by JL Madore
He laughed, sorta hoping someone did try to whammy them again. Finding her body under the covers, he pulled her closer. “You girls are the best part of us. We are so blessed.”
When they were as close as they could be without him physically being inside her, he claimed her lips. The moment their mouths touched, the familiar fire erupted in his veins. She moaned in the back of her throat, and his beast surged forward.
Damn, how many times had he come inside her since he got home? “You must be sore,” he said, talking himself down.
“Not too sore.” She curled her tongue over his and reached between them. When her fingers tightened, he rocked his cock into her palm. She wasn’t tentative or gentle.
Fuck, he loved her Darkworld side.
To look at her in her long gowns, with her hair pretty, and not a touch of makeup, one might think she was meek or sweet. They didn’t get to see this side of his girl.
Nobody got to see this side of her.
Her lust hit him hard, and she waggled her brows. “You lay there, looking delicious, and admire your ring. Let me entertain myself.”
He chuckled and arched back, enjoying the attention. “Thy will be done, Mistress,” he said, his voice rough.
She smiled up from his abdomen. “You know how much I appreciate an obedient male.”
“Fuck, yes,” Kyrian growled, his release building hot and fast. “Devour me as long as you please. I’ve got no plans.”
The vibration of her laughter tickled, and it was a one-two punch mixed with the stroke and suck. He tried not to pump into her mouth, but the slow rhythm of his thrust in and out was too good to stop.
“I love your mouth soooo much.”
Her response was to drop her canines and skim his thrusting cock with her teeth.
“You’re killing me,” he breathed, his balls tight and burning with pleasure. When she pushed at the inside of his leg and widened her access, he almost came. His Shedim Mistress was hungry for more than sex. “Yeah, do it.”
She finished sucking on him with a soft pop and shifted to nuzzle his groin. He opened his legs and caressed the top of her head. The strike was fast, the burn of her fangs a pleasure-pain as she punctured his femoral artery.
He shuddered as she adjusted the seal of her lips and started the pull and swallow of what he so willingly offered. The moan that rumbled out of her as she sated her hunger almost did him in.
“It’s too good,” he said, arching back as she tossed him rough and sucked hard on his vein. Hot jets hit his sculptured abs as his mind shorted out. Fisting the sheet, he was left with nothing but sensation—the out-of-body bliss that only she could give him.
His Darkworld mate.
He hissed as another round of orgasm hit. “Oh, fuck, I love you, Cass.”
Ren followed Ayana through the doors of Archangel Tower, and the angels working the entrance nodded. Their eyes remained on her sister, their admiring gazes following the curves of her body, the bounce of her hair, and the sway of her hips as she passed by. Ren, as always, remained invisible in her wake. It used to bother her that nobody noticed her or what she had to offer, and then she realized it shouldn’t. The people who only valued Ayana for her beauty weren’t the kind of people who mattered anyway.
Hark mattered. For the first time in her life, someone truly saw her worth. She felt him close by. He’d chosen to escort them inside in a dematerialized form, to keep his arrival private for the moment.
He was there, though. She felt him.
It was crazy that she’d fallen so hard so fast, but as he said—Love at first sight was real. Fated love was real.
Their feelings were real.
Ayana led them around the corner to the lifts.
“Point of destination?” the Seraph monitoring the traffic asked. He was a brute of a male, as most Seraph males were. Tall and broad and trained to take down any hostiles or unwanteds breaking into the Archangels’ sanctum.
Ayana set her palm on the intention plaque. “Michael is expecting me.”
He waited for the plaque’s determination and nodded. “Very well. Go up. There are four ahead of you.”
“Fine,” Ayana snapped.
When they arrived on the thirty-seventh floor, they stepped out of the lift and headed toward Michael’s wing. As they rounded an empty corridor, Hark materialized and tugged Ren into a small alcove.
Ayana didn’t notice and kept walking.
