by JL Weil
Dully, Alastair stared as his razor-sharp nails with keen interest. “I might, but I’m suddenly not in a sharing mood. Being banned from this prosperous domain has spurned my goodwill,” he added.
Damn theatrical demons. “You’re rotten to the bitter core,” I seethed, fully intending to give Daddy-o a lesson in humility and a good ass whooping.
A satisfied smile curled his lips. “You are most definitely my son. If there was ever a doubt surrounding your parentage, your own wickedness proves just how related we are.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I demanded between clenched teeth. This was it—his last bygone chance.
Gaze fixed on Angel, he said, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
With ultra-bright eyes, I slammed my foot down, causing a fissure to roll through the ground. The crack split the earth between his legs in a jagged pattern, and his attention was no longer centered on Angel.
He crooked his finger at me, the only invitation I needed. “Let’s party.”
“About time.” I was off my feet, flying forward through the air. I hit Alastair in the side, the impact rocking my entire body, snapping my head back. Darts of sharp pain splintered down my spine. I blinked, trying to clear my rattled vision.
Criminy. That hurt. It was like running into a stone wall.
My insides felt rattled and rearranged, but there was no time to dwell on my injuries. Static crackled down my body. Energy burst toward me in tumultuous waves, smacking me in the chest. It threw me back four or five feet, just barely missing a fallen log. My anger catapulted. Lifting my head, I cauterized him with shimmering amber eyes. I picked up the log, tossing it like a spear straight for his jugular. It flew through the air. Alastair moved to the right, but the asshole wasn’t fast enough. Although I didn’t hit my desired mark, I did hit him. The chuck of wood socked him on the side of his arm causing him to stagger.
Yeah, this was going to be epic.
I pounced.
The jarring clash brought us both to the ground in a thundering tremble, but the impact didn’t break our fall. We rolled and rolled. My brain stopped working at level speeds, not that it really ever did, and hustled. I pulled back my fist and gathered strength, preparing to blast this pain in my ass into next week, except Alastair was doing something to me.
He was searing from the inside out. Open palmed, he sent a blast of heat that magnified in intensity the longer it pressed against my skin. Light exploded up my arm, trailing up the network of veins, glowing in red. The smell of burnt flesh and fresh cut grass clogged my nostrils, and the gross part was, it was my flesh.
“Chase!” Angel screamed, followed by one of my own. “Alastair, stand down. Now! I command it.”
They were the words I needed to break free from Alastair’s fiery hold. Jamming my knee into the frozen demon’s chest, I cocked my head. A muscle in my jaw flexed. “She’s pretty handy to have around. Now, I think you owe us an explanation.”
My icy fingers wrapped around his throat. Lowering his head, he said, “Once you know something, you can’t un-know it.”
I squeezed his esophagus. “Christ, spit it out already!” I yelled.
“You already know,” he wheezed.
The realization was like being hit with frigid air, and the blood in my veins turned blue. “She is becoming like me, part demon, isn’t she?”
“Give that man a gold star. Didn’t anyone tell you the consequences? You have defied the natural order of humans more times than I can count. But Angel isn’t just like you. The power you got from my blood and my genes is, dare I say, kickass. Your strength, your speed, and your cunning are what make you the best. But Angel here, her bond to you because of me, therefore to Hell makes her more than just part demon. She has the ability to live within both realms, and the changes she is feeling are from her body adjusting to the environment of the underworld. Climate control isn’t her only concern. There is an entire army at her fingertips. All she has to do is crook her tiny finger and they will come to her defense. Including you.”
Fan-freaking-tastic. My girlfriend is queen of the damned.
I asked the same question I’d asked Professor Rivers—the same question that had been running wild in my head. “How do I stop it?”
The laugh he let out was haunting and ludicrous. “You’re joking, right?”
I ground my knee into his ribs. “Does this feel like I’m kidding?”
