Her hands went to her breasts, cupping, rubbing, tweaking the hardened nipples as he laved and kissed her lower lips, as he thrust into her with his tongue. She cried out when his mouth found her clit and he began sucking. Her hips jerked to the rhythm he set.
She was helpless against him, helpless against what he made her feel. “Please,” she said, panting, barely able to breathe under his onslaught.
He tightened his grip on her buttocks as if he were afraid she’d try to escape. His tongue joined his lips in tormenting her swollen clit. It swirled over the exposed head, stroked the sensitive underside until she was desperately fucking the tiny organ through his lips.
Aisling’s hands left her breasts and grabbed the bedding as erotic sensation rolled through her. The sounds of his pleasure fed her own. The image of him between her thighs was burned forever in her memory.
His tongue was a flame licking over her, filling her, turning her blood into molten lava until finally her cunt clenched and spasmed in a release that left her crying, as if only tears could extinguish the fire inside her.
But even the wetness of her tears wasn’t enough. She still ached. She still needed. She still wanted to feel his body against hers, in hers.
Zurael was desperate to couple with her, desperate beyond anything he’d known in centuries of existence. He wanted to lie on top of Aisling and press his mouth to hers. He wanted to share her taste in a deeply carnal kiss. He wanted to feel the slide of her tongue against his and swallow her whimpers as his cock pressed deep inside her channel.
Dangerous, she was so dangerous to him. If he wasn’t careful, she’d possess his soul and command him, even without binding him with the incantation the god had given to his mud creatures.
He lifted his mouth from her lush, wet cunt but didn’t give Aisling time to tempt him into crawling up her body.
Zurael positioned her on her hands and knees. He reveled in the way she went willingly, in the way she spread her thighs and pressed backward, enticing him to penetrate her.
Primitive pleasure surged through him at the sight of her readiness. His cock pulsed and leaked. His balls tightened in warning.
It was a torturous exercise in control to keep from impaling her with one hard thrust. He moaned as he pressed the tip of his penis against her heated opening. He panted and struggled to go slowly.
She was so tight, so hot. The walls of her sheath clung to him, measured him, fought him even as they called for him to go deeper.
“Aisling,” he said, unable to stop himself from leaning over and kissing the delicate line of her spine.
She answered him by thrusting backward, by taking more of his cock and whispering his name. His hips bucked once, twice. It was enough to drive him all the way in, so close to her womb that his seed boiled with the need to escape and flow into her.
Zurael closed his eyes as her internal muscles rippled over his shaft in nearly unbearable ecstasy. His chest heaved with the effort it required to stay still. He wanted to linger in the first moment of being fully inside her. He wanted to capture it and hold on to it forever.
She was exquisite, innocent sensuality and a frailty that hid her strength. She was sweet temptation and deadly fascination.
Except for those moments in the ghostlands when he’d been a shadow in her mind, she was an enigma to him, an unexpected contradiction to long-held beliefs. He shouldn’t want her but he did.
“Please,” she said, moving, drowning his penis in slick arousal, searing him with a heat to rival the molten world that gave birth to the Djinn—flooding him with potent lust and an inescapable need to thrust.
Zurael’s hand slid from her hip to the downy nest of pubic hair. His fingers found her clit.
Her hips jerked with the contact. Her cry matched his as her sheath tightened on him.
“Please,” she said again, and this time he couldn’t resist her plea. He couldn’t fight the desire that ensnared them both.
He pulled his cock almost completely out of her slit and felt a savage pleasure when she cried at its loss, then welcomed it back with a shudder. In and out he thrust, slowly at first, then faster, harder. His reality became the hot, wet fist of her channel. His reason for existence narrowed to pleasing her, to making her scream as orgasm slammed through her, to filling her with his seed in an uncontrollable wash of lust.
When she cried out and her sheath tightened on him, Zurael followed her over the edge. He poured into her, died a little death because of her, and would willingly do it all over again.
