by Jory Strong
Zurael was desperate to couple with her, desperate beyond anything he’d known in centuries of existence. He wanted to lie on top of Aisling and press his mouth to hers. He wanted to share her taste in a deeply carnal kiss. He wanted to feel the slide of her tongue against his and swallow her whimpers as his cock pressed deep inside her channel.
Dangerous, she was so dangerous to him. If he wasn’t careful, she’d possess his soul and command him, even without binding him with the incantation the god had given to his mud creatures.
He lifted his mouth from her lush, wet cunt but didn’t give Aisling time to tempt him into crawling up her body.
Zurael positioned her on her hands and knees. He reveled in the way she went willingly, in the way she spread her thighs and pressed backward, enticing him to penetrate her.
Primitive pleasure surged through him at the sight of her readiness. His cock pulsed and leaked. His balls tightened in warning.
It was a torturous exercise in control to keep from impaling her with one hard thrust. He moaned as he pressed the tip of his penis against her heated opening. He panted and struggled to go slowly.
She was so tight, so hot. The walls of her sheath clung to him, measured him, fought him even as they called for him to go deeper.
“Aisling,” he said, unable to stop himself from leaning over and kissing the delicate line of her spine.
She answered him by thrusting backward, by taking more of his cock and whispering his name. His hips bucked once, twice. It was enough to drive him all the way in, so close to her womb that his seed boiled with the need to escape and flow into her.
Zurael closed his eyes as her internal muscles rippled over his shaft in nearly unbearable ecstasy. His chest heaved with the effort it required to stay still. He wanted to linger in the first moment of being fully inside her. He wanted to capture it and hold on to it forever.
She was exquisite, innocent sensuality and a frailty that hid her strength. She was sweet temptation and deadly fascination.
Except for those moments in the ghostlands when he’d been a shadow in her mind, she was an enigma to him, an unexpected contradiction to long-held beliefs. He shouldn’t want her but he did.
“Please,” she said, moving, drowning his penis in slick arousal, searing him with a heat to rival the molten world that gave birth to the Djinn-flooding him with potent lust and an inescapable need to thrust.
Zurael’s hand slid from her hip to the downy nest of pubic hair. His fingers found her clit.
Her hips jerked with the contact. Her cry matched his as her sheath tightened on him.
“Please,” she said again, and this time he couldn’t resist her plea. He couldn’t fight the desire that ensnared them both.
He pulled his cock almost completely out of her slit and felt a savage pleasure when she cried at its loss, then welcomed it back with a shudder. In and out he thrust, slowly at first, then faster, harder. His reality became the hot, wet fist of her channel. His reason for existence narrowed to pleasing her, to making her scream as orgasm slammed through her, to filling her with his seed in an uncontrollable wash of lust.
When she cried out and her sheath tightened on him, Zurael followed her over the edge. He poured into her, died a little death because of her, and would willingly do it all over again.
Aisling felt sated, protected. Soft waves of pleasure rippled through her. Her cunt continued to spasm and grip Zurael’s still-embedded cock as if it couldn’t bear the emptiness that would come with releasing him.
Her heart warned against getting used to the feel of his strong arms around her and his warm chest at her back. He was temporary-in her life for reasons of his own or because he’d been maneuvered into guarding her. At the moment she was too grateful for his presence, too needy to question it.
The thoughts and memories she’d hoped to keep at bay crowded in. The guilt followed. “Those men died because I was there.”
Zurael’s arms tightened. He shifted position so his cheek touched hers. “They brought death on themselves.”
Aisling shivered when his soft lips found the shell of her ear. His warm breath made her nipples bead. The arm resting under her bent and his palm covered her breast. She whimpered when his other hand stroked her belly before its fingers combed through her pubic down and found her clit.
“You were the only human in the club worth saving,” he whispered.