“It doesn’t matter. My time here—” Without a smidgeon of warning, Pops burst into a thousand pieces. That put a new twist on spontaneous combustion. Leave it to the demon who sired me to go out with a bang. I was sure I had the same WTF look on my face as Angel did. Talk about making an exit.
Kneeling in a pile of ash, I turned to look at Angel. “Tell me you didn’t send him back before we got any real answers from him?”
She shook her head, looking wide-eyed.
“Shit.”
Chapter 18
It was pouring. The sky was dark, dreary, and depressing—a lazy day, which I desperately needed. Angel and I were cooped up inside alone. Fat drops plinked against the shingles and the windowpanes as a boom cracked overhead. Angel jumped. The early fall rain wasn’t cold, but it made the house chilled and dark.
She curled up to me. “We’re totally skipping classes today.”
Oh, thank God. “Afraid to get drenched?” I asked.
“Something like that,” she mumbled.
Now that there was a ninety-nine percent chance that Angel’s body was morphing, I could think of nothing except finding a way to stop it. I didn’t care what everyone else said. They could take their impossibilities and shove them. There had to be a way. What was done could be undone. Giving up on her—on us—wasn’t an option. Now, if only Angel shared my unwavering certainty.
“You can’t hide in here forever,” I said, brushing a soft kiss on the top of her head.
Her gaze dipped. “Why not? It has everything I need. You.”
I smiled, unable to help myself. “Flattery is going to get you nowhere. Plus, I promised your mom I’d behave, and you sleeping in my room every night is making it nearly impossible for me to keep my promise.”
“Since when are you the good guy?” she asked in a way that made my stomach do a funny, twisting thing.
“You want to be naughty?” I murmured, lips brushing against hers. A shiver raced down her spine.
“What I want is coffee.”
I made a face. I did not share Angel’s love for the dark, bitter brew. “I’m sure I can help you find a different kind of buzz.”
A playful smile graced her lips. “Seven-tenths of my body is made up of caffeine. I need to maintain the levels.”
With that said she wiggled out of my arms to the end of the bed and pulled on a neon pink fuzzy sock. Sometime in the middle of the night she had kicked them off, which brought a smirk to my mouth. I bent over the side of the bed, scooping up my T-shirt and tossing it over my head. My eyes trailed her as she scoured the room for her other missing sock.
“Don’t just sit there with that stupid grin on your face. Help me.”
In my mind, it was just a sock, and she looked comical, yet adorable with just one sock on. I pondered a moment, weighing my amusement against her missing sock. It was probably shoved under the bed or lost in the pile of clothes Angel mysteriously left littered on my floor, which totally drove me bonkers.
“I don’t know how I lost it. Nothing happened last night.”
“Trust me, I know. That is part of the problem.”
She rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”
In the end, I dragged my glorious butt out of bed to help her find the damn thing. Huge mistake…for my kneecap.
As I hopped out of bed, I spun around to start my search in the most obvious place. Under the bed. Bending down, my knee smacked into the bed frame. I gave an unholy wince. “Son of a bitc—”
Her laugh cut off my colorful string of cuss words aimed at the bed. I glanced up, glar
ing and hobbling on one foot, lacking the ability to see humor in my throbbing knee bone. I’m sure there was a technical name for it, but the only anatomy I was acquainted with was Angel’s.
She had a glittering, furry ball of pink dangling from her hand. “Found it.”
I let out a long, drawn-out groan.
“Okay. Now I’m ready for coffee,” she said, after yanking on the other sock.
I was ready to kill someone.
Grumbling and complaining, I followed Angel into the kitchen, hoping that maybe she would take pity on me and make me breakfast.
Last night had been pretty screwed up, and when we finally walked through the front door, we were both drained. There is nothing more exhausting than interrogating a demon. They play the worst kind of mind games. Neither of us had been in the mood to talk about the fact that she was… I couldn’t even think it. I wouldn’t expend the energy to think it.
