Satan's Sword (Imp Book 2) (8 page)

He dashed around the sofa at me, and I ran trying to keep as much of the sofa between us as possible as I threw the candlestick at him. We did a few laps, then reversed as he tried to catch me off guard. I should have been scared that a being far more powerful than me basically had me trapped in my own home. I should have still been angry at his arrogance and attempted compulsion, but I was actually starting to have fun being chased around the house like this.

We continued the sofa laps for a while, when he suddenly leapt on the sofa and launched himself over it at me, knocking the huge heavy sectional over backwards. I was taken by surprise and shrieked as he hit me like a linebacker, knocking the breath out of my lungs. He wrapped his arms around me and twisted as we hit the ground, taking the full impact as we landed and slid across the floor, crashing into the dining room table and sending it flying. As soon as we stopped, he flipped over on top of me, pinning me to the ground. I wasn’t even bruised.

I felt him take a deep breath and he looked down at me, the black bleeding through his irises to engulf his eyes entirely in their color. “Can I please see your arm?” He was obviously finding the polite word difficult to say. “I think I can fix the brand, if you’ll let me try?”

I looked up at him. There was no blue stuff this time. No compulsion, no arrogant ordering me around. He actually said please. Still, I really didn’t want to do this.

“I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere. “I’m under a lot of stress right now, and having you constantly messing with me through the brand hasn’t done much for my temper. I need to disable it. It’s driving me insane, and I’m less liable to kill you if I fix it.”

“Fix it? What exactly is your idea of fixing it? Making me into a mindless slave?” I asked in suspicion.

He laughed cynically. “Tempting, but I’m afraid that’s way beyond even my power. I can stop it from being an erogenous zone. Anything in addition to that would be a miracle.”

It would be nice not to have an orgasm every time someone grabbed my arm. It was funny at first, but now it was just annoying. Either way, this whole thing was going to be a lesson in humiliation. If I said no, he’d just force me. At least he was asking politely now, as if I had an option to refuse Reluctantly, I raised my right arm over my head to expose the tattoo of the sword with the angel wing guards and the red, raised circle of flesh around it.

He took another deep breath, and his teeth became pointed spikes. Piranha teeth. “This isn’t going to be easy.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or me.

I couldn’t watch him when he originally put the marks on my arm since he had my head turned to face the other way and held firmly with his hand. I was determined to watch this time. I wondered if he’d bite me again. Last time it had been like a thousand hot needles in my skin. That may not sound erotic to humans, but for me it had been an incredible sensation.

Instead of his teeth, though, he took his tongue and laved the raised hickey mark with the middle part of it. I thought I was going to melt. Sensation poured through me and I arched myself against him. He ran his tongue slowly three times counter clockwise around the mark, and I thrashed against him, trying to grind my hips on his. I doubted he had a cock, or anything else down there, but I sure as hell wanted to find out.

“Try to hold still,” he said thickly. He was somehow remaining enviously calm and collected while I was a mess of need.

“Can’t” was all I could manage. Can’t think. Certainly can’t speak.

He pressed himself against me more firmly, trying to hold me immobile. It only intensified the waves of orgasm crashing through me. Three sets of this torture ensued before he finally pulled his tongue away. I hoped he was done as I was at the point of insanity from all the sensation. Aftershocks were still rocking me, but the worst had to be over.

Nope. No such luck. He took the tip of his tongue and ran it around the outer edge of the hickey mark, spiraling inward at an agonizingly slow pace. I realized it wasn’t his teeth that had the hot needle sensation, but the tip of his tongue. It was like jolts of pain and pleasure as the sparks spread from my skin down through the network of his red purple deep inside me. I thought of all the things I’d love him to do with that tongue, all the parts of my body I’d like him to trace with it.

“Ohhhhhhhh,” I dragged out, unable to formulate a coherent thought at this point. I wasn’t rubbing all over him anymore, but before I could be grateful for small gifts, I felt the pull of my personal energy rushing to the surface.

