Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

T
he storm followed her. It remained on the outskirts of the world, but Az caught the lightning flashes in the distance, lighting up the horizon. It sat there, a massive gray beast, and watched its archess, waiting to roll in at the slightest provocation.

He could handle the storm. That wasn’t what worried him. It was the anger behind it that troubled him.

He could read her thoughts once more; that barrier at least had been broken. Azrael had her blood in his veins now. It was the first time he had ever had a woman’s blood in his veins, and the fact that it belonged to his archess made it a tie that bound them inexorably.

Azrael relished how much more easily he could breach the walls of her mind, but he was torn by the things he read there. He’d never been inside the head of someone who had been through what Sophie Bryce had been through. It was like watching a movie loop. Images continued to flash before them both: police officers taking her by the hand after her parents’ deaths; headstones in a cemetery; one leering male face after another; a gunshot that rang out through her soul like a firecracker in the night. And then the man in white.

Now Azrael knew what Gregori looked like. It was an unsettling observation, to say the least.

Az brought them to the location he wanted and headed for the shore, gently setting Sophie down in front of him on the deserted Northern California beach that was protected by a tall line of cliffs on one side.

Sophie got her legs beneath her, a little wobbly at first. Then she straightened, looked around for a second, and ran a shaky hand through her long, beautiful hair. The ocean breeze immediately caught it and blew it back across her face once more.

She ignored it and turned to look up at Azrael. “Where are we?” she asked. He could hear the slowly returning fury tiptoeing around her voice, ever threatening.

“Just north of Trinidad,” he told her. “I have a place here.” He watched her carefully.

Sophie seemed to consider this for a moment and then tore her gaze from his. He felt literally colder when she did so, as if the temperature around him dropped in the absence of the heat in her eyes.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked softly.

It was a good question. It was a
fair
question. “I don’t know,” he told her honestly. He looked out at the dark expanse of ocean and the faint outline of the horizon where the clouds slowly crawled in. “That depends on you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she shot back.

Azrael wanted to sigh in frustration, but managed to simply walk a few paces away instead. Clearly, her ire was returning fast. At this rate, she would be using telekinesis to slam boulders into him within minutes.

He stopped at around five feet and turned back to look at her. His gaze fell to her right hand, which rested at her side. The mark on her palm was faded, but definitely not gone. This Gregori had far too much control over Azrael’s archess for his liking.

“You need to look inside yourself, Sophie. This isn’t you.” He took a deep breath and went on. “You have every right to be upset. But this fury that is racing through you is like a poison and it’s spreading. It doesn’t belong in you, Sophie. Someone else put it there.”

Sophie stared at him for a moment, her expression vacillating between a building wrath and a dawning comprehension. She bit her lip—just briefly—and Azrael’s hand curled into a fist. And then she shook her head and said, “What would you know?”

“About poison?” Azrael asked matter-of-factly. “About something evil that burns through your veins, eats its way into your soul, and bores a hole in your spirit that almost nothing can fill?” He paused, trying for the umpteenth time to regain his composure. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he’d said it, but it was too late.

Sophie turned on him and he could feel the clouds pouring in now, racing across the ocean’s expanse like an army of darkness. “What the hell would you know about me, ‘
Lord
Azrael’
?” she cried. “You don’t know me! You have no idea what or who I am!”

“I know you more deeply than you know yourself,” he told her, meeting her halfway on the anger front.

Sophie’s golden gaze narrowed dangerously and Az felt the first wet wind of her rising storm kiss his cheek. “Oh, that’s right,” she said vehemently. “Because you’ve been reading my
mind
.”

Az matched her narrowed gaze with one of his own. “That’s funny,” he said, flashing her a mean smile. “From what I’ve learned by being in there, I would think you’d
like
it.”

Sophie’s gold eyes sparked and lightning crashed into the sand three hundred feet away. Ruthlessly, Azrael kept going. “After all, having actually
been
inside your mind, I happen to know that one of the things you love about the big bad vampire is the fact that he can read your mind in the first place.”

He moved then. A blur and a gasp from Sophie, and he was standing over her and she was reeling back to get away. He stopped her cold with a strong arm around her waist. “Because then he knows just what to do to you, doesn’t he, Sunshine? He knows
how
to do it—and
when
.” He punctuated his words with a tightening of his grip on her.

Sophie’s hands found his chest, automatically pressing against him defensively. But he could tell what she was thinking now. She couldn’t hide anything from him any longer. Her efforts to defy him were not only useless, they were a lie.