His hips rocked in a gentle motion, timed to the subtle circle of his palm against her nipple, to the light press and rub of his fingers over her swollen clit, to the decadent hot swirl of his tongue in her ear.
Aisling closed her eyes. She let him chase away her guilt.
She met his thrusts and loved the feel of his hardness filling her, reaching deep inside her. He anchored her in a world where the only thing that mattered was the pleasure they shared, the panting murmured sounds as they climbed, the sharp cries as they found release.
Zurael kissed Aisling’s shoulder as she drifted off to sleep. Tenderness filled him, a deep possessive satisfaction he’d never known before. It lasted until his cheek touched the leather string and his thoughts shifted to the pouch containing the bloodred fetishes and inscribed pentacle.
A cold knot formed in his chest and grew larger when Aisling’s pet climbed onto the bed, its golden eyes boring into his. He worried over how he was going to keep her safe, not only from human and spirit enemies, but from the Djinn.
CHAPTER 6
AISLING woke to find Aziel curled up on her pillow. His eyes opened and held an intelligence far beyond what an ordinary ferret would possess.
He studied her as she studied him. What he read in her face, she could only guess. She thought she saw pleased satisfaction in his, but she couldn’t be sure.
“I wish you would tell me what you know,” she whispered, reaching over to stroke his fur, to scratch behind his ears, knowing even as she made the wish it was in vain. Whatever had brought Aziel into her life and kept him there, it remained a secret she couldn’t unravel even in the ghostlands.
Behind her, Zurael’s even breathing told her he still slept. His arm draped across her waist made her channel spasm and her cunt lips grow flushed and slick as memories crowded in.
She eased over to look at him. His was a beauty found only in the old mythology books, in the art books capturing the works of masters long dead, those whose paintings of angels and ancient gods once hung in fine museums to be viewed by rich and poor alike.
He was otherworldly. Temptation and damnation. A dangerous being tangled in the web of her life. One who might ultimately take her life.
She wanted to touch him, to trace the masculine lips, the firm chin and elegant nose. She wanted to lean in, press her mouth to his, her tongue to his, but didn’t.
Continuing to lie with him might cost Aisling her soul as well as her heart. And though she couldn’t find it in her to regret what had taken place between them the night before, it would be better not to repeat it.
As with Aziel, whatever had brought Zurael into her life remained a secret. But unlike Aziel, whose presence gave her strength, Zurael was a weakness she could ill afford.
Nothing good could come of loving him. She didn’t know whether demons existed before mankind’s evolution or were given life by human belief. But she did know there were dark, terrifying places in the spiritlands that claimed human souls, and she didn’t doubt some of them were ruled by demons-a hell whether it was the one defined by the Church or not.
Reluctantly she eased from the bed and walked softly to the bathroom, needing space, distance, a chance to gain her balance. She wasn’t used to days without the rhythm of chores, without the ebb and flow of voices as the younger children played and quarreled, made up and went about the work necessary to survive.
Her heartbeat stuttered in her chest as she unbraided her hair underneath the showerhead. The images captured in the pool of her blood played out in her mind and threatened her with despair. How was she going to prev
ent the slaughter of her family?
Aisling lifted her face and let the hot water cascade over her and wash her feelings of horror and fear away. She forced her thoughts to revisit Sinners, to consider a course of action that would lead her to whoever was responsible for Ghost.
I’ll start by talking to the gifted around me, she thought as she lathered and rinsed her hair. The number of cars she’d seen in the short time before the sun set the previous day was an indication that those who were supernaturally touched might be set aside from the rest, but they weren’t shunned by Oakland society. Only the wealthy and powerful would arrive in this part of town in automobiles.
Feeling refreshed, confident, she stepped from the shower and dried herself with a towel. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of her wet hair. A sigh marked her memory of the decadent luxury of using a hair dryer after showering at the church.
Movement drew her eye to the bathroom door. Her eyes met Zurael’s in the bathroom mirror and her nipples tightened in response to his nearness, his nakedness.
