––––––––
Kier’s wrist was unnaturally cold once Muriel removed her hand. At the sight of the silver, he grimaced in annoyance. “What game are you playing, angel?”
She had snapped a pair of handcuffs on him. Well, half a pair. The other cuff was attached to her own wrist.
His ears filled with the sound of her heart beating frantically, muffling her muttered, “Oh shit.”
He didn’t have time to humor her anymore. He looked to a spot ten feet away and focused on transporting himself, sans handcuffs.
To his frustration, he stayed exactly where he was. What the hell? The last time he had failed at a transport had been centuries ago, and ten feet was easy enough for a juvenile demon to perform. “What did you do to me?”
Muriel leaned away but didn’t step back. She couldn’t as long as she was cuffed to him. “Nothing you don’t deserve.” She sounded braver than she looked.
Anger filled Kier. He was not about to be trapped by some mortal. He stormed off to the side of the restaurant, dragging her along behind him. As he reached the brick corner of the building, he slammed the chain links connecting the cuffs against the brick corner with all of his considerable demon strength.
Pain shot through his wrist as Muriel gasped at the sting that must be traveling up her own arm. Undaunted, he slammed the metal to stone three more times, only succeeding in causing huge chunks of bricks to fly everywhere. The chain links that connected the cuffs didn’t even have a scratch on them.
“It’s no use,” taunted Muriel through clenched teeth.
Kier had to stop his attempts to break the cuffs due to the increasing pain in his own wrist. He glared at the offending steel. He normally was not this affected by pain.
He turned his glacial gaze to Muriel, who at least had the grace to look intimidated. “They won’t break,” she said. “They’re enchanted. Only the key can release you.”
Now he was truly pissed off. His free hand wrapped around her slender throat as he pushed her against the side of the building and slammed her shoulders into the brick. A sudden throbbing sensation shot through his own back and a sickening realization filled him.
Testing a theory, his hand squeezed brutally around her throat, and Muriel’s face turned a shade of reddish-purple. Within seconds, debilitating pain possessed his throat. He tried to gasp for air, but his throat was being held closed by some invisible force.
He immediately released Muriel and caught his breath. Her knees must have given out because she started to sink to the ground, gasping for air. Her free hand gently rubbed her throat where he had mercilessly squeezed.
”You bitch,” he shouted, voice still hoarse. “What did you do to me?”
Her eyes held unveiled hatred. “Simple revenge,” she answered. “You destroyed my soul and now I’m destroying yours.”
“How are magical handcuffs supposed to do that?” He shouldn’t have asked. He already knew the answer.
“You might have tainted my soul, but I’m still pretty pure, especially compared to you. You are stuck with me until your soul is just as pretty as mine,” she threatened.
Muriel could see that Kier’s brain furiously searched for a way out of this mess, but she had worked hard to ensure that there wasn’t. The one way out of the cuffs was a key that only she knew the location to. Any pain she felt he would experience just as bad, if not worse, so he had no way to torture the information out of her.
“You will release me, or, so help me, I will cut everyone you care about limb from limb while you are still attached to me.”
“Really? Well, the joke is on you because there’s no one I care about here. Not sure if you know this, but it’s tough to make mortal friends when you have spent over ten centuries as an angel. Makes it hard to open up to coworkers and neighbors.” She was partially lying. She didn’t have any close friends, but she was fond of her neighbors and had a special spot in her heart for Angie.
Even if she liked them, she couldn’t allow herself to grow close to anyone. For the first year of her mortality, every day had been a struggle to fit in with human society without any steady income or support.
Samuel would have been more than willing to help her adjust, but he had his own problems to worry about. It was his destiny to stop the apocalypse, and Muriel had given up her powers to see that he fulfilled that destiny. She was not about to let her problems stop him.
She had no other mortal friends from her angel days who she could call on to help. She wandered from city to city at first, even stealing food when she had to.
It was only dumb luck that she had happened to run into another lost mortal. Tina had been a recent high school dropout who was determined to leave her family and take a waitressing position at her uncle’s restaurant in a middle-of-nowhere town in Arkansas.
Muriel and Tina had some good conversations, and when it was time for Tina to hop on the bus to Rock Springs, Muriel had joined her. It wasn’t as though she had anywhere better to be.
