Always, Ange

by Heather Killough-Walden

  The fact that he hadn’t tried to infiltrate her thoughts only fortified Angel’s fear that he knew damn well she was something more than human. He wouldn’t bother to try taking her over until he knew what he was dealing with. He was sizing up his prey. A good hunter did whatever was necessary to keep the claw and bite wounds to a minimum.

  Hesperos continued to watch her as he moved through her room, a shark making slow circles around his dinner. His expression was a wickedly handsome mixture of curiosity, caution and determination. “Oh, little beauty,” he said, his voice raising goose bumps of anticipation across her skin. “What are you, I wonder?”

  Angel said nothing, but her heart’s quick pace was surely giving her away. He doesn’t know, she told herself firmly. He doesn’t remember, so don’t tip him off. Be strong.

  “You seem familiar to me,” he said.

  Angel’s breath caught. She felt her eyes widen just a little. Stupid, she scolded herself. She was out of practice, it would seem. Hesperos was sure to notice slipups like that.

  The king stopped at the center of her room and cocked his head to one side, narrowing his gaze on her thoughtfully. In that moment, he reminded her of the calculating Greek soldier he’d once been as he’d gone slumming among the mortals out of sheer boredom. He’d been a veritable god of war, pulling back from the role only when he’d realized that if he’d wanted to, he could have slaughtered the entire human population. That wasn’t him. Hesperos wasn’t a killer.

  But he looked like one now. Machiavellian. Cunning. . . . Bad.

  Without speaking, the Nightmare King took a step toward her. Angel thought fast, steeling her nerves. She raised her chin, and with a slight twist of her wrist, she finally let the slip that she had been holding slide through her fingers. Hesperos’s metal green eyes watched the thin sheen of material drift to the floor and pool at her bare feet. For the slightest of moments, he paused, a small smile playing across his lips.

  Then his gaze slid back up her long body, taking everything in. He took another step. “My, my,” he said, shaking his head as if at the wonder of her. “But you are a rare bird.” Several more boot-echoing steps and he had closed the distance between them. Despite her tall frame, the king stood half a foot taller than she did and towered over her as he crowded her with his imposing presence.

  “You’re rather impressive, yourself,” she admitted softly, unable to help herself. He was getting to her. She may have been inhuman, but she was still a woman and Hesperos was very much a man.

  “You know me,” he said. “You’ve spoken my name.” He smiled then, revealing straight, white teeth with canines that were ever so slightly longer than the norm. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” As he spoke, he locked her gaze in his, capturing her attention in a nearly literal sense.

  She found it impossible to look away as he raised his right hand and delicately brushed his fingers across the top of her collarbone. A hard shiver raced through her. “I hardly believe that’s possible,” she told him.

  His smile broadened, and a chuckle of real amusement rumbled up from his broad chest. “I wouldn’t have thought so either,” he admitted easily. “And yet, here we are. You know who I am. . . .” He lifted a curly lock of her black hair and wound it around his fingers. “And it isn’t mutual.”

  To this, Angel said nothing. She was afraid that if she dared to speak, she would inadvertently say something—anything—that would give her away.

  Hesperos watched her eyes as if he were reading the play of thoughts that ran through her mind. And then he narrowed his gaze and she felt it––the swell of his power. He’d obviously realized that she wasn’t going to reveal herself to him willingly because he had decided he was no longer playing nice. She sensed the arms of his magic reach out and grab her, holding her fast as his mind scraped hers, scouring it for the secrets she was hiding.

  “Stop, Hesperos,” she said, her own gaze narrowing in turn. “Stay out of my head.” Anger clenched her jaw and gritted her teeth. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but his curiosity was piqued. He’d always been like that. Relentless.

  Again—he was king for a reason.

  “Who are you, little one?” he asked, his steel green eyes sparkling with almost cruel amusement and curiosity. “The walls you’ve put up are ancient,” he said, shaking his head as he brushed his knuckles across her cheekbone and then gently cupped her chin. “As ancient as I.”

