Chapter 1
Imogael
It had been a fairly typical day for me, up until that point. I spent the morning with a woman who spent her life seeking nothing but pleasure. I'm talking drugs, drinking, sex, then some more sex. Plenty of food, but she wasn't fat somehow. It was probably the drugs.
Her name was Elise, and she died of AIDS.
It wasn't the partying or the extramarital sex that got her sent down to me. No, it was selling drugs to a kid. 8 years old, no reason to be doing coke.
That was why Elise had become my newest pet, and that was why I got all the nice toys to use on her. She was going to have an awful stay in Hell, for however long that was. Sometimes they 'repented' (ugh) and left early, but usually they never leave.
“Imogael.” came a voice that I'm told was supposed to sound like baby giggles or something. To me, all it sounded like was arrogance and sex. My lips quirked up.
“Hello, Seraniel. It's been a while.” He was magnificent. Fully black, with huge wings. He was like an onyx statue, all but his blue, jewel-like eyes. “Been busy?”
Grabbing my hand, he threw me against the wall. Just his touch was enough to burn me, a punishment for who I was. A demon, touching an angel. Can it get much more forbidden than that? The burn had become my pleasure. I yearned for it.
Though we could never become more, I loved it when Seraniel came down to visit us. He was the escort of the newly repentant from Hell to Heaven, the lowest job an angel could have since it slowly tainted them. If they didn't get promoted out, fast, there was no hope of them ever doing anything else.
“Your boss was giving me lip. I'm going to punish you for it, since I cannot touch him.” I was already naked, of course, my hot red skin glowing in the eternal fires around me. His free hand gripped my breast hard, putting his anger into the squeeze.
He spun me around and bent me over. Taking a fistful of my radiant hair, he pulled back and entered me suddenly. Everywhere there was contact, it burned. It burned so damn good. Every thrust was like the pain a slap leaves, but constant and delicious. Fingernails dug into my hips. My horns slapped against the wall that held chains for holding my human playthings.
Anyone who told you that angels were sexless was lying. Their cocks are, in fact, glorious. As they should be. He filled me up completely, and he knew how to fuck better than any other demon.
Then he was off of me, with no regard for whether or not I had my fill. No worries. I had, multiple times, and him not caring turned me on even more. I tugged on his hair to pull his face down for a wicked kiss, which he gave in return but with less passion than normal.
Oh, hell, not this shit again.
“You seem stressed,” I started, crossing my arms over my ample bosom. I knew exactly where this conversation was going, and I was not going to put up with it.
“My deeds are coming under review. They're talking about promoting me.”
“That sounds very exciting, indeed.” I raised my eyebrows. “What does that mean for us, then?”
He gave a cruel, cold laugh. “Us? Imogael, there has never been an us, and there never will be. Now there just won't be sex, either. You're bad for my future, and my future is more important than some sex, as fun as it might be.”
“You are absolutely not leaving me. Not again.” Stamping my left foot, I absentmindedly played with the tip of the horns on my head. There was always an inherent fear when ordering him around. I knew that, if he wanted to, he could end me. I was just a young demon, with no real power, and even if I were as ancient as Lucifer himself, he would have been able to overpower me. Easily. I wasn't much more than a pathetic ant to him, an insect to step on.
Which was why I felt I had to fight to keep him around. He seemed more serious than usual about leaving me.
“I am.” His face had no shred of unhappiness or remorse. Just factual boredom. “You should not expect to see me again.”
“You're kidding, right?” I laughed, but then he stepped away. How many times had he tried to pull this same stunt with me? Of course I didn't believe he was serious.
I reached out to grab his hand. “No, stay with me! I'll be good!”
“Imogael,” he said, finally some amusement on his face. “You are, by definition, evil.”
If a demon was capable of blushing from embarrassment, I would have been blushing then. “I'll keep us a secret! No one has to know, Seraniel.”
He sighed and finally stopped trying to break free from me. “There is no way to fix this. Whatever we had was fundamentally disordered and wrong.” He touched my shoulder, his soft hand sliding down my bare skin. “Stop being so stupid. You were a great lay, but did you really expect an angel to fall in love with a demon?”
I was screaming and thrashing at him long before I even registered that I was doing it. Fists punching, feet kicking at shins, I was essentially having a temper tantrum. “No! You're no going, damn it!”
“I am.”
As he walked away, my body started to burn incredibly hot. I felt as if I might implode, and wondered if such an explosion would take Seraniel with me. Hurting him would be good. I wanted to hurt him.
Looking over his shoulder at me, his blue eyes turned dark black. “What are you doing?” He asked, his voice colder than ever.
“Making you pay!” I cried, holding my arms at my side, my fists balled up. The moment was coming, the moment when all would be gone and he would suffer for having done me so wrong.
The world around me was engulfed in sudden black, and the heat of my body instead burned cold. Freezing. All but Seraniel was gone, then, and he watched me in that void with his cold, blue-jewel eyes.
Lifting his hand, he pressed his fingers together. The snap reverberated, and then he was gone. All was gone. All was black.
