by Larissa Ione
He rubbed his thumb over the shell’s smooth curves, and her breasts tingled, as if they wanted in on that action. “What happened to him?”
“It was a her. And her fate is still up in the air.” She pointed to a massive vessel on the ocean horizon. “There’s a cruise ship. I could take you on one of those sometime. They have the most incredible lavish buffets, bars, activities, and ship-borne viruses.”
“Sounds delightful.”
She loved his understated sense of humor. “You know what would be delightful? Cocktails. Hold on.” She flashed to a nearby beach bar and used a frowned-upon but not forbidden trick of planting a suggestion in the bartender’s ear. A few minutes later, she was flashing away with two Mai Tais, complete with little umbrellas.
But when she materialized on the beach where she’d left him, she found only a pile of clothing. Then she heard splashing.
It was all she could do to not roll her tongue out like a welcome mat when she saw Azagoth naked and hip deep in the surf, his face turned to the sun and his hands dragging through his wet hair. Holy mother of hotness, he was sex on legs. If there had been people here—and they could see him—he’d have every woman on the beach drooling.
As it was, the only drooling going on was coming from Lilliana.
She watched him dive into a wave, his sinuous body barely rippling the surface as he arched like a dolphin. His long, muscular legs and spectacular ass glinted in the sunlight before disappearing into the ocean. He surfaced a few yards out, laughing in pure, unadulterated pleasure.
Lilliana had spent her entire life in Heaven amongst angels with a zest for living, but she’d never seen anyone come alive the way Azagoth did every time they passed through the chronoglass. It was as if he was a different person, and Lilliana really, really liked that person.
“Come on, angel!” he called out. “Water’s great!”
“Nuh-uh,” she teased, holding up the drinks. “Ice’ll melt. Guess I’ll have to drink them both.”
She took the tips of both straws between her lips, and in an instant, Azagoth was in front of her, naked, dripping water, and gloriously aroused.
“If you really want to suck on something...” He waggled his brows, and she rolled her eyes, but the truth was that she enjoyed this playful side of him, and she loved that it brought out the playful side of her, too.
It was becoming harder and harder to think about leaving.
Shoving those thoughts into the back of her mind, she thrust Azagoth’s drink at him. “Suck that, Soul Boy.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Did you just call me, the Grim Fucking Reaper, Soul Boy?”
“I did,” she teased. “What are you going to do about it?”
His voice became a low purr. “I do think I’ll have to spank you.”
A shiver of unabashed want trekked up her spine. “Promise?”
Three days ago, she wouldn’t have believed she’d be flirting with Azagoth. Heck, she wouldn’t have believed she’d be flirting with anyone. Hutriel had been too serious for flirting, and she’d been too busy since they’d broken up to even think about seeing anyone else.
“Mmm.” His noncommittal response left her practically squirming with uncertain anticipation.
Azagoth’s gaze never left her face as his lips closed on the straw. He sucked down the drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each swallow. When he’d drained every last drop, he tossed the empty glass to the ground and stepped into her.
“Swim with me.” His hand came up to her throat, and then froze. “My necklace,” he murmured. “You’re wearing it.”
“It’s beautiful.”
His eyes darkened with emotion so pure and powerful that she felt it wrap around her heart like a warm blanket. “You honor me by wearing it by choice, not by command,” he said softly. “But you don’t have to wear it.”
Her hand shook as she rested it on his. “I wanted to.”
A rough, primitive sound rolled like thunder from inside his chest. His mouth came down hard on hers, and she met him with equal aggression, tangling her tongue with his and nipping at his lips.
As if a dam had broken, need flooded her body, swift and urgent. She’d known lust before, but this was wild, the kind she’d thought might actually be a myth.
She lifted her thigh to his hip and arched her sex against his. She just needed to get out of these pesky clothes—
Abruptly, the hair on the back of her neck stood up and a shrieking alarm clanged around inside her skull.
Oh, shit.
They weren’t alone.