“Okay,” Hark said, bending down to whisper. “I sense him close by. I figured Michael wouldn’t allow him to get too far from his grasp. You go with your sister, and I’ll track him down. If Ayana veers off-plan and looks like she’s going to double-cross us, remind her that she lied to Michael about us being a couple, and then she helped me get in here. Unless she wants her life blown up and her reputation shot, she keeps her mouth shut.”
Ren nodded. She didn’t like the idea of blackmailing her sister, but respected Hark’s dedication to find his brother. “I can handle her. Good luck.”
He tapped her nose. “Be safe, be smart, and when I signal that I’ve got him, meet me back at the temple.”
“Got it. What’s the signal?”
His smile grew. “You’ll figure it out.”
Hark hated splitting up the team, but he needed to find Ringo and Ayana couldn’t be trusted. So, for the moment, it was every sibling for their own. Ren had accompanied her sister a dozen times to meetings, so it wouldn’t raise any eyebrows that she did so once again. That left him free to do his part.
Throwing his molecules into the air, he began his search.
Nephilim brothers. People didn’t always understand their connection, but it wasn’t for others to understand. They each carried the blood of an Archangel and were bound into servitude, but they were also more than that. Zander and Brennus possessed the strongest sensitivity to their essences or energies or whatever you chose to call it, but they all felt each other. Ringo was close, and Hark was closing in.
“You must eat, young master,” a female said as he drifted up a hall running parallel with the main corridor.
“I don’t feel good.”
Ringo’s words were slurred, and Hark didn’t like his tone. He materialized outside the door, used his powers to unlock it, and strode inside.
The Seraph female tending to Ringo stumbled back, and that was a good thing. When he got a look at the kid, he nearly lost his shit. Lying on a pallet of colorful silks, the boy looked like he should be in the clinic, with Kyrian and Drina working to keep him running.
Instead, he was in a fancy pad, nowhere near his family and the people who loved him.
“What have you done to him?” Hark dropped to his knees. Ringo’s temperature was up, his skin clammy, his pulse racing.
“That bad, is it?”
“Pallid Asian doesn’t look good on you, buddy. Where’s all that color and life you’re usually throwing around?”
Hark wasn’t so preoccupied that he missed the female running for the door. He threw the apple from the food tray and nailed her in the shoulder. It knocked her to the ground, and she scrambled around on hands and knees.
“Don’t kill me, Watcher. I was following orders.”
Hark looked at the stuff spread all around him: food, art supplies, empty vials of— “What the fuck is this?”
The female squealed and raised her palms. “Nothing. Something to help him relax and to enjoy himself.”
“You roofied him? He’s a fourteen-year-old kid.”
“Master Michael said it would help his gift. Improve his creativity.”
Hark shoved the vials into his pocket and lifted Ringo into his arms. “His creativity doesn’t need to be improved. He’s a fucking phenom.”
The female’s eyes bugged as she realized he intended to leave. “You can’t. I’m supposed to watch over him.”
“No, you’re not,” Ren said, rushing in to join them. “I am. And it looks like we both failed miserably.”
“She fuckin
g drugged him,” Hark snapped. He felt the energy shift and watched Ringo’s eyes roll back. “Fuck. Not again.”
As Ringo started to seize, Hark fought with his options of what to do: set him down and wait it out, or get them all the hell outta there. He voted on the latter. “What floor is Raphael on?”
“Twenty-one? Twenty-two?” Ren’s hands were clasped over her mouth as tears rolled down her cheeks. The boy was in the middle of one hell of a seizure.
“Twenty-one,” the Seraph said. “Come. We’ll take the private lift.”
Hark followed, the three of them making tracks. “You just don’t want your boss knowing you’ve killed his trophy.”
The female let off another squeak, and he knew he’d nailed that one.
“Should he still be doing that?” Ren asked, her voice clogged. She was running alongside him, holding Ringo’s hand. “We’re here, Ringo. You’re not alone anymore.”
