Dark Light, 6

For nearly a month, Hellfire has burned along the shores of the surface world. The apocalypse looms, and it is all Isabella and her angels can do to keep the creatures of Hell at bay.

Until a new, far more dangerous demon walks into her life. He knows things Isabella has not found answers for, and has power she can neither explain nor ignore. In every way, this beast of a man should be her enemy.

Yet he claims he is there to protect her.

He is utterly unfazed by her divinity, mocks her attempts to threaten him, and dismisses the creatures she must fight with the flick of a wrist. The demon called Ash is no less than Isabella’s equal, perhaps stronger, and she should be terrified of him. Yet he stirs a desire in her she doesn’t recognize, and delivers a pleasure she cannot deny.

His name is Shreyan, and he is the first-born son of Satan. He was the first Archdemon ever born. And the one thing he wants more than anything else is revenge.

Or it was, before he met the Archangel whose life he needed to protect…

Excerpt:

“Strip.”

The demand jolted her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your clothes are contaminated, and dirty. Wearing them only increases your exposure to the toxins in that fucking cloud.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “And you’re bleeding. Which means you have an open wound that shit is getting into, and it needs healing.”

Somehow, his entirely rational argument rankled her. “I am perfectly capable of—”

“You need to be recuperating your energy, not expending more of it.”

Isabella frowned. “Then I should go to one of my healers.”

Ash didn’t miss a beat. “Fine. I’ll give you a choice, lumina mea.” He leaned forward, as if the mere foot that separated them was too much, and lowered his voice. “Either accept that I will be accompanying you all the fucking way to your healer and watching while she works, even if it scares the piss out of half the staff … or let me take care of you here.” He straightened. “Decide. Now.”

In the back of her mind, Isabella knew she should have fought him. She should have refused all of it, asserted herself, and proven to both of them that she needed no one to mend the small slash on her hip. On its own, she wouldn’t. It was the exposure to the smoke that had spent a month redoubling in on itself before swooping down on her, and fighting beneath that cloud, that had worn her down. And probably also it was time for her to relocate. It was those things, all simultaneously, that made her temporarily weaker than she should have been.

But it was not those things that prompted her answer. “Very well, Ash,” she said after far too brief a pause. “I am in your care.”

Ash snapped his fingers and a wave of invisible power rippled outward, rolling over her and seeming to absorb into the walls. Isabella’s wards flared, glowing against the demonic pressure, but then resettled. She never actually felt the disturbance. A dark veneer swept across the sliders, like heavily tinted glass.

Isabella stared at the glass for a second, then looked back to Ash.

“For privacy,” he said. “None of us would appreciate if one of your subordinates picked the wrong moment to stop by.” He rotated his wrist so that his palm was facing upward, gesturing to her. “Now. Strip, or I’ll do it for you.”

The breath caught once more in the back of her throat, but it had nothing to do with poor lung capacity. Her lungs had already recovered. The foreign, reckless thing inside her that she suspected he might have put there, however, thrilled at his choice of words.

She did her best to ignore her own reaction and moved, carefully, to slip from her battle dress. Or she tried to.

Isabella frowned, finding her body trying to bend sideways in on itself as she attempted to squeeze her arm through the hole in the fabric. This would be done already if he weren’t being so stubborn!

Ash clicked his tongue and settled his hand on her arm, stilling her. “How long has it been since you dressed yourself by hand?”

She felt her cheeks warm. “What does that matter?” It was far too time-consuming to do such menial tasks the human way. No full-blooded angel bothered with such simple things.

He gave his head a shake and then he was reaching around her with both arms, effectively trapping her against his larger frame. With his lips just above her ear as he bent over her, he murmured, “So powerful, and so helpless.”

She opened her mouth to rebuff his claim and felt the tension in her dress give way. And immediately she wanted to hide from her own stupidity. Perhaps he has a point. She knew what a zipper was, but she’d never once zipped up her own clothing. It wasn’t a reflex she had.

Even that thought fled her mind when his hands met her skin.

It was different from when he’d touched her so intensely, so brazenly, that first night. This time his touch was light, the warmth in his skin teasing more than lingering as he drew his fingers up her back. His touch raised higher, she felt him pull at her bra strap, and then that, too, came loose. The flats of his palms settled over her back, searing straight through her.

