Storm of Sin

by Patricia D. Eddy

  Until Gabriel lifts off from the ground in the earthen realm and flies through the portal. His wings start to burn, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. When he reaches me, he hauls his fist back and slams it into Thorn's face. “They have paid their debt, you pathetic piece of shit. But you have not even started.”

  The demon falls, and Gabriel wraps an arm around my waist and helps us back to the edge of the portal. “Do not fear,” he says quietly. “This next part...is not easy.”

  Everything around me fades into darkness, but though I’m terrified this has all been an illusion, I can still feel Sin holding me, and I give in to the overwhelming desire to rest.

  Thirty-Four

  Sin

  I am shivering. After burning in the fires of Hell, everything around me feels frigid. I cannot see, but voices echo close by. What are they saying? The words are muffled. A cacophony that makes no sense.

  Other sensations start to return. A tingle in my hands and feet, a softness against my chest. Breath.

  Under my fingers, drying blood, sticky and cool. Wounds not yet healed. Zoe’s, not mine. The softness of her hair. Her scent.

  “Sin.” Mad’s voice cuts through my jumbled thoughts. “Open your eyes, Sin.”

  “Zoe,” I whisper. The single word takes all of my strength, but if she is not here with me, I do not want to go on.

  “She’s alive. But she hasn’t moved yet, except to breathe. You have to help her, brother.”

  Forcing my lids open, I thank God the angels are no longer lit up like the sun. Gabriel kneels next to Mad, his wings half burned away, and Michael supports Killian as he staggers over to us.

  “You brought her back,” Gabriel says. “But a soul ripped from the body often needs convincing to return. She won’t believe anyone but you.”

  Mad and Gabriel carry us over to a wall, propping me up with Zoe cradled in my arms. Her white gown is covered in blood, and she’s so very pale. But a tinge of pink colors her cheeks, and her chest rises and falls slowly.

  “Zoe? Can you hear me, my love?” From the first day we met—for the second time—I have been able to sense her emotions, but now, I feel nothing. Only an empty void.

  Placing my hand over her heart, I focus all my remaining strength on my love for her. “Feel me, Zoe. Hear me. Come back to me. We escaped Hell. Together. I will not lose you now.”

  She shudders, and a burst of fear hits me square in the chest. Her fear. I would do anything to take it away from her, and I will, but for a brief second, I relish it, because it means her soul is fighting its way back.

  “I love you, my pearl. Only you. Always you. I will never fail you again. I swear it.” Leaning down, I brush a kiss to her lips, and her fear ebbs, a small kernel of hope deep inside growing steadily stronger. “Fight, Zoe. Fight for us.” Another kiss, and this time, her lips part for me.

  She is so very weak, but she gives me what little power she has.

  I pull back, refusing to take what I know she cannot spare, and find her eyes open and a soft smile curving her lips. “Sin,” she whispers. “You...came for me.”

  “I will always come for you.”

  “We’re...safe?”

  “Yes. He could not escape with us. Gabriel made sure of that.”

  “M‘kay. Gonna pass out now,” she manages, then goes limp with a deep sigh.

  Staring up at my brother with tears in my eyes, I want—no, I need—to ask him for one more favor. But he has done so much for me. He and his mate. And I do not deserve anything else.

  Though we have spent most of our lives apart, Mad can still tell what I am thinking with only a look. He takes Killian’s hand, and the warlock draws strength from the touch and nods. “Together,” Killian says. “We can do it.”

  Mad smiles at me, and though he is centuries younger than I am, he is wiser by the same measure. “We’ll get you home, Sin. Both of you. Rest now. Together.”

  I close my eyes and nestle Zoe more securely in my arms. We found one another again, and this time, I will never let her go.

  Zoe

  Awareness returns a breath at a time. I don’t want to wake up. What if this is all a dream? Or really...a nightmare? But Sin’s delicious scent surrounds me. Fresh. Clean. Hints of spice and oak and sunlight, and as I take a deeper breath, soft sheets whisper over my naked skin.

