by Heather Long
The stunned silence that followed left me hanging as the pleasure barraged me, and I floated on the lazy sea of it. I needed more. Wanted more.
Everything.
I wanted it all.
“Anything,” I repeated. “It’s yours.”
That was all it took for them to back away, leaving me cold and lonely. Why had I even said that? I had definitely been caught up in the moment. That was normal, human. Hadn’t they ever had a lover profess their undying love before? Of course they had! They were freaking angels with next level sex skills. Crazies were probably crawling out of the woodwork.
Now that they weren’t touching my skin, my brain cells started to gather again from their nice little hiatus. It was damn lucky I’d never encountered any potent men like them when I was alive.
Hell.
Shaking my head slightly, I sucked in a deep breath to find my center and settle down after those two exquisite orgasms from their delicious kisses. Most girls would be ashamed of how quick they popped their top. Me?
Hell no! How many women ever got the chance to kiss someone with so much skill, that was all it took? I’d count it for a win, even if they were backing away from me like they’d seen a ghost.
Or spirit?
Oh damn. If angels were real, fucking ghosts probably were too.
I’d save that for pondering after I took my happy ass to heaven.
“Please don’t tell me you’re one of those guys?” I called after them, taunting them because the new me couldn’t help it. “Afraid of emotional attachment?”
The beautiful golden undertones to Zhan’s olive skin blanched, leaving him as pale as my precious white Mac computer. Tarus was no better, except where Zhan looked ill, Tarus seemed to be angry. These fools really thought I was here to fuck with them.
Well, I was, but they didn’t know that.
And I sure as hell wasn’t fucking with them then! I was theirs whenever they wanted to play my body like an upright bass.
Electric kisses. Magic fingers. Yum.
When they were several feet away, they turned to each other as if they could forget I was here.
Nice, real fucking nice. And I was still tied up.
“This is a bad idea.” Tarus rubbed his temples. “What the actual fuck were you thinking when you brought her here?”
“I think we can agree I wasn’t thinking.” Zhan’s expression was sullen, and his words were dour. He was a right Eeyore.
Damn it, a twinge in my heart said he needed a hug, and I wanted to be the person who gave him that hug. In my old life, I would have been. I blew loose strands of hair out of my face. Some habits were hard to break. But he was adorable in his misery.
“Oh, you were thinking all right, Zhan. You were thinking with your dick. Look. We had our fun—” he started.
Fun? That wasn’t fun, it was a tease from hell, even if I had gotten my happy ending!
“But nothing good can come of this. Nothing.” He gripped Zhan’s shoulders and pulled him in just a little bit. It was like he was trying to convey something insanely important through his gaze.
And motherfucker, it worked.
“You’re right. It shouldn’t have happened. I’ll take her back.” Zhan started to walk to me, but Tarus stopped him.
“No, I’ll take her. Why don’t you go take a cold shower? You look like you need one.”
Immediately, my gaze was pulled to Zhan’s crotch as if by magnetic force.
My jaw dropped. His tent was massive. Mass-ive. He definitely met the length requirement.
When Zhan looked down, he seemed almost surprised his sword was trying to cut through his pants.
I shit you not. He stuck a hand down his jeans and readjusted himself. It was the most lewd but innocent behavior I’d ever witnessed. This must have been what strippers felt like when men constantly had to fix their dicks.
Like Playboy bunny superstars.
Damn.
“I’m going. You’ll take her back to Sinner’s? There weren’t any humans in there when I brought us here.” He didn’t sound like he wanted to leave, or that he wanted me to leave. But he did sound resolved, like he wouldn’t interfere or stop Tarus for taking me away.
Did I want to go away? Would Seth be mad?
I had no answers. This had been too much fun, but I could also use some time regrouping. Spend some time strategizing how to not get tied to the kink wall next time.
Or maybe that was exactly what I did want?
The conversation ended abruptly as Zhan stormed out of the green room of delayed gratification. Oh yeah, he couldn’t wait to get out of this room.
