Her Demonic Angel - Summary

Her Demonic Angel

A demonic angel with a heart of ice, Veiron walks a dark path with vengeance on his mind. Nothing will sway him from his mission to destroy his master... until he risks his life to enter Hell once more to save a mortal female. The fiery beauty makes him burn with hungers he must battle and needs he cannot deny, tempting him to surrender body and soul to her.

Erin is convinced her refusal to do the Devil’s bidding will see her die in a terrifying realm straight out of her nightmares. The last thing she expects is the lethally sensual warrior who breaks into her cell and awakens the darkest desires of her heart and a fierce longing to know the heat of his caress.

Pulled into an incredible world where war is set to ignite and darkness is on the rise, Erin races with Veiron to escape the Devil’s legions in a journey fraught with danger and filled with passion that flares white-hot.

When Erin is faced with a life-shattering realisation and an extraordinary destiny, will their love give them the strength to battle both Heaven and Hell or will they be parted forever?

 

This is an 8 chapter sample, not a complete book. For information on where the book is available, please visit:

http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/hda

Copyright

Copyright © 2012 Felicity Heaton

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The right of Felicity Heaton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First printed September 2012

First Edition

Layout and design by Felicity Heaton

All characters in this publication are purely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover by Felicity Heaton

Chapter 1

It was the Devil who took her.

Erin was sure of it.

It was the Devil who had come in the dead of night, entering the bedroom of her loft apartment like black mist to take her as she slept.

And he wasn’t red all over or had hooves and horns like in movies or fables.

He was immense, with skin as black as coal, eyes that shone red like car brake lights and the wings of a dragon curling from his back.

He had brought her here to a fiery, broken and inhospitable land where perpetual tormented screams chased every shred of calm and peace from her soul and the air was so thick with the stomach-turning stench of sulphur that she couldn’t breathe.

It was Hell.

At first, Erin had thought the whole event was a vivid and disturbing nightmare, worse than any she had experienced before, but she had hurt herself on one of the shards of black rock that formed the floor and the three walls of her cell and she hadn’t woken.

And then they had hurt her too.

The Devil had come alone at first, entering her cell to glare at her in silence and ignore her pleas to tell him what he wanted with her. Not a word had left his wide black lips. The only time she had gained a response from him was the one instance she had felt brave enough to stand up to him and had tried to force him to speak. Then, he had bared sharp crimson teeth at her and hissed. She had fallen on her backside trying to escape him, afraid that he would attack her, and had cut her palms and scraped the soles of her bare feet as she had crab-crawled away from him.

Now, he no longer came alone.

Now, she no longer feared him.

She couldn’t muster that emotion whenever he visited her. Fear had given way to anger, leaving her brave enough to face death in order to get some answers.

Two other smaller but similar creatures accompanied him. None of them spoke. They didn’t even flinch when she hit them in an attempt to make them talk and tell her what they wanted with her, bashing her fists against their thick limbs and the granite band of stomach exposed between their red-edged black chest armour and the strips that protected their hips. She wanted to punch them in the face but they towered over her, at least three feet taller than she was. Several times, she had struck them hard in the groin but each had only gained her pain rather than satisfaction. They were quick to retaliate, slamming meaty arms into her stomach and sending her crashing into the rough black walls of her prison.

Each visit lasted only fifteen minutes or was it longer? She had lost track of time in this hellish place. Minutes seemed like hours.

Erin was too tired to hit them now. Hunger had set in she didn’t know how many days or weeks ago and now she was so weak that her head swam and she spent most of her waking hours hallucinating about food. Petrified pained screams rang in her ears as she sat near the open wall of her black cell, staring wearily into the hazy fiery distance. The black jaw-length jags of her hair hung across one side of her face, stinking of boiled eggs. The smell had invaded everything. Her small black sleep shorts and tank top, every inch of exposed dirty skin, and her mind too. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the jagged wall behind her, too tired and hungry to sleep, using all of her strength to keep breathing.

They would come soon.

She hadn’t seen them in what might have been a day.

There was no sky in the view from her cell. Just an endless black vault above her, and fields of lava and brimstone as far as the eye could see several hundred feet below.

Erin inhaled slowly and smelled steak.

She frowned. Steak. She swore she could smell it.

Someone had invented a new form of torture. The scent of juicy frying meat wafted through the huge open wall and before she could consider what she was doing, she was standing at the edge of the floor and staring down into the glowing abyss. Hot air battered her as it rose from the inferno below. Her vision swam from the heat and her hunger, causing the sheer cliff face to wobble and distort.

Her mouth watered.

Her stomach growled.

The door at her back opened and she turned sharply. Her foot slipped on the loose stones at the edge.

Before her gasp could escape her lips, a man was holding her with one arm snaked around her back, bending over her. She stared down, wild eyes watching the rocks bouncing off the endless black cragged cliff and disappearing into the fiery river below. Her heart hammered erratically against her chest and she instinctively grabbed the man’s arms, desperate to save herself from following the rocks and afraid that he might drop her over the edge.

“Careful,” the man whispered close to her ear, his voice deep and exotic, sending a strange hot shiver through her. He righted her, kept one hand on her arm and led her away from the edge.

Erin stared at her handsome saviour, mind racing to catch up with everything that had happened in the past few seconds. He still held her arm, his smile perfect though lacking emotion and golden eyes bright and alluring. She couldn’t take her eyes away from them and the longer she stared into them, the more relaxed she felt.

His sensual smile widened and he released her arm, preened the longer tendrils of his black hair back from his face, and then frowned at his hand. Touching her had dirtied it. His expression curled into one of disgust and he turned his back on her.

The heavy compliant feeling that had been building inside her disappeared in an instant and the delicious scent of food assaulted her.

Her gaze snapped to the door and the source of the tempting smell.

The Devil.

He stood there flanked by the two smaller creatures like him, his glowing red eyes fixed straight at her over the head of the elegant man now strolling towards him. The two of them couldn’t have looked more different to each other. The Devil was a beast, black-skinned and huge, his massive dragon-like wings furled against his back, and his body barely covered by crimson-edged obsidian armour. The man was all dark beauty and refinement, dressed sharply in a black suit that highlighted his pale, flawless skin and glossy black hair.

The man waved his hand and the Devil held something out to him.

A tray with a very elegant domed silver plate cover on it.

Erin realised her mistake.

Not the Devil, but a servant.

Erin stared at the man as he took the tray from the beast she had thought was the Devil, removed the cover with a flourish, revealing the most amazing and mouth-watering food she had ever seen, and turned to hold it out to her.

Tempting her.

He was the Devil.

Erin backed away on instinct, aware that before her stood a man who had made her feel compliant by only looking into her eyes and behind her was a sheer drop to a very painful death. She swallowed, heart hammering, and clenched her fists, determined to stand her ground. She had feared the three demonic creatures that had regularly visited her cell but she hadn’t let them get the better of her, and she hadn’t let her captivity break her. She wasn’t going to let this man sweep in and do in seconds what they had failed to do in days.

She straightened and glared at him, lifting her chin in defiance. She was strong. Brave. Her limbs trembled but she refused to let her fear show. The Devil surely thrived on the fear of his victims and making them suffer. He would get no satisfaction from her.

“I apologise for the way you have been treated, Erin,” he said, his deep voice sending another burst of heat over her skin. The sickening feel of it distracted her from what he had said but the moment it had passed, she frowned.

He knew her name.

Erin supposed that shouldn’t surprise her. He was the Prince of Darkness after all. It answered one of the questions that had plagued her during her captivity. He had come specifically for her.

“What do you want with me?” She stood her ground as he moved a step closer, still holding the tray out to her.

“Why don’t you have a seat and enjoy this meal, and we will discuss why I desired your company.”

Erin frowned. “There is nothing to sit on besides the floor.”

He smiled and a large dark carved wooden table appeared behind him, followed by two matching tall-backed chairs with black padded seats. He bowed his head and swept an arm towards them.

“Is this better?” he said and set the tray of food down on the table. “Whatever comforts you desire are yours to have.”

For a price, no doubt. Erin didn’t move. She didn’t trust this man. If she sat on the chair, it would probably wrap itself around her to trap her or something bizarre like it. Her head reasoned that if he wanted to hurt her, he could probably do so without tying her up first. He was the Devil, and he had already shown her that all he had to do was stare into her eyes and she started thinking about doing whatever he asked of her.

“Come, Erin.” He held his hand out to her, the sleeve of his crisp black jacket pulling back to reveal the cuff of his equally dark shirt and glittering jet-black cufflinks. “I have apologised for your treatment, have I not? Can we not talk like civilised people?”

“No, thank you. Your goons took me in the middle of the night and you’ve been holding me in this cell for God knows how long.”

The Devil hissed, his straight white teeth sharpening to points and his eyes burning red.

Erin backed away another step.

He smoothed his hand over his black hair and cleared his throat. The crimson drained from his golden eyes. “I apologise. That word does not sit well with me.”

“What word... oh... God?”

He snarled and was before her in an instant, his fingers closed around her throat and choking her, sharp black claws digging into her skin. He released her as quickly as he had grabbed her and distanced himself.

Erin couldn’t move. She had gone rigid, frozen to her core, the moment he had launched himself at her. Her heart felt as though it wasn’t beating.

Note to self. Never speak about God in the presence of the Devil.

“Self-righteous bastard,” the Devil spat and snarled again, pacing away from her, his body shifting with the sensual and lethal grace of a predator. He turned red eyes on her and frowned. “You would do well not to believe in such a malevolent conceited creature. Now, sit!”

Erin didn’t get a choice. One moment she stood near the edge of her black cell, the heat buffeting her as it rose from the abyss, and the next she sat at the dark wooden table with the tray of food in front of her.

“Eat.” That word was little more than a growl.

She didn’t trust the delicious-looking steak, potatoes and vegetables in front of her but she wasn’t about to tell the Devil where to stick them when she had already managed to royally piss him off. She took the fork in one hand and the steak knife in the other, and paused to stare at it.

“Do not even think about it.” The Devil casually slid into the chair opposite her. He crossed his legs at the knee and leaned back into his chair, his eyes amber again and a false sense of calm about him. She glanced at the three huge black-skinned demons protecting the door.

Erin cut into her steak. Eating the food was probably the wisest move she could make. Not only would it give the Devil a chance to get what looked to be a temper that surpassed everything she had heard about it under control but it would give her much-needed strength. If she was going to survive whatever ordeal lay ahead of her and get the heck out of Hell and this mess, she was going to need her strength.

She devoured the food, uncaring of the way she looked to the three creatures and man, if you could call the Devil a man, watching her.

It was delicious and strangely revitalising. Every mouthful she swallowed filled her stomach and sent heat flowing through her veins, urging her into taking another bite. Was there something in it?

That thought made her pause and she looked up from her plate to the Devil, meeting his gaze. “What sort of steak is this?”

He smiled. “I believe it was the last unicorn.”

Erin retched and covered her mouth, barely managing to keep the food down. “You’re kidding. Right? There’s no such thing as unicorns.”

“Not anymore, there isn’t.” His smile held and she could see the truth in his eyes. God. She was eating a horse. Not just a horse, but a mythical creature. Didn’t unicorns have amazing powers of healing or some rubbish like that? No wonder she felt so revitalised.

And sick.

Erin pushed her plate away.

“You are not finished.” The Devil frowned at the remains on her plate, leaned across the dark wooden table and pushed it back towards her.

Erin shoved it back at him and then smiled politely. “I really couldn’t eat another bite.”

His look darkened. “Sentimentality will be your failing. I find it disappointing to discover such feelings in you.”

She didn’t care if it turned out he was right or what he thought about her. She didn’t want to eat horse, let alone the last unicorn. The sick feeling in her stomach worsened, the food she had consumed sitting like lead in it now.

“Please tell me you didn’t kill it just for this meal?”

The Devil smiled. He had. She felt lousy. She was personally responsible for the extinction of a creature.

“I had to find a way to restore your strength. See, these idiots were not supposed to take you from your home until yesterday and it was supposed to be done during the day... and they were supposed to have brought you directly to me.”

That sounded like three strikes to Erin. The Devil’s golden gaze remained on her but her attention leapt to the three creatures standing in front of the cell door. The one who had taken her shifted foot to foot, a nervous edge about him now.

He looked down at his feet. The ground there burned bright orange and began to bubble. The creature took a leaping step forwards, straight into the path of the Devil. She hadn’t seen him move. He grabbed the large demon by the throat, swung himself up onto his back and took hold of his wings. The creature shrieked and snarled, and frantically tried to shake the Devil off his back. The two other creatures remained at the door, eyes forward, not watching the horror as it played out in front of them.

Erin didn’t want to watch either but she couldn’t take her eyes off the fight. The huge demon struggled but it was no use. The Devil planted his shiny leather shoes between the creature’s shoulder blades, held his leathery dark wings at their base where they attached to his immense body, and leaned back. The demon arched forwards and roared in pain as his wings tore from his back. Blood splattered onto the black floor of her cell, drenching and then soaking into the basalt.

The Devil landed on his feet and casually discarded the pair of wings.

The demon stumbled forwards, face contorted in pain, and tried to get away. It was no use. There was nowhere for him to run. The Devil stalked towards the creature, his expression a mask of darkness and his eyes glowing bright crimson, and grabbed him by one thick arm. He spun on the heel of his polished shoes, swung the demon towards the open wall of her cell and released him.

He screamed the whole way down. Erin covered her ears, closed her eyes, and curled up in her chair.

She had presumed the Devil would be a sadistic and vicious bastard, but he exceeded her expectations. The table knocked against her elbows and she peered up, afraid of what she might see. The Devil sat opposite her, blood splattered across his handsome face and coating his hands. He huffed, produced a deep red handkerchief from his breast pocket, and set about cleaning the blood off his face.

“Now, where were we?” he said and discarded the bloodied handkerchief.

He had missed a spot, a single red streak that cut across his sculpted left cheek, but she didn’t have the courage to mention it. All of her bravery had drained from her and she trembled in her seat, afraid that she would be the next one he pitched over the edge and into the abyss.

“You have lost your fire.” He frowned, black eyebrows pinching tightly, and then sighed and relaxed into his chair. “I apologise. I should have meted out his punishment in private. It was not my intention to startle you.”

Startle? She wasn’t startled. She was petrified.

Erin shook her head, unable to do anything else or speak.

The Devil smiled at her. “Now, I believe you asked why you are here?”

She nodded, heart pounding, fearing what he would say.

“The answer is very simple. It regards a game and your role in it.”

“A game?” She swallowed. What sort of sinister game was he talking about? He nodded and she found her courage. “What’s my role?”

His smile widened, turning cruel and evil.

“You are bait.”

She frowned. “Bait for who?”

Who did she know that the Devil was interested in luring down to Hell?

He waved a hand and a shimmering image appeared behind him. A tropical island. The image zoomed in to the white shore and a woman there.

A shiver cascaded over Erin’s skin and icy fingers squeezed her heart.

Her silver hair reflected the bright sunlight and that part of her didn’t make sense to Erin, but she knew her without a doubt. She would recognise this woman anywhere, had spent the past few months worried about her because she hadn’t been in touch since then, and her calls had been infrequent since a year before that.

Her sister.

Erin’s throat closed and her eyes filled with tears of relief that her sister was safe even while the claws seizing her heart tightened their grip.

“Amelia.”

Chapter 2

Veiron stalked through the dense humid jungle, cutting a path through the bracken with his broadsword. Marcus had better have a damn good reason for dragging him out to such a hellish place just to speak to him. Veiron growled when another insect stuck him with its pointy end and slapped his hand down hard on it, killing it and leaving a small red spot on his tanned skin. What had happened to the good old days of meeting on a nice sunny and remote island? He didn’t like it in the jungle as it was and this one was high on his list of areas to avoid.

