Cast From Heaven: A Paranormal Fantasy Romance (Lili Kazana Book 1)

by Leigh Kelsey

  NOTE

  The Lili Kazana series is reverse harem, which means Lili doesn’t have to choose between her many lovers. This book contains some scenes intended for adult readers.

  This book was written, produced, and edited in the UK where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.

  Copyright © Leigh Kelsey 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the author

  The right of Leigh Kelsey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  www.leighkelsey.co.uk

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  Cover by Pixie Covers

  CAST FROM HEAVEN

  LILI KAZANA BOOK ONE

  Betrayed by heaven, protected by hell. The devil and his hellhounds will do anything to keep their angel safe.

  When archangel Gabriel manipulates Lili Kazana, severing her wings so she can be his spy in Hell, rescue comes in the most unlikely form: protective Cerny, sweet Russ, gruff Bernard, and the devil himself.

  Lili is hesitant to trust her rescuers, but with humanity at stake from a demon invasion and her angel ex-boyfriend on the warpath, Lili has no choice but to rely on Lucifer and the three shifters. It doesn’t hurt that they’re sexy as sin and want to take care of her. Every inch of her.

  Cast From Heaven is a medium burn romance, with a damaged, innocent angel and the four demons devoted to her. This book is RH, which means Lili doesn’t have to pick a favourite of her protectors - why choose when you can have all four?

  Contains some mature content. 60,000 words.

  NOTE

  In the beginning few chapters of this book, Lili is in a manipulative and abusive relationship. If such things trigger you, this might not be the book for you. Or you can skip ahead to Cerny’s first chapter when Lili’s guys save her if you’re okay with reading references to such abuse, just not the abuse itself. Thanks for reading, and remember to take care of yourself - only read what you’re comfortable with.

  Leigh

  CAST FROM HEAVEN

  The many-domed skyline of Wisteria in Heaven was a balm to Liliana Kazana’s homesick soul after a long spring at Guardian Academy. Her final spring at the academy. She was finally home, and now that her studies were done and she’d passed with flying colours, she would finally have time to spend with Gabriel. Uninterrupted time that made butterflies spring to life in her belly. Their too-fast nights, stolen between Lili’s classes and Gabriel’s missions, had tormented her, teasing what it could be like if only their schedules stopped clashing.

  Now that she was home, they would have so much more time. Whole weeks to spend together, luxuriating in each other’s touch and the rough joining Gabriel favoured, before he had to return to the skies to hunt the demons corrupting Earth.

  A smile spread across Lili’s face as she tucked her pearly wings into her sides and plummeted through puffy, mist-filled clouds, gobbling up the sight of her home from above—the only real way to see it. It was majestic from ground level but it was magic from the skies. Lili threw her head back and whooped as her wings snapped out, catching the wind to slow her descent.

  She curved around a golden dome, swerving past spires made of turquoise and lapis, flying over copper roofs and dew-dusted parks, past the statue-capped moonstone columns ringing the central park like an oval photo frame. Each column was graced with the image of one of the gods and goddesses. There, by the entrance stood Zeus and Hera, and there by the silver lake Artemis and Athena gazed down upon the picnickers and children playing frisbee, Aphrodite standing watch over the wrought iron benches and Demeter looking adoringly over the windflower-carpeted clearing.

  Lili had never seen the gods in person—no one but the archangels had, who were sometimes known as the graces and relayed messages between the gods and Heaven—but she’d always loved the park, and the sight of it now filled her with an equal measure of relief and yearning, of homecoming.

  Lili curved her wings, minding the paths of other angels through the skies, soaring her way across Wisteria until finally a pale, shining tower caught her eye. Gabriel’s tower, where he waited for her on the balcony.

  Flying was never Lili’s best look, her mousy brown hair blown into a tangled mass behind her and her wings ruffled, her cheeks rosy with exertion, but as she touched down on the moonstone and marble veranda floor, Gabriel’s eyes heavy on her, she tried her best to flatten wayward strands, to smooth her coral silk dress. The second their eyes met, all self-consciousness flew away. She launched across the balcony and into his arms with a squeal of pure joy.

  Gabriel rocked back, a firm hand pressing into her side to stop them both toppling over as she hugged him tight. When she pulled back, Gabriel’s burnished gold eyes were watching her, sending a little flip through her stomach.

  “I missed you,” Lili breathed, scanning every inch of his hard, angular face like she hadn’t seen it for months instead of just weeks. “It’s been so long, Gabriel, it feels like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  He nodded, glancing over the top of her head at the sky above them. “Where are your bags?” A flat, bored question—because his messenger likely stood within hearing distance and he couldn’t be seen to show preference for a half-angel-half-demon like Lili. It wasn’t heavenly, their affair, but it felt divine when they were pressed close like this, his slow heartbeat echoing through his ribcage into hers.

  “I had a courier send them to my room,” Lili told him, pulling back to smile at him. She couldn’t help the bounce of her toes as her eyes swept from his tawny hair, his sharp face, to his warrior’s body. Bronze—all of him, as if he’d been hewn from the metal. He was beautiful, and hers. Her Gabriel.