  And then, suddenly, he stilled—and she knew her battle was lost. The recognition flashed before his beautiful face like lightning and his grip on her chin tightened. “Angel,” he whispered. His gaze darkened, his pupils expanding. For a moment, he seemed thrown. Off his game.

  Angel felt her muscles tighten, preparing for a literal fight or flight.

  But he was faster. His hands came down around her upper arms, gripping them with vicelike strength. It didn’t hurt—not yet. But it was clear she wasn’t meant to go anywhere.

  Two thousand years ago, Angel had spent a single night with Hesperos. A single, hot, wanton, intense, burning, and delicious night. And then she’d fled—and though he’d looked for her, sending out his Nightmares to search high and low for decades, she had successfully eluded him.

  Eventually, he and his kind had taken to the shadows along with the rest of the paranormal creatures on Earth. They’d disappeared from the sight of humans as readily and easily as she had vanished from Hesperos’s sights.

  Only now, he was back. And he’d found her after all.

  Angel felt her hopes sink and her need rise as Hesperos bent over her and leaned in, his grip tight, his eyes unflinchingly resolute. “Long time no see, precious one.”

  Chapter Five

  It was over now. Her secret was out and she was lost. And she barely cared.

  Hesperos held her fast for a short eternity, his eyes scorching into hers. A beat passed. Another. As if sensing that she wouldn’t run and wouldn’t physically fight, the king finally released his hold on one of her arms and cupped her cheek to rub his thumb across the plump flesh of her bottom lip. “Why did you run from me?” he asked, his deep voice now no more than a harsh whisper in the darkness of her room.

  Angel absorbed his question, nearly swooning beneath the onslaught of desire his touch was unleashing. Somehow, she retained enough cohesive thought to reply. “Why did you look for me?”

  Hesperos’s eyes communicated volumes of unspoken words. He gave her a disbelieving and disappointed look. “After what we shared?” he said, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. “How can you even ask?”

  “It was one night,” she countered, trying to keep the tremor of mounting desire out of her voice. His body radiated heat in front of her. It felt like a magnet on fire, drawing her in, making her crave the closing of that tiny gap between them with a painful kind of yearning. She knew he would be hard, unyielding, strong. She knew he would know exactly how to touch her, when, and where. She knew from experience.

  And when he got in and got close enough, her walls would crumble. Her defenses would be breached . . . and he would know everything. It was what she had feared two thousand years ago. It was why she had run. Hesperos was a cunning king. If he knew her secret, he would use it against her.

  He would go to Sam.

  “It was enough,” the king told her now.

  That’s what scares me, she thought helplessly.

  Hesperos was unrelenting. He leaned in further, cascading her with his heat, and whispered in her ear. The sensation of his breath across her flesh sent a hard shiver through Angel and she closed her eyes. “What are you hiding underneath this beautiful shell, precious one?”

  Oh God, she thought. Please don’t let him see. . . .

  His hand slid into her hair, grasping it lightly at the back of her head as his lips brushed the tip of her ear. He pulled gently, and her neck arched beneath him. “You know I can give you exactly what you want, Angel,” he told her as he moved to her throat, scraping his tee
th along its exposed skin.

  It was almost the truth. Incubi had the power to change for their lovers. Whatever it was she desired . . . man, demon, vampire . . . he could become in the heat of passion.

  He was getting to her now. He was wrapped around her. Oh, he was good.

  Angel marshaled what remaining strength she could and pressed the palms of her hands to his chest. Oh no. The feel of him hard and perfectly sculpted beneath her fingertips was nearly her undoing. Remnants of her will went slipping away in that moment, threatening the foundation of her defenses.

  “I nearly had you two thousand years ago,” he said.

  “Please, Hesper . . .” she whispered, unable to even finish his name. But he stilled in front of her and slowly raised his head. The steel in his gaze sliced through the darkness.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  Angel heard the rush of blood in her ears. She could feel her heart hammering, her body coating itself in a thin sheen of perspiration. Her lips were parted, her breaths quick. She could barely concentrate.

