by Zoey Marcel
Her heart was in her throat when the bedroom door opened and Dante walked in with a smoldering look that reeked of testosterone. His pupils dilated when he saw what she wore. Something was different about him. She couldn't tell what, but there was a hint of danger in the air. Perhaps his attack on her earlier had her on guard, but she didn't think that was entirely it.
“Dante.”
“You look nice.” His tone came out ragged and husky like he held back with her when all he really wanted to do was devour her whole like a serpent.
“Thank you. So do you.”
The silence that followed was heavy and awkward.
Dante walked over to the bed and lay on it on his side. “Lie with me.”
“You know we can't.”
He looked irritated. “I didn't mean we would engage in sexual intercourse. At least cuddle with me, woman. You owe me that much.”
The hostile bitterness in his deep tone surprised her. She climbed onto the bed and sat near him on her knees. “Dante, what are we going to do? We can't go on like this. We'll either go crazy trying to keep our hands off each other, or we'll end up sinning and I'll wind up in hell because of it.”
His eyes took on a sinister appearance and his lips twitched as if pleased by this. “Wouldn't that be a shame?”
“It would. Maybe I should move out.” Sonya felt a lump forming in her throat. The suggestion killed her, but she must think of him instead of herself. “It's selfish of me to expect you to go the rest of your life without sex.”
“Yes, it is.” He pulled her arm so her body came down on the mattress to rest near him. “I won't hold back with you any longer.”
Tingles of excitement sparked inside of her when he drew her near for a kiss. “We can't have sex, Dante. I'm really sorry. I want you so bad, but we can't.”
“Shh,” he lulled as his warm exhale fanned against her face. “Just one kiss, Sonya. God isn't going to throw you out of heaven for that.”
Sonya gasped and pulled away. She sat up, feeling her eyes mist. Nimbus said that to her once long ago. Hearing the same words come out of Dante's mouth now messed with her head.
“What's wrong?” he inquired.
She shook her head. “Nothing. It was just a memory.”
His dark eyes were knowing and mysterious. “Of whom?”
“It doesn't matter.” She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling miserable. “I think I might have made a mistake by moving in here with you. If we keep playing with fire we're going to get burned.”
“Yes.” His provocative whisper sizzled against the top of her hand when he kissed it.
“I guess I'll move out tomorrow,” she said, feeling a cloud of numbness overtake her. “You can still visit Faith, though. We'll take turns with her. That way she gets to know both of her parents.”
“You're a better mother than you used to be,” Dante muttered.
Sonya shot him an indignant look. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
His eyes turned vicious and cruel. “I think you know damned well what it means. Personally, I find a nurturing demon mother far above an angel who would kill her own son to redeem herself.”
Sonya got goose bumps. “How do you know that?”
“A friend of mine told me,” Dante replied with a disturbing nonchalance.
“Which friend?”
“It doesn't matter. And you're not leaving me again.”
“I don't have a choice.” She gasped when his chilly palms cupped her breasts. Why were his hands so cold?
“Yes, you do,” he whispered against her neck before kissing her gently there. “Choose me, Sonya. You won't regret it.”
Her heart ached. “Dante, we've been through this. This is my one chance at redemption and if I blow it that's it.”
“Now wouldn't that be just awful.” His tongue traced circles on the mating mark Nimbus gave her long ago.
Her belly tightened with arousal and wonderful, wicked sensations gathered in her pussy. She purred at the way he nipped her love bite before bestowing her with soothing licks of his tongue.
“You're a stumbling block to me, Dante.” She wouldn't let him go all the way with her, but perhaps they could play a little and escape condemnation.
“Do you know what the best kind of orgasm is?” he asked in a dark, heated timbre as his cool, soft lips peppered her neck with delicate kisses. “Where heaven and hell meet in the unholiest of unions. When a person stands at the crossroads of what they want and what they're supposed to want and turns their back on what's expected of them to obtain what they desire more than anything, the consequences be damned.”
Sonya shivered at his words, feeling as enticed by them as she was afraid of them. “Dante -”
She moaned into his hand when he covered her mouth, willing her to be silent.
Dante alternated between licks, kisses and sucks on her neck and bite mark in between whispering seductively to her. “When you release your inhibitions and choose to lie naked in the arms of the damned rather than pursue the light which stifles you, then you will truly be free. When you accept what you really are deep down and give into the temptation clawing for dominion over you and taste of the highest crescendo of pleasure, you will gladly burn for it. You will lose your soul to be with the one you love and when you can accept that, you will come harder than you ever have in your life.”
Sonya gasped into his palm when he slipped the thin straps of her lingerie down so her breasts were out in the open. She moaned and arched into his palm when he groped her tit. A tiny wail emanated from her when he tweaked the nipple and it emitted a slight trickle of milk that rolled down her breast.
“You can't resist me, can you, cow?” he taunted quietly into her ear.
Being referred to as a farm animal should’ve been a turn off, but it sounded hot coming from him. She could be his bovine if he wanted her to. Hell, she might even moo for him if he asked her nicely, though she'd probably feel silly doing so.
