Awakened by a Demoness

by Felicity Heaton

  “Rey,” she whispered into his ear, nibbled and sucked the lobe, and dug her heels into his backside, shoving him into her.

  He plunged deep and fierce.

  She cried out and his right ear rang from her loud shriek of pleasure.

  Her body came alive around him, hot release scalding his cock as she quivered and shook, her claws pressing into his flesh and breath warm on his neck.

  He growled low in his throat and then grunted against her shoulder, his teeth still lodged in it, as the entire world around him exploded into a million glittering stars and his cock pulsed, each jet of seed stealing his breath from him. His knees weakened as white-hot bliss rolled through him, robbing him of his senses, and he had to grip the tree to stop himself from collapsing.

  She pressed light kisses along his shoulder and he released hers, hazy and lost as he struggled to cope with the rush of new sensations. Pleasure. Bliss. An undeniable warmth that started in the centre of his chest.

  It slowly spread through him, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop the cold that followed it.

  The icy chill of realisation.

  He withdrew from Asteria, set her down and backed away from her as what he had done crashed over him. She busied herself with rearranging her clothing, pulling her stockings back up her thighs and smoothing her skirt and hair, a smile on her face and glow to her cheeks.

  Rey tucked himself away, buttoned his trousers and looked for his t-shirt. It lay discarded on the lawn and he remembered it had been covered in the potion the half-breed had launched at them.

  Potion.

  He backed away another step, head spinning as that hit him.

  The half-breed had struck him with a spell, one that had messed with his head and had ignited his lust.

  A lust potion.

  Asteria lifted her head, her eyes settling on him. Her smile faltered and the colour on her cheeks faded as they paled.

  “Rey?”

  The lust potion was the only reason he had done it with her.

  He did not desire her.

  He could not.

  CHAPTER 9

  Asteria had been mistaken. Rey wasn’t holy at all. He was a demon in the guise of an angel, a wicked male who sent the temperature of her blood soaring.

  A brief flicker of disappointment went through her when he pulled away from her just as she was about to get him fired up all over again and challenge him into seeing just how great angel stamina could be. She busied herself with fixing her appearance, buzzing so fiercely from the two climaxes he had given her that she didn’t notice the way he was looking at her until she lifted her head to issue the challenge anyway.

  It died on her lips when she found stormy gold eyes glaring at her, fixing her with a look that warned she was about to get trampled on for the millionth time in her life.

  “Rey?”

  He cut her down with a scowl. “This was a mistake and it will not happen again.”

  She pushed away from the tree. He wanted her. It was right there in his eyes. He was denying himself.

  What they had done had shaken him.

  Well, he wasn’t alone in feeling that way, but he didn’t see her losing her shit and distancing herself.

  “Come on, Rey,” she coaxed in a low whisper, managing a little smile for him. “You know you liked it… you know you want it again.”

  She raked her eyes over him, moaned at just the sight of him despite the fact he had covered up.

  She took a step towards him.

  Huge mistake.

  Light burst from the mark on his wrist and a sword appeared in his hand. Crimson flames licked along the white blade, almost black near the guard.

  “Do not come near me, Demon,” he spat and despite her best attempts to let it bounce off her, those words cut deeper than his blade ever could. While she was still reeling from the first blow, he followed up with another. “I never want to see you again. This was a spell. Nothing more. If I ever see you again, I will be the last thing you see.”

  He disappeared, leaving her alone in the woods, still quivering from being with him.

  Fucking bastard.

  Damn him to Hell and let the Devil make him his plaything.

  He would be back.

  He had somehow found the strength to leave, blaming their explosive moment on a damned spell, but he wouldn’t be able to find the strength to stay away. She knew it because she felt the same pull towards him, the same undeniable hunger that drew her to him.

  When he came back to her, she would give him hell and show him that no one in Hell, Earth or Heaven treated her like that and got away with it.

  She folded her arms across her chest, held on to her anger and nursed it, tried to stoke it hotter. The hurt was quick to come though, and as much as she tried to ignore it and keep her mind on hating him, she couldn’t stop it from spreading cold tendrils through her as she realised something.

  She was allowing herself to get tangled up in someone, had forgotten to keep her distance, and this time it was infinitely worse.

  There was only heartache ahead.

  Because she was falling for an angel.

  Asteria stared down at her boots, heart sore and aching at the thought she might never see him again. By the Devil, she was messed up if she was pining after an angel.

  He was her fated one though.

  The only male in the three realms that she could form an eternal bond with through mating.

  Her eyes widened and she raised her right hand, touched her shoulder and felt the imprint of his teeth there. He had bitten her. Her heart thundered, making her feel sick as she shook her head. It couldn’t mean anything. Demons mated through exchanging blood, but he had no fangs, and he was no demon.

  She twisted her head and tried to get a clear view of the marks. They were dark pink but it didn’t look as if he had broken the skin.

  Asteria let out a long sigh of relief as her fear melted away.

