Darkest Heart

by Juliette Cross

  “No need to hide from me, Anya.” A scrape of his stubbly chin along the curve of my shoulder and neck. “I’ve been inside you now.” His palm slid up over my hip to the curve of my waist. His metal hand gripped the base of my wing and stroked up to the arch, the feathers wet and dark as a midnight sky now.

  He’d know that I could feel the sensation along the flesh and bone covering the arch. I shivered, watching his silvery fingers caress down over my wing, gentle and soft.

  “You feel with that hand as if you still have the sensation of touch.”

  His breath whispered against my neck. “I do.”

  Still watching his metal fingers trace back down the arch to my back, where I could no longer see them, only feel them as they grazed over my shoulder blade, then trailed down my spine.

  “How?” My voice was thick with emotion, the sweep of sensuality and intimacy between us spinning me into a maelstrom of feelings I could hardly contain or understand. Yes, I’d taken a demon lover. Yes, Xander and surely others of my kind wouldn’t approve. They might well shun me for it. And still, I couldn’t push out of his arms if the world were on fire. That’s what scared me most of all. I knew I’d do anything for him.

  I was glad to have the pattering sound of the shower against the stone, though it did little to hide the strain in my voice. Pressing my palms to the river-rock wall, I held on while his fingers continued their exploration.

  “A friend of mine has the gift of creation.”

  “You have a friend?”

  His exploring hands paused, then found my hips and turned me around. Tucking my wings, the under-feathers of my right wing still swept over his upper body. He growled, but his expression was that of the Dommiel I’d known from the start. Arrogant, mischievous…dangerous.

  “Did you just make a joke?”

  I could hardly suppress the smile creasing my face. He corralled me against the shower wall. I gasped at the cool stone against my back and buttocks. He lifted his metal hand again, trailing a finger down my sternum, his dark ruby eye following the movement of his finger.

  “Your first, I believe.”

  “The first you’ve heard,” I corrected. “I have a sense of humor.”

  He laughed. “No. Not really.” His metal finger continued its downward path to my navel. “You’re always so serious.”

  “Your friend is one of the seraphim?”

  “Was,” he clarified.

  Of course. A fallen angel. A fallen seraph whose voice could make the heavens weep would no longer need the magic of her song to inspire. He or she would use that gift to create in other ways.

  “He made your hand with a sense of touch. That’s amazing.”

  He’d taken a bar of soap and lathered then brushed his hands up my stomach, over my breasts to my shoulders, then swept back down, his gaze following his hands the entire time. His flesh hand swept between my legs, soft and gentle. I gasped and clutched onto his shoulders, then he was watching me. Fierce and intense.

  “She made it. Her name is Bone. She’s a very gifted demoness.”

  He was merely washing me as he eased his fingers along that most sensitive spot so softly, massaging in small circles. His touch was light, seemingly without intent to arouse. Still, it tightened my senses, dragging all of my attention to the tender, flat stroke of his fingers against my sex.

  “Bone made this eye patch for you as well?”

  I trailed a finger over the elastic behind his ear. He shivered.

  “She did.”

  His rough timbre vibrated against my lips as he kept his mouth poised above mine, though he didn’t kiss, didn’t do anything but watch me.

  “She must like you quite a lot to craft such unique gifts for you. To keep you safe.”

  A slight shrug of one shoulder. “As I said, she’s a friend.”

  His fingers still stroked, his middle one pressing down the middle of my cleft. I gasped.

  “Are you too sore?” he asked on a rasp, his lips still pressed to mine but not demanding entry.

  “No. Angels heal fast, as you know.”

  Opening my eyes to see his demon burning, I didn’t care how far I’d fallen. Didn’t care that my soul was slipping away. Didn’t care about anything but getting his hands and mouth on me.

  “I need it.”

  “It?”

  He pressed his chest to mine, the hard strength of him calling to me.

  “You,” I admitted on a breathless plea.

