by Julie Kenner
Swiping up the cups, he turned back to her. Damn, she was beautiful, standing in the middle of his living room, barefoot, her jeans ripped in several places, a narrow strip of flat belly peeking between her waistband and her top. But the real showstopper was her hair, that glorious, wavy ginger mane that flowed over her shoulders and breasts in a tangle of wild curls. She looked like a warrior woman plucked from Earth’s past, and all she was missing was a sword and shield.
And all he was missing was a brain because those were thoughts he shouldn’t be having. He strode back to her and handed her a cup.
“So, with that kind of specialized ability,” he began, “what did you do in Heaven?”
“You mean, what did I do before I started working for a traitor who got me booted out of Heaven?” Her voice was light, sarcastic, but there was definitely a bitter note souring the soup.
Of course, if he’d been tricked into nearly starting an apocalypse, he’d be bitter, too.
“Yeah.” He raised his sad little bone cup in toast. “That.”
She gave him an annoyed look. “I’m a Seraphim. What do you think I did?”
As a Seraphim, who Hades knew was one of the lower angel classes despite what human scholars thought, she would have been required to work closely with humans. “Guardian angel stuff?”
She snorted. “Seraphim don’t work in the Earthly realm. We mainly do administrative work for humans who are newly crossed over.”
He hoped it wasn’t too rude to cringe, because he did. “Sounds boring as shit.”
“It is,” she admitted. “But because my ability to distinguish good and evil was so strong, my work was a little more interesting.”
She was interesting. “How so?”
“Well, all humans are a blend of good and evil, but they’re mostly good. They almost immediately cross over to Heaven when their Earthly bodies die.” She sank down in the chair again, gingerly, as if it would splinter. It might. Hades had made it himself, discovering in the process that he was a better Lord of Souls than he was Lord of Furniture. “The evil ones are collected by Azagoth’s griminions and brought here. But if there’s any question at all about their level of evil, griminions are supposed to leave them alone so they can either remain in the human realm as ghosts or cross over to Heaven on their own. People like that are a very specific mix of equal amounts of good and bad. And others, the ones humans call sociopaths, are even more complicated.”
Huh. Hades had never really thought about that. Yes, he knew there were more shades of good and evil than there were stars in the sky, but it never occurred to him that there would be those who walked such a fine line that they would be difficult to place in either Heaven or Sheoul.
“So you worked with the oddballs?”
“We called them Neutrals. Or Shuns.” She sipped her rum, her freckled nose wrinkling delicately at that first swallow. “And yes, my job was to feel them out, I guess you’d call it.”
He’d like to feel her out. It was probably best not to say as much. “How did you do that?”
She smiled and gestured to her bare arms and feet. “Our skin is our power. We can’t discern good and evil the way animals, some humans, and other angels do, like a sixth sense. For us, awareness settles on our skin. That’s why I cover as little of myself as I can get away with, and what clothes I do wear need to be tight, or sensation can’t get through and I feel like I’m suffocating.”
Now that was interesting. He’d never met anyone who shared his affection for form-fitting clothing. Most people thought tight clothes were binding, but Hades had long ago found that garments that fit like a second skin were more freeing and allowed him to feel the world around him. The air. The heat or cold. The touch of a female...when he could get it.
He took a swig of his rum. “So did you perform your job naked?”
Her eyes caught his, held them boldly, and damn if he didn’t stop breathing. He’d been teasing; she was not. “Some of my colleagues did.” She reached up and twirled a strand of hair around her finger, and he swore it was almost...playful. “I preferred our standard uniform of what humans would call a tube top and miniskirt.”
He pictured that and got instantly hard. But then, he liked her in the ripped jeans and belly-revealing corset she was wearing now, too. He watched her lift the cup to her lips almost in slow motion, watched her throat work as she swallowed.
Damn. He threw back the entire contents of his cup, desperate to get some moisture in his mouth. “And what does good and evil feel like?” he rasped. “On your skin, I mean?”
