by Nina Levine
“If you need me to stop.”
She shakes her head. No words are said until she shuffles off, removing her panties and letting them fall to the ground.
Fuck.
My boxers come off without a second thought. She hovers back over me, but not before removing a condom from my drawer.
Great, I completely forgot for the first time ever.
I put it on quickly, and as I pull her mouth to kiss her deeply, I give her one more chance to walk away, knowing that whatever the hell happens tonight, it’s doing things to me I’ve never experienced before, and there’s nothing I need more than to feel myself inside of her.
“If you tell me to stop…”
“Will,” she breathes, sliding herself on as her mouth parts slightly. “Fuck me, please.”
Her begging spurs on the beast within me. I grip her hips, watching her body ride me. Every inch of her is covered in goosebumps, her nipples hard as I pinch them softly. Her cries are mixed with moans, the sound fighting for attention with the grunts my body expels.
Shuffling my body, so I’m sitting up, her face is in line with mine, and kissing her becomes an addiction I don’t want to ever cure.
Pulling away while arching her back, she calls my name until I slide my hand behind her neck and beg her to look at me.
And at this moment, our eyes connect so profoundly, my emotions run wild in fear.
“Come with me,” I demand with a rasp. “I want you to come with me.”
Her lips crash onto mine, the taste so delicious, I beg of my body not to release now. “I’m ready, Will.”
Both my hands lace around her neck, our foreheads touching as I thrust inside her, and she rides my cock until all I feel is her muscles tighten around my shaft. My body jerks forward, a shiver following as a deep grunt escapes me, and my body basks in euphoria.
Our breaths, uneven, echo inside the room.
Slowly, she slides herself off, collapsing beside me and pulling the sheet over her. I discard the condom, tossing it on the floor, and turn to face her.
“Now what?” I ask, spreading tiny kisses on her arm.
“I don’t know,” she answers truthfully. “I thought you were a one-time guy.”
Slightly hurt by her assumptions, I climb back on top of her to make her understand the truth. “We cannot be together.”
“I know.”
“It’s forbidden.”
“Completely taboo. You’re like family.”
“You’re like a little cousin,” I tell her, my eyes falling onto her lips. “Though not so little, a beautiful, sexy, gorgeous…” I kiss her shoulder until I’m on her lips, “… woman.”
“Plus, I’m not actually related to you.”
“Still off-limits.”
“Completely off-limits,” she agrees while running her hand in my hair before a smile plays on her lips. “But I guess, one more time wouldn’t hurt, right?”
My dick is already hard, and this time, I need to feel her properly, not with a fucking rubber.
I slide myself in, her arousal utterly wet as she moans loudly.
She feels perfect.
Like everything that is missing from my life.
There’s just one problem…
Nothing will change the fact that she’s Lex Edward’s daughter. The man who reigns over all, the ruler of his kingdom, and as of now, I’m his biggest threat.
The man about to steal his princess.
Other books by Kat T.Masen
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Prince of Ruin
Bec McMaster
1
‘Once upon a time, an angel loved a demon;
Betrayal broke them apart, and thus they named him, the Prince of Ruin.
For there was only sin and hate remaining in his heart,
Only lust and desire made him whole;
And he swore that if he ever got his hands on her again….
He would shatter her very soul.’
Lights and sirens wailed past as Sera stepped from the cab and paid the driver.
“You sure you want to be here, sweetie?” he asked, looking around. “This quadrant’s not the safest in the city. The demons will be out to play tonight.”
Sera flashed him a smile. “I’m fine. Maybe if they’re lucky, I’ll play back.”
He shook his head at her as if to say, ‘I tried.’ And then he pulled back out into the traffic.
Sera slung her purse over her shoulder, tottering in her three-inch heels. “Alright. I’m here. Let’s do this.”
Uriel’s whisper-soft voice haunted her memories.
I need to ask a favor.
You won’t like it, Sera, but times are desperate.
There’s a rumor that one of the shards of Michael’s sword has been found…. And not by us.
“I’ll do it,” Sera had promised him. “I’ll get the shard back. Where is it? Who has it?”
Because she’d wanted to prove that her loyalties—long questioned among the Brotherhood—were true. And because “reclamation” was her forte.
But she hadn’t known the full truth in that moment.
Uriel had paused, the hood of his sweater shielding half his face. His golden eyes had met hers, and for a second she’d lost herself in the power of that look. He was a broken king, ruling his territory with an iron fist, but there were times when the Fist of Heaven looked back at her, times when she could see the power of the creature he’d once been flood through him. “It’s in the Swallows.”
Her heart had plunged through her feet as she realized exactly what he was setting her to do.
And why he’d sought her out for this particular task.
There was only one creature in the Swallows who might have gotten his hand on a powerful relic from a long-forgotten era.
One demon who ruled the territory with murder and malice, and every single kind of twisted sin possible.
And she’d been running from this meeting ever since she woke up in the mud of a new world, gasping for breath and staring at her newly mortal fingers in horror.