The pay wasn’t amazing and the outfits were a bit skimpy for Muriel’s taste, but the under-the-table pay was more than Muriel had been making. She and Tina rented half of a ramshackle duplex, with Tina taking the bedroom and Muriel sleeping on the couch.
Tina taught Muriel how to get by on little and was always patient with Muriel when she had a hard time grasping simple human concepts. Seriously, though, Muriel still didn’t see the problem with nudity in one’s own home. Wasn’t that half the point of becoming a property owner?
About a year into their friendship and two years into Muriel’s mortality, Tina went back home to finish school, leaving Muriel alone again. Her loneliness after Tina left had been the catalyst that motivated Muriel to seek her vengeance.
The most obvious vengeance was to make him pay in blood. If she was careful and thought everything through, she could probably kill Kier, but that would be too easy and too hard at the same time.
Killing a demon was difficult, even for angels. As a mortal, Muriel was at a serious disadvantage. On the other hand, death seemed much too lenient of a penalty. He needed to suffer.
She knew she wanted to destroy his soul, but corrupting a soul was much easier than purifying one. For a year and a half after Tina left, Muriel spent all her days off, and any spare cash, researching ways to hurt a demon’s soul. Everything she found led her to the same answer: proximity to an angel.
“Where is the key, you vindictive little bitch?” he bit out.
“If I were you, I would worry about more pressing matters,” she said. “How exactly are you going to tell your little fan club that you were tricked by an angel?”
She didn’t think it was possible for him to get more furious, but she was wrong. He approached her, towering over her and uncomfortably close. Flames burned brightly behind his eyes. Refusing to be cowed, Muriel held her ground. “Fallen angel,” he spat out. He brought both hands, and by default her attached arm, to the high neckline of her shirt and ripped the material in a quick jerking motion.
Muriel gasped and reached to hold the gaping edges, but realized that the tear was closer to the shoulder and no indecent skin was showing. Her brows furrowed in confusion as, in a rapid blur of motion, Kier’s head shot to her shoulder as his teeth pierced her shoulder.
Muriel managed to hold back her scream, but she couldn’t stop the small exclamation of pain, and she heard a pained moan come from Kier as well. She knew that he had to be hurting just as much as she was.
In seconds, he jerked his head away and Muriel lifted her hand to apply pressure to the bloody bite wound. Kier swatted it away before it reached the injury. “Let it bleed,” he commanded.
She cast him a wary glance. She knew the blood loss wouldn’t be life threatening, but she couldn’t figure out why he’d done it. Demons didn’t get sustenance from blood like vampires. They had fangs, but they were more ornamental than functional.
She would’ve loved it if her soul could contaminate his through blood transfer, but that little gem only worked one way—demons to angels.
Kier shifted out of his leather jacket and Muriel couldn’t help but be transfixed by the movement. The raw masculinity of the large muscles playing beneath the tight gray t-shirt had her second-guessing this whole plan.
Magical handcuffs be damned, how had she ever convinced herself that she could contain this beast? He could crush her throat with a flick of his wrist, not to mention the multitude of dangers that went along with his demonic powers.
Once he had shrugged off his jacket, he slid it down his captive arm and arranged it carefully to hide the handcuffs.
Without a word, he walked back toward the restaurant, dragging her along behind him.
Tripping on the first few steps, Muriel quickly caught her balance and followed. Kier confidently walked straight past his leeches. “I have a date with the fallen angel,” he casually told them over his shoulder.
Their interest was piqued, and, at the sight of her blood, their nostrils flared as they tried to detect what had happened.
Muriel flushed with embarrassment as she realized that he was implying that they were running off to have sex. So that was how he planned to get out of this without losing credibility among his peers. Instead of admitting that he had been tricked, he would just let them think he seduced her.
Before Muriel could even think of a denial, he pulled her out the front door and back into the cool night air. Once they were in the front parking lot, he abruptly stopped. “Take me to your house,” he ordered.
Muriel noticed that he had a bad habit of ordering her around. He would soon learn he wasn’t the one in control here, but she would rather have that conversation in the privacy of her own house and not in public where an innocent mortal could be harmed.
She had a hard time finding her voice. Her brave façade faded now that her plans were coming together. “Um, I live two miles west,” she muttered.
She had faced down plenty of demons in her years on the Earth realm, but she had been armed and prepared for the fights. This was a long-term mental war that she was about to wage with a ruthless adversary.
