Hellishly Ever After (Infernal Covenant Book 1)

by Nadine Mutas

  “All right,” Hael said, holding the whistle out to me.

  I closed my hand around it and tugged, but Hael didn’t let go of the string attached to it yet. His gaze on the hound, expression slightly pinched, he heaved a deep breath.

  “Hael?” I ventured.

  A muscle ticked in the demon’s jaw. “Her favorite treat is dragon jerky.”

  I really hoped that name was a euphemism. “I’ll make sure she gets it,” I said gently.

  Hael let go of the whistle, turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

  “So,” I said, facing my four-hundred-pound pet, “it’s just you and me now, girl. What do you say we go explore this joint a bit?”

  Her middle head yipped while the others tried to chase her tail, resulting in her keeling over.

  I was hiding in the library when Azazel found me.

  Vengeance and I had prowled the meandering halls of this ridiculously large mansion for what felt like at least two hours, and this time around I had the courage and leisure to actually try a few of the closed doors.

  Rooms, rooms upon rooms, many of them empty of people—or rather, demons—and I just wondered what one could possibly want with that much space. Not all of them seemed to serve a specific purpose, although some did have a theme, like a game room, or what looked like a mini museum of sculptures. Most, however, were just fancy living rooms with places to lounge. Demons really liked their comfort, apparently.

  While we walked the hallways, things still stirred high up in the gloom of the ceiling, and every now and then something would make a slithering or scuffing noise behind us. With my lion-sized, three-headed guard hound at my side, though, any creatures lurking in the shadows didn’t dare approach. Here and there Vengeance would let loose a half-threatening growl at something, and whatever had come too close to our path skittered away faster than I could spot it.

  “Good girl,” I crooned and patted the wiry black fur on her flank.

  Vengeance preened and wagged her tail.

  I’d pictured running into the inferni again, was half-prepared to draw the dagger from its sheath at my hip while crouching behind my hound.

  What I actually ran into, I wasn’t prepared for at all.

  Or rather, whom.

  I should have figured I’d see other demons milling about Azazel’s house. It was a large estate, after all, and his apparent rank and standing would mean he’d have a veritable army of employees and underlings. I did kind of figure this, sure, and I expected to maybe see Hekesha or Caleb crossing my path.

  But no, of course the first demon I chanced upon was one from the room where we’d met with Zaquiel.

  I rounded the corner and almost collided with a massive chest. Stumbling back, Vengeance pressing into my side and putting her heads in front of me, I peered up at the demon—the bartender I’d gotten drinks from.

  “Well, hello,” he said, leaning against the wall with one shoulder. “Out for a stroll?”

  Temporarily speechless, I nodded.

  The demon studied Vengeance, whose muscles tensed under my hand. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a hound inside.”

  “Bodyguard,” I said stupidly.

  “Makes sense.”

  I tried. I really tried. But it was like if someone told you not to think of a pink rhinoceros, and, of course, all you could picture from then on was a damn pink rhinoceros.

  And my brain, that unruly, misbehaving, could-never-even-get-it-to-meditate set of synapses and wayward electronic impulses, dutifully conjured up the way I’d rubbed myself all over Azazel in that room.

  In excruciating detail.

  The demon bartender blinked, raised a brow, and drawled, “Yeah, that was...delicious.”

  Fucking hell.

  My face aflame, I mumbled some horrible mashup of “I need to go” and “Excuse me,” shoved past him and speed-walked down the hallway in search of a hole to fling my embarrassed ass into.

  Vengeance bounded after me, tongues lolling out her mouths. At least someone had fun.

  First door I tried led me into a large circular room with soaring ceilings and bookshelves running along the rounded walls, stacked several stories high, with a gallery walk circling up from the ground. Several couches and armchairs sat in the center of the mosaic-inlaid floor, and I spotted more interspersed along the gallery.

  I stopped and stared, the door falling shut behind Vengeance trotting into the room after me.

  Gaze tracking the shelves, I let out a sound of helpless awe. There had to be thousands of books here. The only other time I’d seen that many in one place had been at my college library.