Tarus turned to watch him go, and when he had disappeared, he turned to me with a heated sigh. He was affected, maybe more than I was. Maybe especially because he hadn’t had any real fun for himself.
“I’ll let you down. If I’m lucky, you won’t remember the trip back.” He tugged on the knots, and like magic, they unraveled with ease.
“What the hell?” I had pulled on those babies with everything I was worth, and all it took was a little tug on one of the strands?
A devious grin tipped the corners of his mouth as he bent to let my ankles free. “Zhan is a master at shibari. It’s his thing.”
I had no idea what shibari was. But you bet when I had access to the internet, I was looking it up!
Tingles shot through my hands, but not in a bad way, the ropes had never been too tight. My hands had fallen asleep from the suspension. Stretching my arms over my head, I squeaked when large hands closed around my waist, lifting me off the platform.
Tarus brought me against his body, and a vivid awareness spread through me. I caught hold of his shoulders to steady myself and let my nose glide along his neck. For a moment, he held me suspended against the hardness of his body. In more ways than one.
He pressed a soft kiss to my forehead and whispered, “Ready?”
The room fell away as bright white light surrounded us. Our skin seemed to glow from within, or maybe just Tarus’ skin? Was he the source of the white light? When Zhan had taken me, his light was a deep indigo, resembling the most beautiful color of newly bloomed morning glories.
In seconds, Sinner’s melted back into reality, but we weren’t in the middle of the bar this time. He had taken us to the hallway by the bathrooms. Light noise could be heard over the music, but nothing like at night. So we hadn’t been gone too long.
Tarus tipped my face up to his with one finger under my chin. I was still pressed to him, and somehow, his other arm had wrapped around my waist.
“Listen closely, beauty. You were lucky, more than you know. Not only last night, but today with Zhan and me. You have no idea how Luck favors you, because you’re still breathing. Today was fun, and I know you enjoyed yourself, but please don’t take this wrong when I say, I never want to see you again.”
I was shocked. Fucking utterly shocked.
He pressed the gentlest of touches to the corner of my mouth. So light, I couldn’t even call it a kiss. I couldn’t even process this. His actions were a complete contradiction to his words.
The bartender, Quetta hollered at someone in the main bar, and it broke him from his spell. Stepping back, he shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled. Not with happiness or even satisfaction. No, it was something that looked like regret.
“Stay away from Bish, too. He’s not good for you.”
Then he was gone.
Poof.
Disappeared as if he had never been there, and this time, there was no flash, no light.
I spun on my heels, ready to hightail it out of there, only to run smack dab into a vibrating wall.
Tilting my head up, and up, and up, I stared into the furious eyes of Seth.
“Hey,” I said by way of greeting. You know, normally I’d have added something else to that statement, but all of my brain cells seemed to have shorted out. Because Seth’s eyes? Angry as they might be, glowed. The heat in them licked me up like I was ice c
ream, and I melted. The air around him shimmered, and he was so perfectly beautiful.
His rich, full mouth compressed into a thin line, and he seized me. The world kaleidescoped. Zhan had been deep indigo. Tarus flared like the softest and sweetest of white lights. Seth?
Holy fuck me, the light shimmered in every shade, shot through with the deepest striations of a refracted rainbow sunset. Only, instead of ole Roy G. Biv, his multi-hued shades ranged from deep purple so dark, it might as well have been night, to fire-engine red, to blossoming orange, rising to the crest of yellow so bright, I might as well have been looking into the sun.
Tears flooded my eyes, and then we were in his living room. The image of him wavered as I gaped. If anything, he’d grown even hotter, and the muscles beneath my hands bunched and flexed. Oh, I was touching his chest. Even in my heeled boots—oh, they survived the multiple trips—I still had to crank my head back to meet his gaze.
“I found your brothers.” The dazed words slipped free as I glided my hand up to fist around that sensuous braid that kept playing peek-a-boo.
