Knight's Dominion (Knights of Hell Book 4)

by Sherilee Gray

  A male who caused the destruction of her family.

  A male she needed to stop kissing and get the hell away from right goddamn now.

  “We’ve been building up to this from the very start. You know it and I know it. Tell me I can have you.” He lifted his head, his eyes black pools of liquid fire, so deep and dark and hot they burned into her, scorched her. “Say it,” he said between clenched teeth.

  It was a demand. He was demanding that Grace give herself to him, that she give him consent. This was a man used to getting what he wanted. He would never force her, but he also didn’t like the word no when he wanted something.

  He must have seen something on her face, in her eyes, because he growled.

  “Grace…”

  “No,” she said, in as strong a voice as she could muster. “Get off me.”

  Chaos growled again.

  “Now.”

  He released her instantly and climbed to his feet, pulling her up with him. Her body was buzzing like an electric current was arcing over her skin, pulsing and slick between her thighs, nipples hard, aching points desperate for his hands, his mouth. She had to lock her knees so she didn’t fall on her ass.

  He watched her, his massive chest laboring, his eyes, once again those of a shark, hard and cold, hungry, following her, not leaving her. There was no hiding his massive erection, he didn’t bother trying. He stood with his hands at his sides, fingers curled into fists, legs braced apart.

  “I didn’t think you were the type to play games,” he said, voice as icy as his unwavering stare.

  She kept her spine braced. Ready if he came at her. The male wasn’t all angel, he was half demon as well, and Kishi were barely more than animals. “Things got out of hand. I don’t want you. That’s not playing games. Obviously, your ego is too bruised right now to recognize the difference.”

  His nostrils flared and his lids lowered like a beast scenting the air for prey. “I can smell how wet you are, how much you want me inside you. Lie to yourself all you want.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  He grinned, flashing those straight white teeth again. But there was no humor, no warmth. It was kind of terrifying.

  “Yet, you still want me to fuck you.”

  “Get the hell out,” she said, her voice embarrassingly unsteady.

  He dipped his chin, turned, and strode from the room with an arrogant swagger that set her teeth on edge.

  And she tried, so damn hard—but she couldn’t look away until he was out of sight.

  Chapter 8

  Chaos walked into his apartment and kicked the door shut behind him.

  He would overcome this, this fucked-up need…this hunger for Grace. He had to.

  Uncurling his fists, he yanked off his shirt on the way to the bathroom. He’d walked out of her gym an hour ago, and he could still smell her, taste her. Feel her lips on his, her tongue against his, hear the sound of her whimpering in his head. He was hard as stone and furious with himself.

  What the hell had he been thinking? He hadn’t been, and that was the problem. The female scrambled his brain as soon as he saw her.

  Why was he so drawn to her? What was it about her that had him zeroing in on her whenever she was near?

  He grunted, cutting off the idiotic thought that worked its way forward. No. Not that. He’d know it if was that. He hadn’t felt her when she came into her power like Kryos had Meredith, or Zen with Mia. Lazarus had fucking collapsed during a fight when Eve hit his radar. No, it wasn’t that.

  She made his dick hard, that’s all. There was nothing more between them. If there was, he’d know.

  Which meant what he was feeling for Grace was lust, nothing more, and something he could most definitely overcome. He just had to try harder.

  He shoved down his shorts and looked at his cock. It was harder than he’d ever seen it, veins bulging along his shaft, pre-come still leaking from the head.

  Grace forced her way back into his head, the way she’d writhed under him, nails digging into his shoulders, hips moving restlessly against his, her pussy rubbing against his cock, so hot and wet he felt it through the fabric of her tights.

  “Fuck.” He cranked the shower to cold, finished stripping, and climbed in. The ice-cold spray sucked the wind from his lungs, lifting goose bumps all over his flesh, but did nothing to cool his blood or deflate his dick.

  Quickly soaping up, he fought to ignore the throbbing need making him shake, making him sweat despite the freezing water pounding his skin. He needed to get her out of his head. It wasn’t working. Nothing was goddamn working. Chaos was confused and constantly horny.

