Azagoth by Larissa Ione

Chapter Nine

They stepped out onto a frozen wasteland with nothing but ice and snow as far as the eye could see. Not even the sky could offer color or texture. Gray, featureless clouds had turned it into a blanket of blah.

Lilliana watched Azagoth carefully for signs of annoyance that she’d brought him to someplace so cold and barren, but just like when she’d dropped them into the Egyptian desert, his expression conveyed awe and excitement. He wasn’t at all pissed off. If anything, he lit up like the Christmas tree in Times Square.

“This isn’t someplace warm, but I forgive you.” Grinning like a loon, he extended his hands and let a flurry of snowflakes sift between his fingers. “I hate the snow,” he said, but she never would have guessed that with the way he was acting. He even stuck out his tongue and caught a flake on the very tip. She hated that there was something very appealing...and sensual...about that.

“For someone who doesn’t like the snow, you seem pretty taken with it.”

“Because I haven’t seen it in eons.” He scooped up a handful, and with a sly grin, he beaned her with it. Right in the forehead. “Gotcha.”

Sputtering, she wiped snow out of her eyes. “Really? How old are you?”

Bam! Another one hit her in the chest, and then he was running away from her, his boots slipping on the ice, but he never fell. She wanted to be annoyed, but his blatant joy was infectious. Smiling in spite of herself, she hurled her own snowball at him, using just a touch of angel flair to control its trajectory. Damn, it was nice being away from his realm and being able to use her powers again.

It nailed him in the back of his head.

“Payback’s a bitch, Azagoth!”

His laughter rang out in the still Arctic air as he skidded and whirled. And then, and as far as she could tell, he went down intentionally to roll in the snow.

“This is amazing!” he called out.

Yes, it really was. How many people could say that they’d witnessed the infamously grumpy ruler of the dead romping like a child on a school snow day? All he needed was an inner tube and a hill.

Abruptly, he leaped to his feet and lifted his face to the gray sky. “Clouds,” he said. “What a strange thing to miss.” He swung around to face her, his big body as relaxed and loose as she’d seen it. “Before I fell, I used to make clouds in Heaven sometimes, mainly for a change from the blue sky. I made them orange, just for fun.”

How could this male be the same as the one renowned for his ruthlessness as an angel? The history books she’d read had left out a lot.

“I made rainbow clouds,” she said, encouraged to have finally found something in common besides a father-child hate relationship. “It was back when I was young and we were learning how to control our ability to think things into existence.” Channeling a trickle of power, she painted a swath of primary colors across the sky before letting the gray drab take over again. “My instructor got all pissy and changed them to white, like everyone else’s.”

“So your rebel nature extends beyond taking me to the crappiest places you can think of?”

Busted.“I suppose.”

“Rebels aren’t exactly tolerated in Heaven.” He grinned, a heart-stopping, breathtaking grin that made her go hot right here in the middle of a deep freeze. “I like it.”

Suddenly, another snowball came at her and popped her in the chest. She hadn’t even seen him throw it.

“Oh, yeah?” With nothing more than a thought, she sent a huge wall of snow at him. His eyes flared, and for a moment she thought he’d flash himself out of the way, but instead he stood there, his expression almost blissful as it crashed over him like a giant wave.

As he shook snow out of his clothes and hair, he chuckled. And then, in a motion so fast she didn’t see it, he was on top of her.

They went down in a tumble of limbs and snow, his body coming to a rest on top of hers as she sprawled on her back. She didn’t feel the cold—not like most beings did, anyway. But she couldn’t miss the stark contrast of the ice beneath her and the warmth of Azagoth’s big frame above her.

“Did you really think you could get away with that?” He tweaked her nose, and she was momentarily speechless at the playfulness. This male with wild, windblown hair frosted with snow couldn’t be the same guy who possessed the power to destroy souls. The same guy who had so coldly thrown his son out of his realm.

The same guy who had given her an assistant, free access to his realm, and pretty much the freedom to do whatever she wanted.

Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t all that bad.

Smiling up at him, she said, “Maybe I let you catch me.”

One corner of his mouth twitched in an evil smile, and she knew she’d stepped into a trap of her own making. “Then you wanted to end up like this, did you?” Shifting, he settled more fully on top of her. His thigh slipped between hers, and she felt the blatant stab of an erection against her belly. “You wanted to feel my body against yours?”

No. Yes.Oh, dear Lord, she didn’t know what she wanted. Not when he rocked his hips, driving that big bulge against her core. She sucked in a breath, and unbidden, her body arched upward to meet him. Her breasts pressed into his chest, and she wondered how they’d feel in his palms.

“I thought so,” he purred. So arrogant. And really, so right. The bastard.

She bucked, but even she had to admit it was a half-hearted effort. Same as when she said, “Get off of me.”

“I’ll consider it.” He dipped his head and nuzzled her throat.

The shock of his cold nose on her skin made her hiss, but a heartbeat later, his lips sliding along the curve of her neck made her moan. One of his hands tangled in her hair to hold her steady for his kisses, and the other came down lightly on her waist. His palm rubbed slow circles as it moved upward until his fingers brushed the underside of her breast, and a shock of desire shot straight to her groin.

