Intense pleasure.
Rebel would never forget me again.
He moaned and arched. Finally, he stared at me, as if he was seeing me for the first time since he’d been taken out of the cell. “Feathers?”
I clasped onto his shoulders. “Yeah, bro?” I whispered, petrified that he’d wake up and remember everything.
“Why are we here?” Rebel’s confusion shanked me. He tugged at the leather around his wrists. “Some git’s tied me up, and I’m mortified but I…’ He blushed, as his stiffie strained skywards. “Help me?”
What the hell am I meant to do now?
You got yourself into this steaming mess, Violet-kitty, you get your own peachy ass out of it.
Cheers, bitch.
Kiss my perky behind.
Why do you think Drake set you that dare?
You’re a monster, but sometimes it takes an angel to be truly monstrous.
I winced, shocked at J’s rage that vibrated through my head. Yet my angelic powers were still too overjoyed that my Mark was on Rebel to truly understand what J was telling me.
I raked my nails down Rebel’s back, whilst I battled with the violet surging inside.
Control, the powers hissed, claim.
I shook my head, forcing myself to stroke my palms down the back of Rebel’s straining arms instead. “I can’t let you out. You’re…” Hell, this was hard to say, worse than waking up in Vegas and telling someone that you’d married them whilst they were too drunk to remember. “…mine now. Imperfect and Marked.”
Rebel reared back as far as he could in the bonds, before struggling. Then his gaze lost its focus again. He nodded, and his eyebrows furrowed. “Bad angels are punished.”
“No, that’s not…” I wiped angrily at the tears streaking my cheeks. “You’re not being—”
“She’ll remember,” Rebel muttered to himself, tipping his head back, as his wings vibrated with desire. “W-won’t forget. Then she’ll save…save me. Save the bad angel. Bad angels are punished…. Feathers, Feathers, Feathers…”
I’d finally done it: I’d broken him.
“Shut the hell up,” I howled, slamming my hand over his mouth.
This was control? The secret handed down from mother to daughter? How Glories dominated Wings?
Then I didn’t want it.
Rebel was nobody’s bitch.
I pressed my thumb into the Mark, forcing through in a rainbow explosion every aching feeling from the sixty-five days that I’d been stranded alone without him.
Rebel reckoned that I’d forgotten him? Then he was as crazy as a box of frogs.
And this time, as I’d promised J, Rebel screamed.
A pearly arc erupted from his cock, marking his stomach. He broke into shuddering sobs, staring down at the floor. He didn’t dare to look up.
I grinned. “See? I’d never forget the angel who fell into my lap.”
Slowly, Rebel raised his head. Plum tears trailed in fairy tracks down his cheeks, reflecting back the crystals’ light.
I took a step back; my grin faded.
Rebel shook, devastated with humiliated hurt. But also, with a savage rage that I’d never seen directed at me before. He was lucid now and he remembered everything.
He met my gaze. “I’m a muppet. But sweet Christ, do you truly hate me that much?”
I stumbled, blanching.
I’d tried to show Rebel pleasure, yet all I’d ended up with was showing him pain.
I’d been gagged, tied up, and held prisoner. I’d fought against it too.
How had I forgotten that?
I wrapped my arms around my middle, backing away from his accusing stare.
Every day in Angel World my angelic side gained strength, and I forgot what I’d learned in my twenty-one years living amongst humans. Why was Rebel shamed for being a Human Addict, when he didn’t want to be driven by these cruel urges alone?
“Princess…” Rebel said, more softly than before.
The powers inside hissed to claw and slash my toy’s Mark, until his feathers flamed to ash.
Instead, I howled, wrenching at my hair. I twisted away, abandoning Rebel.
To save an angel, I had to run.
12
Why does anyone run, when you can’t outrun your bastard self?
I stormed into the corridor, which flared with lavender-scented flames in a whooshing swell along the stone roof. Warmed by the soothing waves, whose light danced across walls stenciled with wings, where the fire had burned their outline in prehistoric times, I pushed up my sunglasses to dash away the tears.
