. At her cry, he panicked, but the expression on her face wasn’t pain. It was bliss. She was so ready, so eager, and he was so damned lucky.
He pulled nearly free of her body and slid back in, keeping an eye on her, gauging her reactions in case he hurt or frightened her, but she was gloriously free of inhibition, fear, or discomfort.
“More,” she begged. “Don’t hold back. I want it all.”
It was the same strength of character she’d exhibited in the Inner Sanctum, the drive to get what she wanted at all costs, and this time, he was going to give it to her.
Dropping to his elbows, he kissed her as he pumped between her legs, his thrusts growing faster and harder as his climax began to tingle at the base of his spine. The wet slap of their bodies grew more furious as she clung to him, wrapping her legs around his waist with more strength than he’d imagined she had in her entire body.
She met him thrust for thrust, both with her hips and her tongue. He heard the bed banging against the wall and sliding across the floor with the fury of their joining, and shit, he was close, so close that when she came, all he could do was hold on for the ride.
Her sex rippled along his shaft, wringing the climax from him in long bursts that bordered on agony. Sweet, sweet agony. He couldn’t think, couldn’t see as he came once, then twice, the second sending his entire body into spasms of ecstasy. He filled her, but she filled him, too, with emotion he’d never known.