It startled her how quickly need ignited her blood, and her heart beat so hard she could hear her pulse in her ears. Without thinking, she gripped his arms and drew him closer, until she could feel his nipples harden through his shirt. How long had it been since she’d given in to a male like this? Not since Hutriel, and even then, she’d never had the desire to bite every button off a shirt just to get to his powerful chest.

Then again, Hutriel had been all about “proper” lovemaking. And proper lovemaking meant an orderly removal of clothing, and afterward, there could be no lingering looks or touches. There was no penetration, just a tangling of bodies and limbs as you surrendered your soul to the merging. An instant, all-over body orgasm was the reward, an orgasm that could last for hours and leave you drained for a day.

Sure, it was awesome with a capital A. But for all the soul-melding, it wasn’t especially intimate. Not on a physical level. And that was something she had desperately craved. Hell, she’d craved closeness of any kind after being denied it following her mother’s death and her father’s rejection.

Her father’s third rejection.

Azagoth shifted, dropping his hand to her thigh and lifting her leg to his waist, putting her core in full contact with his erection. Ecstasy speared her, spreading through her sex and warming her so quickly that she might as well have been in a sauna, not in ten below Arctic temperatures.

Arching against her, he slid his hand beneath her shirt. Oh, damn, the skin-to-skin contact was decadent, but as he began to smooth his palm upward, she went taut. She shouldn’t be doing this. Not when she was planning to leave. It wasn’t fair to either of them.

You’re worrying about him? The male who serviced seventy-two angels a year, plus the devil-only-knew how many demon females?

Yeah, she was kind of an idiot. But how could she feel such conflicting emotions all at once? How could she hate him but crave him? Want him but at the same time want to push him away?

The pull of the mirror rescued her from her own scrambled thoughts. She cleared her throat. “Are you still considering getting off of me?”

His voice was a silken whisper against her throat. “I’m considering getting you off.”

Heat flushed her body. “We’re going back in a few minutes.”

“It can’t be time.” His mouth trailed upward, along her jugular, and shivers of pleasure shot through her. “We just got here.”

It felt that way to her, too, and truth be told, she felt a twinge of disappointment herself. She’d meant to take him to the most horrible, boring place she could, and he’d loved it. She’d ended up having fun.

Total fail.

“Sorry, but—” She broke off, sucking air as his lips captured her earlobe. How could such a small thing feel so good?

“But what?” He traced the shell of her ear with his tongue. So. Very. Good.

The tug of the mirror intensified, becoming a buzz that drowned out all the pleasant things Azagoth was doing to her.

“But we have to go.”

His head came up, and his gaze bored into hers. “I don’t want to go.”

Crazily, neither did she.

But the chronoglass had other plans, and a moment later, they were back in Azagoth’s office, lying on the carpet.

He was still on top of her.

And his hand had moved to her breast. But the look on his face said that he was anything but happy to be back. His eyes were wild, glinting with anger and what she thought might be confusion.

He’d freaked out last time when they’d come back, but she’d never found out why. She’d written it off as Azagoth being Azagoth, but twice now was too weird to ignore.

He looked down at her, fangs jutting from his upper jaw. Those things probably shouldn’t be a turn-on, but then, she was rapidly discovering that there were a lot of things about Azagoth that shouldn’t be sexy.

And way too many that should.

“Hey.” She palmed his cheek, letting her thumb stroke the contour of his blade-sharp cheekbone. “What’s wrong?”

“Not...used...to...” He broke off, panting, his lips peeled back in agony. “Emotion.”

Emotion? How could he not be used to emotion? She’d seen him pissed as hell. She’d seen him smile. She’d seen him happy as a puppy in a meadow during their time travel jaunts.

But whatever was going on, it was clear he was in pain.

“Hey.” She tilted his face down, forcing him to look at her. His gaze was glassy, tortured, and so very different from how it had been a moment ago. “I liked it better when you were kissing my neck.” He groaned, his teeth clenched as if he was fighting with himself. Gently, she tapped on his cheek. “Focus. Come on, rein it in.”

“Can’t. Worse than...last time.”

Shit. She’d seen something similar before, when she’d been a young angel in battle training. The male named Dreshone had been an empath with such strong abilities that it had been hard for him to function. He’d undergone a procedure to have his ability minimized, but the price had been a big one; his own emotions had been dulled, which had made him an extremely lethal warrior, but once per decade, he’d suffered a meltdown of uncontrollable emotion that had required lockup to prevent him from hurting anyone or himself.

But as far as she knew, Azagoth wasn’t an empath, so what was going on?

“Azagoth, listen to me—” He snarled and started to push off of her, but she gripped his biceps hard and dragged him back down. “No. You aren’t running again.”

His deep growl rumbled through her body, reigniting the fire that had been burning her blood when they’d been lying in the snow. And wasn’t it funny that his anger was turning her on as much as his lips had been.

“Don’t...want to...hurt you.”

Yeah, she didn’t want that, either. “You won’t. You’ve never hurt any of the angels Heaven sent to you over the centuries.” News of that nature would have been the talk of the angelic airwaves.

“I never felt like...this.”

Maybe time travel had an adverse effect on him. “Just focus,” she said softly. “Focus on me.”

His gaze locked with hers, and she saw the moment he went from furious to...well, furious and aroused. And she knew, in that moment, that no matter what happened next, nothing between them would be the same again.