  That wasn’t him.

  When he was hard, he fucked or tugged one out, then he moved on.

  As for confused? He never had a reason to be. He knew what he was on this earth to do. His world was black and white. But Grace was a million shades of gray, shit, no—she was a goddamn rainbow of color. Chaos didn’t see in color. He chose not to. He didn’t have that luxury.

  His anger rose, and he pounded his fist into the wall, cracking several tiles. With a vicious curse, he pressed his palm against the cool ceramic squares, supporting his weight, and wrapped his fingers around his dick.

  The first tug had him gasping, that’s how hard he was, how much he needed release. He didn’t fuck around, he squeezed his shaft, thrusting into his fist brutally.

  Don’t think about her. Don’t fucking think about her.

  But she was there, had never left, filling his head. Images bombarding his mind. Instead of leaving, he was tearing her tights down her toned legs while she pulled at his shorts, taking his cock in her hand.

  He groaned low, the image so damn real. His hand was no longer his. It was Grace jerking him off, her squeezing and tugging his impossibly hard dick.

  “Fuck me.” Her voice echoed through his head, clear, like she was right there with him. Smiling up at him, leading his cock to her bare pussy, spreading nice and wide for him, holding him to her wet-as-fuck opening.

  Yeah, definitely a fantasy. The female had never smiled at him like that, except maybe after she’d given him shit and called out some creative death threat. In his mind, though, her smile was soft, hungry. He shouldn’t be thinking about her like his, but he couldn’t stop now, there was no way he could stop.

  So he stayed in that gym with her and grinned back as he lifted her hands over her head and pinned them down with one of his own.

  Letting the taste of her, still on his tongue, fill his senses, he groaned. The press of her smaller body against his was imprinted on his flesh, and he let it roll through him, sinking deeper into the fantasy.

  Leaning in, he kissed her soft mouth again and slammed inside her with one brutal thrust.

  Her scream of pleasure rocked through him, echoed through his skull, and with a vicious growl, he instantly came. His release exploded from him with force, making it hard to breathe, making his knees weak. He could barely hold himself up as his hand continued to glide up and down his length, as the orgasm that didn’t want to end flowed through him, making him grunt and growl, and dammit, want the real thing even more.

  Want Grace even more.

  Chaos leaned against the wall, forehead to forearm, taking a moment to catch his breath.

  He gritted his teeth. He would overcome this. He would. He had to.

  “You’ve talked to him?”

  Zenon stood across from Chaos, yellow eyes hard, brows lowered. “He still won’t come back.”

  Kryos cursed, shoving his fingers through his curly blond hair. “How did everything go so fucking wrong? We’re failing, and honestly, I can’t see a way out. There’s no way to get Rocco’s mate back that I know of, which means one thing: Diemos walking through the portal is not an if, it’s a when, and we don’t have the strength or the manpower to stop him.”

  Gunner aimed his pale amber eyes at Zenon. “What about Lucifer?”

  They’d recently discovered that Diemos was Zenon’s fath
er. It rocked their brother’s world, but even more insane, it meant that Lucifer was his grandfather.

  Unfortunately, the former king of Hell had been AWOL for centuries. Nobody knew where he was.

  Zenon’s yellow eyes deepened, darkening to almost black. “What about him?”

  “He’s your blood, maybe there’s a way to reach him?” Lazarus glanced at Chaos. “What about Willow? You think she could help?”

  Willow was an extremely powerful witch. Her library of the arcane, the histories of the immortal, of Heaven and Hell was extensive. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Why would Lucifer help us?” Zenon said. “He doesn’t give a fuck about Earth.”

  Chaos shrugged. “We don’t know that. We were led to believe he was locked out of Hell, but is that really possible? He hasn’t attempted to go back through the portal, which makes me think that maybe he likes it here just fine.”

  Zenon jerked his head to the side. “Even if I could reach out to him some way, I don’t want him anywhere near Mia.”

