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“You’re cold.” He sounded thoughtful, rubbing his chin against my temple, golden skin sliding against mine, a hot trickle of delight spilling up my back. “It seems I ca
But I was struggling free of him. “You left me. Where were you? What did you do? Where were you?”
“Stay still.” He grabbed my wrist, but I twisted and he let me go, my skin sliding free of steel-strong fingers. I arched away, but he had my other wrist locked, an instinctive movement. It didn’t hurt me—he avoided pressing on a nerve point or locking the rest of my arm, but it effectively halted me, making me gasp. “Just for a moment, be still. I will explain.”
“I don’t want explanation,” I lied, and pushed at him with my free hand. “Let go.”
“Not until you hear me. I did not want to leave you, but a summons from Hell is not ignored. I could not put it off any longer.”
My heart thudded up under my collarbone, and I tasted copper. “What are you talking about? Let go!”
“If you do not listen I will make you listen. We have no time for games, hedaira, though I would gladly play any game you could devise. But the Prince has called.”
The words didn’t mean anything for the first few seconds, like all truly terrible news. Most of the fight went out of me. I slumped, and Japhrimel’s arm tightened. He released the wristlock and I shook my hand out, my head coming to rest on his shoulder. He pulled me closer, his wings brushing softly against my shoulder and calf. It was incredibly intimate. I knew enough, now, to know that a winged demon—those of the Greater Flight that had wings, at least—did not suffer those wings to be touched, or open them for anything other than flight or mating.
Lucky me. Lucky, lucky me. Dear gods, did he just say what I think he said?
“Do you hear me?” he whispered into my hair. “The Prince has called, hedaira.”
I have been unable to contact him in the usual ma
Japhrimel was telling me that life was about to get very interesting again. I raised my head, hair falling in my eyes, and looked at him.
His mouth was a tight line, shadows of strain around his dark eyes, a terrible sheen of something that could be sadness laid over the human depths I thought I knew.
My hands shook. It had taken a long time for me to stop seeing Mirovitch’s jowly face printed against the inside of my eyelids, a long time before the aftermath of facing down my childhood demons of Rigger Hall faded to a nightmare echo.
It still wasn’t finished. My entire body chilled, remembering the ka’s ectoplasm shoving its way down my throat and up my nose, in my ears, trying to shred through the material of my jeans while Mirovitch’s spectral fingers squirmed like maggots inside my brain, raping my memories. The only thing that saved me was my stubborn refusal to give in, my determination to strike back and end the terror for everyone else.
That, and the Fallen demon who held me, who had stopped the ka from killing me. Who had searched until he found me, and burned my childhood nightmares to the ground simply because I asked.
I looked at Japhrimel. The morning sunlight didn’t reach the bed, but reflected golden light was kind to his high balanced cheekbones and thin mouth. A terrible, paranoid thought surfaced, and I opened my big mouth. “You’re leaving me?” I whispered. “I… I thought—”
His eyes sparked green. “You know I would not leave you.”
It was too late. I’d already said it, already thought it. “If the Prince of Hell told you to, you might,” I shot back, struggling free of his arms, my feet smacking the floor. He let me go. I scooped up the fallen scabbard and made it to my sword, steel i
My shoulder flared, a tugging against the mark branded into my flesh. I ignored it.
“You misunderstand, my curious.” Japhrimel’s voice was terribly, ironically flat. “The one the Prince seeks audience with is you.”
Chapter 4
I turned so quickly my hair fa
As if he was the one who needed the armor.
He watched me, his hands clasped behind his back again. “It seems that once again I am to ask you to face the Prince, Dante. There is… terrible news.”
I swallowed dryly. “Terrible? When you say that, I suppose it means something different than when I say it.” Then the absurdity hit me—I was standing here naked, my entire body gone cold and tense with foreboding, talking to a demon. How did I get myself into these things? “Am I allowed to get dressed, or does Lucifer want to see me in the buff?”
“If you wish to present yourself as a slave, I can hardly stop you.” The edge to his voice glittered and smoked like carbolic tossed across antigrav. “Try to rein your tongue for once. If I have meant anything to you, you must listen to me.”
Slaves are naked in Hell? Yet another demon custom I don’t know about. The mad urge to giggle rose up inside of me and died away again. My jaw set itself like plasteel. “You have no idea what you mean to me,” I informed him, just as flatly as he’d ever spoken to me.
“And vice versa. You are a selfish child sometimes. It could even be your particular brand of charm.”
I lifted the sword slightly. “Do you want a sparring match, or do you want to explain to me why you left me while I was unconscious? And defenseless, I might add?”
“I ca
The mark on my shoulder sent a burning tingle all through me. His hand brushed my elbow, slid up my arm to polish the bare skin of my shoulder, then slid under my hair, curling around my nape. He didn’t have to pull me forward, I leaned into him like a plant leans toward a window. “I have fended off the polite requests Lucifer has sent for your presence, and I have parried his less-than-polite requests. He has stopped asking and started summoning, hedaira, and he is an enemy we ca
The lump in my throat made it difficult to talk. “Fine,” I rasped. “But don’t expect me to be happy about it. I hate him, I hate him, he killed you and I hate him.”
The tension ru
I couldn’t argue with that, so I let him pull me back to the bed and run his fingers through my hair. I let him kiss my shoulder, my cheek, and finally my mouth. I sighed as he folded me in his arms and spoke to me the way I understood best—the language of the body, an instinctive semaphore used to tell me once again that he was real. His mouth against mine, his body against mine, and the rough hungry fire of my own desire swallowing me whole—but tears slid down my cheeks as I gave myself up to him.