Hell's Gift (35 page)

My response seemed to confuse her and she loosened her fingers from around my vital organs. “You are serious, aren’t you?” She frowned. “You really do love her that much?”

I coughed again and blood splattered the left side of her chin and neck. She flinched and inhaled sharply. I could tell she wanted to wipe it off, but her hands were covered in more than what was on her pretty face, so she left it there. Even with all the pain in my body and the fuzziness that had just settled over my brain, I wanted to laugh at her. I didn’t; instead I answered her ridiculous questions.

“I thought it was obvious how much I love Abbi. I’m not exactly trying to hide my feelings here.”

“I know—I just thought—”

My eyes shot open and locked with hers. “You thought what?”

She huffed. “I thought—we thought,” she said and started blinking rapidly, “that maybe you were here just to prove Lucifer could be defeated, that you were sent here by the archangels to weaken him.”

I chuckled, then stopped abruptly when it hurt like hell. “How could I, a fallen angel with no more than human strength and abilities, defeat the King of the Underworld in a physical battle? I was sent here by the archangels, but I have never once led any of you to think what you assume. I came here for my wife, and her alone. I couldn’t care less if Lucifer’s ego takes a punch or not. He could have prevented all of this if he had just given her the soul and let her go. She’s done her time, and doesn’t belong here any longer. She belongs with me, her soulmate, in Heaven.”

Lameria averted her black eyes quickly and looked down at her own hands, seeming to realize for the first time that they were shoved deep into my chest. She glanced up and I briefly caught a glimpse of tears shimmering in her very pretty brown eyes before I was thrown fifty feet. The opposite wall in the hallway slowed my speed from 120 mph to zero in two seconds flat.

I gasped for a breath and sat up, quickly searching for the princess back inside the room. The lights had dimmed considerably, but I could make out the princess, and her arm that was wrapped loosely around Phoebe’s neck.

“Rhyan—”

I was getting back to my feet when the princess smiled, placed her hand under the girl’s chin and then jerked Phoebe’s head, breaking her neck instantly.

“No!” I screamed with all the breath I had left in my lungs and started running for the door. It slammed hard in my face, and after trying the knob, I realized I wasn’t getting back in the room to save my new friend.

She was gone.

She would wake in the Syde of Pride with new scars and no possessions, because she had left them in the hallway while we were introduced to Lameria. Her clothes would be cut and torn, and she wouldn’t have a clue as to why.

She had trusted me.

I had failed her.

I had promised her that I would never leave her behind.

I had failed her, like I was sure to fail Abbi.

Who was I kidding? I couldn’t win against Lucifer.

I felt defeated and lacked the will to go on. My heart ached for the loss of the young woman. She had only wanted out of Hell.

I leaned against the wall beside me and slid down it to the floor.

The first of many tears escaped the corners of my eyes and I allowed myself to grieve for the loss of a friend.

“I’m sorry,”
Isaiah said, but I ignored him.

Chapter 44

Thoros

“What in Satan’s name was that?” Thoros mumbled to himself after he returned to his private quarters in Lust. The image of Josselyn, defenseless and full of heated passion, burned like it was permanently seared and branded on his brain. Her lips had tasted of sweet honeysuckle and felt like the velvet side of a rose petal on his lips. His eyes involuntarily closed and a soft moan escaped through his parted lips as she smiled at him through his memory.

His eyes flew open and he took a great gasp of breath. “Bloody hell, the angel has bewitched me,” he murmured, eyes wide in disbelief and borderline denial.

His hands came up to rub briskly at his face. When that did absolutely nothing to fix the problem and rid her from his memory, he growled in frustration and quickly stomped his way to the bar. He would drown her out, he thought, and nodded once to agree with his own brilliant plan.

A knock at the door alerted him and he looked up at the large rectangle of steel, turning his head to the side in puzzlement, like it was foreign to his eyes. He hadn’t sensed anyone approaching, nor was he expecting any visitors.

“Enter,” he said loudly, then cleared his throat as he tipped the decanter up to fill a more than healthy level of scotch in the glass he was holding.

