Binding Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys of the Underworld Book 3) (12 page)

“You are mine now and I’m going to do exactly what I have wanted to from the moment I walked into that diner and saw you,” he threatened.

The warm trunk of the Charger collided with the back of her jean-clad legs. The sudden contact caused her to jump and gasp. Kier took advantage and pulled her to him for an aggressive kiss.

For a split second, Muriel froze in shock.
He was kissing her. He wasn’t going to kill her.
As soon as the revelation filled her, she sighed her relief against him and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him back.

She knew that this was no innocent kiss. She was agreeing to give him everything, and, at the moment, she was fine with that. She wanted him and had wanted him from the moment she saw him in the diner. She was probably going to die fulfilling some destiny she never asked for in a few weeks. For now, she would allow herself this indulgence.

Just this once, she would allow herself to have Kier.

His tongue slid in and out of her mouth, showing her exactly how he wanted to use her with his cock. His hands reached under her thighs and lifted her to sit on the trunk of the Charger, his rock-hard cock resting in the cradle of her hips.

She rubbed herself against him, loving the friction as his hands moved higher and roughly kneaded her ass.

This was no light, romantic lovemaking. This was fucking. This was I-might-die-tomorrow sex. Somehow it just made Muriel want it more.

Her fingers wrapped tightly in his hair and pulled him further into the kiss. In response, one of his hands slid under her shirt and boldly closed over her breast. She nibbled on his bottom lip in approval as he groaned at the twinge of pain.

He ripped his head away. Before she could complain, his hands pulled the hem of her t-shirt until it was up and over her head. Her bra was gone in seconds, both now piled in the dirt.

Muriel didn’t notice. All she could see were Kier’s burning eyes as he stared in amazement at her bare breasts. “I fucking love your breasts,” he whispered before he leaned his head down to draw a nipple in his mouth.

She threw her head back as he drew his tongue over her skin. He pushed the tip of the nipple between a fang and his tongue, and the sensation shot straight through Muriel. Her hips moved frantically against his, begging for more.

As he moved to her other breast, he pulled one of her hands down to his groin and pushed the hard length of him into her palm. The heat of him burned through her. She stroked her palm up and down the length of him the best she could through his pants.

He groaned against her breast, the feel of his reaction to her touch even more erotic to her than the touch itself.

In the blink of an eye, his pants were gone and his cock was in her hand. Large and pulsing with need to be inside her.

Her fingers were now able to wrap fully around his length, though the size made it difficult. Demons were known for being well-endowed and Kier was no exception.

She started to pump him but was unsure in her movements. She had never done anything like this before. He pulled away and wrapped his hand around hers. He met her eyes as he moved her hand over his shaft, up and down, to show her exactly how he wanted it.

“Do you have any idea how often I imagined you doing this to me?” He leaned in to nibble on her ear. “When I saw your tight ass and perky tits in that diner, I imagined taking you fifty different ways. My favorite was doggy style.” His hands left her then as he reached for the button of her pants.

“Wrapping my hands in your hair and bending you over the nearest table. You would fight me at first, but then you would want it. I would slip your shorts down your legs so your bare ass was mine for the taking. You couldn’t see what I was doing. Just waiting for my touch. Begging for it.” He slipped her pants from her legs. She had to let go of his cock to assist him and kick off her shoes. His words had set her on fire, and she would do anything to get him inside her.

“When you weren’t expecting it, I would give your ass a slap. Not too hard. Just to remind you who was in charge. Then I would kneel down behind you and lick you up like I was a starving man and you were a buffet.” His hand slipped between them and two fingers found their way inside her. She widened her legs in invitation. It was exactly what she wanted. His expert thumb found her clit as he pushed even farther inside her.

Her hand found his cock again, mimicking the rhythm she wanted him to repeat inside her.

“And just as you start coming around my tongue, I would fill you up, just as hard as we both want. We would be animals.” He punctuated the final word with a sharp nip to her ear.

“Please. No more talking,” she begged, releasing him and pulling his hips into hers, sighing as the hard head of his penis landed right where she wanted it.

“You sure about this, angel?”

Was he serious?
Would he really stop if she asked?

Not that it mattered. She would never ask him to stop at this point.

“I’m sure, demon.” She barely got the words out before he slid home. She pulled him close as her body adjusted to his size. She had been more than ready, her body dripping for him, but he was larger than most, and her body was not used to the invasion.

He held himself still inside her but she could feel his muscles shaking with the need to thrust. After another moment, he groaned out, “You good?”

“I’m good.” She smiled into his shoulder. Then he moved. Her eyes drifted shut as she focused on the sensation of his pistoning hips. He had held back as much as he could, but now he was wild. His fingers dug into her hips as he pulled her in close to him, at the same time pushing her back so she lay against the trunk of the car. His body crushed her into the warm metal.