This was really embarrassing. My kind has wild, crazy, violent sex, but the only time we allow our spirit-selves, our personal energy, to mingle is during breeding. Before you get anywhere close to an exchange there are petitions, negotiations, contracts. To have my personal energy flying to the surface, eager to leave this flesh and join with his without my thoughtful and written consent, was a grave loss of control. And at this point, I really didn’t care. As I’ve said before, pride is not my sin.

I held my energy on the outline of my flesh, in an invitation, fully expecting nothing in return. So I was surprised when I felt the angel’s red purple energy leap up to touch the edge of mine against my skin. For the first time ever, I realized my energy had hue, orange with patches of royal blue. It swirled around and through his in an obscene splash of color, dissolving to a sharp, translucent white where it merged. Slowly, our spirit selves blended bit by bit, turning a clear, slightly opalescent white and sending a vibration of sound deep within me. I felt more and more of our energy merge into whiteness and shuddered with the intensity of it. The process gained in speed as we rushed and swirled toward each other. Finally, there was a click of resolution and we existed as one, a translucent white, suspended between our bodies. We held there for what seemed an eternity, and then slowly bled back into our individual colors and our physical forms. Awareness returned to me and I realized that somehow we had shifted positions and I lay on top of Gregory like an overcooked noodle.

“Are you okay?” he asked after a few moments. He sounded like he was struggling to speak. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear very well yet.

I was more than okay. This was the most amazing thing ever. Life altering. World shattering. Amazing. I’d never done anything like that before, hadn’t realized anything like that was even possible. I was afraid to move and break the spell.

“No bones,” I slurred. “Bones are gone. Can’t move.”

That seemed to alarm him, and he forced himself to move so he could grip my arms and chest. “I feel bones. You seem to have them. What’s wrong with them? Why won’t they work?”

“Metaphor.” My speech was still a bit garbled. “That was epic. Can we do it again? But not now. I can’t do it again right now. I need a nap first. And a roast beef sandwich. A nap and a sandwich.”

“No, we can’t do it again.” Gregory’s voice was stern. “We can never do it again.”

I wanted to reply, but all I could do was lay there on him and try to regain some control over my physical form. What the fuck had we done? It was a perfect rush of sensation that had nothing to do with organic matter. Like a moment of existence without the flesh, but without death, held together and joined with another.

I moved a bit, beginning to regain feeling in my limbs again.

“Is the brand still so sensitive?” Gregory asked. “Did I fix it at all?”

“No way I’m going to touch it right now. Give me a few moments to come back to earth, and I’ll see how it goes.” I rolled off him and shakily got to my feet. I had to put a hand on the tipped over sofa to steady myself.

The angel propped himself up on his elbows and looked around at the wreckage. He looked incredibly human at the moment with his hair mussed and his skin a more flesh-like texture. His teeth were no longer pointy, and the black that filled his eyes was slowly receding into his irises again. He was beautiful. Like this, or with the pointy teeth and black filled eyes, he was beautiful. I caught my breath as I felt my personal energy stir again and a warmth run through me. So much for the nap and roast beef sandwich. I was ready to go for round two.

Gregory got up and righted the huge sectional sofa with one hand, pushing it easily back into its original spot. With that done, he walked over and began plucking knives out of my barstool cushions, placing them in the sink. I followed and began picking up spoons and spatulas from around the room.

“I’m sorry about these ripped cushions, and your cabinets, too.” He glanced at the one he’d put his fist through.

“No you’re not.” I laughed. “Admit it; you enjoyed tearing up my house.”

Imagine my surprise when he smiled. Smiled. All the way. Even his eyes smiled. It was devastating. He could rule the universe with that smile. He certainly could rule me with that smile. If he did that more often, he would be unstoppable.

“Okay. It was especially fun putting my fist in that cabinet there. You should have seen your face, little cockroach.” The smile got bigger. I was a goner. I needed to change the subject right now before I threw myself at him like a concert groupie.

“I’ve wanted to show you this. Watch.” I walked around the counter and turned on the sink faucet, then gathered together a globe of water.

“Very nice, little cockroach,” Gregory said as I held the globe above the sink. “Can you freeze it? Vaporize it?”

“Not yet,” I admitted.

