by Sam Cheever
He shrugged, “I think I’m gonna like being an angel. It’s very peaceful up there and I have my own office.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “Do you have an assignment yet?”
He nodded, “Black magic monitoring and management.”
“BMM&M? Sounds kinky.”
Raoul grinned, lifting his wings. “Let’s keep in touch, Astra.”
“Absolutely.” I was proud of myself that my voice barely cracked. I watched my friend carefully test his wings, lifting off the altar a few feet and hanging there until he got a feel for how they worked. I was reminded of Glynus and her first fledgling attempts to fly.
Two members of the celestial army appeared, one on either side of Raoul and guided him upward, breaking the fragile strings that held him to Earth and setting him free to pursue his next life above.
I sighed. I would miss him as a human. But I knew he’d make an awesome angel.
A small popping noise announced the arrival of Glynus. I looked up and found her hovering like an old pro on wings that now looked to be a couple of feet longer. She grinned down at me. “Cheeit?”
I laughed, joined by the group around me. I held a hand out to her, encouraging her to come into my lap. “You can say that again, tadpole.”
“Cheeit?”
We laughed again.
“You’re a terrible mother, Astra.” Darma said, shaking her head. At least she was smiling when she said it.
“Hey, I’m teaching her to be spunky. That’s not a terrible thing.”
I heard a snort behind me and turned to see Flick walking up. “She doesn’t need you to teach her spunk, Astra. When she sets her little dragon mind to something there’s no stopping her.”
“Yeah, I noticed you had trouble holding onto her.”
He shrugged, grinning. “What can I say? It appears she’s a chip off the old halfling block, she has her own opinions and doesn’t listen to anyone. Just like you.”
Glynus hopped up and down on my lap and then leaned toward me, setting her snout on my forehead.
Immediately a picture of dragons, both red and black, flying free in the skies above the Earth filled my mind. Then Zerphor’s beautiful, rich voice overlaid the pleasant visual. You’ve done well, dragon fighter.
I did a mental shrug. I didn’t do it alone. I had lots of help from my friends, including Princess Glynus.
Yes, responded Zerphor with a sigh, she is indeed an exceptional child. I think you two will do well together.
Are you sure you want me to raise her? She can fly free in the world of man now, without worrying about the twisted veil.
Zerphor nodded in my mind. She must learn to live among men so that she can teach the next generation of Blacks. It is set into prophecy and must be so. She smiled. Besides, she is a very difficult child and I think it would be good for you to spend time with her.
Gee thanks! I laughed.
You are very welcome, dragon fighter. Now, if you will excuse me, Quince awaits. Immediately a picture filled my head that, if I’d had anything at all to eat would have brought it right back up. Bent and broken gargoyle toes! Stop, please!
Zerphor laughed. Why do you shudder so? Love is a wonderful thing.
Yeah, normal love but two lizards doing it is not exactly my thing.
We are not lizards and we are far more graceful at love then you human shaped creatures.
How would you know?
I have friends in fairy land.
A chill ran down my spine, You watched!
Her musical laughter was her only response. Until we meet again, dragon fighter. Stay safe.
~SC~
The Red Knight swept cleanly over the city, dipping smartly between the tall glass and chrome arrows that pierced the Angel City skyline. I sat back smugly in the driver’s seat, calling out direction and speed changes like a mad woman.
Emo’s face in the passenger seat was slightly pale and I thought I could see a sheen of sweat on his golden brow. “Do you know how close we came to that last building, Astra?”
I just laughed and sent the Knight hurtling at a ridiculous speed toward the next tall building in the line. At the last second I told her to pull up and we skimmed along the building, in a parallel fashion, toward the clear blue sky above.
I looked out the view port and saw Glynus, gliding alongside us like a small, black arrow, her now sizable wings folded neatly back and her sweet face grinning.
Laughing, I put my fist against the glass. Glynus reached out a wing and tapped the other side of the view port.
Emo gasped like a dying man in the passenger seat.
When we finally leveled out he took a deep breath and forcibly unclenched his fingers from the seat arms. “You’re teaching that dragon to be reckless, Astra.”
I watched said dragon do a flawless loop de loop around an air booger in the sky below us and grinned. “Yeah, I probably should rein her in a bit. But she’s gonna be a queen someday Emo. She needs to be feisty and strong and even a bit willful.”
He frowned as the air booger blasted its unmanly sounding horn and surged away, leaving Glynus to do a little dance upon the air behind it. I slid the Red Knight up beside her. Time to go home, tadpole.
But I’m having fun.
I tried to keep a neutral expression as I gave her the bad news. You have your lessons with Auntie Myra.
Glynus frowned. Bleurgh! She’s bad tempered and stern.
I coughed to hide my smile. Yes, but she’s teaching you how to lead your people. It must be done. And besides...it sux to be you.
Yes, mother halfling. Glynus grinned at me through the view port and then dipped her head in the manner I’d come to recognize as acquiescence. It was very regal and I realized my little dragon was quickly growing up. It made me kind of sad.