“Allow me,” he said, holding her gaze, stepping forward to take the brush from her unresisting hand.
He smelled of exotic spice, of desire borne on desert winds. A small moan escaped her when he gathered her hair and his scent settled around her in a sensuous fog.
The new day magnified, not lessened, Zurael’s desire. It was a mistake to touch her like this, to slide his fingers through her hair as he untangled the wet, twisted locks and used the molten heat of a Djinn’s birthright to speed the drying.
Hair was a Djinn’s weakness. Outside the summoning and binding spells the alien god had given his mud creations, there were few ways to bend his kind to a will other than their own. But an incantation using hair was one of them. And just as he’d rarely touched his lips to another’s in a sharing of spirit, he had rarely trusted another to undo his braid.
Dark amber turned to golden streaks of spun silk as he brushed Aisling’s hair. His cock hardened further, its tip licking across his belly. A shudder went through him each time her waist-length locks touched his penis.
Her skin was soft, her body delicate, utterly feminine. Her scent, spring flowers and arousal.
With a low moan he touched his cheek to satin locks. Rubbed against the loose strands of her hair as he devoured her reflection in the mirror.
Lust rose like steam between them. The brush dropped to the floor.
Her nipples tightened, her eyes darkened. His hands settled on her breasts, cupped and weighed them before his palms settled over hardened tips.
Aisling’s shiver had him pulling her back to his front so he could feel the length of her body against his. And still it wasn’t enough.
The small triangle of dark, honey-gold down drew his hand to explore her slick, swollen folds and erect clit. Her mouth parted, her tongue darted out to leave her lips glistening.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispered, echoing his earlier thought.
“But we will,” Zurael said, kissing her neck, her shoulder. His hands making her quiver with pleasure.
Worry flashed in her eyes. Reluctance built even as the sleek globes of her buttocks rubbed against his cock, enticed him to bend her over and thrust into the slick welcome of her sheath.
“You won’t deny me,” he said, caressing the naked tip and smooth underside of her clit with his fingers. “You won’t deny yourself. Say my name, tell me you don’t want to feel me inside you.”
“Zurael,” she whispered, closing her eyes and turning her face away from the mirror where the sight of her flushed, heated skin and ripe nipples attested to the truth of her desire. “What place do you call home? Who do you answer to?”
He guessed her questions were meant to shore up her resistance to him. To fight her desire for him.
“The names are not for humans to know or call upon. They are death.”
His fingers tightened on her nipple. He refused to let her run away from what was between them.
“Does the daylight make you fear me? Do you remember what I looked like beneath the moon and regret letting me cover you, pierce you? Does my form change the nature of who I am? Does it define me?”
“No,” she said, shivering as she opened her eyes.
“Then look at me, watch while I take you.”
Aisling tried to resist his command. She willed herself to ignore the desperate craving of her body, to pull away, escape his voice, his heat, his arms and the need he generated in her. But she was helpless against him, just as helpless as she had been the night before.
With a moan, she obeyed. She turned her face and met his eyes in the mirror, didn’t resist when he urged her to lean forward, to grasp the edge of the counter, to spread her thighs.
Her hips jerked. Lightning strikes of lust ripped through her as his cock bathed in her arousal, glided over her swollen folds and rigid clit. Kissed her belly in sweet torment and agonizing delay.
“Please,” she whispered and tried to change the angle of her body so he would find her opening and press inside.
Zurael grabbed her hips. He kept her where he wanted her, though the image captured in the mirror revealed how much the effort cost him.
The muscles on his arms stood out as if he fought himself. His chest rose and fell in sharp, quick movements. But it was his face that sent erotic fear slithering downward to pool between her thighs and pulse into her woman’s knob. He was beautifully savage. His eyes were molten gold, his expression dominant, possessive, his attention completely focused on her.
