Revenant (15 page)

“Wait.” She bit down on one kiss-swollen lip. “Protection.”

“False Angels can only breed with False Angels,” he said, and shouldn’t she know that?

“Yes, I know. But you’re some kind of super fallen angel. What if —”

“I’m an
angel
,” he pointed out. “Angels aren’t fertile in Sheoul. Prevents demons from capturing them and using them to breed hybrid abominations.”

“How
is
it possible that you’re an angel anyway?” She frowned, losing the saucy, aroused edge, and shit, he had to get back on the sex track.

“I never fell from Heaven. Long story. I’ll tell you after.” He arched up, reminding her that now wasn’t the time for talking. It was time for fucking.

“Should be a good story.” She stroked his cock in her fist, giving it a couple of good pumps before replacing it at her opening.

He held his breath as she lowered herself, head thrown back, lips parted, her sex swallowing his erection in slow, torturous increments. The erotic sight made him groan, his sex kicking hard inside her as if urging her to hurry.

“That’s it. Fuck, that’s so it,” he breathed. “You’re so damned wet.”

A low, hungry moan broke from her lips as she took him to the hilt. She swiveled her hips and rose up until he nearly came free of her tight heat, and then she sat down again, faster this time, but still way too slow for his tastes.

He hoped she was done with the control-freak trip she was on, because it was his turn.

On the next upstroke, he dug his heels into the mattress and arched his hips to buck her, lifting her knees off the bed and forcing her to fall forward. As her palms shot out to brace her body on his chest, he rolled his hips, penetrating her deep.

Her gasp of pleasure joined his as the pace picked up, breathing became frantic, and the sound of slapping bodies dropped them into a maelstrom of ecstasy. Her breasts, flushed and heavy with arousal, bounced as she rode him, and when she cupped one, tweaking the nipple between her fingers, he nearly came undone.

“Show me your wings, Blaspheme,” he murmured breathlessly. “I want to see all of you.”

He thought he saw a flicker of alarm in her eyes, but a heartbeat later, delicate wings spread from her back, extending high into the air. Unlike true angel or fallen angel wings, they were neither leathery nor layered with feathers, were instead shimmery and translucent, like a bride’s veil sprinkled with glitter.

They were so transparent, in fact, that they seemed to flicker in and out of existence until finally, she folded them neatly behind her back and let them fade completely away.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

She met his gaze, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. The intensity in her expression, the sultry cast of her eyes and lips… damn, he was ready to spill into her, to make her moan his name from that sexy mouth.

“So are you.” She arched in pleasure, the graceful curve of her body the epitome of False Angel perfection. “You’re a bastard, Revenant, but a beautiful one.”

Never had anyone given him such a precious compliment, and for a few stuttering heartbeats, he froze, committing her words to memory.

Rolling her hips, she clenched her internal muscles and took him so deep he swore he felt the beat of her heart at the tip of his cock. His sac pulled taut with impending release as it met the hot flesh between her legs with every erotic move she made.

Given the intensity of her torture, he lasted longer than he thought he would, but he couldn’t have predicted that when his climax came, he’d hit another damned plane of existence.

As his balls throbbed, his entire body seized up, racked with pleasure so intense he could only roar in exquisite agony. Distantly he heard Blaspheme’s soft cries, felt her clamp down around him in rippling waves. Another orgasm rear-ended the first one, and he was launched into the stratosphere again as his body blew apart.

Holy…
damn
.

When the world came into focus again, he couldn’t move. He felt disembodied, could only lie there, dizzy, boneless, Blas’s warm weight something he would gladly bear all night.

She lay on top of him, breathing heavily, her sweaty skin plastered to his. He wondered if his half of the deal they’d struck was over yet, so he could finally run his hands through her silky hair that fanned over his shoulders. But then he decided he couldn’t lift his arms anyway, so the no-touching thing was irrelevant.

“I can’t move,” Blaspheme muttered, her breath whispering across his throat.

Move? Revenant couldn’t even speak. He managed a grunt he hoped sounded like agreement, and he felt her lips curve into a smile against his skin. That one tiny intimacy, a secret, satisfied smile while they were still connected, wrapped around him like a warm embrace.