Chapter Fourteen
The vibration that skittered over Azagoth’s skin was almost orgasmic. In Sheoul-gra, evil was everywhere, permeating everything so thoroughly that unless a being was off-the-charts evil, he barely noticed.
But here in the human realm, evil stood out like a hell stallion in a herd of donkeys.
Reluctantly, he pulled away from Lilliana and turned to meet the source of the malevolent vibes.
Two fallen angels, both looking like they’d stepped out of a Mad Max movie, were walking toward them, their crude leather armor streaked with dried blood, their hands wrapped around sharp, wicked-looking swords. Teeth, bones, and scalps hung from their belts, and he didn’t even want to know what was stuck between their teeth and crusted to their boots.
These were true killers, fallen angels so corrupted by darkness that murder was all they lived for. He didn’t know what made some fallen angels turn into mindless beasts, but he encountered their type every once in a while when they came through his soul tunnel. They were defiant, antagonistic, and they scoffed when he threatened to send them to the worst places in the Inner Sanctum.
Later, much later, when Azagoth went to check up on their misery, they were different people. The information they willingly spewed had given him some of his greatest blackmail material.
Next to him, he felt Lilliana charge up her powers, but he could already tell that these two fucktwats coming toward them were stronger than she was. No problem, because he was going to take them apart in a matter of—
A lightning bolt slammed down in a surge of light, and the fallen angel on the left lit up like a neon sign. His scream joined the crash of the surf and the calls of the seabirds overhead. Stunning ruby-tipped black wings sprouted from Lilliana’s back, arching high against the blue sky as she threw her hand out, sending another strike that knocked the enemy to the ground, his skin reddened and steaming.
Azagoth grinned. His female was a warrior. Time to finish off these fucks and have some victory sex.
“Okay, boys,” he growled. “Time to die.”
He let loose a barrage of fire bombs...at least, he tried to. The weakly little sparks died before they got ten feet from his fingertips. What the hell—
The non-crisped fallen angel snarled, and suddenly, Lilliana was slammed by an invisible force so powerful that she hit the rocky cliff thirty yards behind her. Blood spattered on the stones, and she crumpled to the sand in a broken lump.
Rage burned Azagoth’s throat like he’d swallowed burning tar, and with a roar, he let out the beast he’d become, the thing that hid beneath his skin. As his bones popped and his features contorted, the fallen angel that attacked Lilliana streaked toward her, his gore-crusted weapon raised.
“No!” Azagoth’s voice, so warped that he didn’t recognize it, didn’t faze the bastard.
Power sang through Azagoth as his wings erupted from his back. He shot into the air and came down on top of the fallen angel, his black, serrated talons ripping into the guy’s flesh with the ease of a spoon through gelato.
A weapon struck him, and pain blasted through his chest, but he ignored it as he snapped his jaws closed on one thick arm. The limb tore away with a satisfying rip, and the fallen angel’s scream was absolute music.
He lost himself to the sounds, tastes, and smells of the battle...until he heard another fight taking place. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the fried fallen ange
l engaged in combat with Lilliana. Her summoned fire sword was holding up against the fallen angel’s elemental staff, but Azagoth wasn’t taking any chances.
With a final roar, he stabbed his claws through the guy’s rib cage. The dude’s scream came out gurgled as his blood filled his mouth. Tightening his grip, Azagoth yanked his hands apart, ripping the fallen angel in half.
At the same time, he raised his scaly tail and aimed the poisonous bone spur at the tip at the charred son of a bitch. As Crispy swung his staff at Lilliana’s head, Azagoth struck. The tail spike skewered the fallen angel at the base of the skull, piercing the brain stem and delivering a lethal dose of toxin into his nervous system.
If the physical trauma didn’t kill him, the poison would.
Crispy fell to the ground, body spasming, mouth open in a silent scream as white foam boiled out of his throat.
Awesome.