  I turned in a circle, inhaled the distinct scent of old bindings and well-worn pages, and reveled in this surreal Beauty and the Beast moment.

  I spent the next hour exploring the shelves, perusing the books—most of them in other languages, even other scripts—letting my fingers run over aged spines and pulling out a volume to leaf through its pages here and there, while Vengeance snored on one of the sofas.

  Each shelf had a fancy, honest-to-God—honest-to-Lucifer?—ladder on wheels attached to it in order to reach the higher levels of that particular gallery floor, and I was perched on one of them, balancing to grab a book with a gold-inlaid spine, when a prickling sensation of dark, seductive energy ran up my back and tightened my nipples.

  “Pity you’re not wearing a dress,” Azazel said from his spot at the bottom of the ladder, peering up at me.

  Seeing him again was like a full-on sexual punch to my senses. How he’d gotten even more magnetically attractive, I had no idea, but one look at him, and I swayed on the ladder.

  Instead of his fighting leathers, he now wore what appeared to be formal black pants and a tunic-style shirt in midnight blue, embroidered with silver thread at the open collar. The embroidery matched the lightning in his eyes, glinting in the shimmering glow of the lamps in the room—no torches for this precariously inflammable collection of literature.

  The tunic stretched over his broad shoulders, the fine fabric and elegant cut a delicious juxtaposition to the barely leashed power whispering around him. As always, he seemed to compress the air in the room with his presence alone, a heavy weight of sheer, brute force dropped into surroundings that seemed too tame for his nature. He’d look totally in his element standing on a battlefield, sword in hand, armor splattered with blood, those impressive wings flaring behind his shoulders.

  “There is a painting just like that,” he said in a silken murmur, “in the north wing gallery. I can take you to ogle it to your heart’s content.”

  I inhaled sharply and pointed at him. “That. Right there. I’ve had enough of it. Teach me to shield.” I was fed up with being an open book for anyone to read.

  “All right.” He crooked a finger. I knew what that finger felt like stroking between my legs. “Come on down.”

  Now why did this sound like an erotic threat?

  I perched my butt on one of the rungs of the slightly angled ladder. “I think I’m just fine right here.”

  If I climbed down, with him standing at the bottom and looking at me like this—as if he wanted to peel me out of my clothes with only his teeth and a whole lot of determination—I’d probably jump him before I reached the last rung. I could just see it unfold. We’d never get to the shielding lesson, too busy testing the sturdiness of every available surface in this room.

  “Suit yourself.” The glint in his eyes betrayed his nonchalant answer. He’d been looking forward to my jumping his bones, the ravenous rake.

  He leaned a shoulder against the pillar that supported the gallery above us. “Have you ever meditated?”

  I grimaced. “Does the one time count when I was too lazy to clean my apartment so I just lay on the couch for an hour and contemplated the exact ingredients of the takeout container that’d been sitting on the table for two days longer than was sanitary?”

  Azazel slowly blinked. “Unless you focused on your breathing�
�”

  “I was trying not to inhale too much,” I threw in. “I mean, the container wasn’t empty, if you catch my drift…”

  “—or you used visualization,” he continued, ignoring my interjection with admirable grace, “then no.”

  “I did visualize.” I pointed my finger at him. “I totally visualized that container dumping itself in the trash.”

  He closed his eyes and dipped his head, and I had the niggling suspicion he was trying hard not to laugh.

  “Visualization,” he said as he looked back up at me again, a hint of mirth softening the beautifully brutal lines of his face, “is a good start for shielding. In the beginning, you will need to imagine an actual wall around your mind, until the effect of it becomes an instinct you don’t even need to remember.”

  “Okay.” I rubbed my nose. “Just a wall? What should it look like?”

  “Whatever you want it to look like. Make it your own. Its size or form don’t matter as much as your faith in its protection. It could be a stained glass wall of rainbows and unicorns, but if you believe it to be impenetrable, then it will be.”