There was a gate to Hell here.

He had spent the past year and a half avoiding the gates to Hell, unwilling to get himself caught by making such a rookie mistake. The Devil wasn’t happy about Veiron’s rebellion and wanted him to pay in blood for disobeying him by assisting Amelia and Marcus in their fight against the eternal game that Heaven and Hell was playing with her, and them all.

Amelia was the current reincarnation of the original angel. The only female angel in existence. God had given her too much power and the Devil had tampered with her creation so her soul had been born in Hell. She had led men to sin and to war with each other. God had killed her but angels were immortal. Her death had only triggered her reincarnation.

That reincarnation saw her born in the mortal realm as a human. Under normal circumstances, Heaven and Hell allowed her to live her life as a mortal and die as one. Things changed when the planets came into alignment. Then, the two realms proved just how sick and vicious they could be.

Heaven sent Apollyon, the great destroyer and one of the angels of the Apocalypse, to kill her and awaken her in her angel form. Then, it was all hands on deck in a race to be the first to get their mitts on her. Heaven won most of the time, using Marcus to capture the errant female angel and bring her to the altar in Heaven where she would be sacrificed, her blood used to seal Hell for centuries.

Veiron had won a few times.

For him and Marcus, it didn’t matter who the victor was. They both died whenever she did because her death reset the game. Veiron was reborn as a guardian angel along with Marcus, only he was destined to fall into dispute with Heaven and to fall into Hell shortly following that.

He never had a choice.

Neither did Marcus.

Both of them were pawns in the game. Heaven and Hell forced them, and other angels like Apollyon, to do their bidding against their will.

At least Marcus and the others forgot everything that happened to them when they were reborn. Veiron generally had a few centuries of peace as an angel, oblivious of everything he had done in his past lives, before he fell and pledged himself in service of the Devil.

When that happened, he remembered everything. He remembered killing the female angel and spilling her blood, and dying himself, or the countless times Marcus had been the victor and Veiron had dropped dead somewhere. He didn’t want to remember the terrible things he had done and how he’d had no choice other than to do them. He didn’t want to remember that it was going to happen all over again because Heaven had agreed with Hell that the terms of their eternal game would include him being the Devil’s pawn.

He hated Heaven for that, but not as much as he despised Hell.

Veiron hacked at the undergrowth, tempted to blast it out of his way with his power to unleash some of his rage. He couldn’t risk it though. It was dangerous at the best of times to use his power. The Devil could use it to pinpoint his location and send his army of angels after him. At the worst of times, like the one he was currently experiencing, it would be a grand mistake. This close to the gate, the Devil would easily sense him if he used even the barest slither of his power. Fuck, he couldn’t even use his wings or his spear to get him to his destination. He was reduced to wading through a hot, sweaty, disgusting jungle using a mortal weapon.

Veiron snarled.

Marcus had better have a damn good reason for dragging him out here into the middle of nowhere.

The sun began to sink lower, the dense jungle around him darkening. He checked the GPS device Marcus had mailed to his hotel in Rio de Janeiro. Still miles to go. Veiron huffed and tucked the small dark grey device back into the pocket of his black jeans. His feet ached.

He grunted.

Flying would be sweet right about now.

Another insect bit him and Veiron barely stopped himself from taking his sword to it. So what if he lost an arm? It would be worth it to stop the little fuckers from feasting on his blood. They were getting worse with each minute.

He paused and raised his arm, glaring at the mosquito. It flew away before he could flick it off him. He hoped the fucker got sick from drinking his demonic blood.

Veiron growled and stalked on, trying to rein in his temper. Even that would get him noticed if he wasn’t careful. All it took was his eyes to change, revealing his demonic side, and he would pop up on the Devil’s radar.

He wasn’t sure how much more of this lying low crap he could take. The past eighteen or so months had been torture and he was close to hauling arse down into the bottomless pit in Hell and having it out with the Devil face to face.

What a bloody way to go.

The Devil would take him down before he could even step within forty metres of him. His master didn’t tolerate insubordination and helping the enemy was probably punishable by an eternity of torture.

Veiron’s death would be endless.

The light faded. Veiron stopped, sheathed his broadsword in the case strapped to his back, and rifled around in his small black backpack. He shoved past his folded up leather jacket and grabbed the flashlight. He clicked the button. It didn’t come on.

Just great. Stuck in the middle of Hell on Earth, being eaten alive by bugs, in the dark. He shook the Maglite and looked down at it as he clicked the button again. It came on, blinding him, and he swung it away. White spots winked over his vision.

Veiron sighed and leaned back against a tree, resting there with the torch pointed at the floor. He tipped his chin up and looked through the canopy to the inky sky beyond. It was alive with stars. The only times he had seen this many were when he had visited the island where Marcus and Amelia had remained hidden until recently.

Heaven didn’t have night. It was perpetual daylight there. Hell had a roof over it.

This was the one reason that he envied the mortals. They were able to see such beauty on a grand scale if they only looked up.

Well, this and alcohol. Heaven forbade such substances in its environs. Hell made a wicked form of liquor that could burn the roof off the top of a man’s mouth and leave them unable to taste anything for a week. It wasn’t quite the same as mortal-made alcohol. Mortals knew how to live it up. A million different flavours and none of them designed to knock you dead after one shot.

He could use a shot of something right about now.

Veiron untied his long flame-red hair, raked his fingers through the sweat-soaked strands, and then tied it back into a ponytail, the bells on the end of his leather thong jingling as he did so. His black t-shirt and jeans were equally damp and uncomfortable, and his army boots felt as though someone had poured a bucket of water into each one.

Why the Devil had Marcus chosen such a horrible fucking place as a meeting point?

He was going to wring the angel’s scrawny bloody neck when he eventually found him.

Veiron drew his sword from his back, clutching it in his right hand and the torch in his left, and trudged on. Nocturnal creatures of all sizes crossed his path during the trek, took one look at him and scattered into the jungle. Wise animals. His stomach grumbled, as though he needed the reminder that he hadn’t eaten in too long. He doubled his pace, crashing through the undergrowth, uncaring that the sound of his movements carried for miles through the night.

Anyone around here looking for trouble was welcome to come and try him on for size. The mood he was in right now, he would slaughter them.

The GPS device bleeped, signalling that he was close. He checked it again, juggling it and his flashlight. Very close. A few hundred metres now. He shoved it away and trekked onwards, and clicked his torch off when an orange glow cut through the trees ahead.

The undergrowth thinned and a small clearing came into view. Marcus sat on a log, the fire in front of him and his bare back to Veiron, exposing the elaborate blue-grey wings engraved on his shoulder blades. Veiron grinned.

He crept forwards, his sword ready to strike. This would teach the former angel for making him come out here into this godforsaken jungle. Marcus would probably jump higher than Heaven when Veiron tapped him on the shoulder with the sword. His grin widened.

Something cold pressed against his throat and he froze.

His dark eyes slid to his left.

Amelia stood there, dressed head to toe in black combat gear, her small dagger held to his Adam’s apple. She smiled and her grey eyes brightened, but the fatigue and worry he could see in them didn’t lift. The past year and a half had been difficult for her. It had been difficult for them all. He had never seen her so on edge before though. Had someone found them and tried to kill her?

Both Heaven and Hell had been quiet since Marcus had fallen and joined with Amelia, allowing her to become his new master, endowing him with the same silvery unusual wings that she had, a mixture of feathers on top and leathery dragon-like membrane on the bottom half, and the same incredible powers.

“Been training?” He pushed her arm away, removing the blade from his throat.

Marcus didn’t look back at him. He prodded the fire with a charred stick. “We heard you coming from miles away. Subtlety is not your forte, is it?”

Veiron shrugged and slid his broadsword into the sheath on his back.

He walked into the clearing, dumped his backpack on the leafy ground and undid the leather straps that ran under his arms and held the sword case against his back. He let it drop to the ground next to his backpack and sat on a tree stump near the fire. Small insects drifted too close to the flames and fizzled out of existence. He faced that sort of end if the Devil ever got his hands on him.

“So... what the fuck am I doing in the middle of the Amazon, close to a gate that spells certain doom for me?” Veiron looked from Marcus, with his silver-blue eyes and stoic expression, to Amelia, deciding she was the easier target and the reason Marcus had requested his presence judging by the feelings she wasn’t bothering to mask.

She sat down on the log opposite him, her black clothes blending into the darkness beyond her but her silver hair making her stand out. It was up tonight, tied back in a tight ponytail like his. She looked as though she was enjoying the humidity of the rainforest as much as he was, so why had she chosen this as the location for their latest meeting?

Marcus wore similar black fatigues on his lower half, his own black shirt laying over the log to his left. His bare muscular chest bore the scars of a recent battle and there was a thin dark line cutting across his jaw.

“Why do I get the feeling we’re in a whole heap of shit?” Veiron said and Amelia stared at her feet. “Is someone going to tell me why I’m here, or do I have to beat it out of Marcus?”

He grinned at Marcus when the black-haired man glared at him, his pale eyes dark and daring him to try.

Marcus cleared his throat but it was Amelia who spoke.

“I need your help.” Her soft voice drifted across the crackling fire, conveying every ounce of worry that he had seen in her eyes. “I want to go myself but Marcus won’t let me.”

“Go where?” He didn’t really need to ask that question. Cold realisation sank deep into his gut. They were close to one of the gates to Hell for a reason, and it was one he really didn’t want to contemplate. Amelia had to have a damn good reason for wanting to go into Hell and Marcus had to have an even better reason for making her call in a favour from him.

“I can’t leave her there.”

Her? He looked at Marcus. The ex-angel sighed, lifted his gaze away from the fire, and looked across at him.

“The Devil has her sister,” he said, voice laden with a mixture of anger, concern and fear.

“I can’t leave her there, Veiron,” Amelia whispered and tears lined her grey eyes. Not the waterworks. He could handle anything but a crying woman. “Marcus won’t let me go and I’m afraid that if he goes alone, he won’t come back... or he won’t be able to find Erin. Please... I know I’m asking a lot of you but I need someone strong who knows Hell and won’t rouse suspicion. I need her back.”

Fuck, what was he supposed to say to her? Sorry, Love, I’m not interested in saving your dear little sister from the Devil and getting myself killed in the process? He was only alive because Amelia was. If she went down into Hell, she would get herself killed by the Devil or any of the other million vicious creatures that had orders to separate her head from her body by any means. If that happened, it was game over and he would wake up a guardian angel again, unaware of everything that had happened in his past lives and destined to fall and remember it all.

Still, he really didn’t feel like venturing down into the bowels of Hell on a suicide mission to save a woman when he was high on the Devil’s shit list himself. Everyone was looking for him, both up here and down there. The slightest mistake on his part and his former colleagues, the army of Hell’s angels belonging to the Devil, would be coming after him to haul his arse in for the crime of assisting Amelia and Marcus in their battle against the game.

“Please, Veiron?” Amelia whispered again and he couldn’t stand seeing the tears in her eyes. She had already been through hell because of this vicious game and had almost died by the hand of her lover, Marcus. She deserved to live, and so did he.

They all deserved some peace.

Veiron closed his eyes and huffed.

“Fine. I’ll take a trip to Hell,” he said and he could almost hear Amelia smile, could sense a glimmer of her relief and hear her heartbeat pick up.

“Thank you,” she said and he looked across the fire at her and shook his head. There was no reason to thank him.

He hadn’t promised that he would find her sister and bring her back in one piece.

He had only said that he would make the journey to Hell.

Whether it would be a one-way trip or not was yet to be seen.

It felt like a suicide mission to him.

Chapter 3

Erin sat with her back against the wall opposite the open side of her black rocky cell and stared into the hazy fiery distance, watching volcanic vents spewing lava high into the air and listening to the constant screams. She couldn’t remember if it was five days or twenty since the Devil had visited her, but it had been a long time since she had seen anyone.

The other two who had been with the Devil during his visit hadn’t come back to check on her. Someone slid a meal through a grate in the bottom of her door from time to time. She ate only the vegetables, unable to stomach the thought of eating more of the final unicorn in existence let alone the meat itself.

She could have been somewhere more comfortable if she had complied with the Devil’s desires.

He had told her that before storming out of the cell and slamming the door behind him, leaving her alone with the dismembered wings of the last creature who had dared to defy him.

She had felt sick, reliving the Devil ripping them from the demon’s back, whenever she saw them so she had gingerly dragged them to the open side of her cell and tossed them down into the fiery river far below.

She could have escaped this place if she had gone with him. Not the Devil, but the other one who had visited her. At first, she had thought it was the Devil. The man had flown up from the abyss on huge black feathered wings, his wild hair as dark as midnight and his eyes as golden as a hawk’s. The only items of clothing he had worn were a black loincloth covered by tattered age-worn strips of armour and boots that reached his knees and had gold-edged black moulded plates that completely covered his shins.

His sudden appearance had startled her and he had looked so much like the Devil that she had fled to the back of her cell and had done a double take. Only on closer inspection had she realised that this man was different. If it hadn’t been for the black wings, she would have thought him an angel. He had been handsome, but darkness had clung to him, a sense of evil in the twist of his lips as he smiled at her and told her that she could have her freedom if she came with him.

It had tempted her more than the Devil’s offer and she had almost considered placing her hand into the man’s and letting him take her away. Only that lingering sense that he was evil beyond words, as likely to murder her as he was save her, had kept her at the back of her cell. He had hovered near the open wall of her prison, beating his wings and using the rising heat to keep him close to stationary. When she had refused, Erin had expected him to enter her cell and force her to leave with him, but he had snorted, a feral sound that had made her jump, and then swooped out of sight.

She had been too scared to race forwards and see if he really was gone. She had sunk to her backside close to the door of her cell and stared out at the world beyond her prison, wondering what would have happened if she had gone with the stranger. Would he have freed her or would he have taken her to the Devil, or would he have killed her?

His reluctance to enter her cell and the wary glances he had given it had left her with the impression that he hadn’t been willing to breach it for some reason. He had wanted her to extend her hand to him, beyond the boundaries of her prison. That had led her to settle on the idea that if he had entered the cell, something would have happened. What, she didn’t know, and she didn’t care.

She would have her freedom somehow, but it wouldn’t be with the help of a man who had looked like some sort of demonic angel.

Erin rubbed her knees, idly trying to get rid of some of the layers of dirt from her bare skin. At least it was warm in Hell so her scant clothing wasn’t a problem. She laughed at herself, the sound loud and echoing around her cell, jarring with the endless screams that rose up from the abyss.

Was that where the Devil was right now? Too busy tormenting his victims to come and visit her and try to convince her to do as he had asked.

He had told her that she could have her freedom if she would cast aside her sentimentality and kill her sister. Her stomach rolled in response to that memory and she slammed her mind shut against it, unwilling to contemplate such a thing.

Erin buried her face in her knees and hugged them, tired right down to her bones and starving. The few morsels she ate whenever food came through the door weren’t enough to keep her going. Without eating the unicorn meat, she was slowly growing weaker, the effects of the few mouthfuls she’d had wearing off a little more each day. Her throat felt like sandpaper too. The Devil clearly didn’t understand that the constant heat of his hellish realm was dehydrating her.

Then again, did he really care if she died?

She was bait. Whether she was alive or not didn’t matter. Or did it? He had been genuinely angry that she had been held captive for days on end without him knowing and without food or comfort. She could have had that comfort and all the food she could eat if she had only complied with him one way or the other. Play bait or do his work and kill her sister for him.

Erin wanted to do neither. She didn’t understand why the Devil wanted her sister but she didn’t want Amelia to come to Hell and try to save her. She would rather die here and rot in this cell than see her sister come to harm.