  Groaning, he gripped my thighs and lifted, sliding me up the wall, my wings slapping flat against the stone. With a string of obscenities, his fangs sharp and protruding from his perfect mouth, he thrust his swollen cock inside me.

  I let my head fall back, tightening my thighs around his hips. He wrapped his flesh hand around the base of my throat, his mouth at my ear.

  “Do you feel that, Anya?”

  I couldn’t speak. I felt everything—the hot water sprinkling down, the cold stone at my back, the heat of his chest against my breasts, his hard masculinity invading my body, and the growling animal in his chest. Everything.

  He pumped harder. Deeper. His voice a dark reminder of who held me in a lover’s embrace, his fingers firm but gentle around my throat.

  “Tell me you feel it, baby.”

  If it was possible, his cock got harder, bigger inside me, penetrating with fervent need.

  “That’s you becoming mine.”

  He pressed his forehead to mine.

  “You’re slipping over into my keep.”

  His crimson eye flared gold by the candlelight. Or were the gold flecks sparking in the ruby deep?

  “Your flesh bends to me. Aches for me.”

  His hand slipped from my throat down to my breast where he cupped me with possession. With ownership.

  “You’ll never be rid of me. From the memory of me so deep inside you. From me taking what’s been mine for thousands of years. Just waiting for me to find you in that lonely land you walk. To take you into my own.”

  He breathed heavy against my lips, still not kissing, just spilling words that made no sense. That made perfect sense.

  “Tell me you feel it, Anya.”

  He ground up and deep, pinning me with his body.

  “Tell me you feel yourself losing the battle, sliding over the edge into my possession.”

  His metal hand left my thigh and laced into my wet hair, tugging till I gasped, his thick cock still stroking me toward madness. Toward doom. Or salvation.

  “Tell me…tell me you’re mine.”

  Vaulting toward a violent climax, I cried out, “Yes” on a sob.

  “You’ve always been mine,” he ground against my lips before slanting his mouth over my own and groaned, impaling deep as my sex pulsed through the orgasm.

  Again, he swallowed my whimpers of pleasure, kissing me wholly, thoroughly, stroking his tongue softly, giving me a good taste of the violent need driving him now. When I went limp, he anchored his arms beneath the crook of my knees and lifted me wide, staring down to watch where our bodies joined. He looked half mad with lust and desire hardening his face into sharp, terrifying angles.

  “So fucking beautiful,” he muttered, sliding in and out of me in a fierce rhythm.

  I gripped his shoulders tight, digging in my nails, this moment so visceral and intimate I could barely hang on. His gaze sharpened on mine. My breathing labored, I reached up and pulled the patch from his scarred eye. His tempo faltered for a split second, but he didn’t stop. When I brushed my fingers tenderly along the angry, reddened scar—the eyelid sunken and closed—the violence of the experience apparent in the jagged rip of his flesh raised with scar tissue, he choked on a grunt and thrust deep with his climax.

  He went to drop his head to my shoulder, but I caught his face in my hands, my palms on his jaw, and pressed my lips to the hideous scar that had obviously hurt him far more than he ever let on. A heavy groan rumbled from his chest, like a man lost in grief and turmoil and agonizing
adoration. His arms came around my back as he squeezed me against him, his body shaking with tremors, his cock throbbing, both of us breathing raggedly under the downpour of hot steam and water.

  I combed a hand through his slick black hair, grazing his scalp with my nails, pressing soft kisses on the ugly flesh he hid from the world, desperate to show him that pain was gone, to let it go. He shuddered again, his rod still pulsing inside me. His demon eye closed.

  “So fucking beautiful,” I murmured.

  His ruby eye opened then—focused, searching my own. So much wonder in his expression. I thought he would ask why I chose now to use his favorite adjective to describe his beauty or how I saw him as beautiful, for I was ready to tell him all. To tell him that he wasn’t the traitor everyone thought he was. To tell him he’d chosen good instead of evil when he’d joined Genevieve. To tell him he didn’t have to walk alone anymore. But he didn’t ask. And I was too terrified of him rejecting the idea. Of rejecting me.