Aisling’s breath caught in her throat. The batlike wings she’d seen twice before unfurled and opened on either side of them, and for an instant she was held on the edge, caught between the terror she’d experienced when she first saw him and the dark, dark desire he now generated in her. But then he moved, once again sliding his cock over her engorged clit and plump, wet folds-and she was lost.
“Please,” she whispered, moving the little bit his hands on her hips would allow, trying to entice him into penetrating her.
Satisfaction softened the hard line of his mouth. Victory deepened the gold of his eyes.
The wings came forward, soft suede against her arms, forming a protective cocoon as he found her opening and thrust with a single, hard stroke. She cried out in relief, in need, obeyed his command to watch until ecstasy claimed her in a rush of lava-hot sensation and demon seed.
Aisling returned to the shower, this time with her hair braided and coiled to minimize the wetness, this time with Zurael accompanying her, bringing memories of the previous night, along with the urge to go to her knees and take him in her mouth.
She cleansed herself as quickly as possible and escaped, dressing hastily before retreating to the kitchen and busying herself preparing breakfast. If she’d been home, there would have been fresh eggs and fruit, sausage from a pig slaughtered the previous fall and milk brought in from the barn by whoever was assigned the task of letting the livestock out for the day.
Her heart lodged in her throat; homesickness blended with worry as her earlier panic threatened to reappear and trap her like delta quicksand. She forced the unwelcome emotions away, finding it easier when Aziel scampered in and climbed to his familiar place on her shoulder.
“Do you know him?” she asked, glancing in the direction of the bathroom and wondering again whether Aziel was demon also. “Is that why you offered me his name? Why his presence is allowed when you’ve bitten other men? Do you serve him?”
The ferret didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge the question. His attention seemed fixed on the meager contents of the cabinet, and with a sigh, Aisling studied them, too.
She’d used coupons for flour and yeast when she’d gone to the grocery store, and the thought of making bread was tempting. But it’d only serve to delay the task of looking for whoever was responsible for Ghost.
As she pulled canned pears from the cabinet, panic flared with the memory of how Zurael had fed her peaches when she was left weakened by her bloo
d sacrifice in the spiritlands. She had no will to resist him, no ability to. He’d proven as much to her with every sensual interaction, taken a bit of her soul each time he’d touched her.
She put the can on the counter, retrieved a small carton of eggs and the remainder of the chicken breasts. Her thoughts went to the pouch of silver she’d gotten from Elena, the handful of bills given to her by Father Ursu, the possessions left in the house by the dead shaman. She’d have to return to the grocery store, or trade with her neighbors for supplies.
Eventually Aziel would hunt and scavenge. But at the moment she hated the idea of letting him roam freely outside.
It was foolish to worry about him, to grieve for him when one day he didn’t return, to imagine him dying and ache over the possibility that he suffered. But she’d never been able to stop herself from doing it, from fearing each of his deaths would be the final one, the one that took him permanently.
Zurael emerged from the bathroom wearing black pants and a black shirt. Her pulse quickened, and she hastily ducked her head to concentrate on fixing them something to eat.
He joined her in the kitchen, working by her side as if he’d always been there, his movements sure and smooth. “I thought I’d visit some of my neighbors,” she said a short while later, after they’d eaten and taken care of the dishes.
Zurael cocked his head, his mouth curved upward in a smile that made her want to press her lips to his. “I believe one of your neighbors has come to you.”
A knock on the door attested to the truth of his comment. Aisling rubbed suddenly damp palms against the comforting, worn fabric of the pants she’d been wearing when Father Ursu arrived at the farm. She hesitated, wondered if she should ask Zurael to hide his presence, then shrugged the question away, allowing the demon to make his own choice as she crossed to the front door.
Habit made her pause long enough to peek through the window before unlocking the door, opening the wooden one first and then the metal one. A flash of black at her ankles made her heart race in her chest. “Aziel!” But it was already too late; the ferret was out and disappearing around the corner of the house.