“He was never alone,” the Seraph snapped as they accessed the lift. “Michael put him in my care.”
“Lady Divinity put him in my care. How do you think she’ll feel when she learns Michael kidnapped him and had you drug him and”—she looked her up and down with a sneer—“goddess knows what else you did to him. He’s a young, precious boy.”
The Seraph woman looked taken aback, but still led the way. Once they were racing down the main corridor of the twenty-first floor, Ringo’s quakes slowed.
Ren pushed ahead and tried the door. It didn’t open.
“Move.” His boot came up, and the fucker ripped right off the hinges. The slab shot into the room and across the polished floors.
Raphael was across the opulent space, sitting behind a monstrosity of a desk. His head whipped up, his brown hair blowing back like he was a model in front of a photoshoot fan. Emerald eyes narrowed as if he might end whoever intruded. Then he saw Ringo.
Hark moved straight for the desk, but Raph shook his head. A split-second later, the five of them were in a clinic, an exam table in the center of the room.
“Put him here, Taharqa.”
Hark laid Ringo out on the table and unzipped the kid’s hoodie. Ren was at his side, clutching his arm the moment he stepped back.
“Has this happened before?”
“Once. Three or four days ago. Drina ran tests but didn’t come up with any answers. It didn’t last this long though.”
The Archangel’s hands moved over the kid’s body, searching for answers. “Drina? The purple-haired Reaper I met at your clinic?”
Hark nodded.
No sooner had his head bobbed, Drina appeared in the room. Surprised as she might be, it took her no time to assess the situation. “How long has he been seizing?”
Ren checked her watch. “Over six minutes.”
Drina pulled off his shoes and socks. “That’s longer than last time.”
“Michael had this bitch drug him.” Hark pulled the vials from his pocket.
Raphael took the empty tubes and sniffed them. “That’s a mood enhancer. Doubtful it had anything to do with it.”
Drina took it next, sniffed it, and glared. “A what? He’s a child! What were you thinking?”
The Seraph lifted her chin. “Master Michael—”
Hark turned on her, his Mark glowing. He wasn’t sure what she saw in his expression, but she had the sense to back away. “If you defend that asshole again, you need to leave. My violent side is at the end of its tether and I will snap your twiggy-fucking-neck for endangering my brother’s life.”
She took his invitation to leave. Smart.
When he turned back, Ringo’s quakes ended. He lay still as a corpse and Hark wasn’t sure which was worse. “That’s good, right, Doc?”
Drina looked up from where she was drawing blood from his arm. “Good it stopped. It’s too soon to say what damage was done.”
Hark pulled Ren against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. She was shaking, or maybe that was him. Didn’t matter. She was strong and sturdy in his arms, exactly what he needed. “The kid will be fine,” he said, for both their sakes. “He’s tough. He’ll be fine.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Your feet are so tiny.” Tanek held up one of the feet in question, and Scarlett giggled. His attempt at a foot massage had started well enough, but the view he was rocking from that end of the bed had switched his gears. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course. What are you thinking?”
“Oh, too many naughty things to put into words.” He stroked the smooth line of her long leg and ended right back at her tiny feet. “Okay, distracting, but what I wanted to ask is if you are at all tired or sore?”
Scarlett shook her head. “No. Not a bit.”
“Huh, me either.” They’d hit it pretty hard. First to shake off the cobwebs but then because they were really that horny. “Do you think that’s a ghost thing? Maybe we don’t wear out or have to rest and regroup. Maybe the whole refraction time got left behind with our living bodies.”
Scarlett opened her knees wider, and he groaned at the bounty she offered. She was a stunning woman. “I say we test that theory out.”
“In a normal world, you’d be waaaay out of my league.”
She propped her elbows onto the mattress behind her and looked him up and down. “Why do you say that?”
He laughed. “Seriously? You’re refined education, grace, and breeding.”
“From what Veronica says, you men are all of the highest and most respected breeding of your people.”