Her head thrashed as it became too much to bear. The pressure exploded within her as colors shot in front of her eyes. He gripped her impossibly tighter as he roared. His hips moved against her at lightning speed before he tensed, gripping her tightly to him as his fangs slipped into the soft flesh of her shoulder, drinking in her blood as he violently came inside her.

Muriel couldn’t catch her breath, still coming down from the high of her orgasm. His chest heaved, so she knew she was not alone. He had been just as affected as she had been.

He gently removed his teeth from her as he pushed himself up to look down at her. He looked beautiful with the sun shining behind him. One dark lock of hair fell in front of his face. Muriel lifted a hand to brush it away, but Kier moved back before she could touch him.

Without a word, he disappeared right in front of her and transported away.

The sudden weight of him leaving her combined with the chill of being naked out in the middle of nowhere was sobering. She stood up and hastily looked around her for any sign of Kier. He could be anywhere. Hell or Europe; it didn’t matter. She would probably never see him again.

Muriel wasn’t surprised. She had known that this was a one-time deal. Had known that he would go. Still, the shock of it cut her to the bone.

Her legs couldn’t support her as she sunk down to her knees and tried to catch her breath.
How had so much changed in just three days?

Was she really going to kill the king of Hell? Had she just had sex with the demon she had sworn vengeance against? Not just sex, but mind-blowing, dirty sex in the middle of nowhere in broad daylight.

How had everything gotten so out of control in less than a week? What was she supposed to do?

Frustration and anger filled her. The scream bubbled in her throat. Just like that night after Kier had forced his blood on her, she could not hold back her rage. She roared her frustration for the entire desert to hear, needing to vent somehow.

She was only silenced when her skin burst into flames.

The second Samuel heard the door of the Charger slam shut, he ran outside the motel room. Ava was right behind him.

When Muriel walked toward him, sans demon, he released a pent-up breath of relief.
At least she had gotten rid of the bastard.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked with a harsh tone.

She didn’t look as though she was in any mood to be messed with, but he didn’t care. Her hair was in tangles around her face, no longer in the ponytail it had been in that morning. Her jeans and shirt were covered in dirt. The demon must have put up a good fight.

Too bad. She abandoned him to run off with a demon and stole his car. He was pissed. She was the one who taught him how important destiny was. How important it was to stop the apocalypse and prevent Azazel from taking over. How could she just run off without a word?

“Did you even consider the danger you were putting yourself in?” he asked when she walked past him, ignoring his first question.

Muriel stopped in her tracks and pivoted on one foot to stare him down. He didn’t remember ever seeing her so intense before. Her eyes seemed to bore into his soul. Her modest five-foot-seven frame seemed to grow larger, almost intimidating him even though he had a good fifty pounds on her.

She stepped toward him and he instinctively took a step back. “Do you think I don’t know exactly what demons are capable of?” she asked with an icy voice.

“I’m saying that you and he seemed a bit too cozy.” He stood tall, refusing to back down any more.

Her blue eyes seemed to swirl, almost inhumanly. Samuel blinked, trying to clear his head of the strange thoughts, but that second of inattention proved to be too much.

Muriel grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward her. While he stumbled to catch his balance, her foot kicked out with a force stronger than any of the Navy SEALs he had trained with.

He fell hard to the ground, rolling so his back would take the brunt of the fall. As he tried to steady himself to jump up and face the pissed-off fallen angel, the bottom of her dirty tennis shoe pressed into his windpipe, not causing pain but making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere until she allowed it.

“What the hell, Muriel!” Ava drew her weapon.

With one steady look from Muriel, Ava stayed back. Her gun was still out and ready, but she didn’t want to endanger Samuel any more than he already was.

“Tell me, Samuel.” Muriel returned her attention to him. “How old do I look to you?”

“I don’t fucking know! Twenty? Twenty-five?” He reached to grab her ankle and yank her off him, but she applied pressure to his throat, causing him to wheeze.

“How old do you think I actually am?” She paused a moment before she lessened the painful pressure on his throat.

“Please stop,” pleaded Ava, but Muriel never acknowledged her.

“Somewhere over a thousand years old,” he croaked out.

Muriel smiled at the answer. “Yes. Somewhere north of a thousand years old. So the next time you decide to lecture me about how dangerous demons are, I suggest you remember that I was killing them long before your species even knew the meaning of indoor plumbing.

“Now, I don’t know why I was chosen to take down Azazel, but I will perform my duties to the best of my abilities. To be honest with you, I don’t want to do this. Odds aren’t exactly in favor of me making it out alive. So do me the favor of not patronizing my capabilities just because I’m no longer an angel. If you remember, I lost my wings protecting you. I demand respect.” For one long moment, Muriel stared deeply into his eyes.