He had seen inside of her. The hatred that was scorching her inner being to ash was unwelcome. She was a slave to it, as helpless as if it were whipping her into submission. She wanted to be free of its influence as desperately as Azrael wanted her to be.

She glared at him, her eyes shooting daggers, but a very large part of her liked being trapped in his arms. Even if he hadn’t been able to read her innermost desires, he could sure as hell smell them. A sweeter, more tempting nectar did not exist.

Azrael was a patient man. Thousands of years had sanded down the edges of his temper. But Sophie was another matter entirely. She was temptation and frustration and seduction all rolled into one amazing body, and there was only so much even Azrael could take.

So, as she glared at him and the sky boiled in her mounting anger, he gave in to his monster and put out a quick mental call. One vampire’s bite had faded the mark on her hand and whittled away at her defenses. Az couldn’t help but wonder what two bites at once would do.

It was something she had always fantasized about.

Within seconds, he glanced up through the building fog of Sophie’s storm to see something tall and dark emerge from the shadows beneath an outcropping of boulders against the cliff face. His wicked smile broadened.

* * *

Sophie didn’t want to be angry. A part of her honestly empathized with Azrael and his brothers. It wasn’t their fault that they were here, on Earth, searching for something that had been created for them, waved under their noses, and then torn from them two thousand years ago. It wasn’t Azrael’s fault that he’d been made the Angel of Death in the first place.

Someone else had been pulling his strings, just like someone else was pulling hers. She didn’t mean to be furious at Azrael. But he was here right now and the storm that raged inside her wouldn’t stay put. It leaked out through her pores, through her eyes, through her words—and Azrael was right. It was like a poison, eating away at her while she tried so desperately—and failed—to let it go.

Now he held her tight and no matter how she tried to pull away, her body felt every hard inch of him against her . . . and it was driving her crazy. The weather echoed her emotions, the wind racing, the clouds boiling until they were too heavy to remain in the sky and dropped to the beach instead, covering it in a thick, impenetrable gray. Through the fog, she heard thunder rumble, shaking the sand beneath her boots.

It was all too much, and Azrael was the icing on the madness cake. From afar, on a stage, and even over the radio, the man’s presence was stifling in its charisma. Up close and personal, he was overwhelming. There was no other word for it.

His power was a nearly tangible thing. It wrapped around her like silk cords pulled taut. She felt like the fly in a spider’s web, and every wiggling attempt she made at freedom only tightened the trap around her.

But despite the fact that she knew it was her defiance that had Azrael on the offensive, she couldn’t reel herself in. The fury poured from her like water from a broken dam.

She glared at him helplessly when all she really wanted to do was kiss him . . .
taste
him. What she yearned to do was run her hand through his hair while he sank his fangs into her throat again.

My God
, she thought. There was no description for that kind of pleasure. The moment Azrael had pierced her skin, she’d been awash in a rapturous bliss so deep, she’d gone instantly weak in his grasp. Only that pleasure seemed to have the power to take the fight out of her.

Do it again
, she thought desperately. She wanted to cry out, even as she tried again to pull out of his arms. She wanted to beg him for the mercy that only he could deliver, even while she instead turned her attention to the nearest sea-weathered boulder on the beach. Her powers were out of control; the boulder began to rise from where it had been pounded into the earth by a trillion waves. Sand shifted and cracked, then cascaded around its circumference as the stone rose. Sophie squeezed her eyes shut against the fury. Lightning crashed somewhere nearby, rolling over them like a warning.

No,
she thought.
Take this hate away from me. . . .

“With pleasure, Sunshine,” said Azrael.

Sophie’s eyes flew open. Her head whipped around and she caught the flash of fang and the spark of red at the centers of Azrael’s dark pupils. In the next heartbeat, a magical warmth hit her from behind and a second pair of strong hands wrapped around her wrists to pull them to her sides. A hard chest pressed to her back as her arms were held tight. Her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply as if to scream.

“Shh,” whispered a voice in her ear.

Uro!

The stone to her right dropped with a thud, sending sand flying.

Sophie shivered; the feel of another strong body at her back brought her breath up short, silencing the scream that had lodged in her throat. She was trapped between them, held immobile by the pleasure that was already riding through her body at their very closeness.

She gasped as Uro tightened his hold and moved in. Sophie made a shuddering sound and caught Azrael’s smile. It was lascivious, unforgivable, and breathtakingly beautiful.

She felt him loosen his arm around her waist and watched in disbelief as he deftly brushed her hair from her neck. His fingers touched her skin as he did, sending electric rivulets of pleasure across her flesh.

