And then he set her from him, maintaining only one of her hands in both of his.
He was a daemon. He was the daemon king. He could care for her as a guardian more deeply than any mortal father and still he would use her to order the universe to his liking. Daemons were chess players with an eye for the long game—centuries long—and the game Ezekiel played held the balance of worlds in its outcome.
“You will help him retrieve Lucifer’s wings with no reservation, no equivocation. But you already knew I would ask this of you,” Ezekiel said.
She pulled her hand from his and turned away. Unfortunately, the tiny bedroom gave her no place to flee. Even if she’d had the whole palace at her disposal or the entire desert, there was no place she could go to escape the obligation to the daemon king. He’d saved them. He’d shielded them. Her mother had fallen madly in love with Ezekiel, and he’d never hurt Sophia even though he hadn’t loved her in the same way. Daemons loved long, and Ezekiel had loved Elizabeth D’Arcy and only her. Forever.
Elizabeth had been Michael’s human grandmother. Ezekiel’s love for her lived on in her children and grandchildren.
Yet the daemon king had been tender toward Sophia Santiago. The mighty warrior had treated her like a queen all the days of her life and he’d held her hand when she died. She’d known he didn’t return her love, but the pain of that had been softened by his protective care for her daughter.
Lily loved him for that even though she feared him for his devotion to the D’Arcys. She knew her place in the scheme of things. She’d always known. She was the daemon king’s ward, an obligation, no more, no less. It didn’t negate her debt. Her father had made a deal with the devil and now she would pay the price.
“I will,” Lily agreed.
Any freedom she’d contemplated turned to ash in Ezekiel’s presence. He was her guardian. He was the only father she’d known for a very long time. Her affection and her affinity bound her to him as surely if not more so than her real father’s daemon deal.
She would never be free. But it wasn’t stalking rogues that damned her. Or a deal struck between Samuel and Ezekiel years ago. It was Ezekiel’s scarred heart and the D’Arcys’ claim on it. She wasn’t immortal, but she was afraid she would strive to earn her place in his affections every day of her short life.
“It is done,” he said, and no throne was necessary to make his words a royal decree.
His legs began to dissipate as he turned to walk away. Lily fought the tears that filled her eyes. Not because she didn’t want him to see her cry, but because she couldn’t stand to see him untouched by her tears.
“And then I’ll come home,” Lily promised.
The daemon king was already nothing but smoke and yet he replied, “Of course. The palace was built for you eons ago, after all.”
* * *
After Ezekiel vanished—literally going up in smoke—Lily washed her face in the master bathroom sink and reset the ritual, this time with deadly seriousness. This time the elemental spirits cooperated immediately with no stormy hijinks. No doubt the spirits were as cowed as she was by the daemon king’s visitation.
Wind and Earth created a recognizable channel in the floor of the bedroom and water rose up to flow along its curves. Words came from Lily’s mouth, placed there by her ancestors’ ancient knowledge of heaven and earth.
“The Colorado River,” Lily whispered, but her voice was unfamiliar, colored by the spirits of all who had come before her. The path was revealed with no reservation, no equivocation. Her short-lived taste of freedom was over. She would never be free from the terrible weight of expectations from the only father she’d ever known. No matter what deals were struck and fulfilled, she was bound by her unrequited love for the daemon king. And to defy him more than she already had might mean losing him forever.
Chapter 5
Spirit summoning made Grim nervous. The great ugly hellhound Michael loved stood stiff-legged and quivering as he stared at the adobe home for almost an hour while his master played.
Only the music kept Michael from responding a couple of times when he felt Lily’s call all the way to the boiling marrow in his bones. He played obsessively until sweat ran down his cheeks and his body trembled against the pull he resisted.
“You aren’t helping, you damned mutt,” he ground out between his teeth.
Grim whined, but only came to lie at his feet when Michael thought his hellhound might never turn toward him again. Only then did Michael allow his fingers to still on the strings. The sun had set. The nocturnal activity of the desert came to life around him. Scurryings and scrapings, scufflings and squeaks began to fill the air with soft sound.
“She’s done, isn’t she?” he asked. Grim chuffed and collapsed as if he’d run a million miles with the intensity of his watch. Michael understood. His muscles ached from tension when he uncurled from around his guitar and stood.
The sliding glass door opened and Lily stepped out into the deepening night. Lanterns at either side of the entrance illuminated the beautiful young woman, and Michael slowly lowered his instrument to the ground as he stared.
She was soaked. Her hair and clothes plastered to her petite body. Steam began to rise from her as the cool night air hit her curves. But it was her haunted gaze that captured his attention. Her eyes were dark in the lantern light. Their brown irises deepened to a dusky midnight. And they were rimmed with red as if the water on her face was...tears.
He didn’t think. He didn’t hold himself back. As Grim bristled and let out a sound that was half growl, half whine, Michael strode forward to meet Lily and he was there to catch her when she stumbled forward into his arms.
“My God, woman. That wasn’t a marathon. It must have been a crucible,” he said. The sound of his own voice shook him as much as her appearance. He was hoarse. All the tension of the day spilling from his lips.