  An archangel. Lili almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. She was a mistake, the illegitimate child of Michael and Lilith. She should have been killed at birth, but for some reason Michael had kept her.

  For the first ten years of her life, she’d been shut away in his tower of full-blooded, haughty angels—for shame, she’d thought, until she was allowed to attend the academy. There she’d made friends who were nothing like the sneering, judgemental angels of Michael’s tower, and she’d realised that while she was uncommon, and while some people hated her, others didn’t.

  Michael didn’t visit her often, and when he did he was distant, but she was still grateful that he’d fought for her to live in Heaven. It meant she had a home still, meant she could move back into her room in the tower.

  And now she had Gabriel … her life was a complete picture, no part of her future missing. She might have been a mistake, and she might have once feared that no one would ever want her, but Gabriel showed her she was wrong with every touch.

  “You’re a day early,” Gabriel observed, and Lili grinned, unable to stop herself from reaching for him again, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “I know, but I didn’t see the point staying another day when I could come home. When I could see you.”

  “Welcome home,” Gabriel replied, his hand sliding into her hair and his voice warming. She’d just surprised him, she realised, by coming home early, by flying straight onto the balcony. Lili grinned up at him, that swarm of butterflies going berserk in her belly. “I have some business to deal with now, but bef
ore I do…”

  He tightened his grip on her hair and surged forward, claiming her mouth in the brutal way she’d become used to. It was bruising and rough, his tongue forcing hers into submission, his teeth knocking into hers, and though Lili didn’t love the ferocity of it, she did love him, and because he was kissing her … she melted, an unconscious sound in the back of her throat.

  “Go to the tower,” Gabriel said when he broke the kiss, leaving her gasping and wide-eyed. “I’ll find you tonight.”

  Lili nodded, still stunned by the kiss, but as she stepped onto the balcony frame and kicked off into the sky, she grinned.

  She was home, with Gabriel. Exactly where she was supposed to be.

  Lili hummed to herself, a pop song that had floated from Earth to brighten the skies of Heaven, as she finished unpacking her academy things and showered. Dressing in her prettiest pink dress and curling her hair into perfect ringlets, her cheeks and eyelids got a dusting of gold shimmer, her mouth a peach tint, and then Lili stepped back to squint at herself in the mirror.

  The dress was long-sleeved and had a high neckline, concealing the burns that rippled across her skin. She knew people thought they were ugly, and that fact made an oily feeling twist her belly, but she didn’t hate them herself. Mostly she found them confusing.

  She’d had them since she was six, when the gold flickers of fire warming her bedroom had ensnared her. She’d gotten too close and … fallen in. Lili was lucky the burns hadn’t spread to her face—she didn’t think Gabriel would find her beautiful if they had, and shied away from the thought. The strange thing, though, was even though her skin had turned red and seething, it hadn’t hurt. Not for a second. It had felt … odd, tickling. But not the agony it should have been as her skin burned away.

  She knew her father had seen it as a mark of hell, an insult to him for keeping her, when he should have listened to the other archangels and had her slaughtered at birth. It had made Michael even more distant than he’d already been, and she’d missed him, but mostly she’d been confused. She didn’t understand why the fire had burned her if she was a demon, didn’t know why it had burned but not hurt. But she understood when her nanny, Gracia, warned Lili to never touch the fire again, and she’d obeyed. She didn’t want her skin to pucker anywhere else, didn’t want her whole body to be scarred.

  Even if she didn’t hate those parts, she felt conscious of them when people stared. Even if Gabriel told her she was beautiful in those rare warm moments she lived for.

  Maybe she’d burned because her father was an angel, but had been spared the pain because her mother was a demon. She’d never know. Lili shook off the thoughts. And besides, she looked cute tonight. In the pastel pink dress, with her skin shimmering and her mousy hair in curls … she looked perfectly angelic.

  “Preening like a peacock,” a flat voice observed, and Lili spun with a giggle of surprise to find that Gabriel had landed on her wide balcony, his golden wings ruffling as they tucked into his sides. He looked glorious standing there, handsome in a charcoal suit, crisp shirt, and glossy black shoes.

  Her tower wasn’t as fine as his, made of sand and brick instead of marble and moonstone, sturdy, angular blocks instead of delicately carved curves and columns. She was always conscious of that, and the mess of her bedroom, whenever Gabriel filled the balcony and stepped through the floating curtains into her room.

  His boots tracked dirt into her bubble-gum carpet but he didn’t seem to notice. Lili giggled at that—that she’d noticed something the warrior and spy hadn’t. His eyes narrowed at the sound but Lili kept smiling, thrilled to have him here in her room, and to have hours and hours to spend with him. Nowhere to rush off to, no classes to attend or study for until her head ached. Just blissful hours to spend curled up with her archangel.

  “Come here,” Gabriel said, holding out a hand.

  Lili almost tripped over the faux fur rug in her haste, fitting her body against Gabriel’s. His hand pressed to the ridges of her back as his mouth lowered and he kissed her with bruising passion. Lili sighed, curling her fingers around the silk of his shirt, wanting to brush his wings with her fingers but not daring.