I was abandoning Rebel again.
This time, he was bound, distressed, and alone. Because how the hell did I do aftercare with an angel who I’d Marked…and who hated me?
I didn’t raise you a jackass. You know better than that.
After what I did? The saints would line up to kick my arse.
So will your angel in eyeliner but right now he’s a little tied up.
Yet hate’s just love’s slutty twin: you don’t get one without the other.
Drake snatched my shoulder, spinning me.
Shocked, I slipped, as he dragged me backwards down the corridor; my boots skidded on the black floor.
There was no way Drake hadn’t been eavesdropping on the Rebel Doesn’t Love Violet Show.
Drake hurled me into a crack, which split up the side of the wall, before prowling after me. In the gloom, he stalked closer. His hands shook, as he placed them either side of my head.
I flinched back.
“Are you flying, princess?” He demanded. I shivered; water dripped from tears in the rock, trickling down my neck. “Have you already learned Zachriel’s trick of abandoning those you hurt?”
I couldn’t meet his gaze. “I’m too dangerous to stick around.”
The angelic side? The one Drake and J had warned me against? That the Matriarch had fed, so that I’d become her shadow?
I could feel it now: fat and feathered. It was moving, Alien-style, inside and waiting for the right moment to explode in a spitting spray from my guts, unless I could find a way to become the Monster Princess that I’d proclaimed myself on the battlefield.
No one’s bitch but my own.
Drake snorted. “Lie.” He leaned closer. “We’re all too dangerous. You’re a fool.”
“And you have girlie hair.”
Drake’s eyes widened with outrage, before he swiped his hand through his curls. “I don’t have…”
I sniggered.
Drake took a breath, before smoothing my hair, which I’d disheveled in my distress, with efficient motions. I didn’t reckon that he even realized that he was touching me. “Had the Matriarch not done a good enough job of breaking Zachriel that you had to Mark him?”
“What’s with the acting like I’ve turned into the Big Bad?”
“Was your mother’s demonstration not thorough?”
I licked along Drake’s cheek; frankincense exploded in ancient richness, raging through me. “You should be happy. The Addict — your prisoner — is controlled now, just like you.”
“Be silent. You know nothing of Zachriel and my… What honorable Wing would wish another to be Marked?’
What the hell had I done to Rebel, if it was so dishonorable?
I plucked at the hem of my sleeve. “I won’t hurt him—”
“Fool, like I said.” Drake rolled his eyes, before his expression softened. Then he glanced out of the crack, up and down the lavender-flamed corridor, before whispering, “You’ve made him yours.”
“Spell it out, bro, like cake and confetti, mine?”
Drake gave a bark of scornful laughter. “Do wives control and torture their husbands?”
I shrugged. “Depends if they’re disrespecting a bitch with Man Flu.”
Drake’s wings drooped; their blackened tips, as if they’d been transformed into a Merlin’s, quivered. “I’m painted in the shame of my punishment. Here.” He bent fo
rwards, and his curls fell off his neck. I gasped at the throbbing tenderness of his tattoo. “The state of the Mark — our wings — are on display. We’re humiliated to remind us that we’re the Marked. Does that sound like a husband?”
Burn! Ice Genie just owned your ass.
The Ice Genie will be on his arse if he doesn’t stop with the killer suspense and tell me what the hell Rebel is now.
What you’ve done to the bondage punk, you mean?
When Drake pulled back, and the tip of his wing brushed against my breast in the movement, I reddened, unable to stop the gasp and the way that my skin burned like it was on fire.
Drake tilted his head. “Amusing. Still so human.”
I shoved him back.
Crack — Drake’s head caught the wall, and I winced on his behalf.
Drake tentatively reached to the back of his head. When he brought his fingers between us again, they glistened with scarlet.
Flight whined, shooting a warning lance of heat.
“Accident,” I muttered, “I’m sorry.”
Flight had been silent, still, and stone-cold throughout my time with Rebel. Maybe she didn’t get involved between a Glory and a Wing. Or maybe it wasn’t part of the dare?