The Prince of Ruin.
If the shard was here, then he owned it, the same way he owned everyone and everything that dared cross his territorial boundaries.
You can do this.
He won’t recognize you.
It’s been years….
Centuries.
He’s not the same.
But the choking feeling in her chest felt the same. Call it fate, call it kismet, but she felt like flotsam in a whirlpool, desperately trying to avoid this confrontation all these years, only to find herself spinning faster and faster, toward the center of an earth-shattering collision.
Seraphine Murdoch—according to her fake license—strode across the sidewalk, her fingers toying with the tiny purse she carried. Nerves. Not the best place to show them, but if any of the creatures that lurked in the Swallows saw her as prey, she could disabuse them of that notion.
No prey here, demonspawn.
But come on…. I dare you.
The breeze caught the hem of her white silk dress. It fluttered barely three inches below the curve of her ass. Gorgeous feathered wings were strapped around her shoulders, and white fishnet stockings climbed her legs. Hardly the sort of thing she usually wore, but every thief needed her camouflage, and tonight, the only way to get in and assess whether the rumors spoke the truth was to meld with the general clientele.
Neon lights picked out the club’s name across the street: The Ninth Circle.
Target acquired.
She could hear the bass from here, thrumming below her skin like a heartbeat. Hundreds of party-goers waited outside, and the bouncers seemed to be hauling someone away from the door, ignoring his desperate screams of, “Please! Please! I need th
e kiss! I need the deal. I’ll give him everything!Anything!”
“Damn, you look good,” whispered a voice in her ear. Tayla. No doubt sitting in the surveillance van and eating candy-coated popcorn as she slipped inside The Ninth Circle’s security feeds like a ghost, and started doctoring information. “You’d better be careful. Our Prince of Ruin gets one look at you in that dress and he’s going to eat you all up.”
Sera would never get used to the sensation of the technowitch in her head. One part psychic—enough to communicate on a mental level—and one part superhacker, Tayla was probably halfway through her second Slurpee. She needed to be on song tonight and sugar was her drug of choice.
“Thanks, Tay. That’s exactly what I want to happen. Just call me a sacrifice on his altar.”
A little shiver ran through her.
She was planning to waltz right in beneath his nose, and then out again, with—if the rumors were true—the shard of Michael’s sword in her possession. Maybe sacrifice was the right word.
But she knew the risks.
One wrong move, one slip, and then she’d be facing Azazel himself.
“A girl could play, is all I’m saying. Man’s got a certain rep.”
He sure does. Sera’s painted mouth twisted. “He’s not a man. And if he realizes who I really am, he won’t be playing.”
“Chill, my little thief. Anyway, you’re all in.” Sera had the sudden mental impression of the young woman cracking her knuckles. “One Seraphine Murdoch, uploaded into facial recognition. If they run the data, they’ll get a few hits. You’re a society girl, straight out of Nine Moons. You stumble from party to party, looking for a new sugar daddy, but I’ve got your age listed as thirty-five. You’re starting to feel the weight of your mortal years. The daddies have been few and far between of late, and the facials aren’t cutting it. You woke up with wrinkles the other day—”
“Thirty-five isn’t that old.”
Not when you counted time in the centuries.
“It is to Ms. Murdoch,” Tayla chided. “And you broke my monologue. I was just getting to the good part. Anyway, as I said, you woke up with wrinkles and you know time is coming at you faster than a bullet. You want to stop that bitch in her tracks. You’d even sell your soul to be young and pretty forever. And so you stole an invitation to one of the reaping nights, and even though you know you’re not the usual kind of offering, you’re desperate.”
Grudgingly, she had to admit it covered the one problem they’d had with this set up. “So I’m not even going to pretend the invitation isn’t stolen?”
“Girl, I’m good, but I’m not that good. That fucking thing is written in blood. Demon’s blood. They’ll know it isn’t meant for you the second they see it. This is the best I’ve got. And when they want to know how you got it, flash a bit of tits and desperation.”
Usually she could sync with Tay, but it was too dangerous here. She needed to be psychically inert. This was the Prince of Ruin’s territory and if he didn’t have crawlers in the basement, monitoring psychic transmissions from any of the “humans” who entered his domain, then she was a purple elephant.
Tay had created a wormhole in her head for these situations.
It took nothing for the psychic to slip inside and comment, but Sera was forced to rely on vocals. She could receive incoming, and since the heat of the transmission would be echoing in a little van three streets over, nobody would notice.
She just couldn’t activate outgoing.
Which meant being deliberately vague in case there were listeners out there.
Sera made her way up the sidewalk, striding straight past the long line of girls dressed in skimpy outfits. Red and black seemed to be the order of the day. Digging her mask out of her purse as music pulsed from the club, her fingers quivered nervously on the satin. She didn’t want to fit in. She wanted to stand out.
Had to catch Azazel’s attention somehow.
Show time.
“Silent mode, please.”