  A gasp tore from her when he grabbed her arms hard enough to hurt, but she’d been slowly getting used to it, the force he used with her. The air whooshed from her lungs when he threw her onto her plush bed, cushions rising to swallow her and ease the sting of her bruises, but Lili forgot every ache as he climbed on top of her, those glorious wings rustling as he nudged her legs apart.

  He didn’t waste time revealing her body in slow, teasing increments; he grabbed her dress and tore, kissing her before she could issue a complaint. She’d loved that dress, had thought she looked pretty in it. But Gabriel kissed her misgivings away, tugging at her underwear until they too tore. It was the work of a minute to get his trousers off, his jacket folded neatly on the bedside table and his shoes arranged precisely on the carpet beneath. His eyes slid over her body, from her splotchy face down her breasts, her goose-bump-covered stomach and her rippling burns, to the patch of hair between her thighs.

  He settled between her legs, and Lili’s eyes flew wide as he thrust inside. She wasn’t ready for him, not yet, and it was uncomfortable at first, but Gabriel squeezed her breasts, pinched her nipples until she was wet and taking him deeper. Sparks echoed through her body at every deep nudge of his cock, and it was magic, that explosion of sensation. Like witnessing the dawn of the earth, the formation of Heaven itself. Lili had never known anything like her Gabriel.

  He grunted, thrusting harder and harder, so far from gentle that Lili was sure he’d never heard of the word. She curled her fingers into the blankets on either side of her and held on for dear life as he pounded such pleasure and exquisite pain into her until her body quivered, tensed, and her climax ruptured through her.

  Lili gasped his name over and over, shuddering and weak, stars bursting into beautiful life behind her eyelids as aftershocks took her. Gabriel didn’t say her name—he never did—but that was okay, because it was only Lili who got to see him like this, who he unleashed himself upon like a starving man. And as he pulled out and pumped his cock over her, spilling warmth onto her belly and her breasts, Lili glowed with satisfaction and love. Only hers—only for her.

  Gabriel grunted one last time and fell onto the bed beside her, cold rushing into her body, her bared pussy, in his absence. Still a little dazed, Lili closed her legs and turned onto her side to gaze at her archangel. She wanted to cuddle close but he wouldn’t like that, so she contented herself with drinking in the sight of him, flush and smirking.

  When her eyes were nearly slipping shut, her body so relaxed and her mind quieted, Gabriel said, “Liliana. Can I ask something of you?”

  Lili pried her eyes apart with effort. “Anything.”

  She meant it.

  He traced her cheek with the pad of a finger and Lili’s heart stuttered at the affection. “My next mission is a crucial one, but it will take me away from Wisteria for a long time.” He sighed, looking into her eyes. “I wish I could spend it here. With you.”

  “I want that too,” Lili breathed, nodding. She’d give anything to make that happen.

  His caress slid down her face, her neck, to her shoulder, mapping the path of her freckles. “If you could help me, I wouldn’t have to go away for so long. I’d have more time to spend home with you.”

  Home with you. The words echoed into a place so deep inside her, so filled with longing, that her eyes welled with tears. “What do you need?”

  The smile he gave her was wide and beautiful, and Lili felt so grateful that this smile was for her. The half-demon angel, the scarred girl, Michael’s illegitimate daughter. “I wouldn’t ask unless I had to, Liliana,” he murmured, “but with your help, I believe we can do this. And when we do, I’ll be in Wisteria much longer and more often. We can have a real life together.”

  Lili’s heart nearly burst and she was sure he could see it, but he didn’t
look at her like she was an emotional little girl. He looked at her like … like she was valued. And if she could help him… The mere fact he was asking for her help made the decision for her. “What do you need?” she repeated. “Just ask it, Gabriel.”

  “You know more and more demons are spilling onto Earth.” Lili nodded. It was a real problem and all of Heaven was talking about it. “My mission is to sneak into Hell and shut down the breaches they’re using to infiltrate the mortal world, but because I’m an archangel … I can’t spent many hours there before I’ll wither.” His voice lowered and he glanced away, distress painting his beautiful face. “I could die.”

  “No,” Lili breathed. Everything inside her went still. Not her Gabriel.

  “But you.” Gabriel turned a smile on her. “You’re part demon, Liliana. You could go in and out, and you wouldn’t sicken. You wouldn’t wither.” His thumb skimmed her shoulder. “You could help me; you’d go unnoticed in their halls and overhear their plans—and report them to me. And when we’ve found the rifts between Hell and Earth, we can come home together, to Wisteria, and start a life together. A family, maybe.”

  The words were drops of sunlight on her long-shadowed soul. He wanted to start a family with Lili. A family. She smiled so wide she feared her face would burst. “Okay,” she agreed before she fully processed his request. Doubt hit within seconds. “But—but I can’t spy, Gabriel. I don’t know how.”

  “That’s why this will work.” His hand slid down her side slowly and gently enough that she sighed, melting into the pillows as his hand settled in the dip of her waist. “Because no one will ever think you’re a spy. You’ll be able to get in, and get out, and tell us what we need to know.”