Drake wiped his bloodied hand down his trousers. “My mistake.”
I stroked his cheek in apology. “I get that I’m not spending an evening with roses and chocolates in the Honeymoon Suite, but what’s a Marked?”
“Do you not think that it would’ve been wise to understand this before you took one?” He asked, sighing. “I’m a Commander on the battlefield. But in your mother’s bed…? I am her favored slave.”
My eyes widened. “But the Broken are the slaves—”
“Bed slave, princess. Shall I draw you a diagram? Positions, maybe? The Marked are not beloved Wings but the bound whores of Angel World. Although I’ll kill any who dares call me thus.”
“You, bro, a whore?” I remembered Drake’s jeers of vampire whore to Ash like the idea of a shag horrified his dainty ears.
Drake’s shoulders slumped. “Because you think that I can’t kiss, princess, you reckon no one would wish my service. I assure you, I was promised — gifted — to the Matriarch when I was barely grown.”
I snorted. “You’re barely grown now.”
Drake’s gaze blazed to mine. “You are alone princess. Yet I’ve spent centuries wishing that I could be.”
Who gifted a kid to be Marked? Who’d done to Drake, what I’d done to Rebel?
Except, they’d known what it’d mean.
I swallowed, risking snaking out my hand to play with Drake’s fingers and steepling them between mine. And I didn’t see the shank, until it’d sliced through my shoulder.
I shrieked, before gaping down at the curved gold handle, where it stuck out of my dress.
No more finger cuddling; I’d rub the genie’s lamp so hard that he’d still shine in a week.
Yet when I hauled Drake towards me, he scoffed, “See? Fool.”
The blade twisted.
I shrieked again, letting go of Drake and scrabbling at the invisible attacker. But there was nobody there, except for the Assassin Knife burrowing into my shoulder.
“Enjoying the show?” I panted.
Drake leaned against the wall, studying his fingernails and trying to hide the way that he rubbed at his head. “Perhaps there shall be clowns next?”
My hands shook; sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. A wave of nausea washed over me from the sharp pain, as the dagger tore downwards.
“Drake…” I whispered, as my hands slipped.
“I am grown.” He ticked off each point on his fingers. Had I dissed him enough that he was keeping a list? “I have not got girlie hair. And I can kiss.”
He waited, examining me as if we were at a tea party, and I wasn’t being skewered by Mr Invisible.
“Yeah, you’re the stud of harem boys,” I rasped. “Now bastard help me.”
Drake nodded, before diving into the corridor.
Thwack.
I flinched at the scuffle, but the pressure on the Assassin Knife died.
I tugged out the shank, lobbing it clinking against the wall. I gasped at the gush of blood spurting from the wound. Dizzy, my legs buckled, before I forced myself upright again.
There was no way I was going on my knees for Drake.
Sniveling whining was followed by Drake dragging a teenage Wing with short silver hair and cheekbones sharper than any lord’s in front of me by the ear like a Victorian school teacher. The teenager’s trousers shimmered gold.
“Silence, Nathanael,” Drake snapped. “Apologize.”
Nathanael scowled, shaking his head.
I remembered the alpha pricks in the throne room.
“Seriously?” I smirked. “What kind of non-stealthy assassin dresses in gold and kills with it?”
“Assassin?” Nathanael wriggled in Drake’s grasp. “The Legion aren’t assassins. We’re more powerful than—”
“Your lips are moving, yet all I hear is small dick.”
Nathanael’s high cheeks pinked. “Hold your tongue, bastard Child of the Fallen. I followed my orders.”
Drake twisted Nathanael’s ear, and he squealed. “Hush, you were under my orders not to attack.”
“And when the Mage arrives, Brother in the Phoenix? Who do you think he will be most proud of?” Nathanael sniffed, wiping at his dripping nose, whilst he tottered on tiptoe to ease his sore ear. “What will he do when he hears of your disobedience?”
Drake shoved Nathanael away with a shake of his head. “Apologize.”
When Nathanael bowed, his silver hair covered his eyes, but his smile was sly. “My apologies, princess. And Commander…? I shall enjoy listening to your howls. Again.”