She was pale and clammy against him and her body shivered.
“I might need more than a protein bar this time,” she said. Her teeth clicked together as she spoke.
Lily didn’t resist when he gathered her up in his arms. She was limp. What had he done? Was his freedom worth hurting an innocent woman? The Brimstone in his blood burned him with shame. He’d done this to the daughter of a veritable saint with his selfish demands. Maybe he deserved to sit on the throne of hell. He was no better than his grandfather. Ezekiel’s attention could focus on a goal with no consideration for those he burned out in the process. His mother had warned him about that since he was a small boy.
“Come on, Grim. I’ve got a job for you,” Michael said.
* * *
She’d sipped a cup of soup before she was fully conscious enough to realize it. She came awake to a full stomach and the fiery heat of a massive hellhound snuggled against her side. When her eyes opened, Grim’s glowing red irises blinked at her as if to say, “I’m a useful monster, aren’t I? By the way, I know your secrets even if my master doesn’t.”
Then she noticed she was bundled in a clean, dry sheet and nothing else.
“Um. Little help?” she asked, muffled beneath sulfuric fur.
“Grim, that’s good. You don’t have to smother her with your devilish charm,” Michael said.
The hellhound heating pad slowly got up, stretched and moved away. Lily blinked against the sudden light that glared from the fireplace once the hellhound wasn’t shielding her from its glow. Michael sat on the hearth. He sipped dark wine from a glass. She noticed the sip first. The slow, savoring movement of his mouth on the rim of the crystal and the glistening moisture of the crushed fruit on his lips. The flick of his tongue. The intimacy of his throat as he swallowed.
Then she noticed the tape on his fingers. Every pad was bandaged, and the white of the bandages was stained with blood.
“Your hands,” Lily said. Sh
e gripped the sheet around herself and rose to her knees. She and the hellhound had been lying in front of the fire so the move brought her to Michael’s legs.
He didn’t move away. He simply placed his glass to the side and waited to see what she would do. Lily held the sheet across her chest with one arm and reached for one of his hands with the other. He didn’t resist. She looked from his taped fingers up to his shuttered eyes.
“I played to drown out your call,” Michael said.
Her hair had dried in a riot of waterfall waves around her face and shoulders. She didn’t have enough hands to hold her sheet and his hand and push back her hair. As if he noticed her quandary, he reached up with his free hand to softly brush waves back from her face. But he paused in the middle of the move when his hand glanced against her cheek. He released her hair to cup her jaw as if he couldn’t merely perform a practical move when he was distracted by touching her instead.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Not for Lucifer’s wings. Not for me. Ever again,” Michael said.
“You hurt yourself for me,” Lily reminded him. The hand on her face was bandaged, too. She couldn’t imagine the intensity of his playing if it had hurt the hand that held the neck of his guitar.
“Purely selfish. I was protecting myself,” he said.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was probably only the daemon king’s presence that had dampened the Brimstone pull and the affinity’s call between them so that he could resist. She didn’t want to mention Ezekiel. Not while Michael’s hand was on her face. Not while his warm gaze searched hers. It was the daemon king’s manifestation that had drained her to the point of collapse. Summoning the devil himself took a lot out of a girl. Especially a girl with an affinity for Brimstone already strained by kisses from the future Prince of Darkness.
“Where are my clothes?” she asked instead.
“On the chair behind you. They were cold and damp,” Michael explained.
“I’m warm now,” Lily said. She was on her knees between his jean-clad legs. Warm was an understatement. The fire behind him was meaningless. The fire in his blood called to her and the daemon king was long gone.
Heat rose in her cheeks and spread down to her chest. His gaze tracked the movement as her skin flushed. Or did the track of his gaze cause the flush with its intensity? The sheet was a pristine contrast to the way her skin revealed her way-less-than-pristine thoughts.
His hand slid from her jaw to the nape of her neck beneath her hair. When the move tilted her face up, she didn’t fight it. She should have. She should have pulled away. Stood. Put distance between them. There was no buffer here. Allowing the heat to build between them was suicide.
Her affinity was a beacon for Rogue daemons.
She both feared immolation and craved it. Feared it from Rogues. Craved it from Michael. When he leaned down to give her the burn she wordlessly begged for, on her knees and as supplicant as she could allow herself to be, the thought of Rogues was scorched away.
For the first time in her life she was free.
His lips were hot from Brimstone and dusky sweet from exquisite wine. They were also perfect. Full and masculine and so familiar she could close her eyes and explore with impunity. He gasped when she boldly traced their carved curves and swells with the tip of her tongue. Then he urged her closer until her stomach was pressed to the intimate swell of the erection between his legs. He curled down to deepen the kiss.
Suddenly, he was the royal. He would claim her. He would take control. She might be caught in a devil’s bargain that would lead him all the way to hell, but in this—kissing, touching, claiming—he had the upper hand.
Lily held tight to his muscled legs, but his heat called and she allowed her palms to press and slide. Closer and closer along his thighs to find him, and measure the length of his penis caught and contained away from her by his jeans.