His palm moved from her mouth and raised the hem of her skimpy baby doll so he could get a good look at her pussy while he played with it. Raging bolts of electricity shot through her, ravaging her system in a white-hot fire that would be her undoing if she didn't stop this now.
She'd always been attracted to Dante and the sex had been phenomenal, but somehow it seemed better still now as though a barrier had been removed and he was free to do with her as he wished. Being helpless to his will made her hot, cold and shaky.
But she must resist. She would.
“Dante, please stop. It's getting harder and harder to resist you,” she pleaded, hoping his love for her would reinstate his usual barely-restrained self control.
“I won't stop, Sonya.” His steamy whisper sizzled against her sensitive flesh like an erogenous fire that threatened to burn her alive. “This is what you want. To be loved by a soulless being. To be pleasured by demons.”
Sonya panicked at his words, feeling ashamed at the way she creamed all over the hand that cupped her crotch. “No. I want to be good. Oh, god!”
Her elated cry came out broken and weak, readily betraying her defeat when he caressed her pussy.
“But you don't, Sonya. You want to drink deeply of forbidden pleasure until you're drunk with Tesandrela.”
“Tesandrela?” She gasped at the finger seesawing against her achy clitoris and a sharp cry wrung from her throat when he slipped a finger into her soaked vagina and fucked her slowly with it.
“It's a demonic word for the highest level of pleasure in existence. Comparable to orgasm and subspace only magnified a thousand times over. Only the damned have ever experienced it. But a person must be truly past the point of no return to experience it.” Dante traced the shell of her ear with his tongue and spoke into her canal in a searing whisper. “Let me show you, little flower.”
Sonya gasped and pulled away from him, relieved that he removed his hands from her. She adjus
ted her lingerie to better cover herself and stood to face him, shuddering with desire and fear. “What did you just call me?”
No one on earth had ever called her that, except for one man. A demon.
His dark eyes were knowing and possessive. “Little flower.”
“Nimbus used to call me that.”
His lips twitched to form a lopsided smile. “And you think I'm him?”
Sonya relaxed. “No, of course not. You look nothing like him. Besides, I doubt he knows where I am. And even if he did, he probably hates me after the way I left him.”
Jude's voice came from the doorway. “An interesting theory.”
She squealed in shock to see the soul vampire in her room standing next to Drakkar. “How did you get in here? You're vampires. You can't -”
“Enter a person's home without an invitation,” Jude finished for her. “Oh, it's simple. Your boyfriend lives here too and he invited us in.”
Sonya whirled around to face Dante who stood now. “What? Why would you do that?”
Dante shrugged. “They're my friends.”
“How can you say that? They used me when I went on that mission to slay Drakkar.”
He smiled. “I know. I wish I'd been there to see it.”
Her jaw dropped and her eyes stung. “What's happened to you?”
“I did a little spell on him and he lost his soul,” Drakkar explained. “That church-loving wolf that was trapped in there with him is long gone.”
Sonya quaked with fear. The man she loved was gone. All that was left was the vile demon who despised her for whatever reason. “If you come near me, I'll bite you.”
“I'll bite you back,” Dante threatened as he took another step toward her. “I know it's against your vows to let demons bite you. Shall we see what happens if I do?”
She grabbed a wooden stake and held it, preparing to strike them down. Spearing Dante with it would break her heart, but it shouldn't. The man she loved left when his soul did. As long as she reminded herself that Dante was just a shell of the man he was, she could go through with it.
He didn't look afraid of the weapon in her hand the way Jude seemed nervous. Why wasn't Dante afraid?
Drakkar had something else in him in addition to being a vampire, so he had to be killed some other way that remained unknown to her at present. What was Dante? Perhaps a stake would work on him after all.
“Stay back,” she warned, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “I don't want to hurt you, Dante, but I will if I have to.”
Dante paused before his black eyes turned deadly and he advanced. “Then I guess we're on the same page.”
He reached for her with lightning speed and Sonya screamed as she plunged the stake into his chest where his heart was. He looked genuinely surprised that she'd gone through with it.
During that split second window before he turned to dust, his tone became ruthless and threatening. “There will be no mercy for you now.”
Dante's body turned to dust and he disappeared. To her utter shock, another body stood in his place. Five feet, eleven inches of hard, solid muscle and the heady musk of familiar cologne triggered a thousand different memories of the one who meant the most to her. His thick, soft, flaxen-blond hair and the rugged lines of his masculine face were all familiar to her. The narrow slants of his penetrating, olive-green eyes pierced her down to her soul. He still had that scar over and under his right eye. It was Nimbus.
The noise that came out of Sonya was somewhere between a gasp and a scream as she dropped the stake and fell backward into a bookshelf. She landed flat on her ass and stared up at the hard, scintillating glare of the sexy-as-sin demon who had originally cost her her soul and sired a child with her...twice apparently.
“Nimbus?” Her tone had never shaken so much and her body trembled as though she were having a violent seizure.
“Sonya,” he acknowledged her.
“It was you... the whole time.” She was in too much shock to speak normally.