She choked back a moan; the dichotomy of feelings was too intense. She was terrified and angry, and she was burning with a sexual longing unlike any she’d ever known. She couldn’t believe Azrael was doing this to her, couldn’t fathom that Uro had joined in. The power washing over her built up an anticipation that was so intense it had to go somewhere—it had to do
something
—or she was afraid she might honestly die.

Lightning slammed into the rocks at the base of the cliffs behind them, sending pebbles flying in a shower of shattered stone.

The men waited as the thunder rocked over them and rolled away. And then Uro whispered, “Trust him, Sophie.” His breath caressed her ear. “Trust
us
.”

Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .

Sophie closed her eyes. Azrael slid his arm around her waist once more, his hand spanning her back to press her against him. She felt his free hand shove through her hair and fist gently at the back of her head. He pulled—and she rested her head against Uro’s strong shoulder. She could actually
feel
Azrael’s triumphant smile through her closed lids. She sensed him bending over her, closing in on her. He was everywhere, all around her. His presence was too strong to block out by simply shutting her eyes against it.

And then she felt his breath on her other ear and she gasped, but there was nowhere for her to go. They had her now. She was well and truly trapped.

“Remember my promise, Sophie,” he told her softly, his words sending delicious chills across her entire body. “Last time was the first of many.”

She tensed; she knew it was coming. And then she felt the men do the same. Their bodies went taut with purpose, their grips on her tightened, and Sophie cried out.

Their teeth pierced the tight skin on either side of her neck at the same time, driving deep. Sophie’s eyes flew open, but she didn’t see the sky. There were stars and planets and something that tore through time and space the way she’d imagined it would look at the end of the universe, but it wasn’t the sky. It wasn’t here. She was on another plane, in another universe that consisted only of extremes. Colors exploded before her, flowering like fireworks. She fell into them, light as a feather on the wind. There was no pain here, no discomfort. The anger she’d felt rushing through her only moments before was ebbing away. In its place was a pleasure both tranquil and restless, anticipation made tangible.

As the pain left, her pleasure grew. Deep down, a tension swirled to life, throbbing with every beat of her heart. It pulsed and ached, never hurting, only demanding.

She wanted more.

Chapter Thirty

H
e could sense the change coming over her. As the darkness lifted from around her it simultaneously grew within him. He had been made an archangel eons ago, a winged warrior of immense power. But here and now, in this telling moment, Azrael was the vampire king. The need inside him shoved all else aside and left no room for subtle kindnesses.

He was all monster, his sole saving grace the absolute love he felt for the woman in his dangerous embrace. Had it not been for this tempering compassion, Azrael would have turned her. No hesitation, no remorse. He had never created a female vampire. Sophie would have been his first. All it would have taken was a thought:
Turn and join me.
And Sophie would never again walk in the sun.

But his love for her left him settled somewhere in her warm and welcoming mind, simultaneously experiencing the hope and loss, the ebbing anger, and the growing peace. Her sweet, heartfelt emotions collared the beast within him just enough.

In his peripheral awareness, Azrael noticed Uro pulling away. The vampire released Sophie’s wrists and stepped back. His job was done; their combined attack had diminished Gregori’s influence on the archess and obliterated Sophie’s defenses, and Uro knew when to call it good. He would leave now and rejoin the others. Az had to commend him for being able to stop. It was something Az himself could not do. Not with her. They were too tightly bound. She hadn’t been made for Uro, after all. She’d been made for Azrael.

Az stayed put, his grip ever tight, his teeth firmly planted in her throat. He drank slowly, sparingly, and Sophie’s sweet, sweet blood drifted slowly over his tongue. It set off a flickering of delicious fire that burned down his throat and spread throughout his tall, strong body.
Divine
.

That was the only word for it.

Azrael was held prisoner by his desire, trapped between his yearning to go further and his need to avoid bringing Sophie any further harm. But his hunger was undeniable. He needed more. If he didn’t get it soon, he would lose his already tentative grasp on control.

Sophie . . .
his mind whispered. He knew she heard him when she exhaled softly, her breath caressing the curve of his shoulder.
My sweet Sunshine . . .

The ground released its hold on them as Azrael took them to the sky. They rose gradually through the mist and clouds of Sophie’s waning tempest. Moisture licked at their hair, dampening their locks and pressing them to their cheeks.

Az . . .
Her mind called to him. She did it without realizing she did so.

