“What way might that be?”
I held my breath for the three seconds it took him to finally answer with measured steadiness. “I can give you the power to sift.”
My heart stuttered. I blinked heavily, trying to decide if I heard him right. “What do you mean?”
His wide mouth ticked up on one side in a half smile that did nothing to help my poor heart to settle herself down. Quite the opposite.
“Exactly what I said. I want to give you the power to sift. That way, if things get out of hand, you can get away without waiting for me. We’ll be separated during the fights.” His brow pinched together. “I don’t like the idea of you having no means to escape if you need to while I’m in the ring.”
“But…but…” Didn’t he know that giving me an ability to sift would deplete his own power? I knew that as well as any. It was the reason few high demons and angels shared this power with others. They had to recover from sharing their power with another.
“What is it?” he asked calmly, his scorching gaze holding mine.
“But you have to fight in two nights. You can’t be weakened at all. Don’t you understand what kind of demons you’ll be up against?”
I realized my voice was near shrieking, but it only seemed to make him smile wider.
“I know what I’m up against. Don’t worry about me. Giving you this power will do little to weaken my abilities.” His jaw hardened before he added, “But it will give me some peace of mind while my focus is elsewhere.”
Okay. Either he was completely deluded, or he was one hell of a powerful archangel. With the current of electricity sizzling in the air, I was pretty sure it was the latter. Then my stomach sank for an entirely different reason. He dipped his head lower to catch my averted gaze.
“What is it?”
Clearing my throat, I tried for a nonchalant smile that I certainly didn’t feel. “No one has ever offered me this.”
The one thing that could protect me more than any wards or spells or even giant dragons, like the one I saw still parked out in the woods tonight when we’d returned to my cottage.
“Not even Skaal?” he asked pointedly.
Shaking my head, I whispered, “No one.”
“Well, I’m offering. I’d like to insist, but it’s up to you.”
“Of course I want it!”
He chuckled, and yet again, my skin heated in reaction to his insane beauty, which was blinding when he smiled.
“Why wouldn’t I want it?”
He sobered, amusement still dancing in his eyes. “Do you know how an exchange of power takes place?”
“Yes, everyone knows. It’s exchanged with a…” A drum sounded in my ears. A warning of exquisite, impending danger.
His expression remained completely unreadable, and yet I felt a simmering heat radiating outward. He nodded. “With a kiss.”
Panic seized me hard. But it wasn’t for the reasons I thought I’d fear any kind of intimate exchange with another man after Vladek. No, it wasn’t repulsion and fear that had sucked up all the moisture in my mouth and throat. It was a heady sensation that started at the base of my spine and spread upward in a wave of heat, flushing my cheeks pink.
“Your pulse is beating three times what it should be.”
“You can hear that?” Yes, definitely panic twanging my voice like a schoolgirl.
“I can.” He lifted his hand as if to touch me, then dropped it back to his lap, clenching his knee. “As I said, I understand if you don’t want to. But you’d be safer if you could…withstand it.”
I wanted to throw my head back and laugh, but I simply stared in disbelief. He thought my apprehension was because of my time with Vladek. He knew better than anyone the kind of repulsion I might have for any man’s touch. As he likely felt the same after his own captivity with Lisabette. But he was so wrong. My amped-up anxiety wasn’t because I dreaded his mouth on mine. It was because I longed for it. Needed it. Desperately.
“Y-yes.” Clearing my throat, I said in the most confident voice I could manage, “I want to.”
He straightened his shoulders, his wings parting slightly. Distracted by the movement, I didn’t see him lift his hand. Flinching at the intimate warmth of his large palm covering my left cheek and jaw, my gaze snapped to his. His expression remained calm, serene, tender even.
“It’s all right,” he crooned in a voice I’d not heard him use. One layered with archangel power and a soothing vibration that sung to my bones. “It won’t take long.” He leaned forward, my pulse taking off in a panic. “Close your eyes, Nadya.”