She shifted onto her knees, the rough basalt floor cutting into her dirty flesh, and pushed herself onto her feet. Her steps were unstable but she made it to the side wall of her prison and held onto it as she moved forwards, towards the edge.

Hot air blasted upwards from the inferno hundreds of feet below and almost knocked her backwards. It curled around her, blowing the fringe of her straight black hair upwards and stinging her eyes. She squinted and stared out at the unforgiving bleak landscape that stretched around her, all black rocky crags and flaming rivers. Huge black-skinned beasts roamed the land, their dragon-like wings furled against their backs and weapons in their hands. They tormented any smaller creature they passed, bullying it until it either escaped or gave up and cowered at their feet.

She had grown strangely used to the existence of this place and the creatures that dwelled within it, as though she had always known it was real and not the stuff of legend and myths.

Her gaze tracked the demons far below. Erin had watched the comings and goings of the creatures who guarded the prison, trying to figure them out and see if they had any weak spots. They didn’t. Nothing could stand up to them.

Nothing except the Devil at least.

She couldn’t see him amongst the creatures below her.

Erin leaned further forwards and assessed the ragged cliff face. She might have been able to make it down that way if she had been a champion rock-climber. She wasn’t. She was a weak, exhausted and sometimes scared woman who had never climbed anything bigger than a hill, let alone scaled a sheer rock face several hundred feet high.

The door opened behind her and Erin didn’t make the mistake of whirling to face the visitor this time.

She turned slowly, expecting to find either the Devil or one of his cronies come to torment her.

It was neither.

A bloodstained and beaten man wearing tight black jeans that emphasised the thickness of his thighs and a black t-shirt that stretched across the impressive hard cut breadth of his chest stood in the doorway.

He was holding a very big sword.

Erin swallowed.

Had he come to kill her?

She glanced back at the abyss below her feet. What would be a better and less painful death? Falling to this scarlet-haired man’s sword or plummeting into the volcanic river?

“Erin, I presume?” His deep voice wrapped around her and Erin couldn’t miss the concern that laced the weariness and irritation in it.

Erin looked back at him.

He slid the broadsword down his back and scrubbed his hand across several days’ worth of dark growth on his handsome face.

One good-looking man had fooled her already and it wasn’t going to happen again. This man was every bit as lethal, brutal and vicious as the Devil. It was there in his eyes and the way he held himself, legs spread in a warrior’s stance, ready for a fight.

He looked as though he had already been through several battles recently. Now that she looked closer, she spotted tears in his t-shirt that revealed startlingly enticing glimpses of hard packed muscles.

Erin dragged her gaze down to her own feet.

She must have lost it in the past few days. She had finally plunged into crazy, her mind frazzled by her captivity and being in Hell. She had to be insane to be ogling the man who had clearly come to kill her.

“Why don’t you just do it and get this over with?” she said, feeling a spark of defiance ignite in her chest. If she was going to die, she might as well go down fighting.

“Excuse me?” He frowned at her, a quizzical look filling his dark eyes. “Get what over with?”

“Killing me.”

His dark red eyebrows pinched together. “If you’re not Erin, I might.”

It was her turn to frown. “You don’t want to kill me?”

“Are you Erin?”

She nodded.

“Then I don’t want to kill you.” He stepped into her cell and she noted that he didn’t bother to stay close to the door. If she were entering a cell on a mission to save someone, she would certainly keep one foot in the door in case a bad guy came along and shut them both in. Did he have another means of escape if that happened? He raked dark eyes over her and she shivered under the heat of his gaze. “You are not what I was expecting.”

“Ditto,” she said and shrugged when he looked into her eyes, confusion lighting his again. “I was expecting the Devil to come back.”

“The snide little fucker actually paid you a visit in person?”

Erin frowned at how casually he badmouthed the Devil, as though he wasn’t afraid of him. She stared at the man, taking in his impressive height and build. He was taller than the Devil and much broader too, thick sinewy muscles visible beneath his tight clothing. His biceps were huge, so large she would struggle to wrap both of her hands around one arm. Her fingertips and thumbs wouldn’t touch if she tried. Matching black and red tribal tattoos curled around those biceps, a tantalising peek of a larger design that disappeared under the sleeves of his t-shirt.

Erin found herself wanting to strip his top off to see the rest of it.

She really had lost her mind.

“Are you alright?” He frowned again.

“Just a little brain damage,” she said, trying to make light of everything.

He crossed the black floor and stopped before her, towering close to a foot over her, his immense body overshadowing hers and making her feel tiny. He slid one large hand along the line of her jaw, tilted her head back, and stared down into her eyes.

Erin swallowed. It should be illegal for a man to be so handsome yet so lethal-looking. He screamed danger but she wasn’t quaking under his touch because of it. It was a whole other feeling that had her trembling.

“You don’t look crazy,” he whispered and she added his sultry low voice to the list of reasons someone should stamp him with the words ‘dangerous’ and ‘forbidden’. “Now... all opposed to being rescued, raise your hands, otherwise, I’d like to get the fuck out of here.”

Erin didn’t argue, not even when he clamped one strong large hand around her slender wrist and drew the broadsword strapped to his back with the other. She stared at the open door, battling a flood of emotions that threatened to sweep her under. Freedom. This man was here to save her. It was too sweet and glorious to believe. It had to be a cruel trick, another form of torture to break her.

She didn’t have much time to take in what was really happening when he pulled her over the threshold and into a long black corridor that ran between the cells. Before she could even glance back at the cell that had been her home for God only knew how many days, he was dragging her along the hallway.

“Can you run?” He glanced over his broad shoulders at her and didn’t give her a chance to respond before he started at a pace.

Erin tried to keep up. The prospect of actually surviving and escaping Hell flooded her with adrenaline that had her bare feet moving but she couldn’t match his long strides. A bright flash blinded her but it didn’t slow her companion. He kept running. They passed a large open room and she turned her head in time to see several dead bodies strewn across a floor slick with blood. More flashes lit the darkness and with each one, a body disappeared.

They looked like humans. Had the man killed them to reach her? What was that light and why were they disappearing?

She started to ask but her gaze settled on the hard angles of his profile and the stern set of his jaw and she thought better of it. This man was her ticket out of Hell and she wasn’t about to piss him off, not when she had the impression that he was quite content with killing.

Erin pounded along the black-walled corridor beside him, her legs beginning to tire and each step jarring her bones and sending pain shooting across the soles of her feet. She lost her footing on one of the sets of steps that led downwards and almost fell. The man’s hand on her wrist stopped her. He pulled her up by her arm as though she was nothing but a ragdoll in his hands, suspending her off the ground for a second before setting her down again.

“You are weak,” he said and she bristled at the double meaning in his words. He wasn’t just saying she was weak from her captivity, but that he thought she was weak period.

Erin snatched her wrist free of his grasp and rubbed it. She turned her nose up and stormed ahead of him, feeling crazy for taking the lead when she didn’t know where she was going and she didn’t have a weapon, or the knowledge of how to wield one. She couldn’t let him think she was weak though.

He followed behind her, a dark shadow barely a few feet from her, his footsteps almost silent.

They reached a split in the corridor and Erin paused. Neither of the avenues she could take looked inviting. Both were pitch-black and voices came from one. Or was it the other? Everything echoed in the corridors and it was hard to distinguish which would lead her to a grisly death and which would lead her to freedom.

She chose the right.

The man grabbed her around the waist from behind, twisted her in his arm, and slung her over his shoulder.

Erin struggled and his arm tightened against her back, causing his thick shoulder to press into her stomach. Her organs protested, sharp pain lancing each one.

“You’ll fall off. I need to move fast and you’re slowing me down.”

Well, that was just rude. Erin punched his backside. God, it was like a rock. She almost purred. Could this man get any smexier?

“You can’t carry me and fight your way out of here.”

He laughed, the warm timbre of it echoing around the dark walls. “Believe me, Sweetheart, I can fight with both hands tied behind my back. You’re no hindrance at all.”

He jogged down the left corridor with her, each step jolting her on his shoulder until she felt close to losing what little remained of the last thing she ate. Erin grabbed his leather belt, hooked her thumbs into the waist of his jeans and pushed herself up enough that it didn’t hurt as much as he ran.

This was just embarrassing now.

It was bad enough having her rescuer belittle her.

Having him carry her fireman-style to freedom was making her wish he had left her in her cell.

Warm fresh air assaulted her, as fresh as Hell got anyway, and she looked up to see the huge black walls of the prison fortress bouncing away from her.

“You can put me down now,” she said but he didn’t hear her. Either that or he was ignoring her. She was tempted to punch him on the backside again but gave up and let him have his way.

The jagged towers of the prison slowly wobbled into the distance and were lost from view behind the spires of black rock that lined the path her hero had chosen. Vents in their sides and tops belched hot acrid smoke that stole her breath. She pulled his black t-shirt up, exposing a lean delicious back, and covered her mouth with it. How the hell could he run in this?

Erin wanted to be sick.

She counted the bounces in his step to keep her focus off the horrendous smell of rotten eggs invading her lungs and the increasing number of bleached bones that lined the path as though someone had kicked the bodies out of the way and just let them rot there. Or perhaps some smaller creature had picked the bones clean. There were grooves in some of them, as though sharp teeth and claws had scraped them. Erin hoped it had happened after death and that the screams still ringing in her ears weren’t the death cries of people being eaten alive.

The man managed over three hundred steps before he finally stopped and set her down with surprising care in a wide clearing.

“Are you alright?” He held her at arm’s length, looking her over.

Her blood heated when his dark eyes lingered on her breasts and then the tiny shorts she wore.

“Do you always dress like this?” He raised an eyebrow.

Erin folded her arms across her chest, covering her breasts. The black pebbles of the path cut into the bare soles of her feet. “I was in bed when they took me.”

He ran his gaze over her again and a touch of crimson ringed his dark irises.

Erin took a step backwards.

That had to be a reflection of their fiery surroundings. It had to be.

Mr Tall, Dark and Deadly couldn’t be something straight out of Hell.

He frowned at her feet. Erin gasped as his large hands settled on her waist and he lifted her onto a relatively smoother rock on the side of the path.

“I didn’t anticipate this.” He rubbed his stubbly jaw and crouched before her. His hands were gentle as he lifted one of her feet and inspected the sole, his thumbs pressing in and sending a warm jolt up to the apex of her thighs.

She placed one hand on top of his head to steady herself and tried to resist the sudden desire to comb her fingers through the long crimson lengths of his hair.

She had dated a few men with long hair in the past but none of them had dyed it the colour this man had chosen. It was like blood.

“I like your do,” she said with a smile. “It’s pretty cool.”

He frowned up at her. “Do?”

“Your hair.”

His frown intensified. “We are trapped in Hell and you are discussing my hair?”

“I have to do something to take my mind off the fact that I’m trapped in Hell. What dye do you use?”

The man straightened and even when she was standing on a rock, she was still shorter than he was. “It is not dyed.”

“That’s natural?”

“If you would like, I can prove it to you.” His smile was nothing short of salacious and he reached for his belt. “The carpet matches the curtains.”

Erin blushed and grabbed his hands to stop him from going ahead and flashing her. He looked as though he really would go through with it and while the thought of seeing every inch of this man nude was appealing, it couldn’t stand up to her greater desire to escape.

The man shrugged and then did something that really challenged her ability to think straight and focus on escaping.

He removed the leather contraption that held his sword to his back, reached over his head and tugged his black t-shirt off, revealing a body so perfect that it would make angels weep. Every inch of lightly bronzed skin stretched taut over granite hard muscles. They shifted in a sensual symphony as he easily tore his t-shirt into two pieces. Her gaze ambled over him, ignoring her commands to focus on anything other than his godly form, then he upped the stakes and it was game over.

He crouched again and bent over her feet, giving her a glorious view of his strong back and the detailed red and black tribal tattoos that swept up his thick arms and down his shoulder blades. They curled there, skirting identical ridges of scar tissue.

Erin leaned forwards as he finished wrapping one of her feet in half of his ruined t-shirt and started on her other. She swept her fingers along the wide dark scar that slashed up his left shoulder in line with his spine.

The man was gone in a flash, standing several feet away from her and breathing hard.

“What the fuck?” he snarled and Erin flinched, her hand still poised where his back had been. “Don’t touch me. Understand?”

“I’m sorry... I just saw the scars and wondered what had happened to you.” She hated that she couldn’t get her voice above a whisper and that she couldn’t look at him. Shame burned her cheeks. So much for her insane thoughts about paying back her glowering saviour with some naughty time when they made it out of Hell.

Erin stared at her feet. He had done a nice job of covering them with his t-shirt. She supposed she should thank him for coming to save her and for not doing the whole thing with her slung over his shoulder, leaving her feeling weak and pathetic. Maybe she should just ask him to point her in the right direction and she would find the way out on her own. Her gaze shifted to his sword where it lay on the ground. On second thought, he was armed and if she ran across some of those demons, he might be able to fend them off or even kill them.

“Thank you for coming for me. I owe you my life,” she said and finally managed to find the courage to look him in the eye again.

He casually shrugged his wide bare shoulders. “You own me nothing. I’m only here because Amelia would have come if I hadn’t, and if she dies then that’s my life over.”

“Oh.” Erin’s gaze ate basalt again and her cheeks scalded, her burning heart heating them. He was with Amelia. That made sense in a strange way, although it only left her with more questions about why Amelia knew about Hell, what the Devil wanted with her and how she had met this man.

A man who had taken her place, risking his life to save Erin so she didn’t have to.

Erin stepped down from the rock, feeling as though someone had just popped her favourite balloon. She knew she should feel happy that her sister finally had a man in her life that had a noble and good bone in his body but she couldn’t muster the emotion when jealousy was riding her.

Her amber eyes met his dark ones but she couldn’t hold his gaze. It fell to the ground again. She didn’t want to look at him anymore. The blood staining his face and the harsh cuts across his bearded jaw and neck did nothing to dampen his feral handsome looks.

Erin envied Amelia for having him in her life.

“I want to keep moving.” She started off without him, following the winding path that was surrounded by black jagged rocks and bleached bones and stretched into an equally dark and bleak distance.

Erin was beginning to hate black.

The man easily caught up with her in a few long-legged strides and fell into step beside her, his broadsword strapped to his back again. He cut an imposing figure as he strolled along beside her, his air casual yet throwing off a lethal don’t-even-try-it vibe.

She wanted to give him the silent treatment but it had been days since she had spoken to someone and he was currently her mind and heart’s favourite subject. She wanted the goods on this man, every juicy bit of them.

“So... were you a captive here once too and that’s why you know your way around?” That question hung in the air between them.

His lip curled, revealing a flash of straight white teeth, and he frowned.

Clearly, he was still pissed at her for touching him. Well, sorry. She couldn’t have stopped herself if she had tried. She still wouldn’t be able to if she so much as glanced at the scars that he had evidently tattooed around, as though they were central to the design.

He was silent a few seconds longer and then looked down at her out of the corner of his eye and smiled.

Erin walked on a few paces, towards a long sloping drop into a valley below. She glanced down, seeing that the path she was on turned a corner ahead and continued close to a hundred feet below her.

He finally spoke. “You could say that I’m local.”

That unnerved her, especially when coupled with the bright crimson that flared in his dark irises, a corona surrounding his narrowed pupils.

Erin stepped away from him, backing towards the edge where it was rocky and the stones were loose underfoot. Her gaze darted down to the path far below her. Her footing was poor where she was but she didn’t want to be near him until she was sure it was safe. She would sooner risk falling than being within his reach.