I deposited Glynus at my father’s house so she could spend the next couple of hours being tortured by Myra. Dropping a very relieved Emo back at the office, I headed out to meet with a new client who’d contacted me the night before and asked for a meet.
He’d indicated that he had a demon which needed to be exterminated and asked if I could do it on the spot. I assured him that I could. Which was when he’d asked me, in a decidedly high pitched and not very manly voice, if I was sure I could do it because it was a very BIG demon.
I sighed, thinking of the constant stupidity that I had to put up with. Of course I could vanquish one simple demon. I’d saved the world at least three times. I might be small, but everybody always underestimated the power of little woman syndrome.
I programmed the coordinates the new client had given me into the Red Knight’s directional system. Moments later, when the Knight announced that I’d reached the destination I realized it couldn’t be right. We hovered above the ground, looking at a bunch of grass and trees. There were no buildings or signs of habitation to be seen for miles around.
Finally I shrugged, set the Knight at hover, and climbed out.
Glancing around, I decided my new client hadn’t arrived yet. So I engaged the locks on the Knight and sent it skyward with a verbal command. I grinned as the sleek red air vehicle slid upward on nearly silent wings of air.
I still missed the Viper. I probably always would. But the sleek Red Knight was doing a good job of taking some of that pain away.
After a few minutes of silence I called out, “Mx. Specter?”
I heard a small pop behind me and turned to find a low slung, extremely comfortable looking divan slouching in a spot where before there’d been only grass. Frowning, I turned toward the divan, my senses going on full alert.
“Mx. Specter? Show yourself right now or I’m leaving.”
Suddenly I was on my back on the divan, totally starkers. A long, hard body pressed into mine in the most delicious places. At least...I felt a long hard body pressing into mine...but my eyes saw nothing except the sky above and the shading branches of the tree overhead. “Hey!” I tried to push my invisible assailant away but the soft brus
h of silky, heated lips caressed mine and then touched my cheek, my chin, and moved down my throat, leaving a delicious tingling behind.
I gasped as my phantom lover tilted his hips to show me just how much he liked me and my body started to respond. With a start, I recognized the scent and feel of my lover from another time, another place, another mystery moment in my life.
I closed my eyes as phantom fingers slid down my neck and started making soft circles around my nipples. The feel of a hot, soft mouth closing over the newly energized peak brought my hips arching off the divan.
Heat pooled in my pleasure center and my belly tightened as the decadent touch slid to the other nipple and repeated its mind-melting attentions there. All the while silky, warm lips caressed my face and talented fingers danced across the juncture between my legs with a teasing touch.
It was like making love with three men at once.
My eyes flew open. “Wait a minute...” I tried to push my assailant away again, to no affect. The sensual assault continued without even the slightest break in the action.
The silky heat of spectral lips moved from my nipples and down my belly, accompanied by the feel of strong fingers sliding along my quivering sides. The mouth stopped to nibble my belly, creating throbbing need that made me throw my knees wide in invitation.
My body surrendered under the combined assault on all of my pleasure zones at once, even while my mind screamed at me that I was a hopeless slut monkey.
I didn’t care anymore.
I’d been there before.
I’d be there again.
It was a nice place to be.
As the phantom mouth and fingers brought the lower half of my body into a quivering mass of desire, soft kisses continued to rain down on my face, neck and breasts. Moist heat nipped and sucked. And gentle fingers created trails of tingling sensation wherever they touched.
The sensual onslaught was overwhelming.
And wonderful.
I closed my eyes and willed a different spectral part to come into play. I moaned and writhed under the ghostly ministrations and opened my legs wider, wrapping them around my invisible lover in hopeful anticipation.
A soft, knowing chuckle tickled my sensation ravaged skin, causing me to shiver in expectation.
And then I felt it.
Something thick, hard and wonderful pressed insistently at my throbbing entrance. I tightened my thighs and pulled him in, throwing back my head and screaming as the delicate scrape of hard skin over sensitized flesh plunged me over that first peak into mindless pleasure.
I panted as the orgasm drew on and on and, impossibly, on until I thought I’d lose my mind in the physical sensation of release. The phantom flesh within me grew and stretched and brushed against my nerve-drenched flesh wondrously, skillfully. Moving slowly and gently at first and then plunging into energetic movement, driving deeply here and then hovering at the outside edge of my welcoming flesh there. Pushing me inexorably toward another incredible release.
Sensation built upon sensation.
Feeling layered over feeling.
Until my phantom lover built the tempo into something that couldn’t be resisted. Until he plunged deep and hit hard at the tiny center of my throbbing pleasure. I reached the beautiful end note and tipped over into a crescendo of release. Screaming wildly, without conscious thought, I moaned his name, over and over, in the throes of the most incredible pleasure. I writhed my release under the heated, spectral flesh of my invisible lover.
My ghostly lover stopped moving, still dangling on the razor edge of his own release. I could feel his spectral flesh quivering in anticipation and I opened my eyes, only to find myself looking into a pair of beautiful, almond shaped blue eyes. The impossibly handsome face that hovered over mine was framed by a silky sweep of blue-black hair, which tickled my face and shoulders and smelled of sunshine and sensual things.
