Hellishly Ever After (Infernal Covenant Book 1)

by Nadine Mutas

  “Okay, but seriously,” I said with a grin. “Cherub? You have to admit that’s funny.”

  He scoffed. “The term has been around much longer than the human artistic misinterpretation of it. It’s the third-highest order among angels and demons.”

  “What’s the highest?”

  “Archangels and archdemons. Below them are seraphim, and below them the cherubim.”

  Interesting that demons would keep the same terms for their hierarchy in Hell as angels did in Heaven. Perhaps some unconscious form of trying to retain a sense of legitimacy among them.

  And thinking of angels…another thing occurred to me. I pursed my lips and slowly said, “So your mother got pregnant with you before Azrael fell…”

  He paused in washing my legs, his tone carefully neutral. “That’s correct.”

  “Does that mean,” I said, a grin building on my face, “what I think it means?”

  “Zoe.” A low growl.

  The grin made a full appearance. “It does!”

  I gasped, wanted to turn around to see his expression, but his arm around my middle tightened, holding me in place. His energy pulsed over my skin, dark and zinging, but without the bite of real anger. If anything, it felt petulantly annoyed.

  I craned my neck to peek at his face. He gave me some major side-eye, but the glint in his eyes spurred me on.

  “You,” I breathed, holding his gaze with a shit-eating grin, “are half angel!”

  He narrowed his eyes, but the twitch of his lips gave him away. “Don’t ever say that again.”

  “Do you have a halo?”

  “Stop insulting me.”

  “A flaming sword?”

  He raised a brow. “Do I need to reacquaint you with my sword? It’s not flaming, but then again, if it were, I should probably get medical attention for that.”

  I giggled and set out to turn around, fully intending to needle him further, when he bit my neck and clasped me tight, keeping me in place. I shrieked at the sudden move, tingles coursing down my body, and when he playfully nipped up and down my neck and shoulder, tickling the sensitive part behind my ear, I completely lost it.

  “Stop it, angel!” I cried out with a flare of theatrics, the sincerity of which was sadly undermined by my recurring giggles.

  He kept nibbling at my neck, snarling against my skin, and single-mindedly tickling the treacherous spot that made me dissolve into fits of squeaky giggling.

  “How very unholy!” I squealed, now laughing outright, and thrashed in his grasp.

  His chest shook behind me, his growls underlaid by low chuckles that did fuzzy things to my stomach. Something fluttered in my chest, a strange lightness, filling me with bubbles of warmth. I liked his laugh.

  And I liked it even more that I brought it out of him.

  “I’m not finished washing you,” he now purred against my ear.

  “Oh?”

  The energy in the air shifted as Azazel dipped the washcloth between my legs...and there was simply no way that touch would stay non-arousing. I would have had to be comatose in order not to respond.

  “Um,” I got out a tad breathless, wiggling under the sudden onslaught of sensation, “actually, you shouldn’t use soap—” I gasped “—there.”

  “Is that so?” The innocent-sounding question contrasted with his targeted moves between my thighs.

  “Just water,” I wheezed.

  “Hm.” He dropped the washcloth in favor of using his fingers directly. “I agree.” He parted my folds, stroked along rapidly sensitizing skin. “This is better.”

  Panting, I arched my back, and he held me still with his other arm slung around my waist as he continued to caress me with merciless patience. His large frame caged me as effectively as if I were lying underneath him, his strong thighs on either side of me, the massive wall of power that was his chest at my back.

  I let my head fall back onto his shoulder, and he pressed hot kisses against my ear, my neck, my cheek. The water sloshed as I writhed, scissoring my legs helplessly at the desire coiling ever tighter in my core.

  “Azazel,” I moaned, and brought up my arm, my fingers curling into his hair.

  He made a low sound of approval and pulled me even closer. “I could listen to this all day.” He slid two fingers inside me, pumped in and out with increasing speed. “My name on your lips as I make you come.”

  “Yes.” I bucked into his touch, riding his hand with shameless abandon. “Please.”