He frowned at her and then at her feet, and held his hand out to her. “Come away from the edge.”

Erin shook her head.

If he was something terrible, then she was going to hit the slope, slide down to the path below and make a break for it. She would probably cut her bare legs up but it was better than being tortured by a demon. Had he only rescued her so he could toy with her and hurt her? Was this just another trick after all?

Her sister would never associate with something demonic and evil.

“Do you work for the Devil?” Erin shuffled backwards. His dark eyes flicked to her feet and then back to her eyes, and he stretched his hand closer to her, an impatient and concerned expression on his face. The Devil could change his appearance. This man had a voice that could melt her and so had the Devil. They were one and the same. “Are you the Devil?”

He laughed. “Hell, no. I’m not that evil. Do I look like I go around getting manicures between torture sessions?” He sighed and smiled at her. “I swear to you, Erin. I’m not here to hurt you... and I will keep you safe. Trust me?”

“No, I don’t trust you. I don’t even know you... you say you’re local but you don’t work for the bastard who held me captive, and you expect me to believe that shit?” She edged further away from him and he frowned, his eyes narrowing and expression switching to one of irritation. Anger flared in his eyes.

He growled, low and vicious, and the flecks of red in his eyes brightened. “I expect you to believe it because it’s the truth. I hate the bastard who kidnapped you, and would like nothing more than a chance at separating his head from his body. I’m risking my neck to save you and you dare accuse me of being the one loathsome creature I despise above all others?”

Erin backed off another step as he advanced one, until the balls of her feet hit the slope. Her heart thumped out a hard rhythm against her breastbone and blood rushed through her ears. His gaze locked on hers, challenging her to accuse him again, to voice any belief she still had that he was unworthy of her trust. She trembled and stared up into his eyes, searching them for a sign that he was lying to her.

His anger seemed genuine, born of hatred for a man that she too despised and disgust at being compared with him. He couldn’t blame her for being cautious though, surely? After everything she had been through, it was only natural for her to think everyone in this horrible place was out to get her, and he had admitted that he was a local.

The man backed off at last, the anger in his eyes melting away together with the red, leaving his irises dark. He sighed, his shoulders heaving with it, grimaced and rubbed a hand over his face.

“What am I supposed to say to make you believe me?” he whispered and met her gaze again. “Tell me that, Erin. I’ve trekked through Hell to find you, have fought and killed to reach you, have carried you and tended to you. I’ve risked my life to save you. Doesn’t that make me worthy of a little trust? You think I want to be here?”

No, she didn’t. He had mentioned more than once that he was risking everything by being in Hell, by saving her, and she felt terrible for doubting him.

He held his hand out to her again. “I swear to you, Erin, that I mean you no harm and I am here purely to rescue you and reunite you with your sister. Will you trust me to do that? Can you trust me?”

Erin’s better judgement said not to but she slipped her trembling right hand into his and stepped away from the edge. She looked up into his eyes. They glowed red around the edges again and in the centre too, highlighting his wide pupils. His gaze locked with hers and rocked her with a jolt that reached her soul.

“What’s your name?” she whispered, captivated by his eyes and lost in them. They had more power over her than the Devil’s had. She wanted to stare into their flaming depths for all eternity.

“Veiron,” he husked, his warm breath caressing her face, and Erin’s senses came alive, lighting up like an electrical storm. His masculine scent of dirt, aftershave and fresh sweat filled her nostrils. The warmth of his hand clasping hers heated her right down to her bones. The sound of his voice made her blood burn to hear him speak again. Her gaze delighted in discovering every tiny fleck of fire in his dark irises. The only sense left was one that cried out for a taste of him.

She might be losing her mind, but she knew without a doubt that she wanted this man regardless of what he was.

He was the most dangerous man she had ever met and he belonged to her sister, but there was something about him, something sensual and powerful, deadly and alluring, that she couldn’t resist. He had the smile of a demon, the body of a god, and the tenderness of an angel when he let his guard down.

Her captivity had been a nightmare.

But travelling through Hell with this man at her side was going to be a worse form of torture.

Chapter 4

The last time Erin had spoken to him, it had been to point out that he jingled with each step and that, because he was apparently a guy who could move with stealth, it didn’t suit him. She had fallen quiet after he had touched the leather thong he tied his scarlet hair up with and told her that it was a gift from a lover, and that the two small bells attached to each end were there to ward off evil. A protection charm.

A short time after that, she had trodden on a sharp rock and had sworn at him and swatted his hand away when he had tried to help her and offered to carry her again. She had turned her nose up and hobbled on defiantly.

That had been hours ago.

Veiron wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve her wrath, but she was dishing it out like there was no tomorrow.

He walked a few paces behind her, close enough that he could easily intervene should anyone dare attack her and could touch her shoulder to direct her whenever she took a wrong turn, which happened often when she was in the lead.

Erin was nothing like he had expected her to be. He had pictured her looking like her sister, with silver-grey eyes and full breasts, and the sort of attitude that said she was in command and everyone had better fall in line or suffer the consequences.

The willowy woman storming ahead of him looked little like the one he had left in the jungle just a few days ago. She had the most incredible amber eyes, an impish nose and sensual soft full lips, curves in all the best places, and small firm breasts that promised to fill his hands quite nicely. Not a trace of make-up touched her face and she didn’t need it to enhance her natural beauty. Even with the smudges of dirt and the faint bruises, she was breathtaking and he was finding it hard to keep his eyes off her.

The lilac streak down the right side of her sleek black bob said that when she got out of Hell and got herself dressed, it would be in clothes similar to those he preferred.

No pretty colourful summer dresses and cute pumps for this woman.

She would go for all black and utter rebellion to match her hair and that sassy attitude of hers. When he had finally found her cell, having almost freed the wrong woman, something he would be having words with Amelia about later since she had failed to adequately describe her sister, and had opened the door, she had faced him with defiance in her eyes that had almost masked the underlying fear. She had asked whether he was there to kill her and the set of her jaw and tilt of her chin proclaimed that if he was, she was damn well going to fight him. Layers of filth, some bruises, and dark circles beneath her eyes spoke of what she had been through during her captivity but he still couldn’t believe that she had survived the one thing that would have had most people on their knees.

He had almost choked when she had told him the Devil himself had come to see her.

The bastard normally stayed closer to the centre of the pit, safe in his fortress, only venturing out when bored to torture any poor soul that happened to pass by.

Erin had fire in her all right. Not the uptight and I’m-the-boss sort that Amelia had. No, Erin’s attitude was all defiance and fight, strength and determination to survive.

When Veiron had called her weak, she had looked as though she had come close to slapping him. He couldn’t imagine the hell she had given the Devil. The man had a tendency to try to bargain and Erin didn’t look like the sort his bargaining would work on. He hoped the bastard had come away smarting and with his pride thoroughly dented.

Veiron smiled and checked himself when his gaze slid down Erin’s spine to her backside, the black tank and shorts combo almost doing him in. He wished he had been the one who had taken her from her bed. He had heard the rumours while travelling through Hell to free her. The Devil had sent one of Veiron’s kind to retrieve her in the dead of night. Mercy, he would have had a hard time carrying out that command. Take her from her bed and bring her down to the Devil? Hell, he would have just taken her.

He looked off to his right, using his senses to track her instead and shoving aside thoughts of bedding her. The area they were passing through was quiet enough but they were coming up on a rough one inhabited by countless lower forms of demon that had a taste for human flesh. He would have to keep Erin close to mask her mortal scent with his own immortal and demonic one.

Erin grumbled and hopped a few paces. She raised her right foot, catching it in her hands and bending forwards so she could see the sole. Veiron cocked his head to one side, appreciating her graceful form, and then told himself that as soon as Erin was safe, he was leaving. He had only agreed to come for her because Amelia had gone all weepy on him and Marcus had given him a black look that promised pain if he refused her request to save her little sister. Once Erin was back in her arms, he would resume his pursuit of the one thing that had kept his cold heart warm these past few centuries in Hell.

Revenge.

As an angel, he had lived by the same creed as the rest. The mission was what mattered. He had never felt any allegiance to those words until recent years. Now the mission was all he could think about. It was all he dreamed about. Hunger for vengeance lived in his veins, keeping his heart pumping and his feet moving forwards.

It wouldn’t be satisfied until he had the Devil’s head on a spike and had shaken Heaven to its foundations.

Until that moment of victory was his, Veiron wouldn’t rest.

And he certainly wouldn’t get involved with a mortal female. As tempting as she was, he wasn’t what she needed in her life. He could never give her what she needed and she would be a complication that he couldn’t afford. A weakness. A need to protect her had been steadily building inside him since he had opened her cell door and set eyes on her. That need included protecting her from himself. She had been through enough in the past few weeks. As soon as she was with Amelia, he was gone, out of there. Danger followed him everywhere, constant and unrelenting, and he wasn’t about to drag a mortal female into his life and into the path of that.

Erin might think she was strong, but in his world, she was weak. A kitten. A baby. She wouldn’t last five seconds against the lowest form of demon in this realm, let alone the beasts that hunted him on a nightly basis.

She would become a pawn, something they could use to distract and weaken him, and that was something he didn’t wish on anyone.

No. The sooner Erin was out of his life, the better it was for everyone involved.

His back shivered, the scars where his wings hid tingling with the memory of that soft sweep of her fingers.

She had just had to touch him, hadn’t she? He had noticed from the moment he had stormed into her cell that Erin was as forward about being forward as he had ever seen. Hell, she was so far ahead of forward that forward looked chaste and innocent. The heat of her gaze on him had been hard enough to handle but when she had dared to run her hand down his bare back, he had felt her touch as a fifty thousand volt shock.

His wings had pushed for freedom and it had taken every ounce of his considerable willpower to convince them it would be a bad idea. Very bad. One tiny crimson feather emerging from his back would be enough to send a warning straight through Hell to his former boss, alerting him to Veiron’s exact location in his domain.

But damn, it had felt good.

He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had caressed those lines. He wasn’t sure there was a time. Not the way she had done it, gently following the scar tissue with her fingertips, curiosity and a dash of desire in her touch.

Veiron blew out his breath.

Just thinking about it had his wings pushing and his head spinning off to imagine her running those fingers over his feathers.

Veiron stared at her. She bandaged her foot back up with the black material and then looked over her shoulder at him. Her bright amber eyes met his, sending a hot shiver through his blood that only increased in temperature as her gaze slowly fell to his bare torso and her pupils dilated. She glanced away a split second later and started walking again.

That wasn’t the first time she had given him the wicked once over and then darted her attention away from him. She had done it countless times in the past few miles alone and he had the distinct impression that he had done or said something that had made her feel as though he was not for her.

Which he wasn’t, but he wasn’t averse to her thinking that he was throughout the duration of their journey because she had been a lot more talkative and better company during his first hour of knowing her. They had days of walking before they reached the gate where Amelia waited on the other side. He really didn’t want to spend it with Erin blowing hot and cold on him. He had never been a fan of the silent treatment. He didn’t have the patience for it and trying to figure out how to get the woman to speak to him again twisted his head in painful knots.

What had he done or said that had altered her so dramatically from the woman who had given him heated looks that openly declared she was interested in all things Veiron?

A few things came to mind, most notably the moment where he had revealed that he was a local.

If the demon thing didn’t sit well with her, what the hell was she going to make of her sister and Marcus? They were technically part-demon now.

Veiron drew his sword and stalked forwards to catch up with her.

She jumped when she saw the sword and edged away, placing some distance between them on the narrow black path.

“Stay close,” Veiron barked, his patience wearing thin and the fragile tethers holding his considerable anger over the whole situation, and Erin’s behaviour since his revelation, at bay close to snapping.

She didn’t argue this time. Sweet mercy. The woman might just live to see the mortal realm again after all.

At least, he might not kill her.

Her gaze burned into his profile. He slid his dark eyes to meet hers out of their corners and she blinked, her own eyes going wider. Startled. She didn’t look away though.

“I’m tired, I’m hungry and I’m thirsty.”

This was just what he needed. Complaining female was right up there with weepy on the list of things that lit the touch paper of irritation that could easily detonate the fifty-kiloton bomb that was his anger.

“Tough luck. We can’t rest here.”

“My feet hurt.”

Veiron frowned, what little pride he had telling him he wasn’t going to let this one slip. “I offered to carry you. You refused. Again, tough luck.”

“You’re not very nice. I really can’t see what Amelia sees in you,” she snapped and her cheeks blazed. Her gaze zipped to the path, so her black hair fell forwards and obscured her face.

“What Amelia sees in me?” He stopped, aware that he was contravening his own rules about not resting. It wasn’t a rest. It was a pause. A brief punctuation in their trek so he could figure out what the fuck she was babbling about.

Erin kept her gaze downcast and wrapped her arms around her slender frame. “As a lover.”

Veiron spluttered. Not the manliest thing he could have done given the situation but what she had said, and what she clearly thought, had him reeling so hard he was surprised he didn’t fall on his arse.

“Lover?” he said with so much disbelief that she finally looked up at him.

Her amber eyes were huge against her dirty face. “You’re not lovers?”

He shook his head. “No way. No. Marcus would break my balls if I so much as looked at her sideways and she’s not my type.”

Veiron’s eyes disobeyed his direct command not to take Erin in from head to toe. They roamed over her, liking what they saw. Forbidden. Off the menu. He was not looking for a romantic entanglement. He was looking for revenge.

Besides, Marcus would probably kill him for looking at Erin too, even though she was definitely his type. Smart-mouthed, sassy, and bewitching.

“Who’s Marcus?”

Amelia really needed to keep her little sister in the loop. “Amelia’s lover... boyfriend... hell, he could be her husband for all I know.”

Erin’s eyes managed to go a little wider. “She would have told me if she had married. But you said that if Amelia died, you would too...”

Hell, Veiron could see where she had gotten the impression that he and Amelia were lovers now. So was this why she had gone from giving him ‘come hither and let’s party despite my hellish surroundings’ looks to withering glares?

“I was speaking literally,” he said and her frown didn’t lift. “It’s a long story and not one for here. We have to keep moving.”

She didn’t look as though she was going to heed that command. There was no way in this realm that he was going to stand around in the open and attempt to explain, without making him sound more terrifying than she already thought he was by just knowing he was a demon, the whole situation with himself, Amelia and Marcus.

Veiron grabbed her arm and started marching.

Mercifully, she didn’t protest. She kept pace beside him, her gaze boring into the side of his face, burning with questions that he really didn’t want to answer.

If she didn’t like the idea of him being a demon, how was she going to react when she discovered that he was like the one who had taken her from her home and dragged her down into Hell?

Veiron vowed that it would never happen. He couldn’t use his powers in Hell without alerting the authorities so there was no reason for her to find out exactly what sort of man was playing her bodyguard. As soon as he got her safely topside, he would say a few choice words to Amelia, tell Marcus that he could go to Hell on the rescue mission next time, and would get as far away from Erin as possible and as quickly as he could without his wings.

Heck, he would sprint through the jungle and not stop until he reached the nearest airport.

And he would never set eyes on Erin again.

It was how it had to be.

Because a woman like her could never love a demon like him.

Chapter 5

Erin stuck to Veiron like glue, so close that she had bumped into his back several times in the past few minutes alone. She had almost tripped him once, accidentally treading on the back of his boot. That had earned her a glare that could have scared the Devil himself. He had told her to keep close to her when they had entered an open area that could have passed as a village. Small black square huts with holes for windows and doors dotted the undulating basalt landscape, upwards of twenty of them. A path wound through the ramshackle buildings. She followed Veiron along it, her gaze darting around, fixing on each black hole in the huts, trying to see if there were things inside watching her from the shadows.