“I wouldn’t agree, but it’s nice of her to say so.”
“So,” she said, tugging away the thin sheet he’d slung over his male bits, “even coming from different places, our ghost status now puts us forth as a perfect pair, don’t you think?”
Tanek laughed. “Says the woman who tried to decapitate me with office supplies.”
Scarlett’s blush was amazing. She swept a wayward strand of hair from her face and shifted onto her knees. “I thought tough guys like women with a bit of fire.”
Tanek smiled from ear to ear. “Oh, we do.”
She crawled down the bed to him, her weighted breasts swaying as she prowled closer. He wanted to flip her on her back and suck those peaked nipples into his mouth, but he didn’t know her well enough yet.
Instead, he let her lead.
She flung the sheet out of her way completely and tilted her head toward his erection. “Is that for me.”
“It is.”
She reached toward his abs, and his very grateful cock pulsed, eager for a touch. “May I?”
“You most certainly may.”
She chuckled. “You’re very agreeable.”
His head dropped back as she gripped his length and primed him root to tip. “You hold the power stick, lovely lady. Whatever you say, goes.”
She straddled his hips and propped his cock at her entrance. It was still hot and wet from their previous round. With his hands on her hips, he guided her down his shaft, and they both let off a groan.
Scarlett gripped his pecs and dropped her head forward working him in and out, shifting to grind her insides. “I want to keep this between us for now.”
Sweat broke out across his brow as she found her rhythm. He palmed her breasts, tweaking the pinched buds of her nipples. “Am I your dirty little secret?”
She laughed, her voice breathy. “Hardly. Veronica is processing her father’s death. I don’t want her hurt.”
He sat up, pulling her against his chest. In the next heartbeat, he had her on her back and was pounding inside her. “Whatever you want. As long as we don’t have to stop.”
“No,” she gasped. “Don’t stop. In fact, let’s test your theory of never needing to stop. Right now.”
Fuck yes. “As you wish.”
Hark stood when Zander and his brothers arrived at the waiting area of Raphael’s clinic. They stormed in like a seven-manned hurricane, wings extended, glares murderous. It was like the parting of the Red Sea,
except instead of water, a tidal wave of clinic staff and prospective patients flooded to the sides. Ren stood beside Hark and hugged his arm.
“Where is he?” Zander asked.
Hark gestured to the closed door. “They’ve been in with him for hours. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
Kyrian and Danel didn’t bother to find out.
They stormed straight in.
“What do we know?” Zander asked.
Hark pictured Ringo pale and lying on that pallet. “Michael left him in a room with a Seraph consort. He had her drug him, and goddess knows what else. She said she was charged to tend to his needs and spark his creativity.”
“That’s bullshit,” Seth snapped. “Ringo has more creativity flowing in his veins than the entire fucking creative world.”
Hark nodded and handed Zander the empty vials. “Raph doesn’t think her slipping him a roofie would hurt him, but I don’t know. He looked bad, Z. Like, really bad.”
“But he’s immortal,” Bo said. “Sick, I get, but it can’t be worse than that. Look at what happened to Phoenix,” he said, turning to their mute brother. “If you hadn’t been immortal when that witch-bitch mother of yours went for your throat, you woulda been dead, right?”
“Aye,” Brennus agreed. “But here ye are, Egyptian, alive and well. Yer right, Viking. The kid’s sick, that’s the end of it.”
Raphael came through the door, looking grim, and Hark’s gut twisted. “I’ve called for Lady Divinity.”
They all burst out in chaotic clamor of glowing Marks and colorful curses.
The Archangel raised his hand. “I think what’s happening is that Ringo’s powers are growing too strong for his human body. His gifts are remarkable, and by what Danel and Kyrian tell me, they grow stronger every day.”
“Yeah, and?” Zander asked.
“The boy hasn’t regained consciousness, and my concern is that there has been damage done to his brain.”