I obeyed immediately. I couldn’t watch his beautiful face coming any closer. He cupped my other cheek, the tips of his long fingers sliding into the edge of my hairline. The heat of his mouth hovered against mine, but not touching.
“Apertum mihi,” he whispered in Latin.
I didn’t know if he was speaking to me or summoning his power or both, but my lips parted on his command. Opened for him. Then his mouth was on mine, a firm but coaxing press of lips. A crackle of energy rippled over my skin, melting through flesh and bone on a blazing trail of…Uriel.
That’s all I could manage to think when his lips swept over mine, unhurried. Barely moving. One hand slipping to wrap my nape and cradle the back of my skull. The possessive hold broke something inside me. A wall of protection, a barricade of distance. The fortress I’d erected since Vladek, hoping to keep all men far and away from my damaged heart.
Uriel wasn’t even after my heart. This wasn’t even a real kiss. Not the kind that mattered. And still, a well opened up, flooding my body with intoxicating emotions. A river of sensuality sparked by a seemingly chaste kiss swept me to a hazy place. His power—a potent force—rushed through my veins on a dizzying tidal wave, crashing through and over every barrier I might’ve erected against him.
A moan slid up my throat and poured into his mouth. His fingers clenched at the base of my skull as if to keep me still. On a gasp where our lips parted for seconds, his stormy gaze glimpsed my face, his own frozen in a mixture of disbelief, fear, and stupefying desire.
A carnal groan rumbled in his chest, raising gooseflesh on my skin, before he hauled me into his lap.
Then he really kissed me.
Chapter Eleven
Uriel
Fucking. Hell.
What was that? Expecting the familiar spark of energy when I gave someone a piece of my power, my brain hazed with much darker thoughts. Heavy desires I’d not felt in an age. Or ever. The electric current snapping between us wasn’t just an exchange of power. It was frantic need, intoxicating lust. And something more. Disturbingly more.
In all the things Lisabette did to my body and the ways she’d taken what was not hers, her kiss was the most horrific of all. A kiss was a caress of souls. An intimate entanglement of breath and affection. Or a slaughter to the senses with violent invasion. With that demonic witch, it had been one more cruelty forced upon me while under her black magic and blood spells. But this…this sensation was beyond my experiences. Even immortality hadn’t brought another’s lips to mine in the likes of Nadya.
Angling her head just enough, she opened her mouth wider and let me in. Sweet fucking submission. I slid my tongue inside and over hers. Her whimpered response only fueled me into a frenzy. On a groan, I stroked in deeper. Totally unnecessary to give her the gift I’d wanted her to have, but I couldn’t rein it in. My fingers clenched. My body ached. My brain checked out.
The punch of angel power pulsed down her throat and into her veins, rippling through her body and limbs. She shivered on a whimper as I licked deeper, my fingers digging into her waist and her nape, keeping her close. She combed a hand into my hair, her nails grazing my scalp, and a lick of heat lashed straight through me.
My hand at her nape traveled over her shoulder and down her arm, smoothing over th
e threadbare material separating us. Then all I could think about was getting my hands on her sweet body, her silky skin. All of it. I needed to calm the fuck down before I ripped off her robe and put my mouth on her neck, her breasts, her hips, between her legs. The crippling image of her on her back, on all fours, on her knees tumbled through my overheated brain, hardening my cock to pain.
Like a tidal wave leveling out, the electric energy I’d given her rippled slower, a heated throb sizzling between us, solidifying her new power to sift. But it wasn’t the angel power that had knocked me to my knees. It was my body’s instinctual reaction to having my mouth on hers. To having her open at my command. It wasn’t just a shock that I suddenly wanted her full submission. It was an iron fist to the chest. A clench to my throat. A threatening, debilitating need to have what I shouldn’t want. A demon witch.