Scott
I was agitated as I drove down the interstate with a giant gym bag slung on my shoulder, and I had ever damn reason to be. The guns in that bag were extremely illegal. Like, being caught with them meant a lot of jail time, and I wasn't ready to go back.
The cops were on my side, though. That's what happens when you're a runner, keeping the peace between multiple motorcycle groups while not really having a club of your own. And if there was ever a description of me, that was it. There was nothing else in my life anymore.
No, I dealt with the gangs and the clubs and I kept them all happy with each other. I was a fixer when people died. A business man when territory was being contested. A lawyer when it came to money, and a runner for drugs and guns.
Usually the drugs and guns were shared between gangs when one gang had seriously fucked up. Yeah, that perfectly described what happened between The Mob and Hiroshima MC. The kid that was killed by The Mob was 16, and his mom told me he was going to Harvard.
Some guns weren't going to fix that, but it would keep the peace, and I didn't want to be in the middle of a goddamn war.
The bluetooth piece in my ear chirped at me, signaling a phone call. I ignored it. The guns were supposed to be in Saejima's hands an hour ago, and I wasn't about to be distracted by a brothel.
Then they called again. Everyone I dealt with knew better than to call twice unless the house was burning down around them. “What?” I said, my voice mean.
“Hey, don't yell at me!” Came the feminine voice on the other end. “Look, Scott, we got a problem, and it's a weird one.”
“Spit it out, Starr, I'm on a run.” She had a bad habit of talking his ear off before getting around to the point, and he didn't have the time.
“There's a naked girl in my lab,” she answered, and I couldn't help but laugh.
“Last I checked, Starr, you have naked girls everywhere on that farm of yours. What makes this one special?”
“I ain't never seen this bitch in my life, and she's covered in something and it ain't cum. Plus, you know I keep my lab locked up damn tight. I can't figure how she got down there at all.”
Well, she caught my interest. See, Starr ran a brothel on top of a meth lab, because if you're going to commit one crime, why not commit them all? She also ran The Black Diamonds, an all woman motorcycle group that had a hell of a reputation for murder and general mayhem. If Starr was freaked out about something, you better be freaked out about it too, or she might blame you for it.
“Motherfucker. I have to finish this.” Saejima was not a particularly patient man. That became doubly true when his little cousin had just been killed.
“No, you get your tight ass out here and help me, because otherwise I'm gonna kill her and I know you don't like that.” I just imagined her putting one hand on her hip and it pissed me off.
I was going to slap that woman if she kept demanding things from me, but I sighed and agreed, getting off at the next exit and turning around. The farm wasn't too far from where I was.
It was a giant house, an old antebellum building that used to hold a damn lot of slaves to work the sprawling fields behind it. Now it held slaves of a different kind, though all of Starr's women came to her more or less willingly. Sometimes more, sometimes less. She treated them well enough, though. Better than the other brothels I'd seen around Arkansas.
“Hey,” I said, examining the steps as I walked up them. One of the women sitting on the swing outside of the house looked up at me through long eyelashes. “You better repaint the chip in these steps before Starr notices, or she'll whip you all.”
The woman jumped up, the gold bracelets on her wrist jingling as she did so, and then she left to find the paint in the shed behind the house. When I stepped through the door, I was welcomed with the blessed air conditioning that kept the house practically frigid. Starr was the kind of woman that ran hot, and it had only gotten worse since she lost her period and gained a granddaughter.
Cute kid, by the way, and wicked smart.
“Ladies,” I said, tipping my head towards the gaggle of women sitting in the living room. They watched me as I stepped through the kitchen and onto the steps that led to the basement. The door to the lab was wide open, and Starr was waiting there with her arms crossed.
“She's still asleep. None of us have touched her.” Starr was an old lady, but still beautiful as hell. With such a smooth face and her blonde hair done up in a bun, she could still pass for 30. Her long, thin arms pulled me in for a hug.
Starr was just about the only woman on the farm that I hadn't fucked. She was more like a mother to me, and older women weren't my thing anyway. I motioned for her to take me to the girl, and I followed close behind her. Starr didn't like people wandering in the lab.
“I'm telling you, Scott. I ain't never seen her before. And with hair like that? A body like that? I'd remember.”
She wasn't kidding. The woman on the floor had fire for hair, red with orange highlights and yellow tips. Her body was the kind that any man would want to have all over him, and I was no exception.
Naked and huddled underneath a table, her body was wrapped around one of the table's legs. She was covered in some kind of goop. It was clear, but it sparkled like a kid's craft project.
Nudging her with my boot, I startle her awake. “Where am I?” She asks, but seems confused by her mouth. A hand touches her lips. “It's freezing!”
The lady was clearly nuts. It was 95 degrees out and only getting hotter. “You're in Arkansas, and you're in deep shit,” I said.
She looked up at me with big, green eyes. God, I about died from that look. Her hand went from her lips, down to her legs, sliding over her smooth skin. Then she touched between them, and I felt heat on my neck that threatened to rise to my face. Fingers slipping up to her stomach, her tits.
Bending quickly, she looked over her shoulder at her back. Her back was covered in huge bruises, from her shoulder blades down to her lower back. They looked damn painful.
“Oh, no...” She sobbed, tragedy flashing across her face.