Demon's Embrace (24 page)

In all his years he’d never been so out of control. Guilt whispered.

Brushing her cheek against his shoulder, Miri asked, her voice unsteady, “Bad dream?”

Those simple words and the lightness of her tone were enough to ease the last remnants of his rage and grief. And his guilt.

Her acceptance of him.

Ash laughed unsteadily, more a gust of breath, but it was enough. Something inside him loosened. He curled an arm around her and looked down at her as he brushed a strand of her fiery hair away from her pale face, a part of him noting how good her hair looked against his skin.

Even as he brushed it away he saw the marks of his teeth on her, the signs of his claws on her shoulders, the scratches on her delicate skin. He could heal them and did, brushing his hand over skin as soft as rose petals, but knowing how they’d come to be there?

His jaw tightened. Shame pierced him as well as guilt, and a terrible, bitter anger.

Sensing it, Miri reached up to touch his face, to cup his cheek and turn his face toward her so he would meet her eyes.

“Ash,” she said gently, “You could have hurt me badly, couldn’t you?”

The truth was he could have killed her. He could have feasted too deeply, could have ripped and torn.

It was what he’d been afraid of, that in his rage he would.

“But you didn’t,” she said, “and you wouldn’t. I know that.”

Ash looked into her ethereal eyes. The color fascinated him, enraptured him as it always had, but more, the faith in them, in him, humbled him.

That trust…

“Besides,” she said with an impish grin. “I liked it.”

A little startled, he looked at her.

“What?”

She smiled and shrugged. “There’s something incredibly sexy about you when you get all savage like that.”

For a moment, he could only stare at her in disbelief.

“I kind of like it when you’re so out of control,” she said as a smile twitched at her lips. She paused, fixed her otherworldly gaze on him. “To know you trust me enough to let go.”

In that moment there was something in his harsh and fierce face, in those lambent amber eyes, that Miri had never thought to see, vulnerability, something he never showed, something only she would ever see. No other.

A part of her wanted to weep for him but she didn’t.

She stroked her fingers lightly along one strong cheekbone.

“I’m not afraid of you, Ash. I will never be afraid of you.”

She studied his seemingly harsh and unyielding visage. Her heart ached for him and for what they’d done to him.

Ash went still, looked into enchanting green eyes as brilliant as the moon. Those beautiful eyes fascinated him, enchanted him, destroyed him, and they always would.

“Miri,” he said, as something eased inside him, released him at last.

“We may have been fated, you and I,” she said, “but even so I love you just as ferociously for yourself.”

It was there in her eyes. Everything he needed. Everything he wanted.

His gaze took in each feature of her face as he looked at her with something like wonder.

She looked at him steadily, let him see the truth of what she said.

He brushed a hand over her cheek, slid it into her tangled hair.

“I love you, too, my Miri,” he said, quietly.

She was his true mate, yes, but he loved her too, for herself.

Eyeing him, lifting an eyebrow a little, Miri said, “So, do you want to tell me what that was all about?”

Ash went still and his jaw tightened at the memory.

“Tell me,” she said gently.

Ash looked at her.

“You can tell me anything, Ash,” she said. “You know that.”

Wrapping his arms around her, he scooted them both back against the pillows and the padded headboard, settled her into the crook of his arm with her head on his shoulder.

Miri waited, patiently, giving him time as she stroked a hand lightly over his chest.

“You feel so good,” she said, “like heated satin.” She stretched her hand across one pectoral muscle to span it but couldn’t and shook her head at the futility of the motion. “So smooth.”

She sighed with evident pleasure.

Ash’s tension eased at her gentle touch, his battered soul soothed. Her caress released the last of the tension from his muscles and nerves.

He needed to do this. They both knew it. It was like lancing a wound. The first words were difficult but then they came easier, especially with Miri’s body curled against his.

He spoke of the fetid, dark and damp dungeon with its vermin, lice, mice and rats crawling in the thin layer of fouled straw. Of how his ankles had been covered in bites where the iron had chafed him raw, giving those creatures access to feed.

As close as they were, Ash had never spoken of it even to Asmodeus, his closest friend.

When your world is at war, when everyone has suffered loss and horror, how do you talk about it to someone who has suffered as much as you have? Even worse and harder for Asmodeus, who as Prince had to bear the weight of his decisions?

When he tried to soften it, though, to ease past the details, Miri sensed it through the bond between them and called him on it, even though she paled sometimes, her hands tightening as he spoke but she was clearly determined to see it through.

With him.

It was the first step toward healing but it was a step. Relief washed through him even as the words poured out of him.