  “He might be our only hope,” Kryos said.

  “It’s a risk, for sure. He could turn on us.” Gunner crossed his arms. “But if there’s a chance he could help, we need to find him.”

  Lazarus rested his ass on the nearest desk. “This whole conversation might be for nothing, he’s stayed away this long.”

  “True,” Chaos said. “But we need to try. If we can’t find a way to fix this mess, we’re all fucked anyway.”

  Chaos’s phone chimed and he checked the screen.

  Number unknown. “Yeah?”

  “Who knew it would be so easy to talk to a knight, and the exalted leader no less.”

  Chaos straightened and put it on speaker. “You know my name, how about you help me out with yours?”

  A chuckle echoed down the line. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  Gunner was already at one of the computers, working to trace the call.

  “What do you want?”

  Several beats of silence. “This is a courtesy call, actually. I understand things haven’t been going too great for you lately. Tobias is dead. Rocco is close to losing his mind, and the female who was to be his mate is in Hell.” The male chuckled again. “Though, from what I hear, Diemos has grown quite fond of her.”

  The back of the chair Zenon was gripping snapped off in his hands.

  “Again. What the fuck do you want?” Chaos ground out.

  “Just delivering a warning.”

  There was no real point to this call, other than waving his dick around. Whoever this fucker was, he was feeling confident, too damn confident.

  The phone groaned under Chaos’s fingers as he gripped it tighter, trying to keep the reins on his temper. “What warning? If we don’t back off, you’ll talk us into an early fucking grave?”

  Another beat of silence. “I just thought you should know that things are about to get worse for you.”

  The phone went dead.

  “Got him,” Gunner said, looking up from behind a monitor.

  “Weapon up,” Chaos snarled.

  Chaos crawled on his belly to the edge of the building, Gunner and Zenon moving in beside him. They looked down at the Walmart parking lot.

  Demons, at least seventy of them, stood in a large circle, eyes glazed and completely motionless. After his and Lazarus’s fight with twenty of them in the abandoned bar a few days ago, he knew running in half-cocked was not the right move. They’d keep coming back, bleeding, broken, like a hoard of blood-lusting zombies. They were outnumbered.

  It was late, the parking lot was deserted, but cars still drove by and no one even glanced at the large group of demons assembled there. Not once. They weren’t exactly shrouded in shadows, either.

  “What the fuck is this?” Gunner said, looking from the circle to the humans driving by.

  Zenon shifted beside him. “Someone’s blocking them.”

  Gunner scowled. “Why can we see them, then?”

  “Because they want us to.” Chaos twisted, looking around. “Our mystery caller wanted us to come here, wanted us to see this, whatever the fuck it is.”

  A sleek black car pulled into the lot, driving right up to the motionless demons.

  “We can’t just fucking sit here and do nothing,” Zenon hissed through clenched teeth.

  Fuck. “There’s too many of them, and the way they are, the way they’ll keep getting back up, it’ll be like fighting three times as many.”

  The back door of the car opened and someone climbed out. Male, tall, concealed by a black hooded robe. Power radiated from him like a whip, lashing out, wanting to be felt.

  Demon.

  Chaos glanced at Zenon. “You recognize him?”

  Their brother had been born and raised…and tortured…in Hell. He’d gotten up close and personal with many powerful demons while he was held there. Even without seeing this male’s face, he would recognize his power.

  Zen shook his head.

  They watched as the male in black walked up to the closest demon and raised his hand. The robe’s sleeve slid back, revealing a wicked-looking blade—

  He slit the throat of the demon closet to him. It fell to the ground, and they watched as he moved to the next, then the next. He didn’t bother to remove their heads completely, just left them there bleeding, unable to ash out.

  Zenon froze beside them and a low, rumbling growl escaped. “I’ve seen this before. They’re summoning something.”

  Fuck. “What?”

  “I don’t know. Summoning can go wrong. They wouldn’t bring Diemos through, not like this, it’d be too risky, but with how many he’s sacrificing, I’d say something big or powerful.” Zenon looked at him, his yellow eyes swirling, growing dark. “We have to stop them.”

