“I don’t know. Asmodeus doesn’t know either. He was only told to grab me and bring me to him.”
“I have seen what that fiend does with females and the lengths he will go to in order to get what he wants. It is highly likely that the Devil will attempt to sire a child on you.” Apollyon’s tone lacked warmth and his words left her cold to the bone.
The thought of being used in such a way turned her stomach and she knew from the way that Asmodeus had looked when he had told her that the Devil wanted her and he wouldn’t let him have her, that it didn’t sit well with him either.
She had to go to him, but there was something else she had to say first.
She stared straight into Apollyon’s rich blue eyes.
“You were mean to make him look foolish because he had never experienced hunger. It was cruel.” She held her hand up when Serenity went to speak and frowned at Apollyon, unafraid of the way the paler flecks in his eyes started to swirl and his power rose, beginning to press down on her. “It was cruel and you took pleasure from it.”
Liora shook her head. She had expected Apollyon to be angry with her for bringing Asmodeus to his home, and had even expected him to turn on Asmodeus, but she hadn’t expected him to be so nasty.
“I can see where Asmodeus got that trait,” she said and turned towards the door.
“Liora!” Serenity snapped and she braced herself on instinct, expecting her cousin to lash out at her with magic for her vicious verbal attack on her lover. When she spoke, her tone had softened and the power Liora felt in her faded. “Where are you going?”
Just like her good cousin to forgive her so swiftly. If their positions had been reversed, Liora would have at least shot a warning spell across her bow.
“I have to speak with Asmodeus.” Liora looked over her shoulder at Apollyon and Serenity.
“You cannot trust him,” Serenity said and came to stand beside Apollyon in the middle of the room. They made a good couple. Both of them were powerful, virtuous and held the respect of their peers.
Perhaps Liora and Asmodeus looked that good standing beside each other. She would have to look in the next window or mirror they passed and find out. Both of them were powerful, a bit wicked and dangerous, and didn’t give a damn what others thought about them.
“I can trust him. I’ve felt the good in him and I know he will protect me.”
“There is good in him, Liora, as well as evil, but that does not mean you can trust him. He works for the Devil. He was created for that purpose, to be the Devil’s right hand man, a powerful ally. He serves that dark lord, Liora.” Apollyon took a step towards her, his black eyebrows pinching tightly together and his blue eyes narrowing with them. He looked like Asmodeus when he did that, and it made her want to see her angel even more.
“I need to speak with him. I can handle myself and I will be careful, but I have to go.” She stepped out of the door and raced down the stairs, taking deep breaths with each step, feeling the oppressive weight of being around Apollyon and Serenity lifting as she neared the ground floor and hopefully Asmodeus.
She didn’t just want to talk to Asmodeus about what the Devil had planned for her. She wanted to talk to him about the weird feelings she’d had recently, the sense that someone was watching her and had been close to her several times. She needed to know if he thought it was the Devil or someone else.
Liora muttered another prayer under her breath that when she reached the main doors of the building, Asmodeus would be there.
She bolted across the marble floor of the elegant foyer and shoved the brass and glass doors open. Her heart lifted and her tension melted away when she spotted Asmodeus standing on the pavement in the quiet narrow street, his head tipped back, causing the longer strands of his black hair to fall away from his handsome face.
Liora took the three stone steps down to the pavement and stopped beside him.
He looked stern and his golden eyes had gone cold. She didn’t like it.
A chill crept through her when his irises brightened, the flakes in them beginning to swirl, and he wavered on the spot, as if in a trance. His gaze slowly inched down to her, bringing his head down with it, his eyes focused on her like a hawk eyeing prey and then he visibly relaxed. His shoulders settled and his frown disappeared, as if whatever had been bothering him was gone now.
“Is something wrong?” She couldn’t get her voice above a whisper while he was staring straight at her, the black and amber flakes in his eyes settling and his pupils narrowing.
He shook his head. “Go back inside and leave me alone.”
Well, that was rude. She placed her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“No,” she said and he raised a single black eyebrow at her. She could see straight past his cool but dark façade to the reason he wanted her to leave him alone and she wasn’t going to let him have his way, because he had no reason to feel hurt or upset. She reached out and laid her left hand on his forearm. “You’re new to hunger. It isn’t unreasonable that you would mistake it for sickness.”
Asmodeus huffed and stalked away from her, heading down the street, the long feathers of his black wings fluttering around his ankles. Liora frowned now. She wasn’t going to let him leave her, not when he was still starving and not even after she had somehow managed to get him to listen to her.
She hurried after him, adjusting her small black bag so it was behind her and wasn’t hindering her strides.
“Go away, Liora,” Asmodeus tossed the words over his broad shoulders and she shook her head even though he couldn’t see it.
“Not going to happen. There’s a nice café this way. We could get something to eat.” She looked up at the sky. It was getting light but it was still early. It would be at least thirty minutes to an hour before the café opened for the morning rush.
He cheated.
He spread his black wings and beat them hard, forcing her to stop to avoid being struck by them, and shot into the air. He landed on the edge of the building above her and strolled along it.
Now he was really pissing her off.