Her mind raced at the memories they made together. No wonder they were so fiercely drawn to one another even at first sight. They were mated and they loved one another long ago. The unbreakable bond had defied time and distance and led them back to one another. There was a time when she would've thanked the fates for returning her beloved to her, but in this startling moment she was terrified of him.
Jude shook his head. “The woman has balls. I can't say I was surprised to hear that she killed Sully to redeem herself, but I didn't think she would actually drive a stake into her mate's heart.”
“Her devotion to God is commendable and bloody irritating. You would do anything to become an angel again, wouldn't you?” Nimbus yanked her up with alarming force. His grip on her arm made her cry out in pain and fear.
He tossed her onto the bed roughly and climbed on top of her before his actions could even register.
“I didn't know it was you.”
“Would it have made a difference?” he growled.
Drakkar and Jude lay down on the large bed and each pinned an arm over her head.
“Why didn't you tell me?” Her tone shook with the lingering shock of the revelation.
“He didn't even remember who he was until about a half hour ago,” Jude explained. “Every forty years a demon is freed from their stone prison in the underworld temple. They can either drink from Lethe to forget their former trespasses in exchange for freedom, or should they refuse, they're returned to being encased in rock.”
Drakkar rolled his eyes. “It's a shitty rule.”
“And you remember now?” Sonya asked, trembling at the way Nimbus slowly ran his hands up and down her thighs.
“Yes, Sonya,” he said in a soft, lethal tone. “I remember everything. Jude had me drink water from Mnemosyne so I would remember.”
She shivered when he raised the hem of her lingerie, exposing her bare cunt to them. “What are you doing?”
“I remember loving you since the beginning of time. I remember making you my lover and slave.” His fingertips brushed her smooth mons like a teasing breeze. “I remember mating you and making a baby with you. We had a good life together, didn't we?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
His lovely green eyes flashed to a glowing orange that betrayed the evil entity he truly was. “And then you betrayed me. You became a black angel.”
Sonya cried out when he slapped her cunt with alarming force, evoking a hot sting of pain that proved brutal in nature.
“You murdered our son.”
She choked back a scream at the magnitude of this blow. Her pussy swelled with heat from the abuse. “I'm sorry. I didn't know it was him.”
“That's not an excuse!” He spanked her cunt harder in a series of several angry slaps that amply conveyed his wrath.
Her eyes burned and watered.
“You slept with other men behind my back, even though it's been my permanent mark all along on your flesh.”
She started to sob at the wrathful anguish in his eyes and the agony of each spanking on her sex. “I'm sure you slept with other women when you were possessing Dante's body.”
Oh lord, why did she open her mouth?
His eyes narrowed in warning and he brought his hand down hard on her privates several times. “I had amnesia, damn you! If I had been allowed to remember, I would've come after you right away.”
She writhed against the men holding her down, but they wouldn't let her retreat from her punishment. “But you used to share me with other men back when we were together in England.”
Nimbus slapped her pussy hard and fast several times and she screamed in pain as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Together, you whore!” he yelled. “We shared together. I never betrayed you. The bond we forged is forever and I don't give a shit what other vows you've made since then. I'm going to make you break every single one of them, starting with this one.”
His fangs lowered and he sank them into the delicate s
kin of her mound. Sonya screamed into Drakkar's big hand and struggled against the manly vises on her arms.
Nimbus bit her. A demon bit her and was drinking blood from her sex. That was part of her vows. A crusnik was not to allow demons and vampires to bite them or drink their blood. Cassiel hadn't told her why, simply to avoid it at all costs.
Nimbus groaned from deep in his chest, seeming aroused to have his mouth on her private flesh while he drank her blood. He pierced a finger into her channel and finger-fucked her slowly, rendering the damning experience of an erotic treat for her.
Sonya whimpered and cried at the knowledge that she was being forced to break part of her vow. She cringed that she nearly came from feeling his mouth and hands on her again after so long. Thankfully, she didn't and he didn't make her.
Nimbus grunted and licked the blood off her skin, appearing titillated that he just had a hand in her broken promise to heaven.
She would be forgiven, though. He forced this on her.
His eyes flashed with warning and Sonya swallowed when she recalled that he was psychic as far as she was concerned. The bond they forged through the mating and claiming ceremony long ago had ensured that they could read each others' thoughts whenever they chose to tap into the others' mind. She hadn't been able to get into his head when Aramis had been trapped inside of Dante's body with him.
Now that Nimbus was free and in his own body again, their minds communed. The intimacy of such a connection frightened her. She still felt too much for him, even though he scared the shit out of her.
The incubus covered her body with his, deliberately pressing the hard ridge of his erection into her moist slit. The private, forbidden contact wrung a cry from her throat.
“By the time I'm through with you, there isn't a chance in hell that you'll ever shadow heaven's gates again,” Nimbus vowed in a hushed timbre.
Sonya shuddered, tensing when she felt his groin rubbing against her slick folds as he started to dry-hump her. “I'm sorry I hurt you, but please let me go. We don't have anything in common.”
His eyes became green again as they challenged her. “Don't we?”
She whimpered when his rigid length made illicit contact with her clit. He rubbed his hard dick against her pulsing bundle of nerves in slow, controlled strokes.