Seth stilled.
Utterly stilled.
Like he wasn’t breathing or moving. No, correction, he glared. He definitely glared.
“And let them do whatever they wanted to you,” he stated, the ice in his tone plummeting me from the glowing warmth of my very confusing, if utterly orgasmic day into a frozen pond of slush. “If your idea of punishment is simply spreading your legs, no wonder you ended up on the bottom step of those stairs.”
The shock couldn’t have been more abrupt if I’d stepped down into a muddy puddle just as a car raced by and sent a tumble of it over me to drench me in disapproval. Honest-to-God hurt ripped through my belly.
“I can’t believe how far they truly have fallen.” The curl of disgust in voice slapped the pain and the shock right out of me.
“Fuck. You.” Then my hand connected with his face. Well, it would have connected, but he’d caught my wrist like I’d tossed him a ball. The wrap of that huge palm around my joint shackled me almost as effectively as Zhan’s shibari ropes. Only I’d stood still for that because I’d been drunk on the way the air tasted around him.
Seth, on the other hand, lost major points in the attractive department. Well, not really, ’cause yeah, I’d do him. But I would make him work for it.
His eyebrows edged upward. “I don’t recall asking.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you twice, buddy.” The knot of emotion ripping through my middle lodged in my throat. Through the film of tears I absolutely refused to shed, because see above—fuck him—his whole form wavered. Wings flexed behind him and stretched, before they snapped close and vanished again. “You said to get to know them, you didn’t say they were psycho, kinky, sex thrillers who’d tie me to a wall and try to pleasure the info out of me.”
Shock cracked through his stony facade. Yeah. That sucked, didn’t it? You expected one reaction and got an entirely different one instead. Yanking my wrist from his grasp, I poked a finger into his chest.
“Furthermore, all I did was show up at the bar.” Poke. “I walked inside.” Poke. “Ordered a drink.” Poke, and this time, Seth actually took a step back. “Then they’re all up in my space. Tarus yanked Bish across the room, can’t wait to find out who the hell he is…” That kernel of hurt flared in my gut again, and the knot in my throat shifted, but I couldn’t seem to make it go away fully.
Sucking in a deep breath, I poked him again. “Then Zhan bamfs me off to the green room of sensual taunting, ties me up, and wants to know my name. After he turns me damn near inside out with a kiss and sports the best looking erection I’ve seen in my life, he took off, and Tarus dumped me back at the bar.”
“Zhan kissed you?!?!”
Seriously? I go through that most excellent rant, and that was the part he focused on? Granted, it was a devastatingly excellent kiss. My soaked panties and achingly empty pussy agreed on that, high-five. The rest of it though?
“What? Jealous that you’re not the only one with electric lips, hot stuff?” Hands on my hips, I ignored the jolting reminder of the bruises probably darkening my skin. Bruises from how tight Tarus had gripped me while my world rocked.
Damn. Would it have killed them to do me a solid and let me at least get a little eye candy? Beyond the two fairy rides, I hadn’t even gotten to touch them. The gentle kiss Tarus left me with… My lips tingled all over again.
Every minute I’d spent with them replayed in technicolor, and heat flamed up inside of me.
“You know what, I don’t care. I’m going to shower.” I made it all of two steps before he clasped my arm, spun me around, and hauled me back. A squeak escaped me a second before his mouth closed on mine. Electricity sizzled me from head to toe. I might as well have been tonguing an electrical socket. The heat licking me up earlier burst into a raging inferno, and I fisted his braid again. It was so soft against my palm, grounding me in the wherever the hell we were.
Remember that thing about the tongue wrestling?
Seth wins.
The primal hold he had me in took me down to happy land and left me gasping and staggering when he blinked out. One minute, I’d been plastered against a hard as hell body being sensually ravaged, and the next, I was utterly alone.
What.
The.
Fuck.
“I hate angels!” I yelled out into the emptiness.
Putting a hand to my chest, I tried to catch my breath. Okay, first, I needed some release and relief. Then, I needed a shower.