“Over and out,” Tayla replied. “I’m on your six. Feel free to ogle any sexy men you encounter. I need a few snapshots to add to my spank bank.”
Technowitch’s. Sera rolled her eyes. “You need to get out more.”
“I like my risk with a side of ‘no, thank you.’”
And then the little buzzing sensation in her head went quiet.
Still there, but if anyone went rifling through her mind, they wouldn’t pick up on the other sentience. To get to Tayla, they needed to smash through the wards shielding Sera’s inner core, and she’d been working on building those mental walls for centuries.
If anyone did get past them, she’d never know.
She’d be dead.
On an enormous screen across the street, the image of a muscular blond man wearing a black suit appeared. He was Hollywood handsome with a skinny black tie standing in stark relief against his blazing white shirt, and dark shades shielding his eyes. Golden angelmarks decorated his knuckles, the light of his Grace escaping through them as if the raw power within him sought to escape.
Raphael.
Even without his wings, his raw presence, it was a punch to the throat, and despite the screen it was hard to escape the sheer radiance he emanated.
The screen split, and then there was an entertainment reporter saying something seriously into the camera. Probably a soundbite about where Raphael had been seen dining. Maybe he’d been snapped with another angel. Or sentencing demonspawn to death.
It could also be something ridiculous, like whether he’d been seen with Bella—no last name needed—the latest Hollywood It girl. The last she’d heard, they’d broken up, and the world seemed to be obsessed with whether they’d get back together. It had been a fairy tale romance. Photos of the pair of them gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes had been plastered over every inch of the net.
It was such a beautiful lie that Sera herself might have believed it, if she wasn’t fully aware that archangels didn’t have hearts.
Only obsessions.
And winning the war between Heaven and Hell was the only thing that got that cold prick hard.
When he’d fallen with the rest of them, Raphael had swiftly deduced that winning any wars on this mortal plane was different to waging war in Heaven.
They were fighting for souls now.
Human souls.
They were fighting not to be overwhelmed by demonspawn, ever since Hell had vomited its residents onto earth.
And setting himself up in Hollywood with the rest of his contingent was the best PR he didn’t have to pay for. Gorgeous, blond, roguish and dangerous, his smile could bring a thousand humans crawling to their knees for him. The sheer aura emanating from him—his Grace—was more mesmerizing than anything a plastic surgeon could create.
Sera stared at that golden face. She’d spent years wondering who was powering him now that Heaven was shut for good. Their power source was gone, their Grace only a distant memory, but some of the archangels still blazed like supernovas.
Best not to ask, Uriel had murmured, when she once questioned it.
He alone seemed to suffer as she did.
All across the square, mortals fell to their knees.
It made Sera’s breath catch—that even through the screen they could sense the awe and the shock of Raphael’s power. Imagine what they’d do if he was here physically? The entire city would be struck down—Angelstruck, they called it—and the hospitals would be overwhelmed by those suffering from rapture. Archangels were glory personified, and while the presence of regular angels in all their blazing glory might make humans stagger, and suffer from memory slips, the full power of an archangel would fry their brains in the short term.
But she wasn’t here to observe the humans.
No.
She was here to revenge herself on the demons that ruled this city.
Not everyone could be sunning themselves on a sunny beach with supermodels. If Raphael was the best recruitment the
forces of Heaven had to offer, the banner boy for signing up to fight for #TeamSaveYourSoul, then she was part of the team that worked in the shadows. The invisible hand of glory.
The cambion bouncer took a drag of his cigarette, glaring at the screen across the square, and then he unclipped the rope and gestured her forward. “Fucking Golden Boy. Invitation?”
Sera tugged her clutch open and withdrew the slim slip of parchment.
This was the moment.
She held her breath as he scanned the invitation. The bouncer’s eyes narrowed and he fingered the expensive piece of parchment.
“You don’t look like our usual sort,” he told her flatly, eyeing the wings she’d strapped on.
Sera gave a winsome shrug and bit her lip. “Maybe I want to be corrupted. A good girl who wants to play bad games.”
A hand caught her face and then she was staring into snake-slit eyes as the cambion rifled through her surface memories like a card shark flicking through a pack.
A hotel room appeared.
A man retched in the bathroom.
And Sera slipped naked from his bed, shooting a glance toward the bathroom as she rifled through the man’s possessions, finally coming up with the invitation.
He let her go, staring at her for a long moment. And then a smile curled over his mouth, hard and lethal. “You’re in,” he said. “I think they’re going to like you.”
Relief felt like the post-rush of an orgasm.
“Nice work, Tay,” she whispered under her breath as she slipped past the red velvet rope. Implanting fake memories like that had taken the technowitch a solid thirty-six hours. Though she was going to have words about the tattoo that Tayla had painstakingly added to her ass in the vision.
A sign appeared as she pushed through the double doors, the wave of music and the humid blanket of pure lust hitting her like a train.
‘Welcome to the Ninth Circle’ it said.
Sera took a deep breath as the demonspawn attendant came forward to check her.