Dirty Angel-BarbaraElsborg (4 page)

Aden smacked his fist into the demon’s stomach—
shit that hurt
—and Dante lurched back in surprise before his eyes narrowed and his lips curled in a feral grin. Aden showed nothing on his face and fought the urge to flex his aching fingers.

Dante inclined his head and gave a mock salute. “Thank you for handing me the perfect torment. Sometimes it’s difficult to choose the best punishment. She’ll be waiting for you to kill her over and over again. You can listen to that heart stop, see the light—”

“Fuck you,” Aden snarled.

“Perhaps.” Dante laughed. “Go have your second chance. You’ll mess it up, then you’re mine anyway.”

What were they talking about? What was he supposed to do with fucking great wings on his back?

“One month,” said Raphael.

“One week,” Dante snapped.

“No. He has a month.”

“How about fifty years or so?” Aden asked.

Dante chuckled. “I’ll allow you the month Raph offers. I’m feeling generous today.”

“A month to do what?” Aden asked.

“To become the person you should be,” Raphael said. “You had a bad start in life. No one taught you the value in being kind, generous, selfless. As a child, you did what you could to survive and no blame is attached to that. Yet when your life did
change for the better, you didn’t change with it. You made no attempt to be a decent person. You prided yourself on not caring. You lied, you deceived, you stole. Your face might be beautiful. Your soul is dirty. But it is not yet pure obsidian.”

Raphael glanced at Dante who shrugged. “He’ll fuck up on the first day.”

Fuck you, demon. I will not.

“You have never loved,” Raphael continued. “And that you have never been loved, not even by a parent, breaks my heart.”

Aden sucked in his cheeks. Of what use was love?

“He doesn’t understand the emotion and he never will.” Dante sneered. “He doesn’t want to be loved. Once his childhood was over, he did nothing to deserve to feel that emotion. He’s a user. He cares for no one.”

“Maybe he can change,” Raphael said.

Dante made a dismissive sound. “Impossible. And in a month? Doubly impossible.”

Raphael turned to Aden. “You have this gift of time to understand love, to earn the right to be loved, to work to deserve respect and be a better man. Prove you don’t belong in hell.”

“You want me to…fall in love in a month?” Aden gaped at them. “Or find someone to love me? How is that fair if I’m going to be leaving them when the month is up?”

“Listen to what I’m saying. You have a month to come to understand what love means, to believe in it, to feel it, to offer it.” Raphael stared at him without blinking.

Aden thought he had been listening. Was there something he hadn’t understood?

“Do not come to the attention of the authorities,” Raphael said. “Do not come to anyone’s attention as Aden North. Lie about anything and it’s a mark against you.”

“And I’ll be keeping count,” Dante said. “Hey, on the plus side, why don’t you carry on the way you always have? Lie, deceive and steal. Use your bonus time to have a ball. Fuck as many men as you can. Take as many risks as you want because—hey, you’re already dead—right? The worst that can happen has already happened. When your month is up, you’ll tumble into hell and the party will continue.”

“And it will never stop,” Raphael said quietly.

An everlasting party in hell was not good. Even Aden wasn’t that
stupid.

“A month,” Aden muttered. What would he have done if he’d been told by a doctor he only had that long to live?

Partied like hell for as long as he could.

“That’s my boy.” Dante slid his hand over Aden’s chest and tweaked his nipple.

“Don’t fucking touch me.” Aden pushed his hand away.

“You might try to moderate your language,” Raphael said.

“I rather like his filthy mouth.” Dante smirked.

“You can’t keep your wings.” Raphael chewed his lower lip. “Removing them will hurt.”

Aden’s head was spinning, his back aching and his cock still hard. He really had lost his mind.

“Come with me to hell now and you can keep them, and that lovely hard on. Choose to go back for a month and Raphael is right, the wings have to be pulled off. It will be sheer agony. I know because it happened to me. Don’t worry, beautiful black ones will grow back.” Dante slid his hand over Aden’s crotch and a groan burst from Aden’s lips.

“Stop touching me.”

“But you like it so much.” Dante ran his nail down Aden’s zipper and it came undone.

Aden yanked it back up. “Leave me alone.”

“You’re going to fall,” Dante said. “Why bother trying not to?”

“Because I might fly.” Aden glared at him.