Aisling felt sated, protected. Soft waves of pleasure rippled through her. Her cunt continued to spasm and grip Zurael’s still-embedded cock as if it couldn’t bear the emptiness that would come with releasing him.
Her heart warned against getting used to the feel of his strong arms around her and his warm chest at her back. He was temporary—in her life for reasons of his own or because he’d been maneuvered into guarding her. At the moment she was too grateful for his presence, too needy to question it.
The thoughts and memories she’d hoped to keep at bay crowded in. The guilt followed. “Those men died because I was there.”
Zurael’s arms tightened. He shifted position so his cheek touched hers. “They brought death on themselves.”
Aisling shivered when his soft lips found the shell of her ear. His warm breath made her nipples bead. The arm resting under her bent and his palm covered her breast. She whimpered when his other hand stroked her belly before its fingers combed through her pubic down and found her clit.
“You were the only human in the club worth saving,” he whispered.
His hips rocked in a gentle motion, timed to the subtle circle of his palm against her nipple, to the light press and rub of his fingers over her swollen clit, to the decadent hot swirl of his tongue in her ear.
Aisling closed her eyes. She let him chase away her guilt.
She met his thrusts and loved the feel of his hardness filling her, reaching deep inside her. He anchored her in a world where the only thing that mattered was the pleasure they shared, the panting murmured sounds as they climbed, the sharp cries as they found release.
Zurael kissed Aisling’s shoulder as she drifted off to sleep. Tenderness filled him, a deep possessive satisfaction he’d never known before. It lasted until his cheek touched the leather string and his thoughts shifted to the pouch containing the bloodred fetishes and inscribed pentacle.
A cold knot formed in his chest and grew larger when Aisling’s pet climbed onto the bed, its golden eyes boring into his. He worried over how he was going to keep her safe, not only from human and spirit enemies, but from the Djinn.
Six
AISLING woke to find Aziel curled up on her pillow. His eyes opened and held an intelligence far beyond what an ordinary ferret would possess.
He studied her as she studied him. What he read in her face, she could only guess. She thought she saw pleased satisfaction in his, but she couldn’t be sure.
“I wish you would tell me what you know,” she whispered, reaching over to stroke his fur, to scratch behind his ears, knowing even as she made the wish it was in vain. Whatever had brought Aziel into her life and kept him there, it remained a secret she couldn’t unravel even in the ghostlands.
Behind her, Zurael’s even breathing told her he still slept. His arm draped across her waist made her channel spasm and her cunt lips grow flushed and slick as memories crowded in.
She eased over to look at him. His was a beauty found only in the old mythology books, in the art books capturing the works of masters long dead, those whose paintings of angels and ancient gods once hung in fine museums to be viewed by rich and poor alike.
He was otherworldly. Temptation and damnation. A dangerous being tangled in the web of her life. One who might ultimately
take
her life.
She wanted to touch him, to trace the masculine lips, the firm chin and elegant nose. She wanted to lean in, press her mouth to his, her tongue to his, but didn’t.
Continuing to lie with him might cost Aisling her soul as well as her heart. And though she couldn’t find it in her to regret what had taken place between them the night before, it would be better not to repeat it.
As with Aziel, whatever had brought Zurael into her life remained a secret. But unlike Aziel, whose presence gave her strength, Zurael was a weakness she could ill afford.
Nothing good could come of loving him. She didn’t know whether demons existed before mankind’s evolution or were given life by human belief. But she did know there were dark, terrifying places in the spiritlands that claimed human souls, and she didn’t doubt some of them were ruled by demons—a hell whether it was the one defined by the Church or not.
Reluctantly she eased from the bed and walked softly to the bathroom, needing space, distance, a chance to gain her balance. She wasn’t used to days without the rhythm of chores, without the ebb and flow of voices as the younger children played and quarreled, made up and went about the work necessary to survive.