“Enjoy this.” I snatched Nathanael’s arm, as he scampered towards the main corridor, swinging him towards me.
Then I headbutted him.
Nathanael’s eyes rolled back, before he collapsed.
Drake offered me his arm. “An excellent method of silencing.”
Drake and I strolled back into the lavender fire corridor, leaving Nathanael behind us out cold.
I bit my lip at the jostling to my shoulder, yet I loved this sudden companionship, even though I knew that I had to break it to find out about this new threat. Why did it hurt not to be able to let Drake show the relaxed man behind the haughty mask that he wore to survive? “Who are the Legion? And why do your mates love to hear you howl?”
Drake glanced at me. “Not my mates. And not dead, merely harmed.”
A shard of pain roused the powers inside who shook with the indignity of being shanked by an unknown cult or faction within my own mum’s court. They raged for me to go back and torture Nathanael until he bled out answers.
Although I wouldn’t let myself do that, I had Drake: A Brother in the Phoenix.
I slid my hands up Drake’s blackened wings, closing my fingers around his wingtips. He stiffened, and his breathing became harsh. I wouldn’t harm his wings, but the threat was effective enough.
“That posh freakshow acted like his daddy had hired me as a servant.” My fingers tightened. “What happened to all the cowering you Wings do before a Glory?”
“He’s part of the Legion. The Brothers in the Phoenix aren’t Marked or owned. They’ve no understanding of other Wings’ torment.”
“Aren’t you in the Legion?”
Drake looked down. “I alone am different.”
When I lightly squeezed Drake’s wing, he shuddered against me. “The Mage is the top boy?”
Drake’s eyes were ice-cold. “The Mage and the Legion hold sway because they can give — or take away — something that no one else can. And that hold is like poison. Everyone fears it. Yet they’re forced to swallow it every year.”
I huffed. “Crypto, not helping.”
Drake shrugged, although his expression gentled. “Calm yourself, you’re bleeding. You’ve training
tomorrow, do you not?” I let go of his wings to press against the throbbing in my shoulder. Then his gaze hardened. “And if you think it shameful to be a cowering Wing or Marked bed slave, then you’ve no idea how much more shameful it is to fail the Warrior Trials.”
Fury whirlwind rose in a whooshing gust at his jibe.
The Warrior Trials might as well have been tattooed on my arse. Broken, Imperfect, or Marked…at least they weren’t facing the Trials.
If Drake wanted me to feel helpless, I’d bring him along for the ride.
“Then I’ll need a bandage.” I ripped down Drake’s trousers.
Drake hopped comically, as the silk caught on his ankles. He tried to hold up his trousers with one hand, wrestling with me. At last, he let go, and I wrapped his dignity around my bleeding shoulder in an indigo bow.
Flight bounced on my shoulders like a tutting mother-in-law.
Drake’s stare was cold and dangerous. His wings curled around his cock, as he edged closer, tilting his head. “I know that you’re still hiding something extraordinary inside. I will discover it, princess. That’s my skill.”
I held my breath.
J had better hide his arse behind the walls that I’d spent the last months building. But how many centuries had Drake been practicing his skills?
I forced myself to smirk. “Good luck with that McBareBum.”
Drake snarled with hurt confusion.
I didn’t bastard care.
Why the hell did I bastard care?
“Tomorrow is the last day before your dare is settled,” Drake bit out, edging even closer. “Maybe I shan’t kill you when you lose. And you will. Because without me — and without Flight — on your side, you won’t win the Trials. You’ll die.” His eyes gleamed, but it could’ve been the reflected light from the ceiling. “Then there’ll be one less monster in these caves.”
Drake’s cheek pressed against mine, before he twirled in a flurry of soft feathers and creamy arse.
And I was alone, bleeding, and a bastard fool.
Harahel had warned me about allies. Yet when had Drake changed from guard and jailer to become my savior in the Warrior Trials?
A savior who’d just judged that I deserved to die.
Rebel Angels: The Complete Series Page 38