  She looked towards the gate in the distance and considered leaving, but where would she go? She couldn’t return to Hell without the half-breed, and she probably wouldn’t survive more than a few months at most in the mortal realm without an angel cutting her down or the Devil sending men after her.

  She heaved another sigh, picked up the scattered pieces of her heart and pulled her shit back together. She was here on a mission and nothing was going to stand in the way of her completing it. She was a demon of the Devil’s service, a powerful and formidable female, and no one was going to scare her away from her mark. Not even an angel.

  She clenched her fists at her sides, mustered her strength and set her jaw. Her fangs grew longer, cutting into her gums, and she snarled through them as her horns flared forwards. She flicked her long black hair over her shoulders, stood a little straighter and kicked all soft and stupid feelings out of her chest.

  She was a demoness.

  A powerful and formidable female.

  Angels be damned.

  The Fifth Commander of the Echelon could go fuck himself.

  If she ever saw him again, he would be the one to end up dead.

  Asteria stormed through the woods, heading back to the gate to the fae town. Her mark was down there, hiding among the thousands who inhabited it, and she was going to damn well find her. She had dallied enough. This mission ended now.

  She strode down the dank corridor that wound into the heart of the earth and didn’t slow as she reached the small plateau above the town at the end of the tunnel. She banked left, walked down the steps in such a determined fashion that everyone coming up them got out of her path.

  The way it should be.

  She glared at them all and then she did the one thing guaranteed to make her feel fabulous.

  She broke with convention and unleashed her wings. The black dragon-like wings sprouted from her back, arched high to end in clawed tips above her head, and she kicked off the staircase, throwing herself over the edge almost thirty feet above the ground. She spread her wing
s and beat them, flew over the flat roofs of the square white-washed buildings in the witches’ district and then the haphazard Tudor-style ones of the demons’ district, her eyes constantly scanning the busy cobbled streets below.

  Many of the people on them stopped to stare up at her, stunned expressions on their faces.

  Asteria gave them something to gawp at.

  She focused on her body and called her armour, swapping her mortal clothing for crimson-edged black heavy plates that moulded over her legs and snaked up her waist, falling in a V from it to just below her navel, and the chest piece that barely covered her breasts. She even called her gauntlets, the black plates appearing over her forearms with a smaller plate that protected the back of her hand and metal claws that covered her fingers.

  She felt her eyes change, her vision growing more vivid and sharper as her pupils stretched into thin vertical golden lines in the centre of her black irises.

  As she unleashed her power, her senses sharpened too, allowing her to detect all the different signatures of the creatures below her. She sifted through them, hunting for angelic blood. The damned half-breed carried it in her veins, mingled with demon blood. Asteria’s instincts as a demon had warned her of Rey back in Fort William, screaming that he was an angel.

  That same protective instinct should be able to help her locate the half-breed too.

  Her wings grew tired as she flew around the town, her mood souring as she found no sign of the female, or Rey.

  Had he found the female already and taken her away?

  Her mood took a nosedive at that thought and her body followed it as her wings gave out, weak from under using them.

  She landed near the black tavern and a few demon males called to her. All from the mutinous ranks. It wouldn’t normally stop her from flirting with them, but she couldn’t even muster the will to do that as fear and despair sank their claws into her. She pushed past them and entered the tavern, making a beeline for the bar and ignoring the way the males in the room all turned hungry eyes on her.

  The waitress slammed a huge tankard down in front of her. “You look like you need this.”

  Asteria wasn’t going to deny that. She picked the mug of mead up, saluted the fae female, and began knocking it back. When it was empty, a male ordered another for her. And then another.

  She lost track of who had purchased her a drink as she drowned her sorrows in them, pondering whether she could die from too much mead. Probably not. Her demon constitution meant she had to drink a lot to get tipsy, let alone drunk. Death by alcohol probably required drunk. Beyond drunk.

  She was about to order herself a drink, one it looked as if she would be paying for herself because the males in the tavern had lost interest when she had started babbling about angels being bastards, when someone sat on the stool next to her.

  Asteria smelled angel.

  She looked across, ready to spit a few ripe curses in Rey’s direction.

  Blinked.

  Struggled to focus on the petite brunette beside her.

  The half-breed sighed, took her almost empty tankard away from her and pushed it to the waitress who took it away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, genuine regret in her dark brown eyes. “I hope you didn’t get hurt but I had to protect myself.”

  The way the female looked her over left Asteria feeling she should have been physically injured because of the potion bomb, not emotionally wounded.

  The pretty little thing sighed again, smoothed her ponytail and played with the tips of her hair, flicking them back and forth above her shoulder. Such a beautiful female shouldn’t have to wear such a drab black dress. Witches had no taste when it came to a uniform.

  The half-breed was going to look wonderful in her armour when Asteria handed her over to the Devil and she became a demon.

  That hit Asteria so hard it knocked her through drunk into sober.