Liora focused on his position and called her magic. It was going to take a lot of her remaining power to get her up there. She had used a vast amount of it to bring Asmodeus to Apollyon and had left herself weak.
The world darkened and then a different view greeted her. Rooftops stretched around her, lower than she had expected.
Her coordinates were off.
Liora shrieked and dropped to the tar roof several feet below her, landing awkwardly on her right foot. Her ankle blazed, fire shooting up her leg, and she cried out again and her backside hit the roof. Her shin and foot throbbed as she rolled onto her back and clutched them, gritting her teeth against the pain.
Asmodeus appeared above her, his golden gaze darting between her eyes. The concern in it touched her. He shifted back and she wanted to ask him not to leave her and then realised that he wasn’t going further than a few feet.
He eased her hands away from her leg and carefully removed her black leather ankle boot. He placed it down on the roof beside her, kneeled and set her foot down on his bare thighs. She stared at him as he gently inspected her ankle, feeling the bones, a beautiful frown of concentration on his face.
It hurt like a bitch.
“Is it broken?” she said, afraid that she had pushed her luck too far this time. She had never broken a bone outside of a battle before and in those circumstances adrenaline kept the pain at bay until long after she had claimed victory.
He shook his head, settled her foot in his lap, and frowned down at her. “You were a fool for following me.”
That wasn’t very nice. “I had to… I need to speak with you about everything. I need to know why you didn’t take me to your master… I need to hear you say it again.”
He looked away from her, his focus fixing on the roof beside her. The sun was rising behind him, casting his face in shadows but giving him a glorious golden and pink hued backdrop. His blac
k wings shifted and he drew in a deep breath that had her pain melting away as her gaze dropped to his bare chest and she watched his muscles ripple.
“The Devil is only my master in name. He does not rule me. We are equal in power and standing.”
She could see he truly believed that.
Liora didn’t. If the Devil commanded him to bring her to him, Asmodeus would fight the order, but she feared he would fail. Part of her said that she was safer away from him, with Apollyon and Serenity. The rest overruled it and told her to stay and not let him slip out of her grasp.
“Why didn’t you take me to him?” she whispered and his eyes finally came back to rest on her. They lost their darkness and the cold edge they had gained, and softened, revealing the emotions he tried so hard to hide from the world.
“I will never let him have you. You will never belong to him… because… I desire… something foolish. Pointless.” Asmodeus stood and raked his fingers through his hair. He tipped his head back and sighed.
“It isn’t foolish and pointless to desire something, Asmodeus… not if the object of that desire feels the same.”
His gaze sharply dropped to hers and widened. She smiled and held her hand out to him.
“Help me up?”
He nodded and slipped his hand into hers. The moment they touched, a jolt ran up her arm, causing her fine hairs to stand on end and her heart to race. She stared up into Asmodeus’s beautiful golden gaze, catching his shock and awe, feeling the same inside.
He eased her onto her feet and bent before her. She laid one hand on his shoulder to steady herself when he carefully slipped her boot back onto her injured foot and didn’t let go when he stood.
Asmodeus paused, his gaze holding hers, filled with the conflicting feelings that she could sense in him through her touch. His eyes drifted down to her mouth and her lips parted, anticipation stealing her breath and leaving her trembling. She ached to feel his mouth on hers again, reaffirming everything he had told her before, making her feel that she wasn’t going crazy and that things would somehow work out between them.
He bent and scooped her up into his arms, turned and beat his wings. They lifted off into the air and Asmodeus beat his wings again, carrying them over a gap between the buildings. He wobbled and she snapped her head around, catching him with his eyes closed and a frown pinching his eyebrows.
“Asmodeus?” She clutched his cheeks.
He growled, twisted awkwardly and dropped. She threw her arms around his neck and held on, screwing her eyes shut. He landed hard, stumbled forwards a few steps and eventually righted himself.
Liora opened her eyes and smoothed her thumbs across his cheeks, her fingertips resting along his jaw. “You need to eat. Your blood sugar will be hitting rock bottom.”
He frowned, lifted his eyelids, and stared at her. Red ringed his irises.
“I am fine.”
Liora sighed and stroked his jaw, searching for a way of making him see that she wasn’t mocking him and she didn’t want to make him feel weak. She wanted to make him strong again. She cursed Apollyon for acting the way he had towards his twin, putting it in his head that he was weak because he needed to eat and hadn’t realised that hunger was making him sick.
She had to get him to eat. How?
She smiled.
“Well, I’m hungry and I’m going to eat, so you might as well come with me and eat too.” Before he could respond, she tapped the last of her power to teleport them to an alley behind the main street where her favourite café was located.
Asmodeus frowned at her and set her down.
She looked him over. “Am I seeing you as everyone else will be?”
He nodded. That wasn’t good. She couldn’t take him to the café when he was sporting wings and partial armour.
“You’ll have to change your appearance,” she said and he stared at her, his gaze focused and intense. After half a minute, she added, “Done?”
He shook his head and his handsome face twisted into a black scowl. His hands clenched at his sides, the toned muscles of his forearms following them, giving her a brief flash of how sexy his body could be, exuding strength and power.