  “Zoe.” His deep voice rumbles through me, and I realize I’m practically lying on his chest. “You are safe. In my bed.”

  “The sheets kind of gave it away. You have the best sheets.”

  He chuckles and brushes a tangle of curls from my cheek. “I see it takes only a day of sleep to restore the sharp wit I love.”

  “A day?” Opening my eyes, I take in the room. It’s not quite dawn, the sky beyond the windows just starting to lighten in the east. “It’s been an entire day?”

  “Yes.” Sin tips my chin up, and I find his eyes. Only a hint of sapphire blue surrounds his pupils. The rest of his irises are blood red. “But I would have waited for you for weeks if that is what you had needed.”

  “You’re hungry.”

  “I am always hungry for you, Zoe. But you are still too weak to feed me. Do not fear. We have time.”

  “Um, not from your eyes we don’t.” I push myself up on an elbow and hiss in pain as the wounds across my back pull taut. “Shit.”

  “Lie still,” he says and eases me down again. His hand cups the back of my neck, and a dull ache brings back the memory of Thorn invading my mind. Trying to break me, to force me to betray the man I love. The man who saved me. Tears burn my eyes, and I reach back to finger the raised edges of the brand.

  “Killian tried his best, but you will bear the mark for the rest of your life,” Sin says, sorrow lacing his tone. He holds out his arm, and his own brand has returned, as clear as I remember it from my first life so many years ago. “As will I.”

  “You’re not going to burn it off again?” I trace his tattoo, the skin around it still burned, but the mark itself unblemished.

  “No. Because if not for what we both endured, we would not be here now. We would not have found one another. Fallen in love. Twice.” Sin brushes his lips to my cheek, and I turn my head, kissing him and offering all that I am.

  The energy flowing between us makes my nipples tighten and floods my core with a desperate need so strong, it overrides all rational thought.

  “Zoe,” Sin protests when he finally manages to break off our kiss, “you must rest.”

  “I need you.” Cupping his cheeks, feeling the rasp of several days of stubble against my palms, I meet his gaze. “The last time we made love, I didn’t know who I was. Who I’d been. I do now, and I need this—need you.”

  “I will not be responsible for causing you more pain,” he says.

  “Then give me what I need. Make me yours and let me claim you as mine knowing exactly who I am.”

  “Who are you?” His lips brush my ear, then trail down the curve of my neck. “You were stripped of all that you once were. Now, you can choose. Who do you want to be?”

  Sparks of pleasure race through me when he pinches my nipple, and his teeth score along my collar bone to the hollow of my throat.

  “Zoe. I’m Zoe Dawes. Because that’s the name I had when I realized I loved you. That’s the name I had when I remembered loving you once before. And I will never be anyone but Zoe Dawes ever again.”

  Sin positions himself between my legs and stares up at me. “Are you certain?”

  “I have never been more sure of anything in two lifetimes. Make love to me, Sin.”

  He kisses up the inside of my thigh, over my mound, and back down, and with every touch of his lips to my body, I feel stronger. More grounded. More...me.

  “I love you, Zoe,” he says after a light flick of his tongue to my clit. “I did not think myself capable of feeling...anything ever again, but you changed that.”

  He doesn’t give me a chance to respond, returning his focus to my pleasure. With each tas
te, our bond strengthens, as does my desperate need for release.

  “Sin,” I gasp, so close to the edge I feel like I could fly, “I want you inside me when I come.”

  He growls, moving so quickly, the room blurs as he flips our positions so I’m straddling him, his cock nudging my entrance. “You are in control, Zoe. Do with me what you will.”

  The thrill of his words is nothing compared to the feel of him when I sink down and let him fill me. Pure power and strength swirl around us as I thrust my hips, and his fingers dig into my ass, urging me to ride him harder, faster.