Lilliana stood there, eyes wide as she stared at the two dead fallen angels. They went even wider when she finally got a load of Azagoth. Her fear was palpable, shivering through him as if it was his own. Just days ago, he’d have been ecstatic to feel her emotions, no matter what they were, simply because he hadn’t felt anything at all in so damned long.
But he hated that he was scaring her, and for the first time since becoming the Grim Reaper, he felt shame.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice smoky and rough as it cleared his massive jaws and teeth. “It takes a few minutes to turn back.”
She swallowed. Nodded. And then she made her summoned sword and wings disappear.
“It’s okay,” she breathed. “But I gotta say, you are one scary-ass bastard.”
“You say the sweetest things,” he rumbled.
She dropped her gaze to the dead fallen angels. “You really don’t mess around, do you?”
He grinned, and then quickly hid it, because in this dragon-demon mash-up form, a grin was probably terrifying. “The beauty of all of this is that I get to see their souls again when they come through my tunnel later.”
As if on cue, griminions materialized from out of nowhere and streaked to the bodies, which had just started to disintegrate.
“Hey, fellas,” he said. “Feel free to play with these bastards while you’re waiting for me to open the tunnel.”
Their excited chatter sounded like squirrels on crack. They were cute little buggers sometimes.
He watched as the souls of the fallen angels rose out of their rapidly decaying bodies, only to be shackled by the griminions and ushered away in a poof of gray smoke. Their screams lingered in the air a little while longer.
“Did you see that?” he asked. “That was cool.” Lilliana looked at him like he was crazy. “What? I’ve never seen souls rise and my griminions show up for the harvest. I’m always on the receiving end of the soul reaping.”
Lilliana grimaced. “Let me repeat the scary-ass bastard thing.” She held out her hand as if to touch him. “May I?”
He shrugged, making his twelve-foot leather wings flap in the breeze. Tentatively, Lilliana skimmed her fingers over the scaly skin of his forearm, and a strange rumble he’d never heard bubbled up from his skeletal chest. It took a moment to figure out what it was.
A purr. He was purring.
Lilliana didn’t seem to be disturbed by the noise in the least, and if anything, she’d moved closer, was now running her hand up his arm to his shoulder.
“Is this okay?” she asked softly? “I’m not hurting you or anything, am I?”
“Hurting...me?” He stared down at her in amazement. He could bite her head off right now, before she could even blink, and she was worried that her sensual touch was hurting him?
“Well, you do have blood on you.”
“It’s not mine.” The initial injury he’d taken from the non-crispy fallen angel had healed already, leaving only a thin, foot-long scar across his torso. In another five minutes, even that would be gone.
“Good,” she murmured. “Can you change into this form at will?”
“Yes. But it comes out on its own when I’m angry.” Not that he was angry often, given his numbness to emotions. But his inner beast took advantage of even mild anger now and then. “It came out this time because I don’t seem to have any powers in this realm.”
“It’s the shrowd,” she said. “Only angels with the ability to time travel can use their powers here.”
“You could have mentioned that earlier,” he muttered.
“Sorry,” she said, even though she sounded anything but contrite as she explored the corded tendons in his neck.
He closed his eyes, marveling at the sensation of a female touching him so...reverently. Sweet, savage hell, that felt good. Between the jacked-up high of the battle and Lilliana’s feathery touch, a lance of lust shot through him.
And then, to his abject horror, his cock got interested in everything Lilliana was doing. With a hiss, he spun around, desperately trying to will his body to shift back.
“Azagoth?” Her hand came down between his shoulder blades, in the sensitive expanse just below his wings. “Are you okay?”
“Just...give me a minute.”
Her hand fell away, and for a long, painful moment, he thought he’d offended her. But then she strode past him on her way toward the surf. A few feet away, she looked back over her shoulder with an impish smile on her face.
“I’m going swimming. Join me if you want to.” She stripped as she walked, shedding clothes in a trail on the sand, and he was panting before her feet hit the water.
Suddenly, he didn’t give a shit what he looked like. He needed that female, and he needed her now.