  “I didn’t know there were angels like you in the world.”

  I smiled. “I didn’t know there were demons like you in this world.” Lacing my fingers behind his neck, I pulled him closer. “Or the otherworld, for that matter.”

  He chuckled. But it was almost sad, and I wasn’t sure why. Then he lifted me gently, pulling himself from my body. I whimpered in protest as my feet landed on the shower floor. His smile deepened as he cupped my face, his thumb sweeping the indention below my bottom lip. Pressing his forehead to mine, he sighed heavily.

  “What will I do with you?”

  “For now, I think you should let me sleep,” I teased, which was a foreign thing for me.

  His expression sobered into the austere lines he wore so well as he shut off the faucet. Stepping toward a stack of white towels sitting atop a silver rack, he took one and dabbed dry, wrapping and tying it at his waist. He opened another towel, gesturing for me to come to him. Like I wouldn’t.

  Something dire had happened to me. He was right. I’d slipped over the edge into his possession, willing to do anything for him. Follow him anywhere. The thought was terrifying. And exhilarating.

  I stepped closer and let him towel me dry, which he did with utmost care. Once more, I was mesmerized by the artwork on his chest—the red and black dragons mid-battle, the intertwining skulls and flowers, and the constellations in blue, black, and white ink set in the middle of his torso. Violence surrounding a hub of peace. The seven sisters danced in a tranquility of blue. Orion faced off the Taurus with his bow and arrow. All of it in perfect harmony.

  He slid the towel over the arch of both wings, then set to drying my breasts and stomach. I couldn’t help but reach out and touch the brightest star of the most beautiful of the seven sisters, her willowy naiad arms arching above her head, her slender legs in movement as if she danced with her most treasured lover.

  Dommiel stilled a moment when my finger pressed against the star, his abdomen flexing in response. Then he continued to dab me dry. My body still floated in a surreal place, the steam from the shower sifting through the candlelit room.

  “’Take him and cut him out in little stars. And he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.’”

  His playful smile returned as he resumed drying my shoulder and other arm. “So we’re a Shakespearean tragedy, are we?”

  “What? No.” I connected the stars on his abdomen with my finger, noting how he flexed and tensed under my touch. “Like Juliet, I’m just telling you how beautiful I think you are.”

  His scarred eye twitched, but he hadn’t made an attempt to pick up the patch from the shower floor yet.

  “Again. A tragedy. But that’s probably about right.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He was on his knees, drying my thighs and gazing up. “We’re certainly not a comedy, angel.”

  “No.”

  I grinned, the heat of a blush crawling up my neck. He grinned wider, pressing a tender kiss just below my navel, then stood, tossing the towel aside. With a swift move, he lifted me in his arms as I’d seen a groom carry his bride. I squeaked at the suddenness of it, laughing as he carried me back to the bed.

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” he rumbled deep before collapsing onto the bed and on top of me.

  “What’s that?” I asked, wiggling so my wings lay flat, pushing his wet locks away from his face, wanting to see him. All of him.

  The intensity of his gaze, even with only one eye, pierced straight through me, making me breathless.

  “What, Dommiel?” I whispered.

  He roved my face—across my brow, down my cheeks to my chin, up to my mouth, and back to my eyes.

  “You sure as fuck make the moon ‘sick and pale with grief.’” He swept his lips over mine, breathing in my air. “She’s nothing next to you.” A slide of tongue inside, touching my own, then pulling away. “The sun’s nothing next to you.” He licked along my bottom lip, then the top. “The sad little stars, too. All fucking imposters.”

  He shifted between my legs and was inside me again. Slow and easy. I sucked in a breath.

  “You’re the original light, Anya. Brighter than them all.”