  Pursing my lips, I nodded. Faith. I could do this. Even with his permission to imagine any kind of flimsy wall, I went for the picture of an impressively sturdy rampart. The kind that spanned several yards, thick and massive like the Great Wall of China, only stretching even higher. Impenetrable, I thought and focused on infusing the word with power.

  “Good,” he said. “Now think something very…” He waved a hand. “...loudly. Don’t send it to me as if speaking mind to mind. Stray thoughts are different. Just let them run, but keep them behind the wall.”

  Right. I narrowed my eyes and conjured up the memory of him pocketing my vibrator. My cheeks heated.

  He smirked. “Ah, the suspense of not knowing what exactly put that look on your face. I rather like it.”

  “So it worked?”

  “I can make an educated guess about the nature of your thoughts based on your expression and other bodily clues—” he indicated my chest, and to my dismay my nipples stood at attention “—but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t see your thoughts.” His smile was genuine, warm, and did funny things to my stomach. “Well done.”

  The rush I got from his praise scared me just a bit.

  “Now let’s see if your wall holds up under pressure.”

  “Wait—what?” And dammit, now I had that Queen song stuck in my head.

  “Distraction might be more apt.” He shrugged. “You won’t always be thinking of your wall, especially if you’re active and other things happen around you. But it needs to be there, all the time, even without your focus on it. After all, you’ll need it the most when you’re around others. Your attention will be on them and whatever is going on, and you can’t afford to be mentally split trying to keep up your wall. It needs to stand on its own.”

  That made sense. “Okay. So, distract me.”

  His expression switched from calm instructor to hungry predator in a millisecond.

  Chapter 14

  Oh, no. I walked right into that one, didn’t I?

  Pushing off the pillar, he closed the distance to the ladder with the quiet charge of a brewing storm. His hands grasped the black metal frame, his gaze intently fixed on me.

  I swallowed, my heart thudding faster.

  “I didn’t know you were a Queen fan,” he murmured as he took the first step up.

  Dammit. I repaired the breach in my wall and stuffed Under Pressure playing on repeat back behind the rampart.

  By now Azazel had taken more steps up the ladder. His face level with my crotch, he met my gaze with searing intensity.

  My heart did its best to break through my rib cage, and I curled my fingers around the ladder’s rung.

  No man—not even a demon—had the right to project that much raw sex with just a look. It just wasn’t fair.

  Responding like dry kindling to a struck match, my body flared with heat. A well-known throb of desire settled at the apex of my thighs.

  He inhaled deeply, his pupils dilating. “I love your scent,” he said, his voice an erotic growl that hummed over my skin.

  Without so much as a warning, he pressed his face against my crotch, his nose pushing right on the spot that craved pressure. I uttered a choked moan and gripped the ladder harder so I wouldn’t just flow down, what with my knees having melted.

  “I could bathe in it,” he spoke against my mound, and it didn’t matter that technically, there were two layers of fabric separating his mouth from my skin—the heat of his breath, the vibration of his deep voice, the sheer power of him so close to my pulsing core, it might as well have burned away my clothes.

  Wait, he wouldn’t just—

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered, snapping my head down to peer at him.

  “Dare what?” His expression was just short of on the wrong side of naughty, the fingers of his one hand stroking idly up my thigh, toward the aching center of my lust.

  “Burn a hole in my—”

  My sentence ended in a strangled groan of helpless pleasure as his mouth closed over my mound—and touched skin, the fabric seared off in between. I gasped for breath, my chest heaving as my head fell back against the ladder. Pleasure spiked where his tongue laved my folds, danced around my clit, teased my entrance.

  I squirmed, panting, overwhelmed by the exquisite eroticism of being fully clothed except for that one spot in my crotch area where he sensually attacked my intimate flesh.

  Oh, God.

  He drew back, and chill air touched my wet folds.

  I whipped my head down to stare at him.

  “You need to stop thinking about God when I’m eating you out.”

  Crap, my wall had crumbled again. Grinding my teeth, I rebuilt that sucker.

  His eyes glittered. “You’ll have to keep it up if you want to come.”