Veiron had said that if she strayed too far from him, they would smell she was mortal and she was high on the list of food preferred by the creatures who dwelled here. Were they the sort of demons that had left those sharp grooves in all the bones she had seen? She didn’t want to meet anything that could do that. Surely, they could see she was mortal?

She glanced up at the back of Veiron’s head, watching the bells on the end of the thong that held his long red hair in a ponytail as they swayed with his heavy steps. He was a demon and he looked human. Most of the time. There had been moments when he had looked at her and she had seen the darkness in his eyes, the crimson that edged them and served as a reminder that he wasn’t like her.

How evil was he on a scale of just a bit wicked to the Devil?

And how did he know her sister?

Erin had tried to ask him about the relationship he had with Amelia but each time he had shot her down, telling her to keep quiet and keep moving. She was beginning to think he was using their current location as an excuse to shut her up. If he said that demons could tell she was a tasty snack by the sound of her voice, she would probably believe him.

Did he eat people too?

She couldn’t hold that one in.

“What sort of things are your favourite foods?”

He looked over one wide shoulder, his eyebrows knitted together and his eyes dark. They brightened a second later, as though he had figured out what she was really asking.

“Babies,” he said.

Erin stopped dead.

He huffed, turned to face her, and the muscles in his jaw ticked beneath his stubble. “I was joking. God, what sort of monster do you think I am?”

Before she could respond, he had turned away and was stalking ahead. Erin shot a nervous glance at the two small black huts either side of her and raced to catch up with him. A little too fast. She almost ran into the back of him and had to use her hands as a buffer. He tensed and snarled when they settled against his lower back.

Erin leapt backwards. No touching. She had got the message loud and clear the first time. He didn’t have to growl at her. Would he have preferred she ploughed into his back?

“You’re not a monster,” she whispered but it didn’t even sound convincing to her. Right now, she wasn’t sure what he was, but she knew she didn’t appreciate jokes about eating babies. “So what do you eat?”

“Down here, I don’t need to eat anything, so you’re safe, okay?” Could he sound any more offended? He had practically growled the words at her.

“What about when you’re not down here?” She moved to walk beside him so she could see whether he really was angry with her. He had expressive eyes that hid nothing, as though he didn’t feel the need to guard his emotions from anyone. If he was angry, the world knew it. If he was happy, they knew that too. She was beginning to think that happy was a rare emotion for Veiron.

“Food... just like you.”

“Why don’t you eat anything down here?” She had expected him to tell her that he never ate, not that he ate part time. She rubbed her stomach as it rumbled, thoughts of food filling her mind. How long had it been since she had eaten? The landscape of Hell all looked the same to her and there was no night or day, so she had lost track of time again. Only her aching feet told her how far she had walked. Too far. She needed to rest before she collapsed from pain or hunger but now wasn’t the best place for stopping so she didn’t mention it. Talking kept her mind off it though, and since Veiron seemed to be in the mood to answer basic questions, she would do her best to learn a little more about her guardian. “Do you pig out when you’re up there?”

“No. It’s the same for all... never mind. Forget it.”

“For all what?” Like hell she was going to not mind it and forget it. The hard set of his jaw said he wasn’t going to answer. Erin reached out to him and his gaze followed her hand. She laid it on his forearm. “Veiron?”

He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply. At least he didn’t tell her to get her hands off him this time. Score one for her. If he anticipated her touch, he didn’t shove her away.

“Angels.”

Erin stopped dead again, her fingers tightening around Veiron’s arm. He halted and shifted to face her.

“You’re an angel?” she said and frowned. “But you said you were local...”

He nodded.

“Local and an angel?” Was that even possible? There was so much suffering down here. If he were an angel, why would he tolerate it? Wouldn’t he want to do something to end it?

“Of sorts,” he said, turned on his heel, and kept walking.

Erin stared at his back. An angel without wings. Her gaze looked beyond the black leather scabbard that held his sword against his back and settled on the two long vertical scars highlighted by the matching red and black tribal tattoos on his shoulder blades.

“Has someone cut off your wings?” She hobbled to catch up with him.

He shot her a look that plainly told her to shut up and drop the subject. Like hell. She had gone from wanting to know why her sister knew a demon to why her sister knew an angel, and she wanted answers.

“Oh my God... you’re fallen!”

He turned on her with a snarl.

Something told Erin that it wasn’t the G-word that had upset him, not as it had the Devil. Veiron had used the G-word himself without any obvious anger. The rage that burned in his eyes was because she had struck the nail firmly on the head and driven it hard into some place it hurt.

“Sorry,” she whispered but he wasn’t listening. He was already striding away from her, leaving her exposed to any watching eyes in the huts around them.

Questions burned on the tip of her tongue but the black look on Veiron’s face warned that putting voice to them might make them the last thing she ever said so she quietly walked beside him.

They left the bleak village behind and entered a wide open area where the black cragged land belched flames and fiery orange cracks spewed lava. Erin couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be to live down here if she had lived in Heaven. She had no doubt that the other realm existed. She was walking through Hell with a fallen angel as her guardian. Why had Veiron fallen?

She glanced up at his face. Pain edged his dark eyes as he stared ahead into the endless black. Voicing that question would only hurt him and she had done enough damage already. He had gone through Hell to free her and was leading her out, taking her to her sister. She should have been thanking him, showing her gratitude, rather than playing the painful version of twenty questions.

Erin averted her gaze, no longer sure how to speak to him or what to say if she could find her voice. Shards of black rock edged the right side of the winding path through the fiery broken black fields, obscuring the way ahead. She frowned as they turned a corner and she saw a group of rickety rusty cages ahead. They weren’t empty.

Three women dressed in rags, filthy and emaciated, huddled inside them. They reached through the bars of their cramped cages and looked up at her, dark eyes wide and laced with tears.

As she approached, they pleaded her to help them. Veiron strolled right past them without even sparing them a glance. How could he be so unfeeling? He didn’t even break his stride.

She couldn’t ignore their cries.

Erin reached for one of them.

Veiron’s hand snapped around her wrist and yanked it back.

“Don’t,” he growled.

“But they’re scared and starving! I can’t let them just die here.” She wrenched her arm free of his grip and stood up to him. It was hard to intimidate a man who stood over a foot taller and around two feet wider than she was, but she wouldn’t let that stop her from trying.

“You damn well can because they’re starving all right, and if you open those cages, it will be you on the menu.” Veiron grabbed her upper arm and pulled her against his hard body, so her back pressed against his front.

Erin looked down into their dull eyes. “They’re demons?”

“One of the nastier kinds,” he murmured close to her ear, sending a shiver through her limbs. She barely resisted the temptation to lean back into his torso so she could feel his skin on hers.

Veiron launched a heavy boot at one of the cages, rattling it with a hard kick. The woman in it changed, brown-orange scales erupting across her flesh and her eyes burning blue as she hissed at him.

The creature spoke, lisping a language Erin didn’t understand through sharp teeth and with a forked tongue.

Veiron seemed to know it. He grunted, shrugged and levelled another swift kick at the cage.

“Tell him that if he listens to you,” he snarled and tugged on Erin’s hand, dragging her along behind him. “We have to keep moving. It isn’t safe here.”

Erin wasn’t about to argue but she didn’t understand Veiron’s sudden haste. The bruising grip he retained on her arm and the pace of his strides had her almost falling with each painful step she managed.

“I need to rest,” she said and he turned dark eyes on her.

“We can’t. Not now. Not here.”

“Because of that thing?” She hadn’t been born yesterday. “She’s going to tell the Devil, isn’t she?”

“The bastard won’t listen to her. She would need to escape that cage and reach the bottomless pit first. The Devil’s men would rip her apart before she even laid eyes on the old git.”

“Those horrible black demons with the red fangs and eyes?” She shuddered from the memory of them. “I never want to see another one of those bastards again in my life.”

Veiron suddenly released her arm and prowled on at a faster pace, heading up an incline. Erin tried to keep up but he was moving too quickly and her feet were killing her. Each step sent fire burning across her soles and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep going without a rest.

“Veiron?” she said but he didn’t stop. He kept going, the gap between them gradually growing, until he was more than one hundred feet ahead of her and she began to feel exposed and scared again.

Erin held herself and kept hobbling on, tears stinging her eyes. Her gaze darted around and she swore she could feel eyes on her, following her. She shivered, cold to the bone with fear, and her heart rushed in her ears.

“Veiron?” She tried again and he still didn’t acknowledge her.

He disappeared over the brow of the hill. Erin panicked.

She ran despite the fire that licked her feet and the pain that jolted her bones with each step. The land beyond the hill came into view as she neared the brow and she slowed when she saw Veiron standing there, his back to her and his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

The hill ended abruptly, as though someone had carved away the other half of it. It dropped off into a valley over a hundred feet below her. Bright, boiling fire filled the world as far as her eyes could see.

“We will have to go around,” Veiron said, voice deceptively calm and emotionless.

She could easily fool herself into believing that he had just gone on ahead to scout what waited on the other side of the incline but she wasn’t that sort of woman. He had intended to leave her. She had put her foot in it again. Was it because she had placed them in danger by trying to free those creatures?

“I wish there was an easier way.” Veiron looked down at her but she kept her gaze on the brutal landscape. There wasn’t even a path. It was endless fire. “Hell is ever-changing. A few days ago, we could have passed through this way. There is nothing I can do to make this journey easier on you... if I use my powers, they will know that I am here. With that demon wailing about you, it won’t take the Devil long to figure out that you’re missing and that you’re with me.”

“What sort of powers?” She glanced at him.

He grunted and turned away. “We can follow the ridge and rest up ahead. Can you manage it, or are you going to swallow that pride of yours and let me help you?”

She would rather he answered her questions and stopped evading them.

“I’m fine,” Erin said instead and began walking again, trying not to wince with each step so he had no reason to call her stubborn and force her to let him carry her. As much as she wanted to be in his arms, she didn’t enjoy the prospect of being slung over his shoulder again, and his current mood said he would be carrying her that way or no way at all.

Two hundred yards down the rocky path, Veiron shocked her by speaking.

“I could teleport you out of this place,” he said without looking at her. “I could materialise you boots so you didn’t have to hurt your feet and clothes so you felt more comfortable. I could even produce some viable source of nourishment or perhaps even water if I focused enough... although I am not sure how good it would taste. I could do a lot of things, but the moment I use a fraction of my power, everyone will know where we are.”

That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Erin sighed and wished that he could do all that for her too, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If Veiron not using his powers kept them off the radar of the locals and allowed them to get out of Hell unscathed, then she wasn’t going to complain. She touched his left wrist and he looked at her. He had told her a little about himself and she was grateful, because she knew that he had a good heart underneath his hard lethal exterior. He had used her to illustrate his powers and that told her that he cared about her condition and he wanted to alleviate her pain. She couldn’t let him use his powers, but she could let him use his strength.

“Can you carry me now?” she said and his look softened and he nodded.

Sparks of nerves danced in her stomach when he opened his thickly muscled arms to her, bent at the knee and wrapped them around her. He didn’t sling her over his shoulder.

He lifted her in one arm and slid the other beneath the crook of her knees, carrying her like a princess in a fairytale.

Erin leaned her head against his bare shoulder. “Thank you.”

He shrugged. “We’ll be somewhere safe soon. Get some shut eye and I’ll wake you when we reach it.”

Erin thought she was too wired to sleep, too alert to the dangers around her, but the moment she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of Veiron’s smell of aftershave, dirt and heat, a wave of fatigue crashed over her and the world faded away. She felt so safe in his strong arms.

Chapter 6

Carrying Erin like this was a mistake. A grand fucking one.

Veiron stared down at her where she lay with her head nestled so sweetly against his shoulder, face soft with sleep and beautiful despite the smudges of dirt.

He should have tossed her over his shoulder. Like this, she was a temptation, so innocent and fragile in appearance, calling to his dark need to protect her. God pity anything that crossed his path while he was holding her like a sleeping babe in his arms. He would tear them asunder with his powers regardless of the fact it would light up his position like a beacon in the Devil’s mind.

He would kill without mercy to protect this delicate impish beauty.

They reached the place where he intended to rest with her and he was relieved to see that the area was intact, unaffected by the recent changes in the landscape of Hell.

He wasn’t pleased about something though.

He didn’t want to put Erin down or have to wake her. She had fallen asleep in under a second and clearly needed the rest. He had felt the change in her heartbeat and heard the switch in her breathing the moment her head had hit his chest.

How long had it been since she had last slept?

When was the last time she had felt safe enough to let down her guard like this?

It touched him that she trusted him, even after what she had said. Her words had cut him to the bone and he should heed them as the warning they were, that things wouldn’t end well for him if he didn’t start reining in the dangerous desires she stirred in him and forgot about her. She hated his breed.

Despised him without knowing it.

She never wanted to see another of his bastard kind. He could easily imagine the horror that would show in her eyes if she ever saw him in his true demonic form, and it was something he never wanted to witness.

It didn’t matter that he was the one holding her now, protecting her from the cruelty around her, guiding her safely back to her sister. She would forget all that in a heartbeat, in the time it took for her to realise that he was the same as those bastards that had taken her from her home and cast her into this nightmare.

His heart ached.

If he had ever needed a reason for keeping his distance from her, this was it. Scratch his need for revenge and his mission. It was the thought of her looking upon him with hatred blazing in her beautiful amber eyes that had him emotionally taking a step back and closing himself off to her.

Veiron set her none too gently down on her feet, the action jolting her awake. She murmured and looked up at him with sleepy eyes.

“We’re here,” he said gruffly and didn’t wait for her to fully wake before he hit the severe slope that ran into the fiery valley below.

He skidded down and dug his heels in to stop himself from going too far and passing the small outcrop of rocks that hid a small cave.

“Come on.” He held his hand out to her but she looked wary, eyeing the slope with fear.

Veiron started to lose patience as she shifted at the edge of the path above him, uncertainty written in her eyes. She nibbled her lip and edged her right foot forward.

It slipped.

Erin screamed and skidded down the slope towards him, arms flailing wildly. His heart pounded, adrenaline flooding his veins, released by the thought of missing her and seeing her tumble into the flames far below. He would never let that happen. He launched both hands at her as she came close, missing her with one and snagging her wrist with the other.

She kept screaming even when her backside hit the rocky slope and she stopped moving.

Veiron hauled her up to him and she quieted. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

She trembled against him, hands clutching his shoulders, her breathing fast and shaky. He wrapped one arm around her and held her until her shaking subsided and her grip loosened. When she was close to calm again, he lifted her onto the small ledge beside him and followed her onto it. He motioned towards the cave.

It wasn’t large, barely big enough for two people to crawl into and sit up without banging their heads, but it was safe. No creature would cross the fields of lava below them, unless they wanted their wings singed, and the rocks shielded them from view from the path above.

Erin crawled into the dark cramped cave and settled near the back. Veiron caught her fearful glance at the edge of the small ledge that separated her from a long drop to a fiery death and settled himself at the mouth of the cave, his back against one curved wall and his legs stretched across to the other. The sight of him there, blocking her fall, seemed to calm her.

He could understand her nerves. She had spent the past few weeks in a cell with only three walls and a very long fall to one of the primary rivers of Hell. The poor woman would probably spend the rest of her life afraid of high places where she felt she could fall.

“You can sleep,” he said.

“What about you?” Her voice was soft in the low-lit cave.

Veiron shook his head. “I’ll keep an eye on things here, and on you. You’ll be safe here, Erin, and you need your rest. Once I feel you’ve rested enough, we’ll continue. It’s only another day’s march from here to the gate.”

Her eyes didn’t brighten at that bit of news.

Erin pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I have nightmares when I sleep.”

