My markings said Gabriel climbed to my room every night and that even my enhanced, rewired ward couldn’t keep him out.

What was so special about him?

My body lit up for him.

White flame coursed through my veins at his every touch.

I wondered if every time with him had been like fireworks exploding in my every cell. My mind couldn’t conjure the exact feel. It was like looking at the wonder through a distant glass. How I wished I could shatter it!

And my markings relayed to me that every moment I’d spent with the Angel, I’d felt alive.

I added each of his visits to my skin.

On the sixth night, while he pounded passionately between my thighs, he asked, “Are you going to treat me like a stranger again tomorrow morning?” 

That stopped me cold, but I didn’t miss a beat as I answered between my labored breaths. “Does it matter?”

“Probably not,” he said after a pause, and then bent my knees to my chest and drilled into me harder as if to punish me.

It only brought more pleasure to my core. 

A moan tore through my throat. Gabriel growled, forgetting his own questions. He was as enamored with our coupling as I was. That was why he took great pains to climb to my chamber to have it again and again.

Pleasure rocked me senseless, yet I knew what we had wouldn’t last long.

But the concept of the Angel and me apart and our bodies no longer joining filled me with aching hollowness. 

That was unexpected.

This attachment would lower my guard. It would become more dangerous than all the monsters I faced.

If I wasn’t careful, it would damage me worse than I already was.

“We’ll always be strangers, Angel, no matter how many times we fuck,” I said, coldness seeping into my voice, even though my body was in the burning lake of lust. “That’s the reality on Pandemonium. Don’t expect anything from me.”

“That’s your reality, witch,” he sneered. “But I don’t expect anything from you and never will.”

“Good,” I said. “Then we have a perfect understanding.”

I had to drill this into his mind so he wouldn’t grow suspicious when I didn’t recognize him the next morning. Gabriel seemed to have the power of observation.

I was glad he’d brought up the subject first. Now we could move on.

“We do have a perfect understanding,” he said hoarsely, and flipped me over. 

In one raw, powerful thrust, he slammed in to the hilt. 

There was no gentleness about it. Had he always been so blunt?

I couldn’t know, for I hadn’t been able to spare any more skin to record my sexual journey.

I’d been stranded on this planet for three years. The longer I lingered here, the slimmer my chance to return home.

Gabriel drove into me again. I gasped at his raw strength.

I lowered my torso, my breasts prone on the sheet, and raised my rear for him, inviting him to penetrate me deeper.

Gabriel growled like a beast. His steel rod thrust into me wildly. I could feel his hardness and hotness burning into my flesh, imprinting me to make me his.

Though we didn’t really know each other, our bodies spoke their own secret language and got along extremely well.

Gabriel let out a string of words in a language somehow distant to me, but I could still make out its meaning. He’d called me his own. He’d said, “Mine!”

My heart fluttered at his secret declaration and my body purred.

But my will and logic rejected his claim. 

I was no one’s. I couldn’t be anyone’s.

A man would say anything in the heat of mating. 

“You prefer fucking a stranger? Is that it?” he accused, recovering from his own passion and switching to the common language. “Does fucking a stranger make you hornier?” 

I ignored his harsh words. His cock was hard inside me. That was all what mattered. I melted into the incredible rapture at his sequence of thrusts. 

“I can pretend to be a stranger,” he hissed. “Is that what you want?”

“Perhaps,” I breathed.

He drove back into me with more raw force.

“Oh, yes,” I cried. “More of that.”

“I’ll give you more of that, witch!” he said heatedly. “I’ll fuck you like a complete stranger. I’ll fuck you as if it’s our first time every time!” 

For me, it was.

Gabriel bent down on me, his one arm wrapped around my breasts, the other around my belly to pin me against him as he thrust into me.

It was an animalistic fuck, and I liked it.

“Say my name, Fiammetta,” he demanded, his speed savage. 

“Angel,” I moaned, rolling with him, only because the pleasure was great. 

“Call me Gabriel. Say, ‘Gabriel, I want only your cock.’”

“Gabriel,” I cried. “Fuck me harder.”

“You won’t say it?”

He pounded into me, knocking every breath out of me.

Carnal bliss burned me like a spurt of lava. I wouldn’t be able to take more, but I craved more. So I moaned his name.

He settled for that and fucked me with increased, endless power.

His arms tightened around me, as if he wanted to trap me in his dominant, possessive net. A second later, I realized he was trying to get me to treat him differently. He didn’t like being a stranger to me.

I didn’t possess the ability to give him what he wanted.

“If you want to know anything about me, ask away, Fiammetta. I’ll answer you truthfully.” He didn’t call me witch now. There was no trace of anger or disdain in his voice, but an attempt to charm me and disarm me.

I wanted to know so much about him and his heritage. I wanted to ask how he could see the magical glyphs on my skin since no one else could. I wanted to find out if he had seen any of my kind in his travels across the universe, and I especially wanted to know how he planned on escaping from Pandemonium.

But if I asked him, I’d reveal my vulnerability. I’d interrogated him when he’d first fallen. If I kept asking him the same things, he would grow suspicious.

Gabriel had a keen sense.

Besides, I would forget his answers if I did not record them on my skin. And Kaara wasn’t here to remember them for me.

An alarming thought hit my nerves. 

How could Desdemona know that my mind was broken? 

The only one who could have known was Akem. 

Did he conspire with the vampire prince? Akem hadn’t allowed any alien being to step into his jungle except me. I knew he’d felt kinship toward me, and he was intrigued by me.

But since Gabriel had fallen, something had changed. I felt it in the air.

I hadn’t gone to the jungle for five days now. I was needed in the tower after I’d broken the truce with Desdemona. If my army and I separated, we would be vulnerable to the vampires’ attack.

During my absence, Akem might have changed his attitude toward me.

The last time I’d left, it hadn’t been on friendly terms. I’d fought his creatures and he’d been angry with me for helping Gabriel escape his realm. 

If Akem decided to be my enemy…

A foreboding feeling seized me.

Gabriel pulled out his cock, leaving a sudden empty ache in me. The fire beneath the ice in me wanted him to stoke it higher. And I desperately needed his flame to banish the cold dread in me.

He wanted to flip me over, so he could look into my eyes and see my reaction when he fucked me. He had more questions for me.

I resisted him. I swatted his hand away, held his rock-hard cock, and inserted it back into my pussy. I rode hard along his length with frantic need.

Gabriel groaned. “Fine, if this is what you want!”

He grabbed my hips and drove into me with incredible speed, his raw energy pouring into me like the force from the stars, until I erupted and came apart.

My trembling inner walls clenched his shaft like a merciless iron fist.

“You milk me so hard,” Gabriel growled. “I’ve never come so hard with any other woman.” 

He thrust ruthlessly though my climax and emptied himself into me.

While his body shuddered from his intense pleasure, he whispered in my ear, “Tell me, Fiammetta, what’s going on between you and the vampire prince? Why did you kill his messenger for a few provocative words that meant nothing to others? I’ll defend you, but I don’t like being kept in the dark.”