Kier looked around the parking lot. “Which one is yours?”
Muriel bit her lip nervously as she looked down. “Um, none.”
The demon let out an exasperated sigh. “You don’t even own a car?”
“I own a car. It just doesn’t have legal plates or registration. I only drive when I need to. Believe it or not, this job doesn’t pay a lot and funding vengeance takes cash,” she pointed out.
She could see that he didn’t appreciate her hard work or effort to save money. With an angry huff, he turned and walked west. He took long and fast strides, leaving Muriel to do a mixture of walking and jogging to keep up with him.
The night air chilled her and the bite on her shoulder stung, but Muriel decided to keep her mouth shut. She had a feeling any protests would fall on deaf ears.
They walked in silence for a mile until he snapped, “You seriously walk to work?”
“It’s good exercise,” she said. “Besides, you’re a demon. A little physical exertion should be no problem for you.”
“It should be no problem because I should be able to transport myself there with the blink of an eye!”
Muriel couldn’t help the small smile that formed in response to his frustration. “You know, I understand better than most how hard it can be to suddenly lose your abilities.”
He shot her a scathing look. “You really are enjoying this.”
She didn’t deny it. The entire point was to make his life miserable, and so far she was succeeding. What about this wouldn’t make her ecstatic?
He huffed again and walked even faster. Muriel tried to steal subtle glances at him, but she was too focused on not tripping over her quickly moving feet.
She knew she shouldn’t like anything about him, but she couldn’t help but be mesmerized by his beauty. It really wasn’t her fault. He was designed to lure women with his looks. She’d be crazy not to be attracted to him.
This didn’t make her feel better about the traitorous direction of her thoughts. She had to remember that he was the enemy.
A siren jerked her out of her thoughts as an ambulance passed by a few blocks over. “Your neighborhood sucks,” he grumbled.
She wanted to defend her home of the past four years, but there wasn’t much to say. Her street was drug infested and routinely patrolled by whatever gang was currently in control. The small homes were spaced out nicely, but all needed major repairs and none had what could be called “curb appeal.”
The small town of Rock Springs just didn’t make any money. The plant had closed a few years ago, and most residents moved out. The homes that were left slowly fell into a state of disrepair as piles of junk and rotting cars collected in the abandoned yards. The diner she worked at only made money on travelers and truck drivers passing through on their way to somewhere else.
Even her own small house could use a good landscaper and fresh coat of paint. She and Tina had done a good job decorating the inside to make the house a home, but they had never had the time or finances to work on the outside. After Tina left, Muriel didn’t bother trying because it was a rental anyway. Besides, what was the point of being the only well-kept house in a two-mile radius?
“I have killed demons at the gates of Hell. It takes more than a gangster with a Napoleon complex to scare me.” She stopped and held her hand up to point to the small, formerly white, house she rented. “That one is mine.”
He scowled as he dragged her to the door. He looked to her to open it and all Muriel could do was shrug with her good shoulder. “All my stuff is back at the diner.” He hadn’t really given her a chance to grab her purse or jacket.
He rolled his eyes, as if the inconvenience wasn’t caused by his own domineering actions, and knocked her door open with one powerful kick. Muriel’s eyes widened as she shrieked in outrage. “What are you doing?”
The carnage didn’t stop there. He moved into the small house and started systematically destroying everything that Muriel had collected over the past four years. She speechlessly watched the carnage as she was hauled room to room with him.
She knew it would be fruitless to ask him to stop. She’d tricked him and his anger was to be expected. She knew he would try to punish her any way he could, and it wouldn’t be too hard to do if she was permanently attached to him. Even knowing this, watching all of her stuff get destroyed was hard.
As he reached the kitchen, he tossed all of her dishes to the linoleum floor as he searched every square inch of the cabinets. Muriel was pleasantly surprised by how many dishes survived the fall, but soon enough the floor was littered with sharp pieces of ceramic.
A shard bounced off the floor and sliced the side of her calf. Muriel winced at the pinching sensation and Kier tensed at the same time. He stopped his frantic search to turn to her.
“Why don’t you tell me, what exactly is your plan?”
“I already told you. I’m corrupting your soul.” She had a hard time meeting his gaze when all of his intensity was focused on her.
“Yeah, I got that part. How long do you expect that to take?”