He found that both difficult and easy to believe. She had been through a lot and seen things that would haunt her forever, but she hadn’t shown any sign that she had been having a nightmare when sleeping in his arms.

“I’ll keep the demons out of them too.”

She smiled. “I’m not five. I doubt you can keep my nightmares away. If you can, and it’s another power of yours, I wish you had been around my whole life.”

“Why?”

She lowered her chin and rested it on her knees, and looked up at him through her fringe. He had thought she had looked small and fragile when sleeping in his arms. He had been wrong. The way she had curled up and was holding herself, the tone of her voice, and the trace of fear in her eyes all combined to leave her looking vulnerable, and it made him want to pull her onto his lap and wrap his arms around her. Not just because he wanted to protect her, but because he knew she was letting him see this side of her, that she wasn’t this unguarded with her fears and her feelings around others, and it touched him. A kindred spirit. He hadn’t realised how strongly she felt things and that she guarded her heart as fiercely as he guarded his.

Her eyes met his, open and honest, speaking to his tainted soul. “I’ve always had horrible dreams... the things I see... my parents even had me tested once to put all our minds at rest.”

Veiron leaned towards her in the cramped cave, reached over with his right hand and brushed the black lengths of her hair from her face, hoping to comfort her. “What sort of things do you see?”

“Places like this sometimes... only worse. Horrible things that I don’t want to speak about.” She looked away and then closed her eyes.

“You didn’t have a nightmare when you were in my arms.” He wasn’t sure why he put that one out there. Tormenting himself? He was the big bad hero who chased away Erin’s nightmares and made everything right. Her knight in tarnished armour. Yeah, right. It didn’t matter what he did, or how alike they were beneath the surface. As soon as she realised he was one of those bastards she hated so much, it would be game over and goodbye Veiron. Kill it before it started. It was the only way to save himself.

“I didn’t. Can I sleep next to you?”

“Sure.” Way to resist and keep that all necessary distance between them. What was it about this woman that had him going against his better judgement? It was more than her beauty and how similar they were to each other. It ran deeper than that.

Erin moved closer, flashed him a tired but grateful smile, and settled on her side with her head on his thigh. Hell. He warned the part of his anatomy that she had chosen to snuggle up right next to not to get ideas. Those dirty thoughts spinning out of control in his mind were not going to happen.

Do not touch her. Do not lay a hand on that smooth but dirty slender arm of hers and stroke it to see if her skin feels as soft as it looks. Do not.

Veiron ran his fingers along the length of her arm.

“Veiron,” she whispered, his name like ambrosia to his aching soul as it fell softly from her lips. “I can’t sleep. Talk to me.”

“What about?” Any subject but himself. Keep it professional. Keep some distance. Any subject but himself.

“About you.”

“Sure.” Fuck. Why didn’t he just smash his fist through his ribcage and tear out his heart right now to save himself the inevitable pain in his future?

“Are you fallen?”

He grimaced.

“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.” She tipped her head up, rolling slightly onto her back so she was looking at him. “Tell me if I’m being too nosy.”

He didn’t want to answer it, and she damn well was being too nosy.

“I am,” he said rather than refusing her and wished she would go to sleep. He shouldn’t have woken her. He should have tried to carry her down the slope. He might have made it to the ledge even with her extra weight rather than tumbling into a volcanic abyss.

Veiron looked down at the bubbling flame-filled plain below. Fiery painful death was beginning to look good but dying was off the menu. Not going to happen. Death meant rebirth, and rebirth meant a return to Heaven and forgetting everything until he fell again.

“Did they cut off your wings?” She glanced away when his gaze darted to meet hers. “You don’t have to answer that.”

If he didn’t have to answer any of these questions, then she should stop asking them and just go to sleep.

“How do you know my sister?”

Evidently, she had taken his silence to mean he wasn’t answering any questions about wings. If she knew he still had wings, she would ask what they looked like, and then it was a small leap to realising just what sort of creature’s thigh she was using as a pillow.

“We had a problem in common. I helped her and Marcus deal with it.”

“Is Marcus an angel too?”

“Of sorts.”

She smiled. “Are all angels of sorts? You say that every time. You don’t like to talk about angels, do you?”

He shook his head. It wasn’t his favourite topic. Just the word had his hatred bubbling to the surface and awakened his desire to unleash every drop of his rage on Heaven and Hell.

“Do angels wear robes and fly around Heaven playing harps and singing?”

Veiron laughed. “Fuck, no. We wear armour and fly around carrying out our master’s wishes with angelic weapons... and those missions often entail spilling blood in copious quantities.”

“Like warriors?” She was starting to sound sleepy.

“To the core.” He stroked her arm and then her black hair from her face, curling it behind her ear so he could see her face while she slept. She closed her eyes and sighed out her breath, resting her cheek against his thigh. Her right hand settled further up his leg, her heat burning through his black jeans and making him painfully aware of her proximity and touch, and how good she felt against him.

“I think you’re my guardian angel,” she murmured and his fingers froze against her face.

She didn’t notice. A soft snore broke the heavy silence.

A guardian angel. He hadn’t been one of those in centuries and he had no desire to ever become one again. Not a guardian angel. He was her demonic angel, a man driven by cold fury to pursue something that might end in his death and inevitable rebirth.

Veiron stared into the hazy heat filled distance.

When that rebirth came, he would make sure it was into a different world, one devoid of the Devil and God. They would both pay for the vicious game they played with his life against his will.

Veiron growled under his breath and then inhaled slowly, trying to calm the anger surging through his veins and threatening to seize control. It didn’t matter that he was in Hell right now, under the Devil’s nose, close enough to reach the bastard’s fortress and have the fight he had been itching for these past centuries.

He slid his gaze to Erin where she slept softly with one hand and her head on his thigh.

He had wanted to leave her earlier when she had voiced her hatred of his kind but he hadn’t been able to convince himself to go beyond the reach of his senses. He had needed to know that she was safe.

The Devil would have to wait.

His mission would have to wait.

Erin was what mattered.

Until he got her safely to her sister, she was his primary concern.

His anger subsided as he watched her, calm settling over him that only increased when he set his hand on her bare arm and felt her heat against his palm.

He watched over her, his fingers lightly running up and down her arm, waiting for a sign that her nightmares had come to rob her of sleep and torment her. She slept soundly, as still as she had been when he had carried her, as though his touch really could keep her bad dreams at bay. The only disturbances were a few deep sighs that could have been moans in the right situation and the odd flush that heated her cheeks.

Veiron grinned.

Looked like good dreams to him.

He inhaled slowly. Centuries of service in Hell had rendered him immune to the stench, letting him smell beyond it to the remnants of Erin’s soft warm perfume and the undeniable hint of desire.

Very good dreams indeed. The best sort.

Her lips parted and she sighed again.

He wished that he could join her but angels didn’t need to sleep when they were in their natural environment. He could close his eyes and hope that sleep would come. It wouldn’t.

Veiron watched her instead, putting every pale freckle visible on her dirty skin to memory and listening to her soft steady breathing. Minutes ticked by and slowly turned into hours. Time moved as strangely in Hell as it did in Heaven. A few minutes here was hours topside. He would have to wake her soon.

A sense that they weren’t alone prickled down his spine.

He stilled right down to his breathing.

Someone was close. He leaned further into the cave, hoping to conceal himself and Erin. Three Hell’s angels flew by, barely two hundred feet from him and staying over the basalt slope to protect their wings from the intense heat of the boiling lake beyond. They didn’t look his way but it was only a matter of time before they came back. The demon in the black plains would get their attention and tell them what she saw.

“Erin,” he whispered and nudged her arm, feeling guilty for waking her. “We have to go.”

“Just a few minutes more, Mum.”

“Mum?” He pushed her arm again and her eyes opened.

She lay there for a few seconds and then groggily looked up at him. “I was having a really good dream.”

“Tell me about it later. We have to move.”

A frown creased her dirty brow and she yawned. Veiron moved his thigh out from beneath her and her head hit the dirt.

“Ow.” She rubbed the side of her head and pushed herself up onto her knees, looking more alert now. “Did the bad guys find us?”

Veiron nodded. “They will soon. I’ll carry you. We can head for the nearest gate.”

“I thought that was a day away?” She crawled forwards and Veiron turned away so he wasn’t tempted to look down her black tank top at her breasts.

He reached the ledge, stood and offered his hand to her. “The gate we should have exited through is... but this is an emergency.”

She slipped her hand into his and he pulled her onto her feet and then straight up into his arms. He set her down again.

“You’re not carrying me?” she said with a sleepy frown.

“I am but I can’t run with you like this.” He unbuckled the straps of his scabbard and let the sword fall into the cave. Erin rubbed her eyes.

“Don’t you need that?” She nudged the discarded sword with her bandaged foot. “How are you meant to fight without it?”

“I’ll think of a way but I’m not planning on this coming down to a fight.” Because that would be a very bad idea. He didn’t want Erin anywhere near a fight with one of his kind, let alone three of them. Even if he had his sword, he would still lose control if anyone went after her and then she would see him for what he was.

Erin picked up the scabbard and struggled with it, trying to get the straps on over her arms.

“What are you doing?”

“Arming myself. I don’t have fancy powers.” She managed to get one strap around her shoulder and started on the other.

Veiron didn’t have time for this, but arguing with her would probably take longer than strapping the damn sword to her back. He tugged the straps until they were tight and the sword lay flat against her back, and buckled them. The sword was almost as tall as she was. She didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of wielding a blade this size but the steely glint in her amber eyes said that if it came to a fight, she was damn well going to try. He had to admire her tenacity.

He crouched with his back to her. The moment she lifted her right leg, he grabbed her under her thigh and swung her up onto his back. She slipped her arms around his neck, her supple body pressing into his back, and sighed right into his ear.

This was fast becoming a day full of grand mistakes. He had thought that she would wreak less havoc if he carried her on his back, not more. The way she pressed into him and the feel of her inner thighs against his hips and her arms around his neck had him thinking about her in a reversed position, against his front, and naked. He growled at the thought of sliding his cock in and out of her hot sheath, her breathy moans in his ear and body trembling with pleasure.

“Veiron?” she murmured.

Veiron struggled to clear the image of making love to her from his head.

Something shrieked in the distance.

That did it.

He bolted up the slope to the path, clutching Erin’s hot soft thighs as she clung to him for dear life. The moment he hit the flat, he broke into a sprint.

Erin moved against his back, twisting away from him.

“Veiron?” she said, a note of panic in her voice. “Can you run any faster?”

“Three of them?”

She buried her face against his back.

“No... it’s more like twenty.”

Veiron growled. Fuck it. Desperate times and all that shit. They already knew where he was. Maybe he could lose them or at least slow them down.

He released one of Erin’s thighs and held his hand out in front of him, focusing a short distance ahead. The landscape there shimmered and distorted, and then disintegrated into curling black smoke. Erin’s arms tightened to a death grip on his throat that choked him.

“What the hell is that?” she shrieked close to his ear.

Veiron grinned as the portal erupted into fierce white flames.

“Our ticket out of here.”

Chapter 7

Erin had screamed at the top of her lungs from the moment Veiron had leapt headlong into a flaming vortex until they had exited it in another area of Hell. He hadn’t stopped there. He had produced another wall that had the look of a painful death if you made even the slightest mistake and leapt straight into that one. They had done the sickening jump several times and had eventually ended up next to another of the small groups of buildings that were scattered around the black and fiery landscape of Hell.

Veiron didn’t make another vortex this time. He ran with her through the village, heading up a winding wide road that led towards a plateau that had a sheer drop into the buildings on the left and a huge wall on the right.

Erin felt sick.

With all the jumping from one place to another and the fear that churned her stomach to acid, she was close to throwing up all over Veiron. She didn’t think he would appreciate it.

He set her down on the wide ledge that overlooked the village and walked towards a huge stone arch cut into the sheer black wall that rose up into the endless darkness above her.

“Is this a gate?” she said, unwilling to let herself believe that she was this close to freedom until Veiron confirmed it.

He nodded. Erin’s knees weakened. Veiron was there before they gave out, his arm around her waist, holding her steady. She cursed herself for looking so weak in front of him and clutched his biceps, breathing slowly to calm her feelings. A gate. She couldn’t believe it. She had thought her nightmare would never end and now she was on the verge of escaping Hell.

Erin slowly raised her eyes to meet Veiron’s dark ones, waiting for him to call her weak again. He didn’t. His expression remained soft but intense, edged with warmth that sent her temperature rising and tempted her to drop her gaze to his mouth, lift her lips to his and kiss him.

“It isn’t the gate we were supposed to use. Your sister isn’t on the other side.” His deep voice sent her insides trembling and increased the temptation to look at his mouth.

“Why can’t you zap us to that gate?”

He shook his head, released her waist, and a solemn look entered his eyes. “Amelia and Marcus are waiting there. If I teleport to that gate, then I’ll be leading the Devil’s army straight to her location. I came here to save you so the Devil wouldn’t find her, so he couldn’t kill her.”

“I get it.” Erin took his hand, marvelling at how small it made hers look, and squeezed it to let him know he didn’t need to explain. She understood. If they went to that gate, the demons would follow them and find Amelia. She would have to wait to see her sister again.

She stroked her thumb along the length of his. Maybe waiting wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if Veiron stayed with her until he reunited her with Amelia. Erin could certainly think of some delicious ways to pass the time. Would he stay with her? His mission had been to free her from Hell. When they reached her world, that mission would be over. Wouldn’t it?

“What happens when we go through the gate?” she said, struggling to get her voice above a whisper when fear of his answer squeezed her heart.

He glanced down at their joined hands, and then back into her eyes.

“When we reach the other side, we can’t stop running. Hopping around might have thrown them off my scent for now, but it won’t take them long to discover which gate we used. They will come after us.” Veiron led her towards the huge stone arch. Liquid darkness filled it, inky and rippling, reflecting the fires of Hell that glowed behind her. “I will find a way to get you safely to Amelia.”

Erin nodded and took comfort from his words. He was going to stay with her and help her and she was glad because she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him yet. The more time she spent with Veiron, the more she wanted to get to know him and unlock his secrets. He had risked everything to help her escape, had revealed himself by using his powers and placed himself in danger. She was grateful to him for that, but it wasn’t the reason she wanted to kiss him as she looked up at him, lost in his dark eyes.

He had tasted so good in her dream, had felt so good as he moved above her, his eyes locked on hers, body gliding in and out, taking her to Heaven.

He scared her but he fascinated her too, and spoke to everything that was woman inside her. He was lethal beauty and deadly grace, vicious yet tender, a world of contradictions wrapped in a body that was all honed muscle and masculine strength. A body she wanted to touch and a soul she wanted to taste in a passionate kiss that she knew would ruin her to all other men.

Veiron’s hand shifted. “Take a deep breath.”

Erin did, but purely because it hitched when his long fingers entwined with hers, locking their hands tightly together.

He stepped into the wobbling wall of black and slowly disappeared, swallowed by it. Erin followed him, their linked hands disappearing first and her arm following it. The inky liquid was hot against her skin. She sucked in another sharp breath, closed her eyes and stepped into the gate.

Cool air froze her bare skin.

“You can open your eyes now.” Veiron’s deep voice curled around her, chasing the chill away.

Erin slowly opened her eyes and couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

London.

She would recognise this city anywhere.

Home.

She stared out from the mouth of a narrow alley at the mixture of building styles that lined Oxford Street, the wintry cold night lost on her as the sight of her city warmed her. White lights twinkled in the leafless trees dotted along the pavements and decorations hung from lampposts that stood on small islands in the centre of the road. Shop windows declared fantastic savings in the Boxing Day sales.

When she had been taken to Hell, it had been early November. How long had she been gone?