  The half-breed was right next to her, which meant Rey didn’t have her.

  Which meant Asteria could complete her mission and her life wasn’t about to get very painful very fast.

  Or more painful than it already was.

  She was about to lunge for the female and teleport her to Hell, when the female spoke, freezing her like a statue.

  “What if I told you I know I’m not a witch? What if I told you I know that I’m a half-breed between angel and demon and I’ve known it all my life?”

  A chill skated through Asteria.

  She stared open-mouthed at the female.

  Reeling didn’t cover how she ended up when the half-breed leaned closer, her eyes glittering with gold flakes, and slammed a verbal right hook into Asteria’s mind.

  “What if I told you that you and the angel were once like me?”

  CHAPTER 10

  Rey paced his quarters in Echelon headquarters, working off some energy and hopefully some of the tension that had him wound tight with it. He rubbed his thumb across his jaw as he tried to clear his mind. Whenever he felt he was close, Asteria bounded back into it and he had a flashback of what he had done with her.

  He wanted to be angry with himself, with her, and with the half-breed for launching that lust potion at him.

  But he couldn’t muster that emotion whenever he thought about the passionate moment he had shared with Asteria.

  The intensity of it, the raw and wild passion of it, only made him want to do it again.

  He checked his white wings, preening the feathers carefully, scouring first his left and then his right for a sign of his sin. He had scrutinised them countless times after teleporting straight to his white apartment on the second floor of the equally white bastion in the centre of Heaven, close to the council chambers. Every time he had looked them over, he hadn’t found what he had been looking for, sure it would emerge at some point and mark him for all to see.

  A black feather.

  Angels who committed sins gained them, and what greater sin was there than sleeping with the enemy?

  With a demon.

  Maybe it was the potion. He hadn’t been in control. He had been lost to lust, to a need that had consumed him. Perhaps Heaven didn’t blame him for his actions, and that was the reason he hadn’t gained his first black feather.

  The niggling quiet voice that had been whispering at the back of his mind since he had left Asteria kept on with its constant chanting, telling him that it hadn’t been a lust spell that had made him do that with her.

  He had wanted her.

  The dream he’d had of her was evidence of that. A dream that had fired him up and only left him wanting more, wanting a taste of her in reality rather than in a fantasy. He had wanted that so badly that he had been close to succumbing to his lust for her before the half-breed had doused him with a potion.

  Doused him because he had leaped in to protect Asteria.

  He resisted the temptation to turn his gaze towards her and use his angelic gift of sight to peer through the trees and rock to the bustling fae town beneath.

  The thought that she might have found the half-breed by now pressed him to return, but he wasn’t ready yet. He had thought he only needed a moment away from her to pull himself back together and get his heart back in line, but he had been pacing for hours, struggling with his feelings.

  Feelings he knew he shouldn’t have, but ones that existed in him regardless.

  Just the thought of Asteria, the image of her bouncing along a cobbled street ahead of him, glancing over her shoulders and pinning him with bright dazzling blue eyes and a sultry smile, had him aching to return to her.

  He dragged a hand down his face. Groaned.

  What was wrong with him?

  Was it the lingering effects of the potion?

  He had showered on returning, had scrubbed himself raw, but he still felt wicked urges.

  He looked down at his bare torso and the white loose pants slung low on his hips, and muttered a curse at the way his cock tented the material. He palmed the damn thing, trying to convince it
to go away, but it only made a shiver bolt through him, a hot lance of electricity that had him moaning.

  He snatched his hand away and huffed, trying to be disgusted with himself but failing dismally.

  His green gaze fell to the white floor of his apartment, drawn to it, and before he knew what he was doing, he was seeing through the layers of the building, driving downwards through the sky to the country estate. His vision plunged through that building too, through layers of rock, until it hit the cavern.

  From there, he sought the black building that towered at the curved end of the fae town, and frowned.

  His heart did a strange backflip in his chest.

  Asteria stood outside the tavern in full demon armour, her black leathery wings tucked against her back, hollering words he couldn’t hear up at the building. She made several rude gestures and even picked up a rock and threw it at a window on one of the upper floors.

  His frown hardened.

  His window.

  He had told her to leave him alone, but she was outside the tavern causing a ruckus and trying to get his attention. Everything good in him said to ignore her and continue with his plan to rein in his unruly emotions and desires and then carry out his mission by finding the half-breed.

  That irritating quiet voice demanded he return and find out why Asteria wanted to get his attention.

  He shut it out. She was probably angry with him because he had rejected her and had come to fight him, and he wasn’t in the mood to fight with her.

  He frowned at that.

  He was an Echelon, had been born to eradicate her kind, yet the thought of battling her left him cold inside.

  One of the demon mercenaries outside the tavern took offence when she launched another missile at the window, shattering the pane this time, and glass rained down on him. The big male sauntered towards her and Rey saw red when they clashed and the demon managed to catch hold of Asteria by her throat and throw her aside, sending her crashing into two more demons.