  “Again,” he murmured into my ear.

  I obliged, saying his name, over and over, until it turned into a keening cry of pleasure as my climax rolled through me. He wrung every last drop of ecstasy from me, then petted me down with exquisite care.

  Catching my breath, I tilted my head and sought his mouth. The kiss was surprisingly tender, a thing of fragile beauty and quiet affection, pulling at something soft and neglected inside me. Our breaths mingled in the steamy air, and I half-turned in his embrace. My hip brushed over his hard length, and I bit my lip, my hand already halfway toward grasping his cock when he caught my wrist.

  “In my bed,” he said roughly. “I want you in my bed.”

  He rose and pulled me up with him. The water splashed as we stepped out, the light of the candles dancing over the raw masculine beauty of his honed body as he grabbed a towel and rubbed me dry with lightning in his eyes. The intensity of his focus made me shiver.

  With quick, unassuming efficiency, he toweled himself off too, and the next second he’d hefted me up and was already carrying me out of the bathroom, through my room and into his own. He laid me down on the mattress with unexpected gentleness, given the tension humming in his energy. As if I were something precious, delicate, and his hunger for me in need of tempering lest he break me.

  Well, now, I had no intention of tempering anything, least of all him.

  When he set a knee on the mattress and started for me, I lifted one leg and stopped him with a tap of my foot against his chest.

  He raised a brow in a question.

  “Lie down,” I said.

  Narrowing his eyes, he paused.

  “So suspicious,” I muttered, curling and flexing my toes against his pecs in the hint of a caress. “One might think you don’t want my tongue on you.”

  His gaze heated, one corner of his mouth tipping up. “No flying necessary?”

  “Not this time.”

  He sprawled on his back, arms crossed behind his head, one leg bent...displaying the full splendor of his package without a touch of modesty. Lips twitching, I crawled over to him.

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” I warned, “or I’ll stop.”

  His eyes flared. “A challenge?”

  “You have a way of...distracting me.” I leaned over his chest and placed a kiss on his heartbeat. “But I want to explore you.” Another kiss, this one on the hard muscle where his neck met his shoulder. “And you’ll let me.”

  “I’ll let you?” His voice was a low rumble.

  “Mhm.” My mouth on his throat, his pulse jumping against my lips. “Because I think, for once, you’d like to let me do the pleasuring.”

  “Hm.” He watched me with hooded eyes as I straddled him without sitting down.

  “And I think,” I murmured, leaning down to brush my lips over his, “you’re curious and want to see what I’ll do when you give me free rein.”

  If he gave me free rein. The jury was still out on that one, judging by the glint of feral hunger in his gaze. Everything I knew about him said taking and maintaining control in all aspects of his life was as intrinsic to his nature as breathing. To lie there and keep his paws off me while I took my sweet time to lick every inch of him would be akin to torture for him.

  I so couldn’t wait.

  Keenly aware that his restraint might snap at any second, in which case I’d be flat underneath him with him buried deep inside me in the blink of an eye, I kissed his jaw, licked down his throat to the hollow between his collarbones. Th
e muscles in his throat worked as I let my lips glide over his skin, his power a prickling charge pressing against me. A thousand tiny taps of his energy on my body made me gasp with my mouth over his heartbeat.

  “I said no touching.” I cast him an arch look.

  “No, you said to keep my hands to myself.” His expression was all feigned innocence as he wiggled his fingers where his hands rested on the pillow above his head. “This is me with my hands to myself.”

  Devious demon.

  Narrowing my eyes at him, I kissed his left pec, licked around his nipple—and lightly bit it.

  His power washed over me in a wave of electric sparks. The bed rattled.

  Insanely pleased at his reaction, I trailed more kisses down his chest, let my lips and tongue explore the dips and ridges of his muscled torso. So close to his skin, his alluring scent filled my nose—bonfire and dark spices, mixed with the lighter fragrance of the bath soap, and aromatic heat that was purely Azazel. Hmm. I hummed against his skin, delighting in his taste.