Erin stepped out onto the wide path that lined the street and then looked back at Veiron.

“Time moves strangely in Hell,” he said as though he had read her thoughts.

A passing group of men raked confused but hungry eyes over her and then raised their eyebrows at Veiron. The chill came back, numbing her bare legs and arms. Veiron didn’t seem to notice the cold.

Erin looked over her shoulder at the men just as they looked back at her. Their eyes widened when they saw the sword strapped to her back.

“We should keep moving,” Veiron said and before she could agree, he scooped her up into his arms.

Erin couldn’t stop herself from snuggling into him, as close to his chest as she could get. He was warm, radiating heat that kept the chill off her exposed skin and she liked it. He held her close to him and strode down a side street, heading away from the main road and into the heart of the Soho district.

“Where are we going?” she said and looked up at him, studying his focused expression. He had looked stern enough when they had been in Hell. He looked even more alert now and something told her that it wasn’t because he was waiting for the demons to find them again. Didn’t he like it on Earth? “We could go to my place and I could get some clothes.”

That got his attention. He looked down at her, eyes black in the low light from the streetlamps. She didn’t need to see them clearly to feel the heat of his gaze and she didn’t hide her desire from him. Getting clothes wasn’t the only reason she wanted to convince him to come back to her loft apartment. In fact, they were last on the list of things she wanted to do when she got there. Number one was getting naked. Number two was getting Veiron naked. Three would take them to the shower under the pretence of getting the ash of Hell off their skin. Four would lead that passion party into the bedroom. Five was getting fresh clothes on her body, preferably the morning after a marathon lovemaking session with the sexy hunk of fallen angel who had his arms wrapped tightly around her.

“No way,” he grumbled and strode on as though she had never mentioned hitting her place or suggested with a wicked smile that she would make it worth his while.

Erin blew out a sigh. How could someone so good-looking be so damn stubborn? He was fallen so he couldn’t pull the virtuous thing. Surely all those morals and things people associated with angels had burned to ashes during his time in Hell?

“So where are we going?” she said and he turned down another side street, a darker one this time that had her edging closer to him. His legs hit the sword strapped to her back whenever he took a step. He wanted to avoid the bad guys but it would be the police they would have to avoid if many more people saw her walking around with a huge sword. Or being carried around anyway.

By a bare-chested dark beauty.

Her toes curled and warmth purred through her. Damn, there had to be a way to convince Veiron that hitting her place would be a really great thing.

“Veiron?” she said.

“No. Remember what happened the last time you were there? They will be monitoring your apartment.”

When he put it like that.

“Will I at least be able to get some clothes where we’re going? And some food and water? Basic necessities?” she snapped and his dark gaze fell to her bare legs, slid slowly over their lengths until they reached her bandaged feet, and then raked back up, lingering on her sleep shorts and top.

“I will do all I can.” He didn’t sound very inclined to make a sincere effort.

Erin supposed that should please her. Veiron liked her scantily clad, and freezing. It was one thing dressing like this in Hell, where it was warm and dry, but completely another when wandering around the streets of London in the middle of a cold damp winter.

“Thank you... and again, where are you taking me?”

He grinned down at her, pure sex and sin. “Cloud Nine.”

Now that was a look she liked on him and a place she would gladly let him take her.

He picked up the pace, passing several clubs and bars where patrons spilled out onto the streets despite the frigid weather. They gained a few curious looks from men and women. Erin ignored them. It wasn’t every day that a sword-wielding barely-dressed woman was carried past you by a topless man with the body of a god. She would have stared too.

They rounded a few more corners and ended up on a very dank narrow street. Music pounded ahead and the chatter of people rose above it. Lots of people.

Veiron didn’t slow when he turned the next corner. A queue lined one side of the street, flowing towards her from the bright neon sign on the featureless brick wall of Cloud Nine. Half-dressed men and women cast dirty looks her way. Judging by their appearances, she and Veiron were going to fit right in if they made it into the club. A three hundred plus pound bouncer blocked the door, a mountainous man who almost made Veiron look small in comparison. That was until Veiron strode right up to him, towering a good six inches taller and a few inches wider.

The man didn’t give Veiron a dirty look. The black look in his dull pale eyes was positively friendly compared with the one he cast at her.

“Sinking low, my man.” His voice was so deep it rumbled through her.

Erin glared at him.

“Mind your tongue,” Veiron snarled and the man shrugged thick hewn shoulders and grunted as he shifted aside enough for Veiron to pass.

Veiron kicked the black doors open and music assaulted her, ear-splitting in volume and with bass so heavy it pounded in her chest and made her feel sick. She covered one ear with her hand and pressed the other against Veiron’s bare chest. His heart thumped steadily against it.

He manoeuvred through the dense crowd with her, his height giving her a clear view over the heads of most of the patrons to the dance floor. Dear God. What sort of pervert club was this? There was a little more than the usual groping and snogging going on. The men and women on the dance floor were close to taking things deep into the indecent exposure list of crimes.

Veiron covered her eyes.

It was too late. The sight of the near-orgy happening on the dance floor was seared on her eyeballs.

She grabbed his arm and pulled his hand away from her eyes. He scowled down at her. A threat? Was she supposed to interpret that look as a warning not to gawp at the perversion playing out all around her?

Score two for Erin. She had the man jealous. Why couldn’t she get the man naked? That was what she wanted to know.

He strolled through the crowd and Erin watched how they parted, fascinated by their reactions to Veiron. As he approached, everyone turned to stare at him, fear in their eyes, and moved aside, giving him a wide berth. She looked up at his face. He was scowling and his eyes looked crimson in the flashing lights of the club. Not just the usual touch of red that edged them at times, but complete saturation.

Veiron’s gaze remained firmly fixed ahead. They walked in line with the long curved black bar to his right. Bright colourful bottles lined the mirrored wall behind it and spotlights switched from white to blue to purple to red, washing the bartenders in those colours. Erin caught sight of her reflection, and frowned. She looked around and stared at a beautiful dark-haired woman as she passed. This one didn’t look afraid of Veiron.

The woman tossed a flirty smile in his direction. Veiron didn’t seem to notice.

Another one further in tried her luck but Veiron turned away and set Erin down beside the bar, his back to the blonde beauty. Erin positively seethed. What had the world come to when a man carrying a woman was still a target for whores?

Bitches.

Veiron leaned across Erin, his body shielding her from the brunt of the crowd, and flagged one of the bartenders, a young handsome brunet. “Water.”

Erin closed her eyes and melted at the thought. Water. She had never been one for her eight glasses a day but she had found a new love for plain boring water.

The man slid a tall cold glass across the black bar top to her. Erin stared at the clear liquid, mesmerised and deeply in love. She wasn’t sure whether to drink it in one gulp or savour it slowly like a fine wine.

She grabbed the glass and gulped it down. The cold hurt her teeth but she didn’t care. Veiron chuckled and she stopped, and slid her gaze across to him. He smiled at her, devastating, too sexy for words, and reached out. His hand was warm against her face and tender as he brushed his thumb across her cheek.

“Do you want to clean up?”

Did she ever. Even what was likely to be a grotty club bathroom seemed like a luxury spa to her right now.

“I’ll take that dreamy smile as a yes,” he said with a smile of his own and motioned to the bartender again. The man returned with a whole pitcher of icy water this time.

“On the house, Vay.” He grinned across the bar top at her. “You look as though you need it.”

Veiron grabbed him before he could leave. “You seen V around here tonight?”

The man nodded and pointed further along the bar.

“My gratitude, my man.” Veiron patted him on the back.

“So, Vay, who’s V?” Erin grinned when he scowled at her. “I take it I’m not allowed to call you Vay?”

He shrugged. “I would rather you called me Veiron.”

Erin frowned and poured herself another glass of water. “Be like that.”

Veiron huffed. “God Almighty, you are infuriating. It isn’t like that.” He rested an elbow on the black bar top, bringing him down to close to her height. “I don’t really like the nickname. Satisfied?”

“Not really. Why let people call you it if you don’t like it?” People had tried to pin her with nicknames and she had shot them all down, even the pet names her parents had used for her. Erin was a perfectly good name. Amelia didn’t seem to mind when people shortened her name. Each to their own.

“It pays to be friendly sometimes.” He sighed and scratched the thick stubble coating his straight jaw. What would he look like without those whiskers? He was handsome enough with them. Without them, he could probably lay waste to women with just a wink and a smile. “I’m not exactly welcome here.”

“Now I’m satisfied. So who is V?” She swigged her water, the cool liquid like bliss on her tongue and parched throat. She never wanted to drink anything other than fresh cold water for the rest of her life.

“Someone I don’t want you to meet but I think it wise that we stick together, at least until I know it’s safe here.” He straightened, his dark expression conveying the equally black feelings behind his words. Not jealousy this time. Not fear. A strange mixture of those two emotions, plus wariness and other ones that made him look as though keeping her with him was a struggle and all he wanted to do was keep her out of sight while he spoke to this V character.

He took a deep breath, his broad honed chest expanding deliciously with it and shattering her serious thoughts, and then waved a hand over his head. The action was more like a command, the sort of click of fingers you gave to a dog to get its attention.

Erin turned to see who he was signalling and found herself only a few inches from a pale, sharply dressed dark-haired man. His crisp black suit didn’t quite fit with the club, at odds with the scantily clad men and women. The man’s pale eyes slid down to her and his dusky lips curved into a sensual smile.

Veiron’s arm closed over her chest and he dragged her back against him.

“V,” he growled and the man’s icy gaze shifted up to him.

The man called V offered him a toothy smile that revealed canines that were either fakes or real and she was about to add vampire to the list of supernatural creatures that existed. After everything she had witnessed in Hell, nothing surprised her anymore. Vampires were probably just another type of demon after all, and she had catalogued plenty of different breeds of that particular species while waiting in her cell for visitors. The man in front of her was a vampire and the man at her back was a fallen angel, and who knew what else lurked in the club?

“Veiron. To what do I owe the pleasure? If the boss sees you here, she will not be pleased. You know her policy. No angels allowed, even if they are serving the right master.”

“Choose your words more wisely, Villandry, or we shall come to blows.” Veiron’s arm tightened across her chest and the vampire looked down at her, all charm as he smiled.

“I never thought mortal females would be your style. She’s pretty, I’ll grant you that, but last I recalled your tastes were a little more wicked... like mine.” Villandry raked his pale eyes over her and then curled his lip in disgust. “You know, I still haven’t forgiven you for storming into my home and nearly exposing me to sunlight.”

“I apologised, didn’t I? It’s the most you’re going to get out of me, so get over it. It isn’t why I’m here. I have a business proposition. I need you to keep your ear to the ground and let me know if you hear about anything major leaving Hell in the next few days.”

Erin frowned. Had they come to blows over a past lover? Erin didn’t like the thought of Veiron fighting for another woman. She tried to break free of his embrace but he tightened his grasp and held her firm, pinning her back against the solid heat of his front.

“Sounds dangerous, and expensive.” Villandry signalled the bartender. A pretty thirty-something blonde woman came straight to him and set a martini glass filled with dark liquid down on the bar. He smiled at Erin, lifted the glass to his lips and drained it in one go. He set the empty glass back down on the bar. “I want her.”

Veiron snarled and his grip on her shoulder tightened. “No fucking way.”

“I admit, I had said that I wouldn’t date your cast offs again, but this one is mortal and I would make our few short hours together pleasurable.”

“Please.” Erin resisted the temptation to hold onto Veiron’s arm across her chest for comfort and courage, glad now that she hadn’t managed to escape his hold. “I wouldn’t screw you if you were the last... thing... on Earth or in Hell. Sleazeball.”

“Erin.” Her name was a low warning curling from Veiron’s lips and she leaned back against him, afraid that she had pushed the man opposite her too far. His eyes began to darken, the paleness swirling together with what looked like pure black under the flashing coloured lights. “She is tired. You could say she has been through Hell.”

That was a poor joke. She rolled her eyes at it.

The vampire still didn’t look pleased.

“I am sure we can come to some agreement. I will keep my ears and eyes open and will have my men do the same. If anything comes here looking for a tasty little human and her escort, I will let you know.” Villandry waved to the woman serving behind the bar again.

“Thank you.” Veiron managed to growl those words in a voice that said quite the opposite. He wasn’t grateful at all to the vampire and his death grip on her shoulder conveyed a deep desire to make the man pay in a very painful way for requesting her as his remuneration for services rendered. “Does Taylor still live in London with Wingless?”

Who was Taylor and who was Wingless?

Erin turned to look up at Veiron to ask him that question but her gaze caught on someone who chilled her more than the Devil.

She shrank back into Veiron’s embrace, trying to avoid the man laughing and talking to two women across the room. People streamed between them but he would only have to glance her way at the right time and he would spot her just as she had spotted him. She had already gone through Hell. Couldn’t someone up there cut her a break? She hadn’t seen her ex in close to three years, since he had got drunk at her twenty-seventh birthday party and made a pass at Amelia, and four of her friends. Her sister had lousy luck with men but it looked stellar compared with Erin’s own run of worthless boyfriends.

Her gaze shot over the heads of the crowd and found the pink neon sign for the women’s bathroom. Safety. She could hide there and clean up while Veiron finished his conversation with the vampire. He could come and get her when he was done and they could hightail it out of the club together.

A larger group of people entered the club and began drifting through it towards her. It was her chance.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” she said it loud enough for Veiron to hear.

He nodded and Erin made a break for it, merging with the group.

She was halfway to the bathroom when someone grabbed her arm. Tightly. She thought it was Veiron changed his mind about her being alone in the club but the hand on her arm was too small. Erin slowly turned to find her ex, Adam, staring in horror at her clothes. His look only worsened when his dark eyes reached her face. She probably looked as though she had been caught in a volcanic blast and had starved while escaping.

The roughly chopped lengths of his dark hair hung over one side of his face as he gave her another once over and his grip on her arm tightened when he reached her bandaged feet.

“What on Earth happened to you?”

Erin wasn’t sure how to explain everything she had just been through without sounding as though she was crazy and she didn’t feel the need to explain herself to him anyway. She had called Villandry a sleazeball but he wasn’t a patch on this man.

“Get your hand off me.” Erin tried to twist free of his grasp.

He dug his fingers in even harder. “No, Erin. I want to know what happened. Christ, your face... your legs... where did you pick up all those bruises and cuts?”

“Seriously, Adam, get your damn hand off me!” It came out louder than she had intended and several people nearby stopped to look at them.

Adam pulled on her arm when she struggled and she clawed at his hand, trying to prise it off her. He was hurting her.

A deep growl curled out over the music.

The entire room froze.

Chapter 8

Veiron needed to work on his impulse control.

He knew it, and so did the hundred people who had stopped dead and turned to stare at him when he had unleashed an ungodly snarl in Erin’s direction.

Villandry made a grab for his arm to stop him but Veiron easily shook the vampire off and stalked across the rapidly draining club to the man who had dared lay his filthy hands on Erin and upset her.

Erin paled as he approached, her amber eyes going impossibly wide. The human male with his hand on her seemed frozen in time, his fingers locked around Erin’s slender wrist and his back to Veiron.

Big mistake.

The man should have remained cognitive enough to get his fucking hands off Erin and get the hell out of Dodge with the rest of the mortals in the club crowd.

Veiron came up behind him and politely tapped him on the shoulder.

The mortal male turned slowly and looked up at him.

“I think it would be best if you did as she asked and removed your hand from her arm before I remove it for you... and I mean that literally. I’ll give you one second to take your hand off her or I’ll chop the damn thing off.” Veiron grinned down at the little man, showing him that he was serious. He might have reined in his temper enough to speak to the flea without going nuclear on his arse but the tethers holding his rage at bay were beginning to twist and snap.