We had collapsed on my bed, and I held her, until I heard the soft, even rhythm of her breathing. I didn’t think about how quiet the house was, or that there weren’t any Lexi giggles or knives being tossed in target practice. Emma had strange habits, including throwing daggers against a wood plank in her room to clear her mind or work through a problem.
Now that I had a second to think about it, I wondered… “Where the hell is everyone?”
Angel shrugged, filling the filter with coffee grounds. “Beats me, but now that you mention it, it is awfully quiet here.”
And that in my house meant T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
I went to pull out my phone only to realize that my basketball shorts didn’t have pockets and I’d left my phone back in my room.
“I know what you’re thinking, Chase, and you are not going to start tracking your cousin’s whereabouts,” she scolded over the gurgling of the coffee machine.
I leaned a hip on the counter, calculating how far it would take me to get to my room and snag my phone before Angel could yell at me. “What makes you think I would do such a thing?”
She shot me a you-better-watch-yourself look.
Amusement sparkled in my eyes, and then it clicked. We. Were. Utterly. Alone. And my mind started to get funny ideas. Wink. Wink.
Finally, the frisky demon inside me sighed, and my steely eyes began to heat.
Angel immediately felt the change. She gulped, unable to break the intense gaze between us. Like the lightning that flashed outside, I was in front of her, cupping her cheeks in my hands and tilting her head back as I lowered mine. Her hands slid down to my hips, pulling me to her, and at the same time I moved us backward, stopping only when her back was pressed up against the cabinets of our kitchen island. With her body flush up to mine, I was thanking Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus not a soul was home. I doubted my housemates would want to know what we were doing on the countertops.
Because we were kissing, well, more than kissing, and there wasn’t a hair of space between us. Her body molded to mine, fitting perfectly everywhere it was important. Her arms slipped up my shoulders, finding their way around my neck, her hands sliding into my hair.
“Caffeine ain’t got nothing on me,” I whispered near her ear, taking the tender lobe between my teeth.
Sooty lashes fanned the tips of her cheeks. “Well, indulging in monkey lust in the kitchen wasn’t exactly on the menu, but…” A saucy grin twisted her lips.
She was a girl after my own heart. How could I possibly refuse her anything, which I could also foresee becoming a problem. Angel was the only person in the world with the power to hurt me. Many demons, hellhounds, and hunters have tried, but it was this beautiful, half-pint girl in front of me who wielded the power to break me. I never in a gazillion years thought I would be capable of giving someone that kind of control over me. The knowledge that I had done that made my heart backflip and my stomach drop at the same time.
Or it could also have been her teeth grazing my lower lip that sent me spiraling.
It took just a kiss for things to spin deliciously from teasing to eager and from sweet to what-if-we-never-see-each-other-again desperate. That was kind of how we operated. The feel of her petal soft skin alone could light up Times Square. It was electrifying. Every touch, every looked magnified—escalated.
Her fingers tightened, fisting in my hair, and my lips parted, allowing a soft sigh from Angel to leak out. “Can’t. Think,” she whispered.
Think?
My brain had shut down at the initial brush of her lips. I’d never really liked berries, but the fruity taste of it on Angel’s lips was enticing. Suddenly, I was starved for the taste, and I knew I would never be able to look at strawberry, raspberry, or blackberry without thinking of Angel.
My fingers tiptoed under her tank top, splaying against her flushed bare skin. And it wasn’t enough—not nearly. I wanted her completely, only her, always her. Dear God, I wanted her right here, right now. “Do you want me to stop?” There was a certain roughness to my voice.
“Not unless you want me to hurt you.” Her legs had wound around my waist, and she tightened them, just in case I didn’t get the message.
I didn’t need a whole lot of convincing since my body and my head were hardly functioning. It was nearly impossible to think past how she tasted, like wild berries, sweet and juicy. After that, I opted for a “show, don’t tell,” seeing as my mouth was busy in deep, drugging kisses.