Muriel bit her lip nervously and saw his gaze focus on the action. “From all the reports I’ve read, it varies.”
He still looked at her lips. “What does ‘varies’ mean?”
“A few weeks or a few months,” she said softly, waiting for an angry outburst to destroy even more of her kitchen.
She was surprised when only silence greeted her admission. She cautiously looked up and saw that he clenched his jaw tightly but held himself back from striking out at something.
“Months? You expect to spend months handcuffed to me?”
She was still not happy about that aspect of her plan, but sometimes vengeance required sacrifice. “I figure this way your torture can be twofold...slowly losing your soul while forced to put up with me.”
“How exactly do you intend to shower? Sleep? Masturbate?” He whispered the last one right next to her ear.
As much as Muriel wanted to be her old badass self, she couldn’t help the blush that crept up her neck. Things like masturbation just didn’t come up that often when you were an angel.
“I’m not modest. I’m sure you’ve seen thousands of naked women. I think we can manage simple things like showering and sleeping. As for the, um, other one, that won’t be an issue for me.”
“What about me? Just wait until you go to sleep to take care of myself? Or are you planning on participating?” he purred as he once again used his size to back her up, this time against the counter.
“No, um, no participating.” She seemed unable to stop herself from stumbling over her words.
His hands wrapped around her hips as he effortlessly lifted her until her ass rested on the edge of the counter. He stepped between her thighs before she could close them.
Her free hand went to his chest as she pushed at him, feeling alternately scared of what he planned and a wicked thrill at having his perfect male body pressed against her.
She couldn’t deny that her sexual urges as a mortal were a hundred times more intense than they had been as an angel, and the feeling of his powerful body pressed against hers took her breath away. His muscles rippled and flexed under her hand, and she fought the temptation to explore him further. She had the sudden desire to see him without his shirt. Just his bare skin under her fingers.
Would his chest be bare? Would there be a trail of hair leading the way to his cock? She blushed at the thought and hoped that he didn’t notice the redness that crept up her neck.
His free hand rubbed her roughly between her legs as his bound one squeezed her ass and pulled her harder against him. Any thrill she had felt at his nearness quickly fled at his rough treatment and was replaced by fear.
She’d imagined what it would be like to take a lover as a mortal, but she’d imagined a caring one who wanted her because of her. Not sex born from hatred and anger.
She wiggled to get away, but that only managed to push her closer to him, and as she struggled, the hand that gripped her rear wrapped around her waist to hold her in place.
Her hand curled into a fist and she aimed for his eyes and throat, but her blows didn’t seem to deter him. One of his hands reached under her shirt to touch her bare skin as she tried to rake her nails down the side of his face.
Abruptly he stopped and punched the side of her cabinets so hard that the wood cracked and splinters fell to the floor. The only movement was his chest as his breath came in deep gulps.
She didn’t know why he stopped. He could have taken whatever he wanted. He might have been bound to her, but he was still much stronger as a demon than she could ever hope to be as a mortal.
It was possible she could’ve fought him off, but it wasn’t as if she could run away. She was a realist and knew that he was ten times stronger than her, and, unfortunately, the pain clause in the handcuffs worked both ways. She could hurt him some, but if she caused any serious damage, she would be feeling it just as bad, if not worse.
She had to face the possibility that, even if she did make it out of this alive, she would not make it out sane.
In the struggle, her shoulder wound had reopened and ached. Kier glanced at it and she knew he felt the pain too. Serves him right, she thought. “Why did you bite me?” She wanted to think about anything but what had just happened between them.
“Because you are mine and I can do whatever I want with you,” he snapped.
––––––––
––––––––
Kier felt as though someone was bashing his head in with a hammer. He was cornered and didn’t know exactly how to get out.
Whatever spell the angel had put on the handcuffs, it was powerful magic. Even the smallest scratch on her leg could be felt on exactly the same location on his body, and his shoulder throbbed from his own bite.
This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. Not to him and not by some fucking mortal, fallen angel or not.
He looked over to the infuriating woman. Even through his anger, his connection to her was just as strong. The cuffs were probably making it stronger by the second. He could feel her thrill at beating him and her confusion at his actions.