Raphael smiled and the breath caught in Aden’s throat.

“You can come and come and come in hell,” Dante whispered in his ear as he slid his fingers inside the top of Aden’s jeans, down almost to the head of his cock. “Orgasm all day and all night. Lose your fucking mind in the wonder of it. You don’t need love. You’ve managed without it all this time. You just need sex, lots and lots of hot fucks.”

Aden wrapped his hand around Dante’s wrist and dragged his hand out. Raphael smiled, though his smile faded when Aden stroked Dante’s groin. Aden had only intended to tease him back but…
Oh Christ, he’s big.

“Hung like a cobra, sunshine.” Dante fluttered his tongue and stared at Aden with hooded eyes.

Was his tongue getting longer?
Shit, it is.
Aden stuck his hands in his pockets.

“All the better for rimming.” Dante sniggered.

“Make a choice now,” Raphael said. “Straight to hell with Dante or a month with seven chances to prove where you truly belong.”

“Seven chances?” Dante barked. “Where did they come from?”

“From me.” Raphael glared.

“I’ll take the month.” Aden spoke quickly before Dante played some trick and stopped his voice.

“It’ll pass in a flash,” Dante said.

“Lie face down on the bed,” Raphael told him.

Aden dropped down and found his wrists suddenly encased in leather and fastened to a bar at the top of the bed.

“He goes back to the world with his name but nothing else,” Dante said. “These are my rules. No home, no money, no friends. Your body will not be found until your month is up. If you go near your home, you will forfeit this chance. If you contact a friend, you forfeit this chance.”

“What if they contact me? What if I bump into them by accident?”

“You’ll have no phone,” Raphael said. “You won’t meet them by accident.”

“How am I supposed to live without money? No roof over my head?”

“Changed your mind?” Dante licked Aden’s ear, then bit it.

“Ouch. No.”

“Don’t try to play the system,” Raphael said. “Do the right thing because you believe in it not because you want to impress.”

“Do the wrong thing and enjoy it.” Dante sucked the place he’d bitten.

“Am I allowed to tell the truth about this?” Aden asked.

“No,” Dante said.

“You must not lie,” Raphael added.

What?

“Would anyone believe the truth?” Dante laughed.

“My last words,” Raphael said. “Strive to do the right thing.”

The pair grabbed his wings and Aden took a deep breath. He’d thought the pain was bad before, but it was nothing compared to this. He screamed into the pillow, tugging against the restraints. Fire consumed him, ate at him, spread from his back throughout his body until he felt as if millions of long, blunt needles were being driven into his skin. He could hear things inside him crack and break. The coppery tang of blood filled the air, filled his mouth, spilled from his lips, then one side of his body felt different—lighter. Dante still yanked and twisted on the other.

“Get on with it, Dante,” Raphael snapped.

“But it’s so much fun and you know how much I like blooooood.”

Aden was lifted from the bed by the force Dante exerted and when the pain was too much to bear, he closed down and lost consciousness.

Brody scanned the packed dancefloor from a raised platform. Guys in various stages of undress were bumping and grinding to the music’s heavy beat. He didn’t want to dance. He just wanted a fuck. Eventually he’d find someone interesting enough. Using Grindr would have been quicker and easier, possibly safer. It was what he usually did, but he needed to stand in front of a guy and look into his face to know whether there was a chance of finding what he was looking for.

Yet even as he cast his gaze over the crowd, part of him knew he should walk out and catch the train home untouched by anyone. He felt like that before every hook up, so why did that side of him never win? At least he’d curbed his appetite for rough, anonymous sex since he’d moved south. This was no longer something he did three or four times a week. Now he had it down to once. Even that was too much.

He sipped his beer and thought back to when he’d been at his worst, not counting those periods of time he’d spent with Matt. When he’d been in his early twenties, Brody came to clubs and bars like this with friends and sometimes picked up the ugliest guy in there, though he didn’t know why. To render his mates speechless? To prove to himself he didn’t care about Matt when the guy was out of his life? Even in those days, as he’d strolled toward his target, he’d told himself not to, and his friends had told him not to, but he’d carried on and ended up perched on the lap of a greasy-haired geriatric or some grizzled bear who always looked as if they couldn’t believe their luck.