The sensation was as intense as it was unfamiliar. He loved females and he loved sex, and he’d had a lot of both. But this was the first time he’d felt like this, as if he couldn’t get enough. Not of just sex, but of a female. Of Blaspheme.

He could lie like this forever. Maybe the Earth would stop spinning, the realms would stop fighting, and everyone would leave him and Blaspheme the hell alone. Revenant had never been one to dream… any dreams he might have had were destroyed on that Megiddo hilltop all those years ago, when Reaver had made it clear that brothers or not, they weren’t family, and Rev didn’t belong in Heaven.

But here he was, dreaming. Which was insane, considering his life was in the worst possible place it could be right now, with both Heaven and hell screwing with him. Neither side was known for being especially forgiving when it came to battles between good and evil, which meant that no matter what he did, someone was going to rain a whole lot of hell down on his head. Literally, if Satan was the one he pissed off.

So yeah, lying in bed and dreaming of a future where he was in any way happy was stupid.

But as Blaspheme let out a contented sigh, he realized he was happy at this very moment. He was going to embrace it. Savor it.

Because something told him it wasn’t going to last.

Revenant woke to the tap of Blaspheme’s fingers on his sternum. He’d fallen asleep? Seriously? He never crashed after sex.

Opening his eyes, he glanced at the clock on the wall, and yep, he’d lost a couple of hours. He canted his head to the side, smiling when he saw Blaspheme facing him, her body stretched against his as he lay on his back, her hand running up and down his chest.

“Hi.” She returned his smile with a shy one of her own.

“Hi.” His voice was shot to hell, but in a good postcoital way.

“So,” she said, not wasting any time, “how is it that you and Reaver are brothers? And why didn’t Reaver ever mention it before?”

Groaning, Rev threw his forearm over his eyes. “You got something against coffee before conversation?”

“Nope. But while you were sleeping I rummaged through your kitchen, and I couldn’t find any.” She jabbed him in the ribs. “So? Spill.”

Figuring he couldn’t avoid getting back to real life, Revenant tucked his arm behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “Reaver didn’t mention having a brother because he didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago. Neither did I.”

“How can that be?”

“Our memories were erased. Twice.”

Sitting up, she snared a blanket from the foot of the bed and covered herself. Too bad. He could look at her creamy breasts all day. “I’m lost.”

He was lost, too. “Yeah, well, I’m still trying to work out thousands of years of memories myself.” Reaching over, he fingered a tendril of her silky hair while he considered how much to tell her. He didn’t trust anyone, but False Angels, with their lying, seductive ways, were even less trustworthy. And Blaspheme, while she wasn’t like any False Angel he’d ever met, was undoubtedly hiding something from him. He might have been drunk when he saw some sort of crumpling aura around her last night at her apartment, but he was perfectly sober now, and he still sensed that there was something not right with her.

That said, he didn’t know how she could possibly use anything he told her against him.

“Our mother was a battle angel,” he said finally. “She was pregnant with a potential Radiant, and she was betrayed by an angel to Satan’s forces. Our father was killed in the battle, and she was taken to Sheoul. She gave birth to twins. Heaven worked out a deal to take one of the infants, and Sheoul would take the other.”

“Oh, wow,” she whispered. “So that’s how you’re an angel, not a fallen angel. Heaven took Reaver, didn’t they?”

“Yes. I was left behind, raised in a ten-by-ten cell in a dungeon.” The memories came at him like blows, but he quickly blocked them and got away from that messy part of the story. “Years later, after I learned the truth, I went to Reaver, and it didn’t go well. He’d just discovered that the female he loved had betrayed him and that he had four grown children. He was pissed, I was pissed… let’s just say that between the two of us, we caused a whole lot of destruction.”

“What’s a whole lot?”

“The kind that requires thousands of angels to rewrite history in the minds of humans.”

She swallowed. “They can do that?”

“Apparently they’ve done it several times.”

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

“Yeah.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “So I lost my memory. Satan told me that I was a fallen angel, and that I didn’t remember my time in Heaven because sometimes fallen angels lose their memories when they fall from grace. I bought it. I believed it when he told me that I was kicked out of Heaven for assassinating fellow angels.” He snorted. “I toed the evil line like a champ. Fuck, I need a drink. You?”

