“Checking for hooves.”
He was pretty sure his horns grew larger. So did his dick.
Irritation that he couldn’t control his own body, let alone his emotions, pissed him off even more. Made him...as she put it, extra reapy. Then she was walking toward him, her long, fluid strides kicking her slim hips out with each strut. The bare expanse of her belly became a focal point as she came closer, and suddenly, all the writhing, shifting feelings inside him narrowed into a single stream of lust.
Much, much better. Fury, joy, sadness, guilt...those were things he couldn’t deal with. Lust, though...that he could handle, and handle very well.
“Look,” she said as she halted in front of him. “It wasn’t my fault that we had to come back. We used up the entire hour—”
A tap on the doorjamb cut her off, and they both looked over to the open doorway where Zhubaal stood, outfitted in leather and weapons.
Not a good sign.
“My lord, I had a meal sent to your dining room.” He gestured down the hall. “And...you have another visitor.”
“Send them away. I’m done for the day.”
Zhubaal shifted his weight in an uncharacteristic display of unease. “Sir...it’s Methicore.”
Instant alarm shot up Azagoth’s spine, and he instinctively stepped in front of Lilliana. “Is he alone?”
“Aye.” Zhubaal’s tone was grim. “I shackled him with Bracken Cuffs.”
The cuffs, designed to neutralize supernatural abilities, weren’t necessary, not when Azagoth was the most powerful being in his own realm, but with Methicore’s history, it was a wise precaution. Plus, being shackled was humiliating, and Methicore deserved it. And worse.
“Send the bastard in.”
Zhubaal bowed deeply and left. As soon as the door closed, Lilliana stepped closer. “Who is Methicore?”
“He’s a vile excuse for an angel,” he growled. “A pox upon his kind.”
She frowned. “How do you know him?”
Azagoth inhaled deeply, doing his best to keep the monster throbbing inside him at bay. “I know him,” he said thickly, “because he’s my son.”
* * * *
Bastard. A vile excuse for an angel. A pox upon his kind.
Azagoth’s words about his own son completely obliterated any warm fuzzies Lilliana had begun to feel for him. It was too reminiscent of her own father’s rejection of her. She’d been the product of breeding for a purpose, and when she’d approached him a quarter of a century ago in an attempt to get to know him, he’d made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with her.
“I have a mate and sons now, and I don’t need you barging into our lives and ruining everything.”
In other words, his family didn’t know about her. He’d kicked her out of his grand residence with instructions to stay away from him and his family.
Looked like Azagoth was no better than dear old dad. She should have known.
As Zhubaal escorted Methicore inside, anger at the way he was chained boiled up. She’d been shackled the same way only a few weeks ago, and the memory of being rendered helpless and at another’s mercy closed in on her in a claustrophobic wave.
Methicore stopped a few feet inside the doorway, but Zhubaal remained outside, his hand hovering over a blade at his hip. Was this male truly such a threat? Or had Azagoth taken a page from her father’s playbook? The moment her father had realized who she was, he’d summoned two underlings to flank her, as if she’d come to murder him instead of beg for acceptance.
“Father,” Methicore drawled. “Did you take out your horns on my account? How special.” He resembled his sire in height and coloring, but he was slimmer, and where Azagoth’s eyes had glazed over with icy indifference, Methicore’s burned with hatred.
She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Why are you here?” Azagoth’s expression gave nothing away, as usual. “I told you to never return.”
Oh, gee, Lilliana thought sourly. That sounded familiar. Azagoth and her father should get together for drinks and bond over woeful tales of their inconvenient bastard offspring.
“I wanted to tell you the news in person,” Methicore practically spat.
Azagoth might as well have yawned, he looked so bored. Even his horns had disappeared. And he was still hoofless. “What news?”
“The kind that makes you fucking irrelevant.” Methicore smiled darkly, the resemblance to his father becoming uncanny. “All Memitim are Ascending to full angel status as of today...and we’ve been given the ability to reproduce. You’re done, asshole. No longer needed.”