  I closed my eyes, another tear slipping, knowing I was truly and utterly lost to any other allegiance but Dommiel.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dommiel

  We stood outside a tavern in the small German village of the Erzgebirge Mountains. The village was cut off from the world and therefore was safer from the ongoing battle of otherworlders. Humans shuffled to and fro, even in the deep snow, all of whom turned a questioning and violent eye toward me and Anya.

  Strangely, they didn’t run or ring a bell in the square announcing that monsters had arrived. This was the kind of old village where one might expect a mob to show up with torches and pitchforks.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” asked Anya.

  I glanced at her guarded expression as she scanned up and down the street. After our third and last round of mind-melting sex, we’d drifted off. When we woke, I’d been quiet, uncomfortable with the shared intimacy. Sex, I could do. Intimacy, I could not. Never had to deal with such a feeling.

  Hell, I’d had all-nighters with women before. With more than one woman at a time, truth be told. But sex with Anya had laid me bare. She’d exposed some part of me I’d thought snuffed out with the betrayal from my brother, with my fall from grace, with my sentence of eternal damnation, and finally with being cast out by my own kind. It was easier, safer here in the dark—alone. No risk involved when you flew solo.

  And yet, she made me yearn. Made me want. Made me want to sink into her sweet, soft body and cling to her bright, hopeful ideals. It scared the fuck out of me. Which is why today I’d been distant. Cold. She’d noticed. For once, I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t trust myself around her. So I’d focused on the task at hand, bringing us to this far-flung pub on the outskirts of civilization in this picturesque German town that apparently was doing all right because of its isolation.

  “This is the one. Axel’s vision was clear.”

  “So now what?”

  “We go in and sit at a particular booth and hope that tonight the waitress is Nadya’s friend.”

  “And if not?”

  “We come back again tomorrow.”

  “I’ve never met a demon witch.” She looked at me. “Are they dangerous?”

  I arched a brow. “Very.”

  She exhaled a heavy sigh, her cold breath a white puff in the air. “I suppose she must be cautious this way, but—”

  Not for the first time, I noticed her brow pinching together almost in pain.

  “But what?”

  She glanced at me, wiping her expression blank. “I just want to find Uriel soon.”

  “I know you do. Come.”

  I opened the door of the tavern, the warm light of lanterns and candles spilling out. As I suspected, we were the only
otherworlders in the room, which wasn’t packed but wasn’t empty either. The muffle of voices died at once. Hard-faced men and tight-lipped women watched us enter. I nodded, having made sure my beast was well-hidden, my fangs having receded, my eye a human shade.

  I stalked to the far wall and sat in the booth all the way to the left, the one Axel had indicated. Anya sat across from me, tucking her wings tight against her back. She had cast illusion so these humans couldn’t see her wings, yet they sensed we were other all the same. We were obviously not locals.

  After we sat calmly and didn’t seem about to tear the place apart and attack them, the villagers turned back to their low, murmuring conversations, drinking their beer and eating their soup and bread.

  After a minute, a ruddy-cheeked, stout woman with a friendly face stepped up to us.

  “Not from around here, are you?” she asked in German.

  “No,” I answered in her language. “We’d like two pints of your local beer.”

  “We’ve got potato and ham soup as well. Would you like two bowls?”

  I knew Anya would likely not eat, but I wanted to keep things as normal as I could.

  “Yes. We’d also like to speak to Nadya.”

  The waitress flinched.

  “If that’s possible,” I added.

  “Don’t know a Nadya.” The tremor in her voice said otherwise.

  “I think you do. Tell her, Axel sent me.”

  She frowned. “Not sure what you’re about, mister. I’ll get your beer and soup.”

  She marched off, glancing over her shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen.

  “Well,” Anya broke the silence. “I’m not sure we’ll ever meet this Nadya, if it’s up to her.”

  “Patience, angel.”

  Her slender fingers were laced on the table as she searched the room. “These people look like they don’t even know there’s an apocalypse taking place beyond their village.”