She shook her head.

“You sure?” He swung out of bed and strode, naked, to the portable bar in the corner. “Don’t think I’ve ever met a False Angel who wasn’t a lush.”

“I have to work later. For some reason, Eidolon frowns on his staff showing up drunk.”

He poured himself a shot of Sheoul’s finest absinthe, made the old-fashioned way, with wormwood grown in the corpses of imps. “Ah, that’s right. You’re a False Angel with ethics.”

“Yeah. Ethics.” She rubbed her temples as if fending off a headache. “So how long did you go around thinking you were a fallen angel? Also,” she grumbled, “you should put on some clothes. You’re a menace to society when you’re naked.”

Ah, his ego loved the stroking. He definitely wasn’t getting dressed now. “I believed I was fallen for five thousand years, give or take a century or ten.” He knocked back the neon-green liquor, relishing the stinging burn down his throat. “Then, a little over three decades ago, Reaver did something bad again. He broke a huge rule and was punished. Want to guess how?”

“Ah… memory loss?”

“Yep. Well, that and he lost his wings. Went to work at your hospital. And here’s the kicker. The agreement Heaven made with Sheoul when we were born said that whatever was done to one of us had to be done to the other. So my memory was wiped. Again.”

The alcohol sting in his throat turned bitter. Breaking rules resulted in chaos and pain and all kinds of shit, and Reaver’s reckless disregard for the rules had done exactly that.

“Jesus,” she whispered. “So you lost five thousand years of memories in an instant?”

He nodded. “Reaver at least knew that he was being punished. Me? One minute I was… ah… doing fallen angel stuff, and the next I was wondering why the hell I was standing in Sheoul’s Horun region, covered in blood, and standing over the body of some
vyrm
.”

The color faded from Blaspheme’s cheeks. Her physician self must be appalled by the killing Revenant had done.

He poured another drink. “Like I told you earlier, hunting
vyrm
and other undesirables was my job. I was Satan’s little assassin helper. I didn’t know that at the time. I only remember now.”

He’d been a straight-up badass hell-bent on destruction, and he’d been proud of it. Now, knowing he had Satan’s blood running through his veins, corroding his body and soul like Drano, the memories left him confused. He was evil – how could he not be? But he was also an angel whose mother had loved him.

His fingers curled around the shot glass so hard his hand shook. Fuck, he was lost.

“I wandered around for a year after the second memory wipe, scrounging out a living in Sheoul, turning myself into a hired hand. And then Satan’s minions came for me. He told me the
vyrm
must have erased my memory before I killed him, and that I had been a fallen angel for thousands of years, blah fucking yadda.”

Blaspheme’s skin was still pale, but some of the color had started to return. Good. He didn’t like seeing her upset.

“And then your memory came back a couple of weeks ago?” she prompted. “How did that happen?”

“Reaver again. You sensing a pattern?” Revenant was struck by an urge to seek out his brother and start another brawl. “He rescued Harvester from Sheoul and saved the realms or some crap. For his actions he was raised to Radiant and given his memory back. And because whatever is done to one of us has to be done to the other —”

“You were turned into a Shadow Angel.”

“You got it.” He raised his glass in a begrudging toast. “To my heroic twin brother and his shiny halo.”

“But why wouldn’t you be a Radiant? I mean, you’re an angel, right?”

The liquor went down smoother this time. “Because there can only be one at any given time. There has to be a Shadow Angel for balance, and Reaver won the hero lottery while I was fed Satan’s blood as an infant. It corrupted me, gave me all of the qualities and abilities of a fallen angel.” He tongued a fang. “Including these.”

“So your inner angel is masked,” Blaspheme mused. “Interesting.” She climbed out of bed and started dressing. What a shame. “You said your mother was imprisoned when she was pregnant. What happened to her after you were born?”

He should have expected the question, but it still stabbed him in the heart. “She died after a couple of decades of torture.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as she fastened her bra. “Did you know her at all?”

“Yeah.” The alcohol in his belly turned sour, and all he wanted now was to vomit. “Can we not talk about this?”