  Scooting down, I followed the thin trail of dark hair down over his abdomen, making sure to plant a kiss each on those two muscled lines on his hips that formed an arrow to his groin. My loose hair might have brushed over his hard cock straining for attention.

  Fire crackled in the air. When I looked up, the expression on his face was so carnal, it made my stomach flutter and my inner muscles clench.

  Desire was a liquid lure as I finally directed my focus to the enormous erection jutting up from among close-cropped hair. As with the first time I’d seen his cock that day he’d stripped in front of me before taking a shower, the raw, erotic sight of it made lust pool in my core. I licked my lips, pressed my thighs together, anticipation a thrill in my blood.

  Reaching out, I let my fingers lightly dance over the silken skin stretched taut over steel. His dick jumped at my touch, and I grasped it, unable to wrap my fingers fully around its girth. My hair fell around my head like a dark curtain as I leaned forward and licked along the line from the base to the top, the tip of my tongue lapping up the bead of precum that had appeared.

  Power pulsed in the room.

  The muscles in his thighs tightened, and his hips jerked ever so slightly, as if he’d barely kept himself from thrusting into my mouth. I sent him a knowing glance, a small smile on my lips as I flicked my tongue around the broad head and teased the sensitive front.

  A whisper of hot energy along my inner thighs, like molten honey poured onto my skin, moving up toward my intimate flesh. I jolted, stopped, and glared at him.

  “I am not technically touching you,” he murmured, a sly smirk curving his mouth. He waved his hand. “Do go on.”

  Shooting him another glower, I leaned down again, took him into my mouth in one quick move and sucked.

  Flames rolled out from his body and danced over the sheets.

  I reared back, heart thudding, but he’d already extinguished the fire.

  Eyes sparking with lightning, he gave me an unrepentant grin and crooked his finger. “Proceed.”

  “You are so cocky,” I muttered.

  “Fully justified.” He gestured at the length of his undeniably swoon-worthy body.

  I rolled my eyes, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. Bending down again, I closed my mouth over his dick and swirled my tongue around the head while I sucked.

  A sound that was half groan, half growl escaped him, his hips bucking up. The phantom touch of his energy returned to my inner thighs, licks of heat coming ever closer to my folds. I gasped against his shaft as his power pushed and pulled on the lust-swollen flesh between my legs, an energetic imitation of the sensual havoc his mouth could wreak on me.

  “Azazel,” I ground out, my voice somewhere between snarling and moaning.

  The look on his face was distinctly feline in its smugness. “Hearing you moan my name while you have my cock in your mouth,” he purred. “The ultimate delight.”

  “You’re insuffera—” The sentence ended in a helpless cry of pleasure as his energy locked onto my clit and pulsed in a rapid-fire rhythm. Not unlike… I sucked in a breath. “Did you study my vibrator’s settings?”

  He wagged his brows once, his smile dripping with masculine arrogance. “You still have some exploring to do.” His cock twitched against my jaw to underscore his point.

  Oh, you cheeky—

  I narrowed my eyes and proceeded to dole out some sensual torture of my own. Or tried to. It was increasingly difficult to focus on sucking him to within an inch of madness when his unrelenting energy play between my thighs drove my own arousal to the point I was ready to hump his leg right then and there.

  Gasping, I released his cock with a wet plop and closed my eyes for a second. “Fuck this,” I growled, crawled up his body, grasped his length and slid down on it.

  His throaty laughter almost drowned out my moan. Pleasure sparked all along my nerve endings, rushed through my blood and burst in my mind as his girth stretched me just on the right side of painful. Filled. I was so deliciously filled. Savoring the incredible sensation, I threw my head back and closed my eyes.

  “Still want me to keep my hands to myself?” His voice was an erotic thrum, his power licking over my skin.

  “Hell no.”

  A pleased growl. “Good answer.”

  His hands were on my breasts the next second, and I arched into his touch. Squeezing and massaging, he lavished his attention on my curves as I started riding him, sliding up and down his cock. I tilted my hips on the downward glide to hit the spot just so. My fingers curled into his chest. Pleasure built in my core, my breathing turning ragged.

