Awakened by a Demoness (12 page)

The waitress slammed a huge tankard down in front of her. “You look like you need this.”

Asteria wasn’t going to deny that. She picked the mug of mead up, saluted the fae female, and began knocking it back. When it was empty, a male ordered another for her. And then another.

She lost track of who had purchased her a drink as she drowned her sorrows in them, pondering whether she could die from too much mead. Probably not. Her demon constitution meant she had to drink a lot to get tipsy, let alone drunk. Death by alcohol probably required drunk. Beyond drunk.

She was about to order herself a drink, one it looked as if she would be paying for herself because the males in the tavern had lost interest when she had started babbling about angels being bastards, when someone sat on the stool next to her.

Asteria smelled angel.

She looked across, ready to spit a few ripe curses in Rey’s direction.

Blinked.

Struggled to focus on the petite brunette beside her.

The half-breed sighed, took her almost empty tankard away from her and pushed it to the waitress who took it away.

“I’m sorry,” she said, genuine regret in her dark brown eyes. “I hope you didn’t get hurt but I had to protect myself.”

The way the female looked her over left Asteria feeling she should have been physically injured because of the potion bomb, not emotionally wounded.

The pretty little thing sighed again, smoothed her ponytail and played with the tips of her hair, flicking them back and forth above her shoulder. Such a beautiful female shouldn’t have to wear such a drab black dress. Witches had no taste when it came to a uniform.

The half-breed was going to look wonderful in her armour when Asteria handed her over to the Devil and she became a demon.

That hit Asteria so hard it knocked her through drunk into sober.

The half-breed was right next to her, which meant Rey didn’t have her.

Which meant Asteria could complete her mission and her life wasn’t about to get very painful very fast.

Or more painful than it already was.

She was about to lunge for the female and teleport her to Hell, when the female spoke, freezing her like a statue.

“What if I told you I know I’m not a witch? What if I told you I know that I’m a half-breed between angel and demon and I’ve known it all my life?”

A chill skated through Asteria.

She stared open-mouthed at the female.

Reeling didn’t cover how she ended up when the half-breed leaned closer, her eyes glittering with gold flakes, and slammed a verbal right hook into Asteria’s mind.

“What if I told you that you and the angel were once like me?”

Rey paced his quarters in Echelon headquarters, working off some energy and hopefully some of the tension that had him wound tight with it. He rubbed his thumb across his jaw as he tried to clear his mind. Whenever he felt he was close, Asteria bounded back into it and he had a flashback of what he had done with her.

He wanted to be angry with himself, with her, and with the half-breed for launching that lust potion at him.

But he couldn’t muster that emotion whenever he thought about the passionate moment he had shared with Asteria.

The intensity of it, the raw and wild passion of it, only made him want to do it again.

He checked his white wings, preening the feathers carefully, scouring first his left and then his right for a sign of his sin. He had scrutinised them countless times after teleporting straight to his white apartment on the second floor of the equally white bastion in the centre of Heaven, close to the council chambers. Every time he had looked them over, he hadn’t found what he had been looking for, sure it would emerge at some point and mark him for all to see.

A black feather.

Angels who committed sins gained them, and what greater sin was there than sleeping with the enemy?

With a demon.

Maybe it was the potion. He hadn’t been in control. He had been lost to lust, to a need that had consumed him. Perhaps Heaven didn’t blame him for his actions, and that was the reason he hadn’t gained his first black feather.

The niggling quiet voice that had been whispering at the back of his mind since he had left Asteria kept on with its constant chanting, telling him that it hadn’t been a lust spell that had made him do that with her.

He had wanted her.

The dream he’d had of her was evidence of that. A dream that had fired him up and only left him wanting more, wanting a taste of her in reality rather than in a fantasy. He had wanted that so badly that he had been close to succumbing to his lust for her before the half-breed had doused him with a potion.

Doused him because he had leaped in to protect Asteria.

He resisted the temptation to turn his gaze towards her and use his angelic gift of sight to peer through the trees and rock to the bustling fae town beneath.

The thought that she might have found the half-breed by now pressed him to return, but he wasn’t ready yet. He had thought he only needed a moment away from her to pull himself back together and get his heart back in line, but he had been pacing for hours, struggling with his feelings.

Feelings he knew he shouldn’t have, but ones that existed in him regardless.

Just the thought of Asteria, the image of her bouncing along a cobbled street ahead of him, glancing over her shoulders and pinning him with bright dazzling blue eyes and a sultry smile, had him aching to return to her.

He dragged a hand down his face. Groaned.

What was wrong with him?

Was it the lingering effects of the potion?

He had showered on returning, had scrubbed himself raw, but he still felt wicked urges.

He looked down at his bare torso and the white loose pants slung low on his hips, and muttered a curse at the way his cock tented the material. He palmed the damn thing, trying to convince it to go away, but it only made a shiver bolt through him, a hot lance of electricity that had him moaning.

He snatched his hand away and huffed, trying to be disgusted with himself but failing dismally.

His green gaze fell to the white floor of his apartment, drawn to it, and before he knew what he was doing, he was seeing through the layers of the building, driving downwards through the sky to the country estate. His vision plunged through that building too, through layers of rock, until it hit the cavern.

From there, he sought the black building that towered at the curved end of the fae town, and frowned.

His heart did a strange backflip in his chest.

Asteria stood outside the tavern in full demon armour, her black leathery wings tucked against her back, hollering words he couldn’t hear up at the building. She made several rude gestures and even picked up a rock and threw it at a window on one of the upper floors.

His frown hardened.

His window.

He had told her to leave him alone, but she was outside the tavern causing a ruckus and trying to get his attention. Everything good in him said to ignore her and continue with his plan to rein in his unruly emotions and desires and then carry out his mission by finding the half-breed.