Surprise flickered in Azagoth’s eyes, but it quickly snuffed out. “Is that all?”
“No.” Methicore’s grin widened. “Also as of today, as of the second I leave, access to your realm will forever be cut off to Memitim.” He tapped his chest with pride. “My doing, of course. You’ll never see any of your sons or daughters again.”
Lilliana gasped in horror, but there was absolutely no reaction from Azagoth. Did he not care about his children at all? Slowly, as if this was all just so very ho-hum to him, he turned his back on his son and stared into the fire.
“I have no use for you,” he said softly. “Begone.”
Lilliana’s heart crumpled like aluminum foil as a flicker of hurt flashed across Methicore’s face. It was quickly smothered by a triumphant smirk, but she wasn’t sure what he had to feel good about. Revenge was far more poisonous to the giver than the receiver. Besides, Azagoth didn’t seem to be disturbed by the fact that he’d never see his offspring again, so Methicore’s victory was hollow. She actually felt sorry for him.
Methicore shot Azagoth the bird and moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold. “Female.” His eyes locked on her, and the calculation in them left her feeling more exposed than anything Azagoth had done so far. “You’ll get nothing from him but a cock that’s as frozen as his heart. Come with me, and I’ll give you what he can’t.”
“Have a care, son.” Azagoth’s quiet voice held an ominous edge that seemed to make even the flames in the hearth shrink back. “For some species devour their young.”
Methicore swept out of the office with a snarl. The moment the door slammed shut, Lilliana rounded on Azagoth.
“You bastard.” She spat out the word with all the contempt she could muster. “How can you be so cruel to your own son?”
“Me? Cruel?” His hands formed fists at his sides. “I’m not the one cutting off access to my children.”
“As if you give a shit.”
“Do not,” he growled, “presume to know me after a few hours of prancing around my realm.”
Prancing? She’d never pranced in her life. “I don’t have to know you to know your kind.”
He swung around, his jaw tight and unforgiving. “My kind?”
“A breeder.” The very word pissed her off. “A stud for hire who doesn’t give a damn about the lives he creates.”
He jerked as if she’d shot him with an arrow. She’d struck a nerve, hadn’t she? “Shut. Up.”
“Fuck you,” she shot back. She hated being so crude, but something about this male and this realm brought out her bitchy side.
“Shut up,” he ground out, “or I’ll make you shut up.”
He clearly had no idea how stubborn she was, something that had driven her kidnapper nuts. “You can’t make me do anything.”
He came at her, his gait loose yet predatory. “I can make you do everything.”
Unbelievable. “Are you aware on any level whatsoever how arrogant you are?”
“This is my realm, angel. I am this realm. My reach extends beyond Sheoul-gra’s boundaries to the deepest pits of Hell and the highest levels of Heaven. So yes, I’m aware of my self-confidence, and when I tell you that I can make you do something, I mean it.”
You can’t make me stay here. Oh, she couldn’t wait to get out of this depressing place. “What will you do? Beat me into compliance? Torture me?”
He stopped in front of her, his gaze roving boldly over her, lingering on her breasts and bare skin of her belly. “Only a fool and a coward would harm his mate, especially if they have to co-exist for eternity.” He bared his teeth in what she assumed was a smile. “I have other ways of getting what I want.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but short of torture, you can’t make me do anything.”
His smile became downright wicked. “I can make you beg for the mere whisper of my breath on your skin. I can do things with my tongue that will make you scream with the exquisite intensity of it. And I can make you come so hard, for so long, that you’ll pass out from pleasure.”
“Sex,” she said bitterly. “Typical male, thinking that’s all females want.” Never mind that she did want it. Lord help her, to experience an orgasm like that...oh, yes, please.
“Sex,” he said huskily, “is only the beginning. I can make you a queen. I can give you an entire realm.”
She snorted. “You mean this?” She made an encompassing sweep of her arm. “This cold, dreary realm full of death and griminions and fallen angels? Yeah, it’s what every girl dreams of.”