He didn’t want to lose it, not when it would reveal himself to Erin and place her in danger by alerting any of his kind nearby to his location.

The man released Erin’s arm but didn’t back down. He did the one thing in the situation that was guaranteed to push the button on the detonator of Veiron’s anger.

He squared up to Veiron.

“Did you do this to her?” the man positively growled the words and Veiron frowned down at him. One of the tethers on his rage pinged and snapped. Three more and this man was dead. “What sort of sick fuck beats a woman?”

Veiron’s blood boiled. He might be a Hell’s angel but he would never hurt Erin. He would never lay a finger on her in that way. He snarled. Erin looked as though she wanted to say something to defuse the situation but it was too late.

Ping. Ping. Ping. And his rage was free.

Veiron growled, locked his hand around the mortal’s throat, turned with him, and drove him across the room until his back slammed into the curved black bar.

He bent over the man, tightening his hold on his puny neck, and lowered his face so all the man could see was the fury blazing in his now red eyes. Veiron growled low in his throat again, the feral sound rumbling through him, and felt his teeth shift to sharp crimson points and the skin around his eyes begin to blacken. The voice of reason at the back of his head screamed on repeat that he needed to calm the fuck down. The voice of pure primal rage obliterated it.

This man would pay.

The mortal panted beneath him, skin blanched and eyes staring in wild terror into Veiron’s red ones. His heart hammered, a jittery beat that made Veiron’s smile widen. He should fear. By the time Veiron finished with him, he would be pissing his pants.

Veiron shoved the man down into the tacky bar top, forcing him to bend backwards at a harsh angle. The mortal rallied and swung a punch at Veiron’s shoulder. Veiron felt nothing. He grasped the man’s wrist, twisted it until he screamed, and snarled in satisfaction.

“You ever... touch her again... it will be the last... thing you do. Do you... understand?” It was hard to form sentences when his head was pounding, blood rushing like a torrent through his ears, and he was trying to fight his desire to change completely and rip the man to shreds with his bare hands and trying to retain a little sanity so Erin didn’t see him for what he was.

She couldn’t see his face from where she stood, couldn’t see what this man did when he stared into Veiron’s fiery red eyes and saw the darkness around them and his sharp red teeth.

The lights above the bar dimmed, the area around him darkening as his rage began to slip beyond his control. Veiron sneered, flashing his fangs at the petrified mortal, relishing the gasp he released and the way his heart skipped several beats.

“Please don’t kill me.” Those words were jittery, quiet, a plea that spoke to his sane side and said that he should be satisfied now. He had the mortal quaking. Let him go.

No.

Veiron squeezed his throat harder, feeling bones creak and muscle bruise. The mortal choked and gasped, wheezed as he tried to breathe.

“Veiron?” Erin’s soft voice reached out to him.

No.

He shook away the part of him that felt soothed by her voice and growled in the man’s face.

“Veiron!” The sharper female voice and the cool hand that firmly grabbed his shoulder had him shutting down his anger in an instant because he knew what was coming next and he couldn’t allow Erin to see his face as it was now.

The woman hauled him to face her and his gaze flicked to Erin where she stood a few feet behind her. She looked horrified. Veiron cast his eyes down at the floor, not wanting to see in hers that she already thought he was a monster.

A demon.

“Do I need to remind you of my club’s rules?” the blonde in front of him snapped and swept the short strands of hair from her face with a defiant flick.

Her dark gaze locked with his.

Veiron shook his head and released his stranglehold on the piece of shit human male. The last thing he wanted to do was piss off the boss. She was fine when she was in a good mood, but when she lost her temper, her true appearance shifted over her skin, all scales and ugliness, and she could tear even the strongest angel a new one.

The man spluttered and coughed, and wheezed.

Veiron strode across the club, grabbed Erin’s hand, turned towards the doors and growled at the man on his way past. The human’s knees gave out and he crashed to the floor. Erin stumbled along behind Veiron. He knew his pace was too quick for her when her feet were sore from trekking through Hell but he needed fresh cold night air in his lungs to quell the heat of his rage.

“We have to leave.” Veiron shoved the double doors open. A few mortals and demons in their human forms milled around in the alley outside the club. They all backed away when they set eyes on him, giving him space. Probably the wisest thing they had done in their short or long lives.

He didn’t slow until he was three streets away from Cloud Nine. Each breath of cool fresh air soothed a little more of his anger and brought with it painful awareness of what he had done.

He had lost it.

He had exposed them both because of his inability to keep a lid on his temper where this woman was concerned.

His focus shifted to Erin. She felt shocked on his senses and he could hear her heart racing, and feel her hand trembling in his.

“I’m sorry.” Those were the words he had always found hardest to say but they came so easily tonight. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered and then her voice grew stronger. “He deserved it.”

“Who was he?” Part of Veiron feared the answer to that question. He had a feeling he knew what that man had once been to Erin and the thought that he had been allowed to touch her, to taste her and do everything with her that Veiron denied himself, had his chest burning and blood heating to a rolling boil.

Erin was his.

Erin was not his.

She was just a mission. As soon as he got her safely to her sister, he was gone. Goodbye. Sayonara. Have a great life. Erin was a complication that he didn’t need. She made him weak when he needed to be strong and keep a level head. He hadn’t spent the past few centuries plotting his revenge only to throw it away now that he was so close to seeing all his plans come to fruition.

“I went out with him a few years ago. It wasn’t my greatest hour. I dumped him after he hit on my sister and friends at my twenty-seventh birthday night out.”

He felt her shrug, as though it was nothing, but he heard the truth in her heart and the glimmer of her emotions that he could sense. The man had hurt her. He had betrayed her trust and her love.

Veiron wanted to kill him.

He kept his face turned away from Erin so she couldn’t see the change as it came over him, turning his eyes red and teeth crimson and sharp.

“We need to get off the street,” he said but it came out as more of a snarl and Erin’s hand tensed in his. He cleared his throat, reined his anger in, and tried to sound more normal. “I know a place where we might find sanctuary.”

Veiron stopped and looked down at Erin’s feet and her bare legs. She was shivering again and it wasn’t out of fear this time. The night was cold against his chest and back too. Sharing body heat sounded like a reasonable way of keeping warm.

“Come on,” he said and crouched with his back to her.

Erin climbed up onto him, her soft body pressing into his back and her thighs against his hips. Devil, she did feel good right there, snuggled close to him. She settled her arms on his shoulders as he straightened, his hands under her thighs, supporting her.

Veiron blew out his breath at the feel of her fingers sweeping across his shoulders and then down them. They paused and he kept walking, concentrating on the action to purge his desire to absorb the warmth and softness of her caress. If he didn’t focus, his wings were likely to erupt from his back and knock her flying.

Not the way he wanted her to see them for the first time.

Her fingers drifted over his biceps and then followed the sweeping curves of his tattoos to his back. She held onto him with her left hand and traced the tattoo on his right shoulder blade with her other one.

“They’re very beautiful,” she whispered, voice soft but not from her concentrating on his tattoos and being absorbed in following the design with her fingers.

There was desire in that voice, hunger in her tone that made him wonder if she was thinking about running something other than her fingers over his back.

Just the thought of her sweeping her tongue over his tattoos had him hardening painfully in his tight black jeans.

“Thank you,” he uttered, distracted by his thoughts and how good she felt against him.

He fought the urge to turn down the next dark alley, drag her around to his front, pin her to the wall and scratch the itch he had for her.

If he could just scratch that itch, that dark hunger to know her taste and her body, he was sure that he could get her out of his mind and get it back on his real mission. 

Wasn’t going to happen.

Veiron plodded on, hands burning where they touched her bare legs so close to her bottom, mind racing as she continued to swirl her fingers around every curl and along every spike of his tattooed right shoulder.

A shiver raced across his back and it had nothing to do with Erin’s touch this time.

“Hold on,” he said.

Time to run again.

He pounded the pavement with Erin clutching his shoulders, her rapid pulse thumping in his mind, whispering her fear to him.

“How many?” He felt her twist, knew she was looking back.

“Just three.”

He liked the way she said that. Just three. Like three Hell’s angels were nothing for them. They could handle such a paltry number.

He could, but with Erin around, he would be distracted, concerned that she might end up dragged into the fight somehow and injured.

“Veiron... they’re flying.”

That was just cheating.

Two could play at that game.

Veiron stopped, pulled Erin around so she was against his front, and started running again.

His wings burst from his back, he ran up the back of a parked car, boots denting the trunk and roof, and launched himself into the air.

Erin gasped.

Cold night air swept through his crimson feathers as he beat his wings, carrying them higher into the alley.

“You have wings. How do you have wings? You said you didn’t have wings!”

“No, you thought I didn’t have wings.” Veiron flapped them harder. Stay red. Please stay red. When his mood was degenerating as rapidly into anger and violence as it was now, it was normally impossible to keep the feathers on his wings. “This really isn’t the time for this argument.”

Erin mercifully remained quiet.

Veiron’s red gaze darted around, searching for the right direction. If he could get Erin to Taylor’s, he might be able to set her down and tell her to ring the bell and ask Wingless for help while he drew the Hell’s angels away.

He spotted the small square near Taylor and Wingless’s home and shot towards it. The enemy were gaining on him.

“How close?” he said over the noise of the wind.

Erin shivered against him, her body freezing under his hands. “Too close. They’re practically on us.”

“Fuck.” Veiron dived, heading back to street level, and beat his wings, desperate to put some distance between them and their pursuers. Erin tensed in his arms and buried her face against his throat. He levelled off but didn’t slow down. “Listen. I’m going to put you down and draw them away.”

“No.” She threw her arms around his neck and locked her legs around his hips. “No. I don’t want you to ditch me.”

“Stubborn,” he growled and tried to prise her off him but she did the most marvellous impression of a limpet he had ever seen. He couldn’t shift her without using more of his strength and he wouldn’t risk hurting her by doing so. “Fine. Change of plans. I’ll set us both down. You hide behind one of the parked cars on the street and I’ll fight the bad guys.”

“Liar.” She snarled the word at him. “You’re going to ditch me.”

He was. He didn’t have time to argue about it either.

Veiron hit the ground running, furled his crimson wings against his back, and peeled her off him. She tried to hold on but relented when she looked over his shoulder. They were closer now. He could feel them.

Her feet hit the pavement next to a parked black four-wheel-drive vehicle. It was tall enough to conceal her while he fought their three enemies. Erin reached over behind her with both hands and tried to pull the sword out of the scabbard.

“What are you doing?” he said and she grunted, her face screwing up in frustration. She managed to get the sword up several inches but then a flaw in her plan showed itself. Her arms weren’t long enough to draw the sword.

“You need this so you can fight.”

Veiron smiled, drew the sword for her, and handed it to her. She frowned at it and then up into his eyes.

“A mortal sword will be of no use to me in this fight... and I have already revealed myself to them. I might as well use a weapon I favour.” He held his right hand out beside him and a black staff materialised in his hand.

Red patterns decorated the short black rod and red curved blades appeared at each end. The staff itself was only the length of his forearm as it was now, the blades equally as long, but he could increase the length of the rod if he needed more room in the fight.

“Stay here.” Veiron touched her dirty cheek. She didn’t look at him. She was staring at his hand and the spear he grasped as though he had just performed the most amazing magic trick.

Hey presto.

She should see some of the other things he could do.

Veiron beat his wings and flew over the square.

The Hell’s angels appeared and split up as soon as they spotted him, one diving off to his left, the second to his right, and the third heading straight for him.

All three of them were in their true form, making them larger than he was, huge black-skinned beasts with dragon-like wings. The yellow streetlamps reflected off their obsidian armour, draining the colour from the scarlet edging on their breastplates, greaves and the vambraces that protected their forearms.

He wished he could call his own armour but Erin was watching him from the shadow of the Range Rover and if she saw his armour, she would realise that he was like these creatures.

Veiron held the short staff of his double-ended spear in both hands and slashed at the first demonic angel as he lunged at Veiron with his black sword. Veiron knocked the blade aside and snarled as he sliced across the angel’s thick black arm. The angel roared at him and attacked again, quicker this time, and Veiron struggled to counter each strike that drove him backwards through the air. His senses blared a second before a blade cut down his back, narrowly missing his wings.

He cried out and Erin shouted his name.

Foolish woman.

One of the angels turned her way and zipped towards her.

Like hell Veiron was letting him near her.

Veiron beat his wings and shot after the demonic angel, the cold air buffeting him. He extended the staff of his weapon and swung with it, catching the man hard in the waist and sending him careening through the air. The angel crashed into a parked car up the street, the sound of the impact echoing around the Georgian townhouses lining the square and the shockwave sending the alarm of every vehicle in the area shrieking.

Veiron hit the pavement, took two strides, and grabbed Erin around her waist. She gasped and he kicked off, shooting into the air again with a single strong flap of his crimson wings.

The sword fell from her hands and hit the pavement with a clang.

Veiron scoured the area for a safe place for her. The two conscious angels chased him, their leathery wings creating eerie noises amongst the wailing car alarms. There was another square up ahead. The one he had hoped to reach without incident. He couldn’t fight there. It was too close to where he wanted to take Erin once they had lost their tail.

They needed somewhere else.

Veiron held his hand out in front of him and a bright fiery portal appeared. He shot through it, holding Erin close to his chest, and came out near the broad black swath of the River Thames.

He set Erin down on the pavement under a pedestrian bridge next to the river.

“Stay in the shadows.” Veiron went to leave and then came back to her. He laid his hand on her cheek, feeling her shaking, and looked deep into her eyes. “Don’t hate me.”

Before she could ask why, he ran a few paces and took off again, using his wings to carry himself high into the air where she hopefully wouldn’t see what he was about to become.

He couldn’t fight the demonic angels off as he was. His true appearance unleashed his full strength and power. He needed that if he was going to protect Erin.

The first demonic angel appeared through a vicious orange streak in the sky, scanned the darkness, and spotted him. The second tore a rip in the world a few hundred yards further away. Just the two of them.

Maybe he wouldn’t need to go nuclear after all.

Veiron beat his scarlet wings and caught the second angel unawares, cutting him across the neck and then following through by twisting his double-ended blade and slicing down his back. The blade caught the male’s left wing, tearing through the leathery membrane, and he shrieked and plummeted into the river. A bright orange glow lit the water as it boiled, telling Veiron that the angel had returned to Hell to heal.

That left him with one.

Veiron grinned and turned to face the remaining demonic angel.

Erin screamed.

 

Have you enjoyed this long sample of Her Demonic Angel? To continue reading, please purchase a copy of the book.

Her Demonic Angel is available now in paperback from Amazon and also as an ebook from Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, Kobo Books and other retailers.

For links to where this book is available, please visit:

http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/hda

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Felicity Heaton is a USA Today best-selling author who writes passionate paranormal romance books as Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. In her books she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons!

If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, Felicity Heaton’s best selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series she writes as F E Heaton or any of her stand alone vampire romance books she writes as Felicity Heaton. Or if you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try Felicity Heaton’s new Vampire Erotic Theatre series.

In 2011, five of her six paranormal romance books received Top Pick awards from Night Owl Reviews and Forbidden Blood was nominated as Best PNR Vampire Romance 2011 at The Romance Reviews. In 2012, she was awarded the GraveTells Author of the Year Award, and Heart of Darkness was announced as a 2013 Epic Ebook Awards finalist in the Paranormal Romance category. Many of her books receive five star reviews from readers and review sites alike.

To see her other novels, visit: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk

If you have enjoyed this story, please take a moment to contact the author at author@felicityheaton.co.uk or to post a review of the book online

 

Follow the author on:

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