He could feel rage coming off her in waves, but there was more to it. She was sad about something, and Samuel had a bad feeling that the demon had something to do with it.

Thank God he was out of the picture now.

He nodded his agreement. He had always respected Muriel. Always been grateful to her. Not only had she protected him when he needed her, but she had brought him Ava. Ava was his life. He would be nothing without her.

Somehow he had forgotten just how ancient Muriel was. Just how powerful she’d been. If she was supposed to take down the most powerful demon in the underworld, then her mortal form must still be able to channel some of that power too.

She removed her shoe from his neck and reached a hand down to help him up.

Ava cautiously approached as Samuel stood up and shook the dirt off him. “We never meant to make you feel like we didn’t respect you.”

“I know,” said Muriel softly. She walked into the motel room and shut the door behind her, leaving Ava and Samuel to stare.

“What do you think happened to Kier?” asked Ava in a quiet voice, clearly afraid of being overheard. “She seems pretty pissed. Do you think she killed him?”

“She had every reason to,” said Samuel, sincerely hoping that Muriel had ended the demon.

“I guess so,” said Ava, not sounding convinced. “It’s probably stupid, but I got the impression that he really liked her.”

Samuel laughed out loud at the crazy observation. “You are the smartest woman I have ever met, but that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

“That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” said Teryn. “What do you mean you don’t want to hunt the fallen angel?”

The last thing Kier wanted to do was discuss Muriel with Teryn. He would never understand how Kier could have developed feelings for her. Kier didn’t even understand it completely.

He should have killed her when he had the chance. He should have wanted to kill her when he had the chance.

Instead, he pounced on her like a dog in heat. One hundred souls could have been his with just one well-placed punch. It would have been so easy to end her life as she stood just feet from him, completely defenseless.

Kier abruptly walked out of his apartment and onto the deserted streets of Hell. True to rumors, it wasn’t the most inviting landscape.

The skies of the underworld were always dark, but continuous streaks of lightning gave an eerie glow to the realm. The sky shone an eerie purple-black through the streaks of electricity, but even that was hard to make out through the thick clouds.

There wasn’t really weather, though. The temperature never changed and it never rained. There was always a heavy wind that blew through the streets and kicked up pieces of trash. The various lost souls and demons who occupied the realm didn’t concern themselves with littering.

Most demons stuck to the more populated area. Hell had one large city that housed around a million modern demons. The city didn’t have a name since it was the only one. The outlands were where the real monsters lived.

The deserted lands, where not even Azazel would travel, housed the prehistoric demons. When Lucifer first created Hell, he wanted to terrify all of God’s favorite creations, so he formed the prehistoric demons. Covered in scales and sharp teeth, some were smaller than a can of soda while others were as big as a house. Once they proved to be too savage for even Lucifer to control, they had to be corralled into Hell.

With the prehistoric demons too much hassle, Lucifer tried a different approach. Instead of aiming for a frightening design, he created demons who blended in. Males and females who were the standard of beauty for their time.

Over the centuries, the standards of beauty changed, so the more ancient demons could never pass as modern-day movie stars, but they could still blend in with a crowd if they wore hats and kept a beard to hide their strange features.

Because demons needed human souls to survive, the ancients stuck more to blackmail and sorcery to corrupt humans: Find the more desperate souls who didn’t care how strange the being offering them their dream was. Offer to do anything to get the woman or job or house they had always dreamed of.

Kier and Teryn were the perfect age for demons. Old enough to have gained the power and wisdom to earn respect among other demons, but young enough that their bodies were still seductive to the modern humans.

Younger demons never had it easy. Because they were inherently selfish creatures, mothers abandoned their young to their own devices once the child reached ten years.

Kier’s own mother had been no different. At ten years old, he was wandering around Europe, looking for the weaker humans he could corrupt. On one hand, it was easy because humans thought of children as innocents. On the other hand, Kier hadn’t known enough about human nature to truly understand how to corrupt them.

Starving for a demon was similar to starving for a human. Their stomach would cramp and their head would pound as muscles wasted away. One soul per month was just enough to get by without feeling hunger pangs, though more was always better.

Muriel’s soul had kept Kier on a diet of one soul every six months. Even on the limited diet, he rarely felt hunger. A human driven to murder would keep a demon full for three to six months, while a simple sin like adultery would feed a demon for a week.

Though Teryn and Kier were both around four centuries old, they’d never hunted together until recently. Teryn was neither the strongest demon nor the weakest. He had a habit of sucking down just enough souls to get by. He was only so popular in Hell because he was so much fun once he had a bottle of whiskey in him; he mixed with some of the most powerful demons, despite his lower status.

Kier’s friendship with him started after he skyrocketed to the high ranks of the demonarchy from the power he gained from taking down Muriel. He was finally living the dream, but his newly acquired conscience and constant thoughts of the fallen angel held him back.