A tense black silence hung like a pall in the air, and she had a feeling she’d pushed him too far. Despite what he’d said about not harming his mate, she braced herself for a blow.
And one blow was all he’d get. Her power was muted down here, but she’d fight him until her last breath. Or she’d get the hell out of here and happily submit to the dissection team that would extract her time traveling ability.
But Azagoth didn’t raise a finger. Instead, he dematerialized, leaving her alone. Again.
Chapter Seven
Azagoth materialized in his library, wishing he could scream in fury and agony. But all the emotion that had nearly crippled him earlier had found its way back into the desolate, frozen wasteland he called a soul. Although he supposed his soul had been sucked out of him a long time ago.
Snarling, he swiped a soda-bottle sized crystal chess piece off his desk and crushed it under his boot. Methicore had given it to him, a reminder that Azagoth was a king, and the world was his chess board.
Methicore should have remembered that.
Azagoth ground the heel of his boot on top of the piece, relishing the sound of destruction.
His son had betrayed him yet again. Not only betrayed, but destroyed every relationship Azagoth had forged with his sons and daughters. Not that he’d ever had much in the way of relationships, but at least he’d been able to visit with some of his offspring now and then. The ones who hadn’t abandoned him when Methicore led the rebellion against him, anyway.
Funny how Azagoth had seen Satan’s insurrection coming from a mile away, but he’d been utterly blind to Methicore’s machinations. Then again, by the time his son had risen up against him, Azagoth’s ability to sense deception had been dulled like a blade that had sawed too much bone.
And then there was Lilliana and her unwelcome observation about him. Calling him a breeder. A stud for hire who doesn’t give a damn about the lives he creates.
The real pisser was that she was right. But not about all of it. He did give a damn about his offspring. He might not be able to feel true love for anyone or anything, but he did care.
He cared too much, and Satan had exploited that fact in order to get what he wanted from Azagoth.
The demon had never forgotten Azagoth’s role in his expulsion from Heaven. Talk about holding a grudge. What a big, whiny baby. So Satan hadn’t succeeded in taking over Heaven. He was King Shit of his own domain now. Who else could say that?
Oh, right—Azagoth could. Not that Lilliana gave a crap.
She’d given him the greatest gift of his life by taking him to the desert, but when he’d offered a gift of his own, the key to Sheoul-gra, she’d mocked him and flung it right back in his face.
This cold, dreary realm full of death and griminions and fallen angels? Yeah, it’s what every girl dreams of.
How dare she, he thought, as he flashed himself outside his manor. How dare she reject anything that he, the Grim Reaper, offered? Females creamed themselves over him. They’d come to him by the thousands, begging for any scraps he’d throw their way. Granted, they were demons, but they’d been high-ranking, influential females from every species. Before her recent demise, even Lilith herself had approached him on multiple occasions to try to convince him that a union between the two of them would make them the most powerful couple in existence.
No thanks. He’d already been screwed by her. In more ways than one.
Frustrated, he kicked at the oily soil beneath his feet. It felt nothing like the sand in the desert. He looked into the distance at the dozens of buildings and beyond, to what used to be a forest filled with life, rivers, and lakes. Now there was nothing but gnarled tree trunks and stumps, dry creek beds, and one lake so stagnant that its toxic stench sometimes crossed the barrier between Sheoul and Sheoul-gra. Denizens of Sheoul’s Horun region had affectionately named the affected area The Grim Reaper’s Asshole.
It’s what every girl dreams of.
Azagoth’s heart went dead in his chest. Holy shit, Lilliana was right. Demons might think of Sheoul-gra as a treasure, but no one else, especially not an angel, would think that any of this was a gift.
What a fool he’d been. What a fucking dumbass.
He had nothing to offer Lilliana. Sure, he could give her great sex. Better than great. But beyond that? Nothing. His realm, which had once been teeming with activity and life, was dead.