Then…
Then, I didn’t know what.
6
Why couldn’t an ‘Achilles heel’ be a killer pair of shoes? Why did it have to be an angel? Well, angels. Three to be precise. Yes, I said angels. Bite me. If it has wings and looks like a god, then it’s probably an angel. Maybe they’re just devils. Or is that supposed to be me? - Dahlia
Zhan
Hand braced against the wall, Zhan worked the other against his cock. The hot water and soap made it slippery, but even the friction wasn’t giving him enough to push against. Need surged in his veins, his balls dragging up tight, and the release didn’t bring with it relief but a sagging emptiness.
It had been three days since Dahlia.
Three.
His existence could be partitioned into B.D. and A.D.
Before Dahlia. Life had been bleak, their time divided amongst the ranch they occupied and the occasional woman they brought in for a little fun. Trips to Sinner’s taken for the express purpose to reinforce why they’d fallen. While not a hot spot for humans, they did trickle in. Enough to wet his whistle as it were.
The tragedy always followed them. Dahlia had been no exception. The shimmering bright light guttering in the darkness closing in around her. The man at her side—her boyfriend—snapped with the darkness consuming him. It had damn near drained him dry, and all that self-hate and loathing had been redirected at the amusing, vivacious, and downright dangerously sexy woman at his side.
When he’d begun his verbal assault, nothing would allow Zhan to look away. He should have. They should have just left then. Instead, he forced himself to watch as her time dwindled. Three chances to escape him. She should have had three.
None of them presented themselves.
Luck didn’t put on an appearance.
Karmen sat in her corner, feet on the table as she drank her wine and played on her phone.
Then there was Bish.
Fucker.
The whole room wavered a moment before Dahlia left with her murderer. In that, all too brief space of time, Zhan hoped it had been Bish daring to get involved. But he didn’t. He just lingered there as Dahlia vanished into the night to meet her death.
But she didn’t die.
How?
His thoughts circled and stuttered on that single fact over and over. Finishing the rinse, he shut off the water and snapped one wing out to shake off the droplets. Then the other. Then both faded back in
to the ether. The weight of them an afterthought until A.D. Before, they’d almost vanished. But after Dahlia?
No, they strained his muscles as the tension cording there flexed them.
In no world had Dahlia deserved the abrupt end. But wasn’t that true of all murder victims? Humans took life with such gratuitous ease. Greed. Gluttony. Lust. Envy. Those fat bastards barely had to lift a finger anymore. Why bother? Humans didn’t need encouragement.
Why bother indeed?
Striding nude across the bathroom with its marble tile and inlays, he paced into his bedroom. They’d built the whole structure, including their rooms. Tarus had the west wing of the house while Zhan took the east. Zhan didn’t need much. A comfortable bed to sleep in, shelves for his books, and an eighty-inch screen to watch fictionalized humanity.
It amused Tarus to no end that Zhan watched just about anything that had a happy ending.
Anything.
Not that the shows helped. The news detailed the people sent to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. People died. They got sick. Lost their jobs. Fought desperately for the right to even exist.
It was an ugly, brutal world with no justice. No matter what he’d attempted.
The fruits of his labor were rotting in stinking fields. Nothing made a difference.
Nothing.
Except, she’d swallowed every drop of his anger and desperation. Swallowed them, and given him life.
A flash of her dark eyes, the way the pupils nearly swallowed all the color from them, and the swollen pinkness of her lips. No one had ever responded to him with such ferocity before. The alcohol couldn’t touch the effect she’d had when she detonated his system and obliterated the apathy entrenched in his bones.
Dahlia was dangerous.
When she declared herself his…
Fuck.
He ground the heels of his hands against his eyes as if to erase the thoughts scalded into his brain. Nothing worked. Tarus brought him a woman the night before. Dark haired, dark eyed, very willing, and so sweetly submissive in her compliance.
Zhan hadn’t touched her.