He growled against her mouth and moved his hands to her shoulders to urge her back. She went with his urgings. She made room for him to leave the hearth and join her, on his knees. Now they were both supplicant. Both begging. Distantly, Lily heard Grim whine, but she could only focus on getting closer to Michael’s heat. All rational strategy was forgotten. Her vision of the Colorado River boiled away to nothing. The daemon king’s manipulations paled in comparison to the demands of her and Michael’s bodies.
Her sheet had fallen away.
She was naked for her Brimstone prince and when his lips left hers to trail down and claim her breasts with his mouth and hot, wet suction, she thought she would die. Her heart raced. Her lungs hitched. Her body burned.
Lily reached for him and even through his clothes his rising body heat transferred to her fingers. When she stroked her palms down from his shoulders to his bare arms, his skin was feverish to her touch. Impossibly hot. She brushed down the slightly roughened skin of his scars anyway. Learning, exploring and burning all the while.
But Grim’s whine erupted into growls and Michael pulled away before she had even begun to know him as well as her affinity drove her to. He rose and went toward the hellhound.
Once their bodies were separated, she could feel the Brimstone burn of the intruders that were causing Grim such concern. Rogues. Here. No doubt called by her affinity that sang with an almost audible hum in her body when Michael touched her.
“We’ve got trouble,” Michael said. He’d moved to the front window to place his hand on Grim’s head and look outside.
“More than you can possibly know,” Lily replied. She was already shrugging into her clothes, which were stiff and warm from drying by the fire. The fire’s heat paled in comparison to Michael’s Brimstone burn. She shivered at the loss of his touch in spite of the warmed clothes. Her fingers fumbled on the buttons while Michael turned from the window where he’d shrugged into his jacket to grab up his guitar. She hadn’t noticed it leaning by the hearth. It was such a part of him. Like a shadow that moved when he moved and stilled when he stilled. He placed his arm through the tooled leather strap and settled the instrument against his back, where it fit perfectly as if made to match his planes and curves.
“How many?” she continued. Her own pack settled against her back with a weight that had become familiar over the past few months. Her affinity didn’t tell her the odds. It was only a magnet that drew her toward daemons and their Brimstone blood. In the past, her father’s affinity had been used to hunt and destroy daemons until he’d decided to fight the violence and hate. He’d split with the hunters. And his decision had led to his death at their hands.
“Too many to fight. Too many to face. We’ll have to take the back way out,” Michael said.
As if Grim understood his master’s words, he turned from the window and ran toward the back of the earth-bermed home.
“I thought we were surrounded by dirt on three sides?” Lily said.
“I grew up on a vineyard estate. Playing in wine caves. Other kids had tree houses. I had tunnels and cellars. A maze of them beneath the vines. And I played hide-and-seek with a hellhound for fun,” Michael explained. “Hidden exits are a family tradition. I had this one installed shortly after I began using this place.”
He took her hand, and she let him pull her after Grim toward what seemed like a dead end at the back of the house where even the skylights failed to illuminate the shadows with moonlight. The fire still crackled and burned in the front room, but they stepped into chilled darkness that smelled of earth. She pulled her hand from Michael’s when they paused. Touching him caused her affinity to flare. There was no logic in being any more of a beacon for the Rogues than she already was.
Loud thumps came from the front of the house. Rogues were at the door. Maybe they had seen Grim at the window and they were reluctant to break through the glass where he might be waiting.
Michael pushed aside a large cloth that hung o
n the earthen wall. She’d thought it was a Navajo blanket, but up close, even in the shadows she could see it was a woven tapestry of European origin. She reached up to touch the figure of a bird created with bright crimson plumage at the center of the piece.
“It’s a Russian firebird,” Michael explained. “That folktale has special significance to the Turov family.” But he was already disappearing into the gaping hole he’d uncovered behind the tapestry. Lily followed as the sound of breaking glass came from the bedroom behind them. The skylight. One of the Rogues had decided to come through the roof.
She followed the prince through murky subterranean shadows. Grim had stopped in front of them. Michael pushed past his hellhound and she went with him. She couldn’t be sure in the dark, but she thought the large creature was guarding their retreat.
The tunnel narrowed and dropped, taking them deeper underground. Her hands rose instinctively as they hurried along. She could barely see. She had to feel her way. Her fingers trailed across packed earth. Claustrophobia threatened. She tried to breathe normally but her respiration was hurried. In and out with every quickened step.
“Only a little farther,” Michael said. His deep voice was contained by the small space around them. The weight of the earth trapped the sound, making his melodious accent muffled and strange.
“What about Grim?” she asked. And suddenly her voice echoed as they exited the tunnel into a more cavernous space.
“Grim doesn’t need a car to escape,” Michael said.
And that’s when Lily saw the gleam of chrome and glass and steel.
The vintage muscle car was black, or she might have seen it right away. Once her eyes had adjusted to the difference in the quality of light between the tunnel and the cavern, the car’s striking curves and angles reproved her inability to see and appreciate right away. Rogues were only a few hundred feet behind them. A hellhound prepared to defend their retreat. But Lily still paused as Michael opened the driver-side door and tossed his guitar in the back seat.
Brimstone Prince Page 5