“I’ll show you.” She moved toward him, every step popping out her hips and making her breasts bounce in a smooth, seductive rhythm. His mouth went dry again, but then it began to water as she reached out and placed her palm in the center of his chest.
Very slowly, she dragged her hand along the contours of his pecs, her touch so featherlike that he barely felt it, and yet, he was hyper-aware of every move her hand made, every centimeter of skin her palm passed over.
“Goodness and light,” she said softly, “is like bathing in Champagne. It’s tingly and effervescent. It wakes you up even as it relaxes you.”
“Like sex,” he murmured. “With someone you like.”
“With someone you like?” She blinked. “Why would you have sex with someone you didn’t like?”
A rumbling purr vibrated his chest. “Baby, it’s like fighting, but with orgasms.”
“And less blood, I suppose.”
“Not if you’re doing it right.” He waggled his brows, and she rolled her eyes. “So what does evil feel like to you? If good feels good, then does evil feel bad?”
“That’s the funny thing.” She inched closer, adding another palm to his chest, and he gripped the cup so hard he heard it crack. More. He needed more. And damn her for making him crave it when he’d been perfectly fine being alone for all these years. “It’s as seductive as good, but in a different way.” She shivered delicately. “It’s hot. If good is like bathing in Champagne, evil is like bathing in whiskey. There’s a burn, but it’s almost always a lovely burn.”
Yeah, he felt that lovely burn where she was touching him. As she talked, it spread across his chest and into his abdomen, then lower, to his pelvis and groin. Everything tightened and grew feverish with lust.
“Seems to me,” he said in a humiliatingly rough voice, “that bumping up against evil would be an incredible temptation for angels like you.”
“It is,” she purred. “Which is why we aren’t allowed to leave Heaven except under certain circumstances, and even then, we must have an escort. It’s one of the reasons I know I can’t ever enter Sheoul. To become a True Fallen would be to have my full powers of detection restored, and I’d be skewed toward evil. The few Seraphim who have become fallen angels are like drug addicts, seeking out the most evil beings they can find, to serve them, to just be near them.”
He wondered how having a Seraphim fallen angel as a warden in the Inner Sanctum would play out. Then Cat dragged her palms down his chest to his abs, and he forgot all about everything except what was happening right now, right here in his home.
“And what do you feel when you’re near me?” He knew he shouldn’t ask. Knew he was encouraging something that shouldn’t be encouraged, but holy hell, he was starving for female contact. Maybe this little bit would be enough.
And maybe he was lying to himself.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled. “Like I want to climb your body like a tree so you can wrap yourself around me.”
Hot...damn. He wasn’t sure if the rum had gone to her head or if she was affected by his inner evil, but what she’d said made him want desperately to play giant oak for her so she could do whatever she wanted with his hardwood.
Giant oak. Hardwood. Man, he cracked himself up sometimes.
His amusement fled as her fingers brushed his waistband and reality crashed down on him, splintering the tree fantasy. She was clearly not in the right state of min
d to understand the consequences of getting physical with him, while he understood far too well.
Cataclysm is off limits to you.
Azagoth’s deep voice echoed inside Hades’s ears. He’d gone to Azagoth a few months ago, hoping he’d grant Hades permission to see Cat. Hades would have been happy to just talk to her, to get to know her, but Azagoth had been immovable. And then, when Hades had asked Azagoth why, after thousands of years of service, he couldn’t even take a walk in Sheoul-gra’s lush forests with Cat, the unsatisfying answer had been, You know why.
Yeah, he did. And what if I disobey?
Do you remember the last time you disobeyed me?
As if Hades could forget. The very memory still made Hades’s testicles shrivel. Reluctantly, he stepped back from Cat, but she moved with him, her hands splaying on his torso as they caressed him in slow, sensual circles.
So. Fucking. Good.
Gods, he felt like he’d been deprived of air for so long that he no longer knew how to breathe, and now someone was offering him an oxygen mask but he wasn’t allowed to take it.