  His mouth on my breast, teeth closing on my nipple. Electric heat licked right over my clit. I grabbed his neck, desperate for purchase in the storm that hovered, ready to sweep me away. His energy wrapped around me, suffused me, until I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began.

  This. I’d needed this. To lose myself in him. Feel my desire mirrored in his own, consume him as he consumed me.

  “Azazel,” I whispered hoarsely, my hands in his hair, my mouth seeking his.

  “Here,” he murmured against my lips. “I’m right here.”

  He met my kiss with fissures in his composure, letting me see, feel, taste the naked, raw, unbridled need within him. For me.

  Me.

  My breath shuddered, something hard inside me cracking open.

  His fingers tangled in my hair, pulled my head back to expose my throat, and then his teeth were on my neck, the sharp prick of his fangs teasing the skin over my racing pulse as he bucked to meet my hips in a rhythm of primal urgency.

  He uttered a word, half feral and choked with the kind of need that shook me to my core, and it took me a moment to understand what he’d rasped. “Zoe.”

  I shattered. A crescendo of bliss and deep, open vulnerability wrapped in pleasure, and when he followed me right over the edge, his wings erupted from his back with a deafening whoosh, the flame-licked onyx enveloping us both.

  When I woke up what felt like hours later, I blinked against the semi-darkness, expecting to see the faint outline of my own room. Much like the first night I’d spent with Azazel, I fell asleep right in his arms, and I fully expected he’d later deposited me back in my own bed, as he’d done before.

  Not this time.

  His scent wrapping around me like a sensual blanket, Azazel lay behind me, my back to his chest, his skin against mine the sweetest brand. The silken sheet covering me and him was so incongruously warm and heavy, like a weighted, heated blanket. I sighed, snuggled further into him, and pulled the sheet more snugly around me—and stilled.

  “Try not to dislocate my wing,” came Azazel’s sleepy murmur.

  My eyes shot wide. Flexing my fingers against the silky brush of feathers, I uttered a muffled squeak and yanked my hand back. “Sorry!”

  He harrumphed and shook out his wing, then settled it over me again. “You’re wiggly.”

  “I can a
lways go sleep in my own bed.”

  With a sound I liked to interpret as a contemplative growl, he snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me closer. Splaying his hand possessively over one of my breasts, he squeezed. “No.”

  I pressed my thighs together against the tingle of arousal and smiled into the darkness.

  Chapter 17

  “So today went better,” Azmodea said, her voice muffled.

  I turned my head to look over to where she lay face-down on the table, her auburn hair spilling out over the towel as the female demon massaged her exposed back.

  I scoffed. “Because I only died twenty times instead of thirty?”

  “It’s an improvement.”

  Yeah, right.

  The second female demon was currently kneading my calves, and I flinched with each deep tissue stroke. Practice today had left my muscles particularly sore.

  I still didn’t know how Azazel managed to convince me to start combat training. I dimly remembered it might have something to do with a promise made under sensual torture involving wicked fingers and a skillful tongue.

  A promise I regretted every day since.

  There was a reason I’d never joined any competitive sports. I hated any form of ball games, mostly because my face seemed to attract said balls like an industrial strength magnet yanked metal close. I didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the times I came home from school with a tissue stuck in my nose because a dodgeball/volleyball/soccer or insert-any-sport-with-a-head-sized-ball had hit me square in the face and made me snort blood.

  I didn’t fare any better in gymnastics, track and field, or any of the other athletic activities. It was like my DNA was deeply suspicious of all forms of organized sports. Perplexingly, that reasonable explanation did not win over any of my PE teachers.

  The only exercise I’d ever been halfway decent at was yoga, thanks to which I was nicely flexible. Pity that fact didn’t help me all that much when it came to fighting. I still landed flat on my ass more times than not, even when I was sparring with someone who pulled all their punches, like Caleb.