It hurt Miri to listen to it, but she knew she must, she had to know all of it, the truth of it, and not flinch or turn away. He needed this, needed to talk about it.

His torment was a testament to the horror that could be inflicted on one living, thinking being by another.

What they’d done to him had been terrible.

It hurt so much more to know, to envision the lash striking him, tearing at him, to hear in his words the sound of his bones breaking as they smashed his hands. To see it in vision. It had gone on for more than a year.

Her heart ached as she caressed his scars, slid her fingers between his.

What barbarians could do such a thing?

It was one thing to ‘see’ it in vision, to witness it distantly, yet another to listen to Ash talk about it, to feel his muscles tighten, his body grow taut, involuntarily flinching now and again at the memories. It was another thing entirely to hear his deep voice with every ounce of emotion leached out of it, detailing what they’d done to him. There were times she had to resist a shudder and more than once a part of her wanted to cry out, to ask him to stop…but she didn’t. He needed the release, needed to tell someone, to talk about the horrors he’d experienced.

Closing his eyes, Ash told her all of it. How he’d marked the days he couldn’t see, could only guess at in the stygian darkness of the dungeons. How he waited for the day when they would take him out into the sunlight one last time. He craved it, if only to see the sun one final time before the flames rose.

“I didn’t know Zefir had escaped and taken the Book with him, that they hunted him to regain it. I only knew the guards were less diligent. When the chance came, I took it,” he said and took a breath.

Ash looked at his beloved Miri and told her the rest.

How he’d fed from one of the priests, draining the man dry for the strength to escape.

Horrified at what he’d done, he’d dropped the desiccated body, and yet had been sickly satisfied that justice, in a way, had been done.

By the time he was finished talking Ash felt empty, scoured clean.

A warm droplet fell to his chest.

He looked at Miri as she cupped his cheek. Her fairy eyes looked at him, her lashes damp.

She wept for him. No one had wept for him. All those that would have had been long dead.

His heart twisted.

“Miri,” he said.

She kissed him softly, shaking her head.

“No,” she said fiercely, “don’t you dare apologize. Thank you for telling me. I know what it cost you to do it.”

Inside him, something that had been broken healed a little bit more, but heal it did.

Never again would he face the darkness alone, there would always be clear sky above him and Miri in his arms to hold him when the nightmares came.

For him, for them, it was a new start.

Above, the sky lightened.

After Ash’s nightmare Gabriel’s bright airy kitchen with its green glass-fronted white cabinets, stainless steel appliances and green and white gingham curtains seemed utterly and completely the wrong place to be having the discussion they were having. And yet, oddly enough, it was the best place for it, reminding them all exactly what was at stake.

Their right to exist, to return to this world, their sanctuary, and their peace of mind.

Once more Ash stood with his back against the counter. It was his usual position when he came to visit but now he stood with his Miri in his arms.

That was a precious gift, too.

It was a measure of his agitation that his tail wasn’t wrapped around her but lashed around them instead.

The kitchen was crowded with a half a dozen very large Daemonae with folded wings and whipping tails, the last clear signs of their distress.

Surprisingly, those tails didn’t hit anyone, not even each other.

It wasn’t just Ash and Miri, or Asmodeus and Gabriel. Mal – Moloch – was there, too, and Ba’al, the brothers Zefir and Zaebos, a few of the others.

Gabriel handed Miri a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. Protein and calories.

“Eat,” she said softly, “you don’t know when your next meal might be. I learned that a long time ago on my first stakeout.”

She handed another plate to Ash as she said to Miri, “I took the liberty of getting you clean clothes. Nothing of mine will fit you and yours was pretty much destroyed.”

Miri had wondered about that. It had been nice to find fresh clothing awaiting her.

Taking the offered plate and setting it on the counter beside him, Ash shook his head at Zaebos’s question. The Daemonae took little sustenance from food, enough to survive, but every little bit would help. But they liked the taste

As he picked at his food he said, “We can’t just let it go, Zaebos. We knew Templeton would actively seek a way to recover the Book, as we learned at that last meeting with him.”

He, Asmodeus and Gabriel had confronted the financier. It had been an…interesting…exchange.

Mal added, “We confirmed it last night. Prometheus is one of Templeton’s companies. It took a little doing, but Ba’al and I found the connection.”

“Now we have proof,” Ash said. “And he’s still searching for the Book or he wouldn’t have tried to take Miri. He has a little magic of his own, enough to use it or money to find or force others to do his bidding. We leave ourselves at his mercy if we do nothing.”