“Is this really what you want?” He forced the question from his mouth, because dammit, this was really what he wanted. He just wanted to take a breath. “To get me worked up?”
“Didn’t you just accuse me of panting after you?”
He had. He’d been teasing, but there was nothing funny about this anymore. Her flirtation had been cute and flattering, but it had to stop. For both of their sakes.
“Yes,” he drawled, reaching for the cockiness that had served him well when things got too serious. “But to be fair, all females do.”
A slow, seductive smile curved her mouth, and it took a lot more restraint than he cared to admit to keep from dipping his head and kissing her senseless. “I’d tell you that you’re arrogant, but I’m sure you already know that. And I like it.”
Man, he had no idea how to handle this little vixen. She seemed both innocent and experienced, and he wasn’t sure which was the truth.
Maybe it was time to find out.
Chapter Nine
Cat’s heart was pounding so hard that she wondered if the surrounding tissue was going to be bruised. After months of trying to catch Hades’s eye, she had him all to herself. She had his ear, his eye, and with luck, she’d have him in that coffin-bed.
Yes, there were pressing matters to attend to, but in this moment, they were in background because all she cared about was the foreground. And what a foreground it was.
The problem, she realized, was that she had no idea how to proceed. Things with Zhubaal had gone disastrously wrong, so she didn’t want to repeat the mistakes she’d made with him. She just wished she knew what, exactly, she’d done.
Gods, this had better not be a replay of her incident with Z.
Closing her eyes, she let herself feel Hades’s unique blend of good and evil on her skin. She’d made the comparison of good feeling like sparkling wine, while evil felt like whiskey, and Hades was a swirling mix of both. Carbonated whiskey. Might taste funky, but her skin felt alive with a tingling heat that spread to her scalp, her toes, and everything in between.
It was especially concentrated in her feminine parts.
So delicious.
“Hades––” She’d barely gotten his name off her tongue when his mouth came down on hers.
“Is this what you want?” he growled against her lips. “I’m not one to question motives when it comes to females who are willing to fuck me, but you have me confused as shit.”
She wasn’t confused at all. Zhubaal...he’d been an experiment. A means to an end. Oh, she’d liked him, she supposed. He was gruff and rude, but he was never cruel. At least, not that she’d seen.
But Hades was unique. From his clothing to his hair, he blew other fallen angels out of the water. And where most other fallen angels were all serious and dour, Hades was playful, even silly at times. Once, when Thanatos, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, had come to Sheoul-gra with his toddler son, she’d watched Hades chase the squealing boy through the courtyard before tackling him gently and then tickling the boy’s belly with his Mohawk.
She’d been fascinated to see a legend like Hades, a male whose job it was to make life miserable for millions of demons, handle a child with such tenderness. And he did it with such exuberance, without a care who was watching. How many times had she seen male pride get in the way of fun, as if enjoying life and showing emotion was wrong or weak?
No, it took strength to live the way Hades did and still be able to laugh at a joke or enjoy a child’s giggle.
That was the fatal moment in which Cat had decided that she needed to get to know Hades a little better. It was also the moment in which she decided she wanted to feel that blue stripe of hair tickle her sensitive spots.
Before she could tell him as much, he spun her, put her hard into the wall, his body against hers. She gasped at the feel of his erection as it pressed into her from her core to her belly. Oh, sweet Heaven, how was that going to feel inside her?
“Most females want me because I’m a monster.” He arched against her, and she moaned at the erotic pressure against her sex. “Is that your game? Fuck the underworld’s most notorious jailor and earn some bragging points?”
A note of bitterness crept into his voice, but she couldn’t tell if he was bitter because of what he was...or if he was bitter because he thought she only wanted him for bragging rights. Either way, it made her want to hug him.