“I do not want to go with you.” Asmodeus turned away from her and folded his arms across his chest.
Liora’s eyebrows rose high on her forehead as it dawned on her that he was too proud to admit that he had tried and had found he didn’t have the strength left to change his appearance.
“That’s cool. I’ll just go and get some stuff and bring it back here. I hate how crowded it gets there. It’s nice here.” It wasn’t nice at all but her only other option was to call him on his problem and have him mad at her, and then he would try to leave her again.
She left before he could say anything, hobbling out of the side road and into the main avenue. Her ankle was killing her and she wished she had kept a sliver of magic, enough to take some of the pain away and kick start her body’s natural healing ability.
There were plenty of people coming and going along the Champs Elysees. She looked further up the wide tree-lined street to her right and smiled. The café was open, the cream awning stretching out from the beautiful old sandstone building. Parasols covered elegant black wrought-iron tables and chairs on the wide pavement in front of it. She would have liked to sit there with Asmodeus, enjoying sweet pastries and the early morning sun. Maybe they could do that some other time.
Liora brought her black bag around and rifled through it for her purse. Asmodeus would need something sweet, and something substantial. The café wasn’t likely to have all the baguettes made for the day at this early hour. Savoury was probably off the menu. She hoped Asmodeus liked sweet things.
She entered the small café and made her way to the long counter that was covered in tall curved glass that showed off the beautiful array of sweets they offered. Her gaze darted from one delicious pastry to another. One of the staff asked her what she wanted and she ended up ordering more than she needed, and two bottles of orange juice to go.
She wasn’t sure what sort of pastries Asmodeus would like, or whether he would like them at all. He had never left Hell before and she presumed that meant he had never eaten before too. He had some serious catching up to do and she couldn’t wait to see what he made of the things she had bought. Introducing him to the pleasures of food was going to be interesting.
Liora paid for her purchases and made her way back to the alley. Asmodeus was sitting on the step of one of the buildings lining the narrow street, his wings carefully placed so the longest black feathers curled around his ankles. He looked pale, his skin almost milk-white against his wild black hair and thick dark lashes. He lifted his head and gazed at her as she hobbled towards him, his golden eyes warming and then burning like fire as they took her in. Heat chased in the wake of his eyes, setting her body aflame and stirring a different sort of hunger.
She wanted to drop her things beside him, settle herself astride his lithe muscular thighs, and run her fingers through his hair, raking the satiny black strands back from his sculpted face. She would force him to tip it back and look up at her, and the action would cause his lips to part. She would swoop on them then, feeling their firmness beneath hers, waiting for him to hit that point where he found the courage to take the lead and showed her a hint of the passion he held locked beneath his incredible exterior.
His gaze dropped to the bag she carried, reminding her that he had to eat before she could do anything with him or he was liable to pass out. She sat on the step below him, took the white box of pastries out of the carrier bag and carefully untied the ribbon. She pushed the lid up to reveal the neat rows of sweet treats and her mouth watered.
Asmodeus stared.
“What are those?” He looked curious. That was good. Maybe he would eat some for her.
“Pastries.” She plucked a strawberry mille-feuille out of the box and offered it to him.
He took it from her and peered at it, turning it this way and that
and getting cream and icing all over his hand.
“It’s my favourite.” She picked up the other one she had bought and bit into it. The layers of fine crisp puff pastry, custard-cream and strawberries were delicious and she moaned and took another bite, unable to resist the tempting allure of the sweet heavenly confection.
When she risked a glance at Asmodeus, his pastry was gone and he was licking his fingers. She moaned for a different reason, her head filling with thoughts about what he could do with that tongue and some cream, and he looked at her.
There was a spot of cream at the left corner of his mouth and she couldn’t resist. She reached up, swiped it off and sucked her finger clean. His gaze darkened and zeroed in on her lips. Her heart fluttered in response, shivery heat washing through her and making her want to keep sucking her finger and giving him wicked ideas.
Food first. Fun later.
She finished her pastry and offered him the box.
He took a small rectangular slice of chocolate gateaux and devoured it in two bites before taking a pain au chocolat, and then a wedge of tarte au citron. He pulled a face on eating that one, his nose wrinkling up.
“Not into the citrus fruits?” she said and he shook his head. She pulled the bottle of orange juice from her bag and smiled apologetically. “You might not like this then.”
He took it anyway and inspected the plastic bottle. Rather than taking the bottle from him and twisting the cap off, something that would probably make him feel foolish again, she took her own bottle from the bag and opened it intentionally slowly.
Asmodeus mimicked her, acting like a pro and snapping the cap off his bottle. He drank half the contents in one go and then frowned at the bottle.
“It is not as bad as the sweet thing.” He set the bottle down beside him on the stone step and took the other slice of chocolate gateaux, and then paused when her gaze lovingly followed it towards him. “Would you like some?”
She had bought the pastries, so she deserved at least a portion of the gateaux. It was her second favourite item.
Asmodeus held it out to her and rather than taking it, she leaned over and bit into it, her gaze on his the whole time. His golden irises darkened again, his pupils expanding to relay his desire. They only darkened further when she licked her lips.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Romance Series Complete Series Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 81