The door flew open and a very distraught Lameria came running into the room with red, swollen eyes, desperately searching for someone. Him.

Confused, but ready to beat the hell out of anyone that had hurt her, Thoros set the old fashioned glass on the bar and caught the girl as she flung herself into his arms and against his hard body.

“Lameria—”

She looked up at him, brown eyes glistening from fresh tears and the light from the fireplace. “Take me to your bed now, Thoros. Put your hands on me. I want you now. I need to forget again. I need you to take my mind elsewhere, anywhere…just—please,” she pleaded, and began to take short, shallow breaths.

Not taking his worried eyes from her face, he cautiously led her toward the couch so she could sit, and he could possibly figure out whom it was he needed to murder. She seemed to realize they were going in the opposite direction from his bed and she jerked from his gentle embrace, tearing at her clothes in an effort to disrobe before he could refuse her of sexual services.

“Lameria, what are you doing?” he asked, grabbing his reaper robe from the arm of the chair to help cover her already half naked body, but she vanished and then reappeared in the middle of his bed, her flesh completely bare and glistening with a sheen of sweat. Has she gone ape-shit crazy? He thought, then approached her with extreme caution. “You must tell me what has happened. I’ve never seen you quite so distressed in all the time I’ve known you.” He didn’t know who was at fault, but he had confidence that it could be fixed if she would only tell him.

His face sobered and his stomach gave a small flip when the thought crossed his mind that Lucifer might possibly be behind her panic attack. He couldn’t fight Lucifer. There would be no competition. Lucifer made sure nobody had enough power to defeat him. After all, it was
he
who gave them their abilities.

Thoros swallowed and wet his lips nervously with his tongue. “Was it Lucifer that hurt you?”

She got to her knees, all the while staring at him like he’d gone crazy. “What? Don’t tell me you are siding with him! You haven’t touched me or kissed me since I arrived. The look of lust in your eyes is gone,” she accused. What has happened to you, Thoros? He hasn’t even visited your syde—”

“Siding with whom, Lameria?” he bellowed, throwing the black satin to the stone floor, making her flinch and sit back on her heels in an instant. “You aren’t making any damn sense. Until you do, any help from me, including any type of sexual satisfaction, will not happen. Do you understa—”

“The angel!” she screamed, and clutched at the black satin comforter. It was the only thing within her reach.

Thoros blinked a few times as he watched her fall apart on his bed. He hadn’t been keeping up with Abigail’s pet angel. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that the guy would make it past the first syde. What had happened while he’d been observing - obsessing about - his angel? No, not his angel, he thought, scolding himself; the angel, the female angel, Josselyn.

“Where is he?”

Lameria laughed hysterically for a moment, then finally realized he was asking because he really didn’t know. She sobered and shook her head. “He has defeated every syde except for Greed, Lust and Wrath. He’s in my syde now. I had him. I had his heart in the palm of my hand, my nails piercing the racing muscle, ready to squeeze and send him back to Gluttony. Then he said it. I’ve spent centuries trying to forget and now it’s as fresh in my mind as if I’d seen him only yesterday. My defenses are down. I am weak,” she cried.

“Said what?” he asked quietly.

“My soulmate. The angel mentioning that Abigail was his soulmate sent a flood of memories through my mind that I thought I had locked away forever. I need to forget them. You can help me. Your touch is the only thing that even comes close enough to satisfying me the way he could. I will never again feel his touch on my skin because of what I did to him. I could never be so bold as to ask forgiveness. The disgust in his eyes the last time we saw each other let me know where I stood with him. Then I was banished.”

He watched as her eyes glazed over in a daze as if she was watching it all again in a memory.

Thoros slipped helplessly into a daze of his own. Josselyn’s angelic face was all he could see, and he wondered if she could possibly be his soulmate.

He watched her smile and he smiled back in anticipation and excitement. She laughed lightly and pointed at him, then curled her index finger back toward her, motioning him to obey her command.