Not long ago, she’d have thought him a monster, but even if she hadn’t seen him playing with a child or pilfering bread from Azagoth’s kitchen to feed the doves, Lilliana’s stories about Azagoth’s redemption had touched her. Azagoth had been perched on the precipice of the kind of evil one couldn’t come back from, but Lilliana had lured him away from the ledge. Oh, there was still darkness in him––the kind that had made Cat sick for days after accidentally touching him. She had a feeling that if anything ever happened to Lilliana, Azagoth would fall into that black, evil hole and would never return.
But Hades, for all his evil deeds and all the malevolence that surrounded him, had somehow avoided becoming toxic. So, no, he wasn’t some sort of fiend, and he wasn’t going to convince her otherwise.
She lifted her leg and wrapped it around him, trying to get closer. Trying to get some friction going on. “I don’t believe you’re a monster.”
He scraped his teeth over her ear. “Why not?” he growled, so softly that the crackling flames from the fire nearly drowned him out.
She could have told him the Thanatos story. She could have told him how beautiful he was when he laughed with Lilliana. She could have mentioned the time she saw him smiling as he watched a couple of foxes playing on the edge of the forest just outside Azagoth’s mansion. But for some reason, she wanted him to know why her opinion of him was so personal.
“Because I worked with Gethel,” she whispered. “She was a traitor who plotted with Pestilence to slaughter a newborn baby and start the Apocalypse.”
He brought one hand between them to feather his fingertips across the swell of her breasts, and she went all rubbery in the knees. “So you’re saying that in comparison, I’m a saint.”
“No.” She nipped his lip. “I’m saying you are nuanced. You’re evil, but there’s good in you, as well.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Expose more of my skin, and I will.”
She felt his chest heave against hers. Once. Twice. And then, as if he’d given himself permission, he reached around behind her and ripped her corset off. Thank Heavens she’d chosen the one with the Velcro closure today.
“Now tell me,” he breathed into her hair, “do you feel me?”
“Yes,” she moaned, undulating her entire body, desperate to get as much skin-on-skin contact as possible. Her nipples, so sensitive they were almost painful, rubbed against the hard planes of his chest. She hadn’t known they could ache like that.
“S
hit,” he rasped. “Too much. This is too much.”
Too much what? It wasn’t enough, as far as she was concerned. “I like touching you.”
“No one ever touches me.” He took a deep, shuddering breath that somehow sounded...pained, and not in a good way. “Nothing but the wind and rain ever does.”
Wind and rain? Was that why he often went bare-chested? He liked the feel of something caressing his skin because people wouldn’t? Or maybe he wouldn’t let them?
She couldn’t imagine living like that. She liked to touch and be touched. To show him how much she enjoyed it, she shoved her hand between them and found his erection as it strained against his pants.
Oh...my. She could feel every ridge and bump through the thin fabric as she ran her fingers along his length. Her strokes, made awkward by her inexperience and their position, still managed to elicit a tortured moan from him. The sound emboldened her, and she gripped him more firmly. His thick length pulsed, the hot blood pounding in her palm, and his shout of pleasure filled the room.
Then, suddenly, he was standing near the portal door and she was slumped against the wall, which was the only thing holding her up. How had he moved so fast? More importantly, why had he moved so fast?
“I have to go.” For a split second he looked frazzled, his chest heaving, his nostrils flaring. Then he smiled, a cocky lopsided grin that did not fit the situation. “Hanging with you was great, but I have people to torture and shit. You can...” He looked around the room. “I don’t know. Clean or something.”
“Clean?” Sure, she was still disoriented from the fog of lust and the surprise of him breaking it all off so quickly, but still...clean? “I work for Azagoth. Not you.”
He shrugged. “Then sleep. Cook. Watch TV. Whatever. Just don’t leave this crypt.”
“But I have to find that human.”
Reaching behind him, he palmed the symbol carved into the portal door, and it flashed open, turning into a shimmering arch of light. “I’ll do it.”
She pushed away from the wall, hoping her wobbly legs would hold her up. “I can help.”