He came over behind me and put his hands on top of mine. My concentration slipped with his touch and the globe wept drops into the sink basin.

“Try separating it and pulling it back together.” His breath stirred the hair by my ear.

I felt him slide his power down through me, and the globe became a dozen smaller ones, hovering in a neat line above the counter. Suddenly I knew how to do it. It was as if he’d transferred the skill and the knowledge along with the stream of power. I got the feeling this was something he didn’t do for just anyone. A gift. The thought made me uneasy.

He stepped in closer to me and I could feel the burn from the power he leaked. It trickled again, down through my arm, and the little balls of water became one, then shattered apart again into a thousand shards of ice, all hovering above the skink. They danced in a spiral before melting in a splash back into the basin.

“You must learn more quickly. You need to become more than a little cockroach if you’re to survive.” His voice was soft, and I felt the faint hint of blue. “Stop fighting me and let me help you.”

I fought off the blue, shielding myself as best as I could from his power running through me. He chuckled.

“Fine. See if you can do the ice yourself now.”

He pulled his power back to a light touch, keeping his hands firmly on mine. I stared at the water and took a breath. I could do this a lot easier if he wasn’t touching me. Ideally, he should be in the next room. At least twenty feet away with his back to me. Carefully, I pulled a globe of water together, raised it, and froze it from the center out, elongating the ends into a huge icicle. Pride surged through me.

“Faster,” he commanded, overriding my control and returning the melted ice to the sink.

I obeyed before I could feel irritated at his tone, and a rather sloppy blob of ice hung before us.

“No. Again.”

Pissed, I seized the water from the sink and transformed it straight to ice as I launched the tiny darts into my ceiling. Asshole.

He vaporized them with a poof. “Better. Again.”

I looked into the empty sink.

“Create the water.” Bossy angel had been replaced by the seductive one. I felt more comfortable with bossy angel.

I reached inside to grab from my store of raw energy, and was surprised when he blocked me.

“No. Pretend you’re empty, desperate. Convert what you have. Fast. Now.”

I reacted. Yanked the atoms from the air around me, converting them directly into a shard of ice. I spun it with a whoosh, separated it into a spiral of glittering pieces, then vaporized them one at a time with little cracks of noise, like fireworks.

“Ah, little cockroach. That was beautiful.”

His physical body hadn’t moved, but his personal energy reached out, rubbing along mine in a soft caress. Part of me wanted to freak. Part of me wanted to rub back. Maybe more than rub back. I needed to sit down. I needed to step away from him. It was too much, and I was confused by what I was feeling.

“Have you practiced withdrawing yourself from your physical form? So you can survive mortal damage?”

He was still holding my arms, rubbing himself along me. His power continued to pour through me, even though the water work was done. It was like being immersed in liquid fire. I struggled to remember his question.

“You mean like taking a gunshot to the head? No, I haven’t worked on that.”

Idiot. It’s not like I could practice getting shot in the head and surviving it. There’d be no practice. I’d live or I’d die, and odds were, I’d die. Demons were more committed to their physical forms than angels. We could survive a lot of damage, but if the body died, we did, too.

“You only need something of this world to shield you, little cockroach.” Gregory’s lips were practically touching my ear. “What houses you doesn’t have to be a living being. You can safely exist in the form of a dead corpse, a spark of fire, even a rock if you wished.”

“We’re not like angels,” I protested. Like I’d really want to live my life as a rock anyway. “We can’t do that sort of thing.

“You
are
angels.”

Are? I thought it was “were angels,” as in past tense.

“Angels who use only a tenth of their potential,” he continued. “You must learn this. The day is coming when you can no longer hide under a rock, little cockroach. I would be very upset if that day came and someone squashed you under their heel.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “There’s always a rock,” I assured him.

I felt his amusement. “No. There will be no more rocks.”

Before I could reply, I felt the stab of a thousand needles tracing the edge of my ear. He’d licked my ear? And he was still rubbing himself against me, in a way only beings of spirit could do. Too much. It was too much. I was going to fly apart into a million pieces, like the ice we played with. Everything blurred for a moment as I struggled to retain some kind of control.