Wrenching my mouth from hers, both of us panting, I stared into her dilated eyes, swamped with more black than blue. Quickly, I gripped her waist and stood, lifting her and setting her on her feet. She visibly trembled, wobbling before catching her balance, her hands shaking as she wrapped her arms around her middle, making sure her robe was closed.
“Are you nauseous?” I asked, knowing that was often a reaction when I’d given a human some of my power. It could be jolting.
She made a choking noise in her throat that was almost a laugh, her mouth partly open. Staring at me, she shook her head. There was no mistaking her expression. She wanted me. The frightening realization made me take another step back. My fists balled at my sides. If I touched her again now, I wouldn’t stop.
Speechless. I was fucking speechless. When had that ever happened? Never, that’s when. I needed to get out of here. Away from her.
“I’ll meet you here, just beyond my wards on Friday at eleven thirty p.m.”
She said nothing. Didn’t even indicate whether she’d heard me. And I couldn’t stand there one more second with her haunting eyes, her silken skin, and her goddamn temptation of a body.
Stiffening my spine, I gritted out, “Friday,” then stormed out into the night.
I needed some distance from her. The cold air washed away the heat firing through my blood. With three long steps, I launched up into the air, beating my wings to take me higher. I had to get away from her before I did something irresponsible. Irreversible. Like take her to bed and wash away the constant edge of pain in her eyes.
I didn’t want to think about the ways Vladek had used her, growling at the image that brought to mind. And I didn’t want to become a rutting beast that made me in any way like him.
“Fuck.”
I flew higher, beating my way through the icy wind and cloudy vapor, shooting like a rocket until I was above the clouds where only wisps of gray obstructed my view of the starry blanket above.
That unholy monster had surely done unspeakable things to my sweet Nadya. And when had I begun to think of her as sweet? Or mine? God, I was already lost.
She was a demon witch, there was no mistaking. She’d gone into his house of her own accord as one of many in the round of his court. She was likely comfortable in that hell house for a time. But she’d caught his eye, and then she was doomed. To be a special pet of Vladek was likely the most unimaginable kind of hell. Of course, I could guess, for I’d been the enslaved guest of his protégée. Lisabette certainly thrilled at the joy of inflicting pain. I wondered what Vladek had done to Nadya while she was in his keep.
Hell, the thought of his hands, his mouth, any part of him on her or inside her was enough to make me—
Sickening at the thought, I shot even higher, relishing the frigid blast of the high altitude, the near weightlessness as I pushed up against the atmosphere, longing for the cold to seep straight into me and end this torture. This maddening attraction that should not exist had rocked me to a disturbing degree. Of course I’d noticed her beauty. Who couldn’t? But it wasn’t until I’d seen her kindness to the Stegemann family and her genuinely compassionate nature and her abhorrence for her time in Ivangorod that I realized she wasn’t a creature of the dark after all.
No. She was a luminescent light like no other. Scarred and wounded by one particular demon in her past. A demon king who was directly in my path. Though she accepted my kiss, as a means to gain the power to sift, she wouldn’t accept me as a lover. Not after that foul fucker Vladek.
Skimming lower just above the canvas of clouds, a weighty shadow lifted up out of the mist, swirling the vapor into a whirlpool. Circe’s earthy growl rumbled on the wind. Glancing to my right, I caught her golden gaze.
“No. Go back and protect her.”
She chuffed, puffing out a cloud of black smoke that skimmed over her knotted spine. She soared beside me, pretending to ignore my command.
“Fine. You can eat anything that tries to harm her.” She blinked heavily at me. “Now go back to her.”
With an unenthusiastic roar, she banked right and down, whipping her spiked tail in the air before returning to Nadya. The creature, conjured of supernatural substance, had become a loyal servant. I knew other angels thought me a fool for possessing a demonic creature, but I didn’t care. After my time in Estonia, I’d learned one thing. Do what you must to survive, to protect what belongs to you, and what you love. I’d possess an army of dragons if needed to wipe out the evil of this world.