Her shoulder was bloodied, but Kier was used to blood. It was the teasing show of skin that caused him to stare. He should have ripped the material more. He could see the beginnings of the flesh-colored cup of her bra. How conservative. He wondered whether she had a secret collection of colorful lingerie. Laces and silks in reds and blacks.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to focus on something other than her sexy body. Whose bright idea was it to make an angel so sexy anyway? Who did they need to lure with such a curvy figure?
Angels were a damn boring lot, driven by the need to follow orders and fulfill destiny. Even though they had all the equipment, they had no desire for sex.
Had that changed now that she was mortal?
She hadn’t responded to him when he touched her, but that was hardly surprising. He hadn’t been touching to arouse, but to intimidate and control. For all the good it did him. Her fear had flooded him, and any chance of arousal had fled.
Forced sex had never appealed to him. He was a demon, but the point wasn’t to force evil onto anyone. It was to coerce and seduce the human soul to commit the evil. Kier had met very few demons who raped or murdered for fun, and the ones who did were never high-level demons.
The entire point was to enrapture a human soul. It was like food to a demon. They thrived off a decaying soul and derived power from it. The bigger the sins, the more power could be taken from it.
Taking down Muriel’s soul gave Kier a high that lasted for months. Colors were brighter, food tasted better, and the sex was earth-shattering. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced.
Combined with the high was the sudden respect from other demons. Leeches would follow him, hoping they could help him take down his next soul and feed off the leftovers. His powers were amplified, and he could conjure any material possession for the first three months after. He could transport himself all the way across the world with the blink of an eye. With one flick of his wrist, he could kill a demon.
For those first few months, he’d almost been a god. It had been amazing and torture at the same time.
As much fun as he should have been having, the weight of Muriel’s depression and loneliness had stayed with him.
With time, his powers and the weight of her emotions had lessened, though the lingering, puzzling desire for her remained.
A part of him wasn’t even angry about the binding spell. That hidden part of him was ecstatic at the prospect of being near her for such a long period of time. His mouth watered and cock hardened at the thought of spending a week straight with her. In the shower. In bed. He would be her shadow. It was almost worth having the darkness sucked away from his soul and getting locked out of Hell.
He had hoped that forcing her would remind him of exactly what she was. A mortal. That was all she was. Besides the binding spell, she held no power over him. Any connection he had to her was all in his mind and could be overcome with enough willpower.
But he hadn’t been able to go through with it. Feeling her fear ate at him, and any chance of arousal was chased away. He felt dirty for even attempting it, and he was pissed off about it. He was a demon. He was never supposed to feel dirty. He glorified in sin.
“The key isn’t here. It’s buried in a desert somewhere you’ll never find it,” she said, obviously uncomfortable with the long silence.
For the moment he was stuck. He couldn’t torture her for the location of the key, because he would feel any physical pain. He couldn’t mentally torture her because he had been feeling her mental anguish for five years already. It was only worse now that she was so near.
He wanted to hit something, but looking around him, he saw that he had already destroyed everything in sight. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. He needed to take a step back and face this when he was less emotional. In the morning, he would have to search out some magical solution. He refused to believe that the only answer was one tiny key hidden in the desert.
As a demon, he didn’t sleep, but weariness crept into his bones. It must be what Muriel was experiencing. He also felt cold, and he remembered the door that he had destroyed, letting in the cool air. He scowled. Maybe if she wore more clothes, she wouldn’t feel so cold.
“Where is your bed?” he asked.
He could see her uneasiness with the question. What did she expect? Obviously they would share a bed at some point. She feared that he would make another move on her, and he couldn’t blame her.
Ice blue eyes surrounded by dark hair and a body to drive any man to sin. The only time he’d seen her before was the night he ruined her. She’d been beaten beyond recognition. Now he could fully appreciate the sight.
He had been thinking about this woman for five years, and now he’d probably ruined any chance he had with sixty seconds of trying to convince himself that he was still “in control.” Scratch that. He had ruined any chance with her when he forced her to drink his blood.
He wasn’t afraid of a challenge. He had been seducing women for centuries. He had convinced even the most chaste of mortals to join his bed. How hard could one fallen angel be? That sealed it. He would make her scream his name and beg for more.
It might not be an easy task, but apparently he had plenty of time. Besides, he felt what she felt. He knew that when he first lifted her delectable ass onto that countertop and stepped between her luscious thighs, she had desire for him.
On some level, she wanted him, and he would be sure to use that against her.
––––––––
~~~End of Sneak Peek~~~