  If they were summoning something from Hell, whatever it was, it was coming to cause destruction.

  Chaos yanked off his shirt, his brothers doing the same, and each called their demons forth. Chaos’s wings snapped from his back as he shifted into his Kishi demon form with a roar.

  Shifted, they looked like giant gargoyles. Only their skin was deep crimson, almost black. Horns protruded from their heads, black and shiny, and long ivory fangs reached halfway down their chins.

  What set them apart was their eyes and wings.

  Chaos tilted his head to the figure shrouded in black. “Try to take him alive,” he said, his voice now an inhuman rumble.

  They extended their wings, catching the wind, and lifted off the roof.

  Sword in his hand, Chaos flew straight for the demon trying to unleash Hell on his city. Zenon threw one of his twin fighting axes, the Li Kweis spun, an audible thwump, thwump, thwump as it whipped through the air, heading straight for their target.

  But instead of immobilizing the fucker, it stopped several feet away, suspended in midair for several seconds before falling to the ground with a clatter.

  The air around the circle of half-dead demons shimmered, light moving over an invisible surface, like rippling water.

  “They’re surrounded by some kind of force field. Someone’s protecting them,” Chaos barked.

  Gunner roared and clawed at the surface of the barrier. The demon in black ignored them, now chanting rhythmically, the same words over and over again as he moved around his circle of demons, slitting throats, blood dripping from his fingers, his knife, soaking his cloak. There were only a handful of demons left.

  Zenon took his axes to the barrier, Gunner and Chaos doing the same with their swords. It was like trying to cut through molasses. Every slice closed in the wake of his blade, repairing itself instantly.

  The last demon fell, and the male in black moved to the side as blood flowed from the fallen, flowing to the center of the circle as if drawn there.

  The ground glowed as his chanting grew louder. The asphalt shook beneath their feet, and they watched in horror as a hairline crack snaked across the surface, growing wider and deeper with every passing second.
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  “It’s happening,” Zenon barked.

  Gunner stumbled back as the ground lifted in the center of the circle in big jagged, triangular-shaped chunks of asphalt.

  A reptilian-looking red leg burst through, four shiny black claws tearing at the surface, each one twice the length of Chaos’s sword. A high-pitched, ear-shattering roar came from below the surface, making the invisible barrier quiver and ripple.

  Another scaled crimson leg appeared, claws sinking into the blacktop that was now bubbling around the glowing orange hole the Hell beast was dragging itself out of.

  It roared again and used its massive, muscular legs to explode free, landing with a ground-shaking thud. The hole beside it began closing.

  It was doglike except red and scaled and had two heads, one eye each. Its mouths hung open, lips peeled back, yellow teeth dripping drool. It shook its heads and twin holes, its nostrils, flared.

  Both heads lowered, nosing a half-dead demon, then each snatched one up in its jaws. The sound of bones crunching, of flesh being torn filled the night.

  “What the fuck do we do?” Gunner yelled.

  Chaos glanced at Zenon, hoping like fuck he’d seen a creature like this in Hell. “Will cutting off its heads work?”

  They watched the beast eat its way around the circle of death, filling up on the sacrifices littering the ground.

  “They’ll just grow back. You can’t stab it in the heart, either. It doesn’t have one, or any other vital organs. It’s immortal.”

  There were only a few demons left, and the male in black had backed away, so the beast was between the knights and him.

  The demon vanished.

  Chaos growled. “Someone’s cloaking him.”

  They didn’t have time to worry about the demon, though, because the invisible barrier around the creature shimmered—

  Then it was gone.

  The beast picked up the last two bodies and tossed them down its throat.

  Chaos and Gunner gripped their swords and Zenon swung his axes. “If we can hack it up, cut off its heads, its legs, maybe we can weaken it enough to lock it down. Keep it headless, buy some time to work out how to kill it or send it back,” Chaos said.