Teryn specialized in taking on lower sins while still hanging with the power players. Every few weekends, they would hit big cities, looking for innocents and socialites to corrupt. Kier would let Teryn reap most of the benefits considering he didn’t need the souls as much. It was nice to have a wingman, though.

Now Kier had to make sure his best friend never found out the truth about him and Muriel.

“One girl. She’s just a mortal. Just a little bullet to the brain or broken neck and we get a hundred souls! How can you not want in on this?” asked Teryn for the tenth time.

“I don’t want to go on some wild-goose chase just because Azazel wants her dead. There are thousands of other demons looking for her right now. What are the chances we would catch her first anyway?” Kier wished he had a better excuse to give Teryn, but it was all he could think of at the moment.

“You are my ace in the hole. She has your blood in her. There has to be some sort of connection still there from those few drops.”

A couple of drops? Try a huge glass full just one day ago.

Teryn continued, “Can’t you just close your eyes and focus real hard? Maybe you can get a read on where she is.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” said Kier. Truly, he had no idea whether it would work. She was always in the back of his mind. Her presence was even stronger now that they had just exchanged blood and a hell of a lot more on the trunk of that Charger in the middle of the desert.

The more he thought about it, Teryn was probably right. Kier bet that if he focused intently enough on Muriel, he could probably find her. For some stupid reason, that made him happy. “Has anybody gotten close to her?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“When the news first broke, Forrester and his pack cornered her at her house, but I guess she still knows some of her angel tricks because Forrester and two of the four demons that he brought with him ended up dead. The other two were walking with a limp, though they refused to admit that they were beaten by a mortal. I’m thinking gunshots, but she had to have had a blade or fire to take down the other three.”

Well, at least he had helped to bolster her reputation.
“What makes you think we can take her?”

“Are you kidding? You know Forrester. He was a fucking moron. Whatever he got, I’m sure he deserved it.”

Hard to argue with that. Forrester
was
a moron. “I’m not saying it again. I’m not going after her. I’m going back up and going hunting.”

“Didn’t you just corrupt an innocent?”

Kier cursed himself. He had already forgotten his own lies. His excuse for not hunting Muriel when Teryn originally called was because he was holed up with a pure soul. “I’m hungry again,” was all he said. With lies, it was best to keep it simple.

“Something is going on with you, isn’t it? Do you need my help with anything?”

The question surprised Kier. Demons were not known for being empathetic. They didn’t offer help unless it benefited themselves somehow, at least not in Kier’s experience.

Kier’s mind wandered back to Muriel for the millionth time in the few hours since he had left her. He shouldn’t care about her, and he sure as hell shouldn’t care about her feelings, but he desperately wanted to know whether she was okay.

It wasn’t as if he were turning into a saint or anything. He had abandoned her in the middle of a desert, completely naked, just minutes after screwing her up against a car.
It was only reasonable to wonder whether she was freaking out
.

But he was lying to himself. It wasn’t just screwing on the back of a car. It was mind-blowing, world-altering sex. Usually when he was with a woman, it was to corrupt or seduce. Once he was freed, knowing that Muriel had gone through great lengths to protect him even though she had sworn vengeance against him, he had not been able to contain himself.

Maybe if she had fought him, he would have let her go. Let her go back to her martyrdom and her war against his king. But she didn’t fight him. She welcomed him. Even encouraged him.

Angels weren’t supposed to behave that way. Especially Muriel. As a mortal, she managed to stay away from all temptations for five years, even after being overwhelmed by her new human urges.

How could her monumental self-control rupture so completely around him? And why did he keep biting her?

Demons didn’t really marry, but they would have periods of monogamy if they found an interesting enough partner. He had bit her when he first cornered her in the alley to make sure the leeches who came with him didn’t think he was willing to share.

Even then the taste had been intoxicating. When they were alone together, he had no leeches to push off. He just wanted to mark her as his any way he could. Which was stupid.

“Teryn, I can’t tell you everything, but I’m going through a lot of shit right now. I don’t want to go off on some wild-goose chase for some fallen angel who has a hard-on for killing demons. Make sense?”

Truth.
It shouldn’t make him feel good to tell the truth but it did. Maybe Muriel’s plan to corrupt his soul had worked, because there had probably never been another demon in existence who actually enjoyed telling the truth.

“I guess. I got a few offers to join a hunting pack, so I’m going to give it my best shot. I just knew that you would have a leg up on all the others. You and she did have that connection.”

You have no idea.
“Tough shit. Call me if you find her.” Kier brushed off any sentimental feelings that floated in his head. He was going topside, and he was going to find the first desperate human he saw and obliterate their soul. Then he would find someone else to repeat the process with. He would do this over and over again until he consumed so many souls that he never thought of Muriel ever again.