Between her elevated heartrate and her hyperawareness of his touch, Isabella nearly missed the low whisper of a groan that escaped him.

His thumb rubbed over the back of her neck, threatening and promising of dangers she wasn’t supposed to crave, and then he eased up. He took hold of her loosened straps and in a single movement swept her dress and her bra to the floor.

Isabella’s eyes widened as the reality of her nudity hit her.

Ash dropped to a knee, not seeming to even notice, and methodically pulled her feet free from the strappy sandals she always manifested for herself. She wore sturdier footwear when she intended to enter battle, but the sandals were her default. And his purposeful manhandling required her to tip forward, to lean on his shoulders which were still covered in layers of fabric.

Isabella frowned, frustrated at the heat that burned her face and the way her heart continued to beat too fast. She was no innocent when it came to men, but she had never been so … unsettled by one. None of the feelings predominant within her were anger or fear-based. There was some pain, some shame, and far too much arousal. She felt a yearning for more of that touch, and a desire to bridge the chasm she had feared she’d carved between them.

She scarcely recognized herself.

Failure.

Was she? Was this that? Surely, yearning for a demon qualified.

She sucked in a startled, shaking breath when Ash pulled her panties down without warning. “Why—”

He stood, hooking her beneath the knees and swinging her into his arms as if she weighed nothing, then walked them around to the interior side of the bed and promptly sat. He settled her in his lap, her wounded side out.

Isabella opened her mouth to insist he at least tuck her under the comforter when she processed the sensation of what had to be his erection, pressing into her. He hadn’t said a word about her body. She wasn’t sure he’d even looked at it.

But he was aroused.

The arm behind her shoulders tightened, pulling her upper body closer to his, and Ash grunted, “Quit fucking squirming.” He moved his other hand to hover over her wounded hip and his tone softened. “This part will hurt. Hold on to me if you have to.”

She gasped softly at his reminder. She had forgotten about the flash of pain when he’d healed her burn. So she pushed down her useless, awkward, insecure feelings and leaned a little more into him in order to latch both hands onto his shoulders. Then she lowered her head to the shoulder nearest her, practically beneath his jaw, and closed her eyes.

As if sensing her readiness, Ash pressed his hand to her wound. The shock that followed had her body curling into him and she grit her teeth, refusing to cry out from the sudden, searing pain. It hurt more than receiving the wound had. It hurt more than fighting with an open, agitated wound. But the blistering, stomach churning pain lasted only a sparse handful of seconds.

When it was over, she felt oddly cleansed.

Her energy was weaker than it should have been, she could tell that immediately, but the toxins that had seeped into her system were gone. The soreness, the sharp pinching, at her side, was also gone.

She relaxed, her grip loosening, and let out a breath. It would certainly have hurt less to do it her way, but ultimately, she would have had to inconvenience an already-taxed healer or wait out the slow purge of toxins from her system.

Ash slid his hands around her, his fingers splayed over her back, and she felt him nuzzle into the hair near her temple. “I think I like having you like this, ivory.”

A different kind of heat flashed through her. “I beg your pardon?”

“In my arms, relaxed.” He paused for a beat and she swore a grin lifted his voice. “Naked.”

Every confusing feeling rushed back to the surface and Isabella instinctively pushed from her comfy spot against his chest. The motion was a mistake, because it forced her to make eye contact with the man whose lap she remained seated on. Yet, instead of becoming flustered, the sight of his faint smirk and heated eyes only strengthened the words that promptly fell from her lips. “That surprises me. I would have expected you to hate every moment of caring for me, what with the way you’ve barely been able to tolerate my company for most of the week.”

She remembered being confused, even concerned, at his sudden distancing. But he’d maintained it, so she had come to the conclusion it was his preference. Perhaps even his true self. And now that she was thinking about that, that didn’t line up at all with the behavior he’d exhibited in the past few minutes.

Isabella pushed completely from his lap, found her feet, and stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. She was not going to awkwardly try to hide what he’d already seen, and technically touched, so instead she kept talking. “It would be much easier for the both of us if you would be more consistent. I hardly know how to respond to you when one moment you can’t be bothered to look at me, let alone speak to me, and the next moment you’re dragging me around and demanding on caring for me yourself. Those are very oppositional concepts.”

Slowly, Ash stood. “Do you really want to know what I want, Isabella?”