* * * *
Lilliana had only gone shin-deep in the water when she heard a whoosh and a splash behind her. Turning, she faced Azagoth, still in his beast form.
Damn, he was scary. At least two feet taller and a hundred pounds heavier than his usual form, he was the epitome of what humans would call a demon. From his massive, elongated jaws and serrated talons, to the black horns that jutted from his forehead and curled up over his skull, he was the stuff of nightmares.
No doubt he’d become those fallen angels’ worst nightmare. And to make it all worse, they couldn’t escape him in the afterlife, either. She almost felt sorry for them.
Almost. One of them could have been the bastard who’d killed her mother. So if Azagoth wanted to spend weeks in the Inner Sanctum with them, she was okay with that.
It occurred to her that she was thinking into the future, but this time, she couldn’t get worked up about it. Not now. Not with this magnificent creature in front of her.
Azagoth’s deep chest was heaving as he stared at her with intense, red eyes, and she probably should have been terrified, but after the initial shock of seeing him like this wore off, she’d been fascinated. He was beautiful in the way a cobra was, sleek and graceful, primitive and deadly.
He was also very, very turned on.
She tried not to stare. She really did. But Azagoth The Sleek and Deadly was sporting a baseball bat between his legs. Morbid curiosity made her want to touch it, to see if she could close both hands around the thickness.
“I can feel the change starting to happen,” he rumbled. “So if there’s anything you want to...explore...now’s the time.”
Oh, what the hell. This wasn’t a stranger. It was Azagoth, even if he didn’t look like he usually did, and if she was even considering staying with him, she had to accept all of him.
Stepping closer, she took his length into her hands. He hissed in pleasure as she gently stroked the ebony head and feathered her fingers down the rigid shaft. Sweet mother of sin, he was huge, so thick around that the tips of her thumbs and fingers barely met as she grasped him in both hands. When she reached the base of the smooth column, she dipped one hand lower, to his scrotum, and yup, there were the baseballs to match the bat.
“You’re, um, well endowed,” she whispered, her tongue so dry she could barely speak. Probably because
all of her moisture had gone south, and even as her mouth dried up, her sex became soaked.
Was she really turned on by this? Her aching breasts and throbbing pelvis said yes.
Azagoth’s big body trembled, and as she watched, his form crumpled in on itself until he was back in his usual form, panting, his eyes wild.
He stumbled back, averting her gaze, and alarm rang through her.
“Azagoth?” She moved toward him, but he turned away, leaving her to stare at his bare back. “What’s wrong?”
“No one...no one has ever touched me like that.”
“I can’t believe no one has touched your penis.”
He inhaled raggedly. “No, I mean, no one has touched me like that. Not in my demon form. Weren’t you afraid I’d hurt you?”
“Why would I be? You were you in there. You weren’t some mindless beast.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Am I wrong? When you’re in that form, can’t you control yourself?”
His muscles flexed under her palm. “I’m in complete control unless I’m killing. But even then, my focus is limited to the one I’m fighting.”
“See? That’s why I wasn’t afraid to touch you.”
“But this is what thousands of years of corruption has done to me. I’m hideous.”
“Not to me,” she said softly.
He moved in a blur. One second he was staring at the sand, and the next, he was pressed against her, his arms wrapped around her back and shoulders, his hands digging into her hair. His lips came down on hers in a fierce, hot meeting of mouths.
“Lilli,” he whispered, “thank you.”
She had no idea what he was thanking her for, and it didn’t matter. At this moment, she needed everything he could give her. It was as if she couldn’t bear another second without him inside her.
Throwing her arms around his shoulders, she lifted herself up so her thighs wrapped around his waist and his sex rubbed against her core. He groaned into her mouth, the very male sound of need reverberating all the way to her breasts.
Arching, she used her entire body to stroke him, her sex grinding against his, her breasts rubbing over the smooth skin of his chest, her belly creating hot friction against his abs. Dear, sweet Lord, she was going to come right here, right now.