The only thing for her to do down here was what Azagoth did; meet each evil soul as it came through the tunnel, and then decide its fate before sending it to the various levels of the Inner Sanctum to await reincarnation. Assignment to hard labor? A stint in Hades’s dungeon? Maybe roasting in the Eternal Field of Flames or swimming in the Acid Pools of Agony?
And really, he should not have let Hades name shit in the Inner Sanctum. Azagoth wanted to beat the fallen angel every time he was forced to say, or even think, of the miserable area known as Feces-palooza.
Oh, hey, Lilliana, let me take you on a tour of your wedding gift. Yep, check out Disembowling Beach. We can honeymoon in Feces-palooza. And just wait until I take you to Boiling Piss Pond and the Fetid Razor Swamp.
Fuck.
Scrubbing his hand over his face, he decided he needed to rethink his strategy. If Lilliana was truly here because she was given no choice, eternity with him would, literally, be hell for her. He was a bastard who traded in death and pain, and while he liked to tell himself that he’d been corrupted by thousands of years of life in Hell, the truth was that even as an angel he’d been in the business.
Interrogators weren’t exactly nice people.
Okay, so where did he go from here? First, he supposed, it might help to know why, exactly, Lilliana had agreed to mate him. Jim Bob had indicated that this was a punishment, but Azagoth wanted to hear it from Lilliana herself. Had she been given any choice in the matter at all? And if so, why had she agreed?
He couldn’t do anything about Methicore and his idea of revenge...at least, not in the immediate future. But he could take care of what was happening right now in his home.
Home. What a joke. Home was a horror show of a necrotic realm. Dream stuff, there.
As he contemplated his next move with Lilliana, he headed back inside and straight for the bedroom. He expected her to be waiting for him, but to his surprise, she’d climbed into bed, her chestnut hair spilling over the black satin pillowcase in a shiny wave. The clothes she’d been wearing were laid neatly on the recliner next to her wardrobe and, he noted, the sapphire silk baby-doll nightie was missing from the hanger.
Man, he wished he hadn’t missed her putting that on. He could imagine her hard body loosely covered in luxurious material meant to caress her smooth skin, and when he added himself to the picture, the nightie became a shredded pile on the floor.
Mouth watering, but not for food, he made a
quick detour to the kitchen to see if she’d eaten, and he was pleased to see that she’d made a huge dent in the Italian food Zhubaal had scored from one of Azagoth’s favorite restaurants. Azagoth could cook, but one of his few pleasures was eating the best foods in the world, and Zhubaal had a knack for knowing exactly what Azagoth was in the mood for.
Too bad his mood for Italian had passed, because the three pasta dishes, steamed mussels, and tomato bisque looked amazing. What was left of it, anyway. Apparently, his angel had a hearty appetite.
The thought made him practically purr inside. He loved a female who could eat.
Returning to the bedroom, he eyed his erotic furniture, wondering if she’d show as much enthusiasm for sex.
How could she? She doesn’t want to be here.
He shook off the thought. He’d make her want to be there. Sure, he didn’t have a plan, but he had the power to bring anything she wanted into his realm. He could keep her content. Happy, even.
Keep telling yourself that, jackass.
With a growl of frustration, he stripped naked and climbed between the crisp sheets. She was lying as close to the edge of the mattress as possible, her back to him and the covers tucked under her chin. He closed the gap between them, easing himself close to her, but just short of touching. He didn’t trust himself. If he touched her, he’d need to keep touching, and he wanted to give her time to adjust.
How gentlemanly of you. Yeah, well, his soul might be warped into something unrecognizable and his emotions all but dead, but his memories were fully intact and untainted by Sheoul’s evil influence. He remembered his mother and how she’d been so timid and afraid of new experiences. It had hurt him to see, especially not knowing what had made her that way.
Those memories were what made him handle his nervous bedmates differently than he handled the others. While he might not actually feel sympathy for faint-hearted females, he knew he used to, before he came to Sheoul-gra. And despite the rumors, he had never taken a female by force or coercion.