  Yet, at the same time, she felt his power recede and begin to pull away. Just enough.

  For a moment, Angel couldn’t believe it. But then she remembered who and what he was. Incubi were about lust, need, and hunger. Most of all, they were about pleasure, and Angel had asked him nicely. For what, he wasn’t sure. But he was giving her the chance to finish asking for it.

  “You have to let me go,” she told him, pressing on his chest enough that he loosened his hold on her hair and she was able to take a step back. At once, she felt cold and dizzy and weak. It was a nearly sickening feeling . . . like deep, dark disappointment. Like knowing you’ve almost had something magnificent. But not quite.

  She remembered that feeling. The Nightmare King could get under a woman’s skin like nobody’s business.

  “If I recall correctly,” he said, “that’s what you said that night twenty centuries ago.” His expression hardened. “Right before you disappeared.”

  Angel swallowed hard.

  “Now here we are again,” he said. “And you’re trying your damnedest to run.” He shook his head, his metal green eyes glinting in the moonlight. “And I want to know why.”

  “It’s none of your business,” she told him flatly. Her voice barely quivered at all. She was almost proud of herself.

  Hesperos cracked a smile. “I know you in a biblical sense, precious one. I’ve tasted you. I’ve moved inside of you.”

  Angel shivered.

  “I’d say that makes it my business,” he finished softly. There was a familiar edge to his tone. She could recall him using it all those years ago. He never raised his voice. But when commanding his army, he’d given orders with a kind of cool calculation that made his soldiers shake in their boots.

  He was skirting that tone now.

  “I want you—” Angel’s voice cracked. There was a lump in her throat. She swallowed past it, took another step back from Hesperos, and tried again. “I want you to leave,” she said, suffering beneath a painful ambivalence. She’d spoken the truth. And she’d spoken a lie.

  The Nightmare King said nothing to her request. Instead, he took a step back from her and his boot once more echoed in the silence. Angel felt the residual tendrils of his power slip from around her like loosened ropes as he continued across the room, finally turning his back to her in order to turn his attention to her window and the moon that beckoned beyond it.

  His tall, strong frame was outlined to perfection in its waning light, casting him in a profile that would forever brand itself on her mind’s eye. In fact, it had long ago.

  As if deep in thought, Hesperos placed his fingers to his lips and tapped. And then he glanced at her over his broad shoulder, eyes flashing. “What will you do now, precious one?” he asked.

  Suddenly, he dropped his hand, turned, and strode purposely toward her once more.

  Angel inhaled sharply at his new, determined speed. She had time to scramble back a few inches and then he was in front of her, again towering over her. “Where will you go?”

  She tried to retreat, but his arm snaked around her waist and with one hard pull, he had yanked her body up against his. The feel of his leather belt, rough jeans, and bare chest against her exposed flesh was maddening. Coherent thought fled her mind, rushing like an errant wind toward the window across the room.

  “Will you run again? Try to hide?” He shook his head, his teeth bared, and punctuated his words with his grip around her waist. “The world is only so big, Angel, and my men are everywhere.”

  His presence whipped at her once more, smothering her like a tidal wave. Angel’s hands clutched at his thick arms, scrambling for some kind of release. It was not forthcoming and the breath was leaving her lungs. He was stealing it from her, sapping her strength. Her legs grew weak, and warmth coiled low in her belly.

  “You can’t hide forever, precious one. And I won’t give up so easily this time.” With that, he kissed her.

  She didn’t fight the kiss—she couldn’t. Hesperos was tender and demanding; he made her feel drugged. His lips opened her up beneath him, persistent and hungry. His kiss claimed her with a fierceness that spoke of his anger—his fury and resentment over her defiance and disappearance. And yet, in its gentle, almost poignant subjugation, it spoke of the possibility of forgiveness.

  Most of all, it was an unspoken pledge.