“Dialle.” My smile met his and a stab of something almost physical made my heart pause and my stomach flip.
“My princess.”
My grin widened “Don’t call me that.”
“But I must.”
I shook my head. “Don’t call me anything right now. In fact,” I nipped playfully at the beautifully sculpted chin, dipping my tongue into the sexy dimple there, “don’t talk at all. You have important work to do.”
“That is true, I do.”
And then his dark head bent happily to its task. And his golden body started moving wonderfully within mine.
And everything I’d suffered up to that point—all the pain, all the frustration and every thought that I wasn’t good enough to do what needed to be done—was gone as my body reached for his and drew him in. We immersed ourselves in the age old dance of love, leaving everything, and everyone, else behind as we started the important work of building a future together.
The End
I hope you enjoyed Bedeviled & Beleaguered. But wait, you’re not done! Here’s a taste of Book 4 in the Bedeviled & Beyond series, Bedeviled & Belittled!
PROLOGUE
Milestones and Millstones
The Devil you know will comfort bring, though chaos be your friend,
The Devil you wish mayn’t solve a thing, and slay you in the end.
Sometime around 2060, the world went to war again and opened up a whole new can of worms. Up until then humans thought they had it pretty rough on this Earth, with poverty, crime, disease, your everyday evil forces and the general disintegration of morality.
However when the laser guns and plasma bombs finished smashing a geographic area comprising about seventy percent of the surface of the Earth into smithereens, something eminently evil used the resulting chaos to slither its way into the world. This evil something hadn’t been seen before by human eyes, but had always been there, in a parallel dimension, watching the show and waiting for its turn to join in the fun. And every once in a while, when Earth’s defenses were particularly low, this something would reach across that barrier and tweak us a little. Which explains things like mosquitoes, liver and onions, and reality shows.
Devils and demons were never meant to walk among us. But once they’d found a way to get through, God had no choice but to send his angels in to keep an eye on them. Several minor skirmishes have already been fought between the forces of good and evil, since that time thirty years ago when the first devil snuck through Earth’s defenses. The angels, with the Big Guy at their backs, are winning the battles so far, but the outcome of the war is still uncertain.
About ten years ago God started using halflings to help the good side out. The only problem with halflings is that, by our very make-up we are some portion devil. That’s why we understand and know how to defeat the forces of evil. But it is also what has made us a little bit unpredictable to the good guys.
What exactly is a halfling you ask? A halfling is a non-human. We have neither wings nor horns, but generally have both angel and devil in our family forests. Which is probably why we enjoy a higher sensitivity to spectral influence than regular human people.
My name is Astra Q Phelps. Don’t ask me what the Q stands for because that little piece of info will go with me to the crematorium. I’ve had all printed documentation of the name destroyed and, though a lot of my enemies have tried to dig it out, no one will ever know what it stands for. A girl has to have some secrets. Especially when the truth would cause her some serious embarrassment.
I run a business called the Angel Network, which is the only devil and demon locating and destroying business in the universe. In other words, I kick serious evil butt for a living. I am a halfling.
Recently, the Celestial Army has been keeping me pretty busy saving the world. Over and over and over and...well, you get what I’m saying. The human world just has trouble staying saved.
I’ve also been dealing with some pretty intense feelings for a certain gorgeous Royal Devil, who is most likely the great unifier of prophecy. It’s been a busy and confusing time. But it’s abou
t to get much worse.
My twenty-fifth birthday is just a few months away.
The thing about that twenty-fifth birthday is...well...for halflings it’s kind of make or break time. It’s called our Settling and it’s the culmination of our growth period. The time when we become what we will be in life. It’s also the time when the dark side of our nature has the greatest pull.
It is on our twenty-fifth birthday that we decide which way we’re going to go. Good or bad. Black or white. Gray usually isn’t an option. And outside influences have a lot to do with the outcome. In my case, my influence pool is decidedly murky, given the fact that I hang out a lot with devils.
Really hot devils.
Extremely sexy devils.
Truly, stupendously, ripped, horny, sensual devils.
Incredibly...um...okay, you get it.
Right. Crossing my legs...
Anyway, as the fateful date approaches, I can feel the changes boiling just under the surface of my mind.
My skin quivers with it.
My body heats.
And my libido...well...let’s just say my boyfriend’s threatening to go off planet just to get some much needed rest.
Of course he doesn’t mean it.
At least I don’t think he does...
CHAPTER ONE
Crowned!
Our randy miss doth pitch a fit, o’re an audience of red,
But in the end she’ll welcome it, to warm her lover’s bed.
“Tell me again why we have to have sex in front of twelve hundred people?”
Dialle sighed, tugging on a stray lock of my auburn hair. “Not people, Astra. Devils.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Answer the question.”
His full, soft lips dropped to within a single, steamy breath of mine. “Don’t you want to have sex with me?”
I sucked in his essence and my knees wobbled, my happy place clenched with desire, and my heart started to do the rumba in my chest. I licked my lips. “That’s not pertinent.”
His lips touched mine, a feather-soft kiss that stole air from my lungs and filled my sexy thong with moisture. “It’s extremely pertinent, my queen.”