He felt her arms slide around him, warm and tight and welcome, and the vampire king’s heart cracked a little, a genuine ache that was both the most wonderful and the most horrible thing he had ever felt.

Lightning sizzled around them, somehow changed now. It was no longer an angry energy that arced from the earth to the sky. It was hot and languid and crackling, and it bounced off of the dense walls of the low-lying clouds.

Gently, Azrael released Sophie’s now damp hair and brushed his fingers down the back of her neck. She shivered beneath the caress. He wanted to touch more of her. He used his control of the air to help him hold her aloft, and with a simple thought and flux of will, he did away with their clothing. It was there one second, gone the next. The clouds swirled in to dress them, leaving droplets of moisture on their skin.

Instinctively, Sophie pressed herself against him, a soft moan escaping her lips. Az felt his chest shudder, his body clench tight. He was hard as steel, pulsing hot, and they were skin on skin, her warmth taunting him. His fingers moved lower, grazing the smooth, perfect plane of her back to the tight curve of her bottom. Rivulets of rainwater built and trickled, running over his hand.

Sophie gasped and involuntarily arched her back as he cupped her cheek and continued farther, his fingers taking her in, absorbing her heat. When he reached the valley between her legs, her fists curled into his back, her nails threatening his skin.

In response, he sucked harder, his teeth claiming her throat, taking her blood now with a renewed sense of urgency.
More
—he wanted
more
.

Humidity blanketed them, leaving them drenched. Azrael’s cock throbbed against her taut stomach, now so painfully engorged that he could no longer ignore it. His hand slid over the slick, honeyed entrance to her core, the scent of her arousal wafted toward him, and her nails broke through, drawing his blood. Her body arched desperately against his as he growled against her throat and pressed farther, dipping into her heated wetness.

One finger . . . two . . .

Sophie cried out; he drank deeper.
More
.

He felt her clench around his fingers, mind-blowingly tight and so very wet. Another sizzling bolt of lightning crisscrossed the dense fog, charging the air with heat and static. It sliced through the spaces beside him, threateningly close. He ignored it, his attention focused solely on the sweet, responsive woman in his arms.

Sophie, I need more
, he thought, sending the words careening through her mind. It was the plea of a starving man—a dying man—who had been given a taste of salvation and would perish without another life-giving swallow.

Sophie coated his fingers with the nectar of her desire, urging him on without another word. But she was so tight, so small.

With tender care, Azrael pushed harder, subjugating her body to his demanding, expert touch. Then his vampire took over and he pulled his fangs from her throat.

She cried out at the quick retreat and her fingernails drew more of his archangel blood. It ran down his back now, thin rivers of crimson pleasure.

He leaned back, taking her in from head to toe. No woman on Earth should have looked as good as she did, from the tips of her toes to her long, slender legs and the triangle of golden curls between them. His gaze burned over her tapered waist to her perfect round breasts to the graceful lines of her collarbone. As he looked at her, she moaned in frustration. His eyes shot back to hers. Her straight white teeth were bared and she was writhing in his embrace, waiting to accept everything he wanted to give her.

Slowly, almost menacingly, Azrael ran his tongue over his fangs and watched as Sophie’s glassy, lust-filled eyes widened. Her breathing became short and quick, her body moving desperately upon his fingers. She was trapped in his gaze, held captive by his influence, and nearly frantic for release.

She was all his.

He struck with vampire speed, lowering his head and sinking his still-glistening, razor-sharp fangs into the smooth flesh of her left breast. Sophie’s piercing cry split the night and lightning sizzled, an impossible tornado of electricity that coiled around their bodies like a spiral cocoon. At the same time, her hand shoved through his thick, dark hair, holding his head to her chest—as if he would consider letting go.

But he
was
going to let go. Because there was another place on her body he wanted to sink his teeth into. Gently, he extracted his fangs once more and again brushed his thumb across her clitoris as his fingers moved inside her. Sophie’s head tossed to the side, her now fully wet hair flying around her like a glorious golden halo. Azrael took it in, never wanting to forget what she looked like.

The air responded to his command once more, holding her aloft as he released his hold on her waist and slowly pulled his fingers from her molten core.

“No . . . ,” she murmured, her forehead furrowing in disappointment.

His smile broadened, becoming well and truly cruel. She took one ragged breath after another and floated, captive to his web of air as he slowly moved down the length of her body until the dark blue vein on the inside of her leg was in his sights.

He ran his hands up the backs of her well-muscled legs, then curled his fingers around them to hold them open. Sophie resisted him, perhaps instinctively, for a fraction of a second. Her breath caught and he looked up. Her eyes met his—and he knew that she was fully aware of what he was about to do.