I’d watched for centuries before this Great War had even begun, how evil prevailed unless the innocent had proper protection, elevated power in their corner. That was when I’d decided to create the Dominus Daemonum, the demon hunters whose penance was to expel demons from this world for dying with a mortal sin upon their souls. I always gave them a choice. Some chose hell instead, but most of them longed for redemption. I offered them that. But even more, I offered protectors to the helpless in this world.
Now that the gates of heaven and hell were fully opened, the rules needed to be broken. Rules like angels shouldn’t sully themselves by possessing demonic creatures. I took great pleasure from stealing Circe from the possession of that demon prince Rook who’d made her. She was mine now. And I’d use her to smite the unholy who wreaked havoc upon this earth. The irony made me smile.
To think of all the wickedness the high demons had committed on innocents. I thought again about Vladek and Nadya, the sting in my chest digging deeper.
I might not be able to heal her internal wounds, but I could kill the one who’d put them there. The tension in my shoulders and the weight in my chest eased. I could fight not just for those nameless tortured in his dungeons, not just for revenge for what he and Lisabette did to me, but…I could fight for her. I would fight for her.
Come Friday, those demons best be ready. Because nothing was going to keep me from pounding them all down to blood and bone.
Chapter Twelve
Nadya
I waited on the edge of the wards in the pitch of night just as he’d told me. He hadn’t come to the cottage since he’d left after that kiss though his dragon crouched in the shadows of the woods the entire time. Even now, her eerie golden eyes gazed at me from across the field. Not menacing, just watching. I wasn’t afraid of her anymore, knowing she was an extension of Uriel. Knowing she did his bidding. Strange that I should find comfort in a terrifying dragon slumbering near my cottage.
Exhaling a shaky breath, I crossed my arms, trying to bully myself into being the person I needed to be tonight. The hair and the clothes were a good mask, but I had to play the part in personality as well. I’d never fit in at Ivangorod. Was that why Vladek had wanted me? Because I’d never truly been one of them? Even when Lisabette tried her best to force me to adopt their ways, I just didn’t revel in debauchery and hedonism. And certainly not evil. When I’d finally found the courage to leave, it was too late. Vladek had caught sight of me at one of his feasts. He’d lured me in at first. That was the most shameful part. I’d actually fallen for his gentle attenti
ons, his subtle wooing. I’d gone to his bed willingly, convincing myself he was just a fallen angel—as all high demons were—who had become powerful in his own right and enjoyed the hedonistic lifestyle. I’d never seen women draped all over him or seen him even hurt another outright. Those who broke the rules of his land were sentenced before his throne and the punishment meted out of sight by his thugs.
But I was such a fool. He’d studied me and discovered who I was. That I wasn’t a witch who dabbled in the black arts like Lisabette. I was the exact opposite of her, actually. He’d even given me a garden to spend my days. Seduced me slowly. And I’d convinced myself that he offered me this paradise, this sanctuary away from the raging war across the world, because he longed to protect me. Because he loved me. But I was wrong. It was his trap, baited with purple lilies and monarch butterflies. Pretty words and prettier lies. I realized what a monster he was only after I was fully under his spell and chained to his side. Sometimes literally.
It wasn’t the times he was rough with me that haunted me in the dark of night. It was the times he’d whispered frightening words of affection. I could hear him even now, hovering over my shoulder, his hot breath against my cheek when he liked to tell me, “I’ll never let you go, kroshka.”
He liked to use his Russian endearment, which always made me cringe. Direct translation is “crumb” but was a common pet name for a man’s lover. The sad thing was I felt like his crumb, like leftovers that had been dropped to the floor to be discarded and stomped on. I’d lie awake at night in his bed, staring at the stone ceiling far above and wish he’d be tempted by another woman. The wish sickened me because I was wishing my fate on some helpless other person. But he never wavered from me. Never tired of me. If anything, his obsession became more intense, more twisted with each passing day. That’s when I realized I had to stop lashing out.
Coldest Fire (Dominion series) Page 10