  I glowered down at him. “That’s unfair.”

  “No, it’s an incentive.” He leaned forward and licked over my still heated flesh, making me shudder. “Anytime your wall fails, I’ll stop.”

  I contemplated going for that dagger still strapped to my hips. My fingers flexed.

  “If you keep the wall intact while my mouth is on you,” he said with a chuckle as he kissed my clit, “I’ll make you come so hard that I’ll have to carry you down this ladder in a boneless heap.”

  I whimpered, my bones doing some pre-melting already.

  His tongue flicked through my folds again, and my arousal skyrocketed. Closing his lips over my clit, he sucked. My hand shot out and tangled in his hair. He snarled his approval as he went to town, letting me feel his teeth in between generous licking and suckling.

  I’d never understood the appeal of riding a guy’s face before, but I could learn to channel my inner cowgirl with how he worked me over.

  He stopped.

  With a whine, I glanced down at him.

  He was resting his head on my still jeans-clad inner thigh, his expression hidden, his shoulders shaking. Was he—

  “Cowgirl?” he asked in a strangled voice.

  Dammit! I fixed up the holes in my mental wall.

  He was still laughing quietly when he put his mouth on me again.

  And so it went, on and off, on and off, in excruciating sensual torture until I was so high-strung with desperate, unfulfilled desire, it was a miracle I didn’t simply snap like an overdrawn rope.

  “Pleeeeeeeease,” I wheezed, sweat slicking my skin.

  “It’s up to you, love,” was his pragmatic, unyielding answer. “You know you can do it.”

  “I hate you,” I murmured as I clenched my hand in his hair and pulled him closer.

  A husky laugh against my intimate flesh. “No, you don’t.”

  Ugh.

  Checking the wall in frustration, a cursory, instinctive pat-down of my defenses, I let myself fall into that place of mounting arousal, with the single-minded focus of getting the fuck off.

  If th
is wall fell down again, I would commit a bloodbath.

  “There now,” Azazel purred against my mound as I writhed underneath his skillful tongue. “You’re doing great.”

  God, I needed relief as bad as a junkie did their next fix.

  He kept nipping and lapping at me, and I gasped—he hadn’t caught that thought!

  Yessss. The wall held. It held, it held, it held—

  He grazed my clit with his teeth and sucked.

  I came with a scream. The orgasm razed me down to my foundations, a violent force of long-awaited pleasure. So sweet, so torturous, so charged that it veered into pain—which only hurled me further into bliss. Convulsions rattled my body, and I would have crumpled down the ladder had he not held my hips in place.

  Spots of light danced in my vision, and I barely noticed as he turned me around, one arm slung around my waist and cushioning me against the ladder. His lips on my neck, his chest pressing into my back. He’d climbed up, was now right behind me, caging me in against the ladder.

  “You’re not quite boneless yet,” he murmured into my ear. “Let me remedy that.”

  “I think I’m boneless enough.” My voice was hoarse. “I’m practically a chicken nugget.”

  “If you can still speak, I haven’t done my job.”

  His free hand slid down to my jeans, popped open the button. The zipper followed suit. I shivered under the caress of his mouth on my neck as he grabbed the waistband and pulled both jeans and panties down to my knees in one skilled move. The raw carnality of that act only rekindled my lust, and despite my semi-boneless state, I managed to push my hips back—right up to the hard length of his own arousal, still trapped behind his pants.

  Biting my lip, I rubbed against it. The hiss it elicited from him was the sweetest reward.

  He drew back a little, and I felt his hand between us. A few quick, efficient moves, and then he pressed against me again, this time skin to skin at our hips. I gasped at the feel of his cock against my butt, fresh desire pooling in my core.

  The fingers of his free hand slid between my thighs—slick with my arousal—right up to my entrance, dipped inside me. I moaned and let my head fall back against his shoulder. He pumped in and out for a few heartbeats, his breath hot on my jaw, before he withdrew his hand. Grasping his cock, he positioned it between my thighs, right where my legs met my butt, and spread me as much as possible with the jeans still tangled around my knees.