Her heartbeat stuttered in her chest as she unbraided her hair underneath the showerhead. The images captured in the pool of her blood played out in her mind and threatened her with despair. How was she going to prevent the slaughter of her family?
Aisling lifted her face and let the hot water cascade over her and wash her feelings of horror and fear away. She forced her thoughts to revisit Sinners, to consider a course of action that would lead her to whoever was responsible for Ghost.
I’ll start by talking to the gifted around me,
she thought as she lathered and rinsed her hair. The number of cars she’d seen in the short time before the sun set the previous day was an indication that those who were supernaturally touched might be set aside from the rest, but they weren’t shunned by Oakland society. Only the wealthy and powerful would arrive in this part of town in automobiles.
Feeling refreshed, confident, she stepped from the shower and dried herself with a towel. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of her wet hair. A sigh marked her memory of the decadent luxury of using a hair dryer after showering at the church.
Movement drew her eye to the bathroom door. Her eyes met Zurael’s in the bathroom mirror and her nipples tightened in response to his nearness, his nakedness.
“Allow me,” he said, holding her gaze, stepping forward to take the brush from her unresisting hand.
He smelled of exotic spice, of desire borne on desert winds. A small moan escaped her when he gathered her hair and his scent settled around her in a sensuous fog.
The new day magnified, not lessened, Zurael’s desire. It was a mistake to touch her like this, to slide his fingers through her hair as he untangled the wet, twisted locks and used the molten heat of a Djinn’s birthright to speed the drying.
Hair was a Djinn’s weakness. Outside the summoning and binding spells the alien god had given his mud creations, there were few ways to bend his kind to a will other than their own. But an incantation using hair was one of them. And just as he’d rarely touched his lips to another’s in a sharing of spirit, he had rarely trusted another to undo his braid.
Dark amber turned to golden streaks of spun silk as he brushed Aisling’s hair. His cock hardened further, its tip licking across his belly. A shudder went through him each time her waist-length locks touched his penis.
Her skin was soft, her body delicate, utterly feminine. Her scent, spring flowers and arousal.
With a low moan he touched his cheek to satin locks. Rubbed against the loose strands of her hair as he devoured her reflection in the mirror.
Lust rose like steam between them. The brush dropped to the floor.
Her nipples tightened, her eyes darkened. His hands settled on her breasts, cupped and weighed them before his palms settled over hardened tips.
Aisling’s shiver had him pulling her back to his front so he could feel the length of her body against his. And still it wasn’t enough.
The small triangle of dark, honey-gold down drew his hand to explore her slick, swollen folds and erect clit. Her mouth parted, her tongue darted out to leave her lips glistening.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispered, echoing his earlier thought.
“But we will,” Zurael said, kissing her neck, her shoulder. His hands making her quiver with pleasure.
Worry flashed in her eyes. Reluctance built even as the sleek globes of her buttocks rubbed against his cock, enticed him to bend her over and thrust into the slick welcome of her sheath.
“You won’t deny me,” he said, caressing the naked tip and smooth underside of her clit with his fingers. “You won’t deny yourself. Say my name, tell me you don’t want to feel me inside you.”
“Zurael,” she whispered, closing her eyes and turning her face away from the mirror where the sight of her flushed, heated skin and ripe nipples attested to the truth of her desire. “What place do you call home? Who do you answer to?”
He guessed her questions were meant to shore up her resistance to him. To fight her desire for him.
“The names are not for humans to know or call upon. They are death.”
His fingers tightened on her nipple. He refused to let her run away from what was between them.
“Does the daylight make you fear me? Do you remember what I looked like beneath the moon and regret letting me cover you, pierce you? Does my form change the nature of who I am? Does it define me?”
“No,” she said, shivering as she opened her eyes.
“Then look at me, watch while I take you.”
Aisling tried to resist his command. She willed herself to ignore the desperate craving of her body, to pull away, escape his voice, his heat, his arms and the need he generated in her. But she was helpless against him, just as helpless as she had been the night before.