  When he finally broke the kiss, his jade metal eyes held her as solidly as the arm around her waist. Angel gazed up at him through half-closed lids, her breathing shallow, her body on fire.

  “Until next time, precious one,” he promised, echoing what she already knew. One hand spanned the small of her back, a hold of pure possession as his other hand again cupped her face, as warm and tender as his eyes were cold and hard. “Fight it all you want,” he said. “But you’ll open up for me, Angel.”

  He bent, placing one final butterfly kiss across her lips. And then he smiled. “Sweet dreams.”

  With that, the leader of the incubi, Hesperos the Nightmare King, vanished; there one moment and gone with a puff of sandalwood-scented smoke the next.

  Chapter Six

  For the third time that week, Sam awoke with a start amidst damp sheets and unanswered questions. Anger surged through him, harsh and unrelenting. Remnants of a vision licked at his consciousness, but as he rose from his bed and shut his storm gray eyes, fighting to reclaim it . . . he lost it for good.

  A sound that was half growl escaped his throat through gritted teeth. Lightning flashed outside the windows of the mansion where he was currently staying. Thunder followed close on its tail. Samael shoved his covers aside, rose, and strode to the windows without bothering to dress.

  A landscape filled with desert weeds, cacti, and river rock was illuminated beneath the flashes of lightning. The window panes rattled in their casings as thunder rolled over the estate.

  The house belonged to a surgeon who worked in a small town in Texas. However, at the moment, the doctor was out of town and Samael was “borrowing” the domicile. He needed a residence in town and this would one would do.

  Eleanore Granger was here. Sam had a lot of work to do.

  But even as he tried to put his troubled thoughts away and focus on the young archess, he found his attention wandering . . . to a woman whose face he could not see, but whose presence haunted his every sleeping moment and lingered long into the daylight hours. In this last dream, there had been something else—something he couldn’t remember. But Samael did recall the jealousy that had surged through him.

  It was not a normal emotion for him to experience. In fact, he never got jealous. What did he have to be jealous of? He could have anything he wanted, if he wanted it. And yet, the sentiment had raked its way through his bloodstream like razorblades. He’d awoken seeing red. He remembered that now. He’d seen red . . . and smelled rain.

  Sam ran a frustrated hand through his ash blond hair and squeezed his eyes shut tight. The world was wa
iting for him. He had a plan and he needed to carry it to its fruition, regardless of faceless women and jealous nightmares. He needed to focus.

  Samael’s alter ego, Samuel Lambent, had a date with destiny—and her name was Eleanore. With careful planning and a little luck, he would have Granger under his wing within a fortnight. And the Old Man’s four favored would suffer as they never imagined possible.

  Angel leaned against the building’s alley wall, the hood of her zip-up sweatshirt pulled low over her head. She was a little tired. It had been a long day, and lately, she’d been using her days to catch up on sleep since most of what she had to do took place at night. She’d been all over the country that morning, trying to make some kind of dent in the going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket trend the world had been taking of late. She’d managed to do a few things, but as always, it wasn’t enough. It would never, ever be enough.

  Now, her brown eyes scanned the crowd of people across the street until they landed upon the woman they’d been looking for. Angel had known she would be in that exact place at that exact time.

  The young woman was tall, had long golden hair that came to the curve of her lower back, and as Angel watched, she quickly pulled a pair of mirrored sunglasses down over a set of eyes that resembled illuminated honey. Or sunshine.

  “Right on schedule,” Angel whispered to herself, watching the girl carefully cross a street that intersected the university. Berkeley’s campus was teeming at the moment, despite the relatively late hour. The university was holding an open house for students who might decide to attend beginning in January. When they did this, they remained open long past their normal hours. The sun was going down, and its campus was still overrun with high school hopefuls and overachievers—and one archess.

  Angel looked on in silence as the golden-haired archess hurried across a green to another sidewalk. She carried a folder of documents in her arms and was smiling. She seemed to have absolutely no idea what kind of picture she made as she crossed the campus. She almost seemed to glow.