“Come to me, Prince of Lust,”
Josselyn said in his mind, and he nearly tripped over his feet in the rush to claim her body as a prize well won. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. He could make it up to her if she would only let him. He’d been confused and she’d misunderstood him and his actions. She thought he hated her. He didn’t hate her. It had unnerved him how much he wanted her, and that had scared him.

He wasn’t scared anymore. He could handle her and keep scary emotions in check. So what if she made his heart race like it was the lead horse in the Kentucky Derby? What did it matter that just the sound of her voice made him happy? And it was hurting nothing and nobody that the feel of her lips on his made him want to turn freaking holy without question. He’d keep all those things to himself, he thought. Not even Josselyn needed to find out how she affected him. It wasn’t like he was in love or anything.

The thought of love made him pause a moment, and then Josselyn was pulling him to her. She looked so good with her head on his pillow, her hair displayed in an array of long blond locks on the black satin. He’d never felt so close to an orgasm just by looking at a naked woman in his bed before.

He took only a moment looking at the beautiful masterpiece laid out before him, then realized his clothing was gone, too. He brushed away the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was far too excited to worry who’d taken his clothes when there was an angel in his bed waiting for him to please her in every way possible.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment forever, Thoros. Don’t make me wait any longer. Show me what to do.”

He swallowed hard and nodded like it was his very first notch on the bedpost. He was so nervous, he was physically shaking as he hovered over her.

He put most of his weight on his left forearm and legs, then took her left hand in his right, placing it gently on his chest, then slowly moved it down to the firm muscles of his abdominals. “Just touch me and let me worry about the rest. I will make you feel good, Josselyn.”

A sigh escaped her throat and he bent to kiss the tender flesh below her ear. Her fingers trailed further down and closed around his shaft, making his breath catch in his throat and throwing him off his game. Letting out a nervous laugh, he moved to slow her quick motions, but she was already guiding the blunt tip of him into her slick heat.

Eyes wide, he looked down at her. Desire filled her eyes and he drank every bit of it in, then pushed the rest of the way into her in one swift motion.

A cry tore from her throat and her body arched up to meet the next thrust and then the next one, pushing him even harder and faster with the growing need to release.

He’d been craving the feel of her lips on his since she’d turned away from him, and he didn’t aim to wait anymore for the softness to make him weak for her again. He needed the kiss. He craved the kiss, because it was different, whereas the sex with her felt just like any sex he’d had with any other woman. But the kiss, the kiss was special and made him feel things he’d never even dreamed of feeling.

Thoros crushed his mouth to hers, kissing her deeply, passionately and without any regret. He fought hard to seek the emotions he’d felt with her while on earth, but they were not there. Mayhap he wasn’t love-struck after all, he thought, and then broke from her lips abruptly and stared down at her.

Josselyn’s brown eyes gazed up at him, then she grinned mischievously as her features began to change.

He jerked out and away from her, catching his foot in the tangle of satin and tumbled to the floor in his haste to get away. Lameria’s thunderous laughing brought him completely back to reality and he jumped to his feet and grabbed his pants from the floor, covering himself as best he could manage with the soft, brown leather.

“You—you knew?” he stammered out.

She rolled to her side and propped herself up by her elbow, letting her black curls cascade around her arm and over her shoulder and left breast. “I’m the Princess of Greed. Of course I know what your deepest, darkest desires are. It’s my job to know what people are greedy about. I’m disappointed you didn’t figure it out a minute later. I was nearly done.” She puckered her blood-red lips at him and kissed the air. “She does have quite the hold on you, this angel chick. Who is she?”

Thoros stared at her naked form lying on his bed and was at a loss for words. He couldn’t tell her the truth. It would put Josselyn in danger.

“Yes, Thoros, who is she?”

Lameria’s intake of breath was sharp and immediate.

His gaze moved swiftly to the open door of his chambers and he felt as if his heart exploded in his chest as his eyes fell upon a tall, dark figure propped against the jamb.

Lucifer.

Chapter 45

Rhyan

“Get up,”
Isaiah commanded, but I ignored him again.