  With my gaze firmly locked on his, I link our fingers on either side of his head, and my nipples scrape against his chest, taking me higher than I’ve ever been. But I have to hold on. Because when I fly, he’s coming with me.

  “Zoe. Tell me,” he says, each word escaping on a grunt. “And then let go.”

  “I love you. You’re mine. And I’m yours.” With more strength than I should have, I slam into him and scream his name.

  “Sin!”

  Epilogue

  Sin

  For almost a week, Zoe and I spend most of our time in bed or wrapped in one another’s arms on the sofa watching old movies, talking, or testing the physical limits of how often two celestial beings can have sex.

  Mad and Killian are to visit tonight. Along with Dion, Kunchin, and Gabriel, though Zoe forbade him from materializing inside the apartment and injuring her ear drums again. The archangel has apparently decided his lack of time spent in the mortal realm is a detriment to his celestial duties, and has been galavanting around the United States.

  Though a part of me wants to hold on to the hatred I carried for him for centuries, I cannot. He saved us in the end at great risk to himself. An angel’s wings can only be damaged by Hell’s fire, and he can no longer fly. He will again, but it will take some time.

  “Are you certain about this?” I ask when Zoe turns away from the mirror and smoothes her hands down her emerald green sweater. “You do not need to live the life someone else chose for you any longer. No one would blame you if you decided not to return to the Bureau.”

  “The Bureau gave me you,” she says. I start to protest, and she silences me with a swift, passionate kiss. “But that’s not all. It gave me my first true friends. The first ones I was ever allowed to choose for myself.“

  Dion and Kunchin. The yeti has visited three times, twice bringing Zoe’s favorite doughnuts—glazed old fashioned—and though Dion only felt up to leaving her apartment for the first time this morning, she and Zoe have talked on the phone every day.

  “You have a brilliant mind.” I trail a knuckle along her jaw and brush my thumb over her lips. “And I could not imagine taking on another partner ever again, but I would do so if you needed. I hope you know that.”

  “I do.” Wrapping her arms around my waist, she rests her cheek over my heart. “This is what I want, Sin. All of it. This job. This name. This life. With you.”

  “Then, shall we get on with it? The commander may go easy on you for a few more weeks, but if we’re even a single minute late for our shift, I am likely to face her wrath.”

  “Just promise me one thing,” Zoe says with a smile as I help her on with her jacket.

  “What is that?”

  “Keep your speed demon tendencies under control in the car. I may have been created by the seraphim, but my stomach is all human.”

  I arch a brow. “My love, I am a sex demon. Or have you already forgotten how I woke you this morning?”

  Her laugh is my second favorite sound.

  The first? Her screaming my name when I make her come.

  I may have my wings, but I am, after all, only half angel.

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks go out to Kim, who helped me with a last minute change that made the book so much better, and for all those who forgave me for disappearing for the last week I was working on Storm of Sin when I couldn’t concentrate on anything else!

  And more than anything, for my readers. I hope you love Storm of Sin as much as I do. Thank you for reading. <3

  About the Author

  I’ve always made up stories. Sometimes I even acted them out. I probably shouldn’t admit that my childhood best friend and I used to run around the backyard pretending to fly in our Invisible Jet and rescue Steve Trevor. Oops.

  Now that I’m too old to spin around in circles with felt magic bracelets on my wrists, I put “pen to paper” instead. Figuratively, at least. Fingers to keyboard is more accurate.

  Outside of my writing, I’m a professional editor, a software geek, a singer (in the shower only), and a runner. I love red wine, scotch (neat, please), and cider. Seattle is my home, and I share an old house with my husband and cats.

  I’m on my fourth—fifth?—rewatching of the modern Doctor Who, and I think one particular quote from that show sums up my entire life.

  “We’re all stories, in the end. Make it a good one, eh?” — The Eleventh Doctor, Doctor Who

  I hope your story is brilliant.

  You can reach me all over the web…

  patriciadeddy.com

  patricia@patriciadeddy.com

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