I hoisted her on the counter, allowing both of us freer access with our hands. Angel wasted not a second, shoving her fingers into the hem of my shorts, clenching and tugging me against her.
A growl erupted from the back of my throat, and my pulse went erratic. Yeah, we were definitely on the same wavelength. Trailing up her shirt, my fingers brushed against lace, her breathing increasing rapidly.
We might live under the same roof, but believe it or not, we hadn’t done the deed since our first. There had been more nights than I could count that we slept in the same bed. Just slept. When Angel and I were intimate, it was beyond epic, steering right into mind-blowing. Twined together as we were, the links went erratic. All barriers were broken and a whoosh of emotions, thoughts, and sensations came rushing to the surface—a turbulent, uncontrollable storm.
There was a sense of urgency between us that neither of us could ignore. With one long sweep of my arm, the counter was clutter free, and her laugh was teasing my ears.
“Here?” she asked.
“Here.”
“What if—”
I pressed a finger to her swollen lips.
With a mischievous glint in her eyes, she took the tip of my finger into her mouth, the slightly rough texture sending my nerve endings into a tizzy. Watching my eyes darken with desire, her pupils became luminous. “The way I figure it, I am doing the world a public service by keeping your lips busy,” she murmured, right before she covered mine in a kiss I never wanted to end.
Our lips got busy. Our hands got busy. And boy did our bodies get busy.
A soft, fluttering moan escaped her. She was turning me into a delectable mess of feelings and emotions that were spinning swiftly out of control. I think I called out her name, or it could have been in my head. I no longer could decipher between the two as my world muddled with all things her.
Loving Angel was the greatest gift. Adventurous. Special. Thrilling. Astonishing. There were more adjectives than I could come up with to describe being in love.
What I wouldn’t give to forget the world, forget the problems what went with it, and bask in the afterglow of being part of Angel. Her heart pounded in perfect time with mine, slowly returning to a human speed. Small beads of perspiration slicked her flushed skin.
“I don’t think I will ever be able to eat in this kitchen again,” she said breathily.
My lips curled in satisfaction. “This is my favorite room.”
She smacked me playfully. “Sometimes I forget that you are a tool, and then you say something like that and I remember.”
“Just keeping the memory alive.”
Sitting up, we both dangled our legs over the side of the cabinet. I handed over her tank top, and she passed me my boxers. It was all very hysterical, us sitting half-naked on top of the kitchen counter. We both burst out laughing, and it felt good. There hadn’t been enough laughter between us lately, with adjusting to our college schedules, me being distracted by my invisible stalker, and Angel with her own personal problems. I needed to change that. Life was short, and I wanted to make Angel laugh every damn day of our lives.
Just like that, reality became a bit sobering. The fun and games were over. If there was going to be a future, we needed to formulate a plan. Stat. “We need to figure out what our next move is,” I said.
The grin on her lips fell, and she blew pieces of tangled hair out of her face. “Move?”
I felt like such a jackass for bringing this up after what we had just done, but I wasn’t willing to waste any more time. “Yeah. How I—I mean, we—are going to stop you from becoming demon matter.”
“Oh. I was thinking more along the lines of going to class. It stopped raining.”
It was so normal hearing how different her mind worked than mine, which fueled a determination to make sure that never changed. Besides being the keystone and being bonded to a half-demon, Angel was the most normal girl I knew. I loved her that way. I never wanted to change her. “We have way more important stuff to deal with.”
She jumped down and went to pour herself a cup of cold coffee. “You don’t continually have to save me, you know. Maybe this time it just is.”
I shook my head. “That’s bullshit. And besides, I like saving your beautiful butt.”
“Hmm.” She pursed her lips over the rim of her “zombies make great pets” mug.
“Angel, this isn’t nothing. You have to take it seriously. I am not going to pretend that nothing is wrong.”
“You are so obstinate. Once you get an idea in your head, you pick at it and scratch it until it bleeds, letting it fester inside of you. That’s so unhealthy.”
“Just one of my many faults.”