That irritating quiet voice demanded he return and find out why Asteria wanted to get his attention.

He shut it out. She was probably angry with him because he had rejected her and had come to fight him, and he wasn’t in the mood to fight with her.

He frowned at that.

He was an Echelon, had been born to eradicate her kind, yet the thought of battling her left him cold inside.

One of the demon mercenaries outside the tavern took offence when she launched another missile at the window, shattering the pane this time, and glass rained down on him. The big male sauntered towards her and Rey saw red when they clashed and the demon managed to catch hold of Asteria by her throat and throw her aside, sending her crashing into two more demons.

He teleported in a heartbeat, before he could reconsider or even think about what he was about to do. Arcs of white-blue light crackled and snapped around him as he passed through the bridge he had created, striking like lightning. He normally avoided such a dramatic entrance, but his emotions were beyond his control, his anger at the helm, and he couldn’t stop the electrical charge from building.

He landed in the cobbled street in a devastating lightning strike that shook the town and caused a cacophony of screams to rise above the thunderous boom.

Rey rose onto his feet as the dust settled around him, spread his white wings wide as arcs of power leaped and danced along them, and turned his golden gaze on the demon who had assaulted Asteria.

A demon who had frozen with his back to him.

The mark on Rey’s inside right wrist burned hot against his flesh and he launched his hand at the male’s neck, clamped down on the nape of it and dug his fingers in as fury blazed through him, a dark need to destroy the male.

The male howled in agony as his skin charred beneath Rey’s hand and then the blackness raced outwards, sweeping down his shoulders and over his shaven head. Fiery cracks formed on the blackened skin, glowing brighter as Rey’s gift consumed more of him. The male’s cry cut short as it reached his face and he slumped, falling from Rey’s grip to land on the floor in a smouldering heap. The darkness continued to devour him, the bright orange fractures spreading over his body.

Rey stood over him and watched as he slowly crumbled into ashes and then turned his golden gaze on the other two demons who stood beyond Asteria.

They wisely turned tail and ran.

Asteria just stared at him, her vivid blue eyes enormous and unblinking.

He huffed and lowered his hand, rubbed his left thumb across the mark as it settled, and tried to ignore the curious eyes of those who had gathered around him.

“Fucking hell,” Asteria muttered and dropped her gaze to the smouldering pile of ashes between them. She looked between him and the pile, back and forth so many times it was dizzying, her mouth flapping open and closed, as if she wasn’t sure what else to say. Eventually, she gathered her wits, cocked her armoured hip to one side and flicked her long black hair over her shoulder. Shooting for casual? Her blue eyes gave her away together with the nerves he could feel in her, fear that had her voice shaking the smallest amount as she finally found it. “That was some entrance. You think you could make it louder and crazier next time? I think there were a few people in the town who weren’t scared shitless.”

He glared at her and breathed slowly, clawing back control and fighting the urge to go after the other two demons.

Odd that he wanted to hunt them down and destroy them, but not the demoness staring at him with a fascinated and impressed look on her beautiful face.

She flashed a smile and nodded towards the pile of ash. “You do that for me?”

He wasn’t going to answer that. He preened his wings, hid his surprise that his feathers were still all white, and then furled them against his back, as casually as he could manage while Asteria was slowly looking him over, her gaze scalding him and making him burn for her.

Just the lingering effects of the spell.

Perhaps he should have dressed before returning to the fae town though. Standing before her in nothing but a loose pair of white trousers was giving her an excuse to gawp at him and it brought back what she had said the first time she had seen his body.

Incredible
.

His cock got the wrong idea and began to harden again.

He gritted his teeth and called his armour before she could notice the effect she was having on him.

No, not her.

The spell. The spell was having an effect on him. Not Asteria.

Not the way her gaze set him on fire as it trailed over his bare torso, slowly rising upwards to settle on his face. Or the way her pupils had dilated to devour the blue and darken her eyes with desire.

White metal plates edged with gold covered his legs, hips and then his torso, shaped like muscles over it, and then his arms, completing his armour.

Asteria looked disappointed but quickly bounced back.

She flashed him another smile that hit him square in the chest.

“What part of leave me alone did you not understand?” he said and her face fell again, and stayed grim this time, edged with hurt that he did his best to ignore because he knew if he acknowledged it, he would want to apologise to her.

He would want to do something to make her feel better.

“I found the half-breed… well… she found me… and you need to hear what she has to say.” She planted her hands against her armoured hips and he resisted the temptation to look down, aware that her armour dipped low from her waist to below her navel and her chest piece was ridiculously small.

He wasn’t sure he could look at that much exposed skin and not want to step into her and kiss her.

“I need to hear what she has to say?” He managed to glare at her, even when his damned eyes were still fighting him, wanting to stray to her shoulders at the very least.

He didn’t want to look there. He really didn’t.

Asteria damned him by flicking her black hair away from her shoulders, exposing them, and his gaze briefly dropped.

It landed on a bite mark that sent a hot thrill through him and had him growing hard again beneath his armour, aroused by the memory of biting her while making love to her against the tree.

“Just tell me what she has to say,” he snapped.

Asteria smiled knowingly and fingered the mark on her shoulder. “Tell me how good it was for you, and maybe I will.”

“Never,” he barked at her and that smile grew triumphant.

Damn.

By saying he wouldn’t tell her, had he just told her that it had been good for him? He should have denied it had been good. Shouldn’t he? He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists and growled at her. She was playing with his head again.

His right hand twitched.

She scowled at it. “None of that. I’ll take your refusal to answer as a yes, and state again that you need to come with me and meet her, because… believe me… this isn’t something you want to air in public.”