Brody rarely got what he wanted. Those sorts of guys fell in love with him. That was the last thing he’d needed. Yet here he was, away from Matt and still fucked up. What did Brody’s good looks matter? Or his smile or fit toned body? Or that he was up for almost anything? Most guys in this club took what they were offered or went home alone. He guessed most went home alone. They didn’t deserve to be ugly and unwanted any more than Brody deserved to be handsome and desirable.

If they could see inside his skin, they’d be repulsed, though they’d still fuck him given half a chance, and be grateful. But Brody wasn’t looking for a guy to be grateful. He wanted someone to fuck him—hard. He wanted to be treated like a piece of shit because he didn’t deserve more than that. He didn’t want someone telling him they loved him desperately, madly, incessantly.

Brody knew what an idiot that made him. He and Matt had almost managed to destroy each other. Brody was lucky to be alive after their last encounter, though in some ways he felt he hadn’t survived. Even though he’d told Matt it was over and he’d told himself the same thing, he’d been left an emotional mess. It was a minor miracle he was holding down a responsible job, and doing it well according to Henrik. But outside of work, he was unhappy and didn’t know how to make things change. The sad, disappointing, fucked up truth was that if Brody had seen Matt on the dance floor tonight, there was a chance he’d have thrown himself back into that dangerous world.

No, no, no.
Brody gritted his teeth. He had to stop thinking of Matt. The guy wasn’t what he wanted. He needed him out of his head. He’d had enough of being strangled by his past—almost literally
.
Therapy might help, but he was too ashamed to admit to what had happened, what he’d done, what he was still doing.

So stop this right now.

Brody took a shuddering breath. It was a mistake to come trawling in this state of mind. He had victim written all over him and he hated that. Even as he’d parked his car at the station, he’d told himself to turn around and go home, get the good night’s sleep he needed after a tiring, stressful day. But here he was in his tight trousers, and tight T-shirt, his heart thumping, his cock already swollen in anticipation. How was his life going to get better if he didn’t do something to make it happen?

Someone tapped his shoulder and he spun round. Not Matt.
Fuck, stop it.
But this was a guy with eyes like Matt’s. Blue, ice-cold and hard. No risk of love.

“Dance?” the guy asked.

“Fuck?”

He laughed. “Sure.”

They walked together to the bathroom, the brown-haired man’s hand in the middle of Brody’s back in a gesture of possession Brody both liked and disliked. This was part of his problem. He didn’t know what he liked. He’d never chosen. He’d always been led. One last fuck with a stranger and he’d stop.

He almost believed it.

Inside a stall, Brody handed over a condom and a sachet of lube. He was stupid but not reckless. He peeled off his T-shirt and hung it on a hook. His motive partly to keep it clean, partly to expose his body.
Tell me to go. Tell me you don’t want me.
He watched the guy’s face as he took in the bruises and bites on his torso, still visible from last week’s mauling in a different club.

Brody could tell the way he was going to get fucked by the reaction to the marks. If eyes widened in shock, the fuck would be gentle, and he’d be treated as if he were going to break. That wasn’t what he wanted, some patronizing twat who thought he was better than him, better than whoever had done this to him. Even if it were true.

Signs of disapproval on the man’s face implied Brody would still likely get fucked, together with a lecture about being careful.

Then there was the third alternative.

This guy touched the bite mark on Brody’s shoulder and grinned as he pressed his fingers into it—hard. His pinch of Brody’s nipple was vicious enough to make Brody gasp and for heat to flood his body. The kiss was unexpected and bruising in its intensity, teeth clashing before Brody’s lip was nipped so hard he tasted blood.

Guessing this was going to be rough, and excited by the prospect, Brody fumbled to open his jeans so they didn’t get ripped. The guy shoved them down, spun him round and pressed Brody’s face against the graffitied wall hard enough to make him cry out. On his left, someone had written
God is love but Satan does that thing with his tongue that you can’t get enough of.
It had been a long time since Brody had been rimmed. A long time since he’d gotten a blow job.

The man gripped Brody’s hips, holding him in place as he pushed into him, by the feel of it his prick hardly lubed, and though Brody thought he’d wanted a hard fuck, now he didn’t. Except how could he stop him?
I am such a dickhead.
He wrapped his fingers around his own cock that had no qualms at all and jerked himself off, coming a moment after the guy behind him. As fucks went it wasn’t good. Not for him.