“I should be going anyway.” She tugged on her pants. “We had a deal, remember?”

Yeah, he remembered. And he was kicking himself in the nuts for making it. He wasn’t ready to let her go. He should be; he’d never had a problem letting a female go in the past. But suddenly, he was aching at the thought of parting from her.

It’s that damned False Angel magic
.

Of course. Hopefully it would wear off once she was out of his sight. But what if it didn’t? What if she was intentionally enchanting him? That was one of a False Angel’s many methods of finding sustenance. They used their pheromones and seductive skills to enchant, their aphrodisiac powder to seduce, and then they severed ties and gorged on the emotional agony they caused. The more heartbroken the male was, the more energy she took from him. If she was lucky and he died, she feasted.

That wasn’t going to happen to Revenant. He was stronger than that. If Blaspheme thought she could play him, she was going to be brutally disappointed.

He clothed himself in an instant, going with jeans and a black Four Little Ponies of the Apocalypse T-shirt, and then he watched her finish dressing, wondering if she’d make some sort of flirty play to draw him in even further. Sure enough, as she slipped on her shoes, she shot him a teasing smile.

“That was fun.” Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she strutted over to him and drew her finger down his chest, halting at his waistband. “Interesting T-shirt choice.”

“It annoys the Horsemen’s stallions.”

“I have a feeling you like poking dangerous things with sticks, don’t you?”

“If the stick is sharp enough, no thing is dangerous.”

She cocked a blond eyebrow. “Really? Because I don’t think I could find a stick sharp enough to make you less dangerous.”

“I’m not a danger to you, Blaspheme.” Putting his fingers to her throat, he stroked the silky skin right over her jugular vein. “Not if you’ve been honest with me.”

In an instant, her demeanor changed, intensified, almost as if she had a split personality, and the other one had come out to play. Gone was the easygoing, flirty doctor, and in her place was a temptress with pouty lips and half-lidded eyes. Her delicate wings flared out and tucked away again, and in the smoky light from the wall sconces, he could see glittery particles floating in the air.

Aphrodisiac powder. She was attempting to enchant him with it. And okay, he suddenly felt a little amorous, but it didn’t overshadow the disappointment rolling through him that she’d so blatantly use a False Angel trick on him. Did she really think he’d fall madly in love with her and then collapse in a sad little puddle of grief when she left him high and dry?

“I am what I am,” she said in a low, smoky voice that filled his brain with fantasies of doing her in front of a roaring fire. A campfire, a forest fire, a freaking fire in the Pits of Pain, he didn’t care. “Thank you for the distraction. Now I need to get back to the clinic.”

Dropping his arm, he snared her hand. He wasn’t going to let her screw with him more than she already had. “I’d say it would be even better next time, but there won’t be a next time.”

“Then we’re in agreement.”

The hard-to-get angle wasn’t going to work with him now that he knew what she was up to. Anger bubbled up, but he tamped it down, figuring he had the upper hand now, and once he had it, he didn’t give it up.

Still gripping her, he flashed to Underworld General’s parking lot.

“Well,” she said crisply, whipping her hair over her shoulder, “I guess this is it. Nice knowing you, Revenant.”

“No,” he said, “this isn’t it. I still need you for Gethel.”

Now that Heaven had made him an offer, he needed Lucifer to die more than ever. His death would mean Rev wouldn’t lose his status in Sheoul, but it could also get him a welcome into Heaven. Either way,
he
would have the power to choose his destiny. Win-win all around.

Of course, that was assuming Blaspheme and her doctor buddies were devising a way to rid the realms of Lucifer. They had to be. Eidolon’s family was too tied together with Reaver and the Horsemen, and there was no way they couldn’t be plotting to destroy Gethel, and with her, Satan’s brat.

She started toward the sliding glass door that led to the emergency department. “I told you to bring her here.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then I’ll find you another doctor,” she called from over her shoulder.

“Unacceptable.”

She spun around, and a sudden chill infused her voice. “Yeah, well, here’s the thing. You might be a Shadow Angel with powers and influence I can’t even comprehend. But here, in this medical facility, I lay down the law. So let’s part ways