She made a helpless sound, one he could never hear enough, as he pulled her legs apart and lowered his head to slowly, teasingly, run his tongue across the slick, smooth lips of her womanhood.

She bucked in his embrace, as he had known she would, but his grip was firm—and his mind was headed toward delirium. He tasted her a second time, wanting to drink her in every possible manner, wanting to absorb everything that was Sophie Bryce, body and soul.

Divine.

The word floated through his mind once more and he closed his eyes as his tongue continued to taste and Sophie continued to writhe in his fast grip. He was in heaven. But heaven was a pleasure so severe, it was painful. His body was so hard, sweat had broken out across his skin, joining the rainwater that coalesced on them and soaked them both. Azrael raised his hand and pressed gently on the swollen nub of Sophie’s clitoris. She cried out in both frustration and ecstasy and quivered under his hand, her movements more furious now. The clean, wanton scent of her was maddening. She was dripping for him.

Without warning, he turned his head and sank his fangs into the vein on the inside of her thigh. As he did, he shoved his fingers into her once more and was rewarded with the tight, frantic clenching of her core around his hand. Her climax drew a harsh cry from her throat, but that cry was totally absorbed by the thunder that echoed off the clouds as a second spiral of lightning enveloped the airborne lovers.

Azrael watched her through his glowing eyes as he pulled and swallowed. Pulled and swallowed. If he drank her dry, it wouldn’t be enough.

Careful
, he told himself. She was an archess and made of stronger stuff than a mortal, but she could still be killed, and he’d taken enough blood.

And there was something else he wanted just a little bit more in that moment. He couldn’t wait any longer.

In one swift movement, Azrael pulled his teeth from her vein and his fingers from between her legs. Then he rose on the wind and pressed the tip of his painfully swollen member to the slick opening between Sophie’s legs. He could feel her still clenching, still coming down from the tidal wave of pleasure she’d just experienced.

He drew her against him, wrapped his arm around her waist, and cupped her face, leaning over her, demanding that her eyes meet his. He felt her hot little breaths across his lips as he brushed his thumb along her cheekbone and marveled at her perfect beauty.

And then he drove into her, shoving into her slick, tight heat in one hard thrust. He swallowed her scream of pleasured pain with a kiss just as demanding, just as powerful. And lightning struck.

This time it hit home. The heavens opened and the bolt of white-hot heat cascaded over Azrael and Sophie with direct aim. But they were completely drenched in rainwater and perspiration, and the electricity sizzled around them, moving over and off of them, kept at bay by the layer of moisture they wore.

Az let it go without so much as a second thought. All he could feel was her heat wrapped around him, enveloping him with a succulent, velveteen rapture.

For a moment, he rested there, lodged deep inside his archess, his entire world one of intense bliss. Her arms had come tightly around him, her fingers flexing against his strong back. He drank her in through his kiss, his tongue drawing forth her pleasure with thousands of years of practice as they both grew accustomed to his impressive size—and her incredible tightness.

Long enough.

Azrael drew back, pulling out of Sophie until his cock was nearly free. And then he drove into her again. Once more, she cried out against him. He took the sound and absorbed it, silencing her cry with his kiss. His teeth threatened her lips, poked at her tongue, dominant and fierce.

And he pulled back . . . and drove into her again.

And again.

Sophie’s precious little sounds settled down into a rhythm along with his thrusts, each sigh and gasp and moan coming with euphoric perfection. Azrael ended the kiss and tilted her head to bare her already pierced throat to him one final time.

He sank his teeth into the marks he’d already made, driving his fangs deep as he shoved more fiercely into her sex. His power broke free as Sophie’s second orgasm drew near and his own followed. The two of them began to rise through the fog once more.

Fingers of mist swirled around them, eddied before them, and then pulled away as Azrael unknowingly broke through the cloud ceiling and brought them into the starry night above.

It was quiet here. Sacred. This, up here, beneath the halo of the moon and the blinking, diamond stars was a soul expanse, pure and deep and dark.

Azrael and his archess filled that sacrosanct dark with the combined sounds of their climaxes as Azrael took his final swallow of her precious life force and pulled his fangs from her throat. Sophie bucked violently in his fierce grip, her body convulsing around him as his molten seed filled her womb.

Azrael threw back his head and howled into the night. The Masked One’s voice echoed off the stars, alerting the universe to his pleasure. The Angel of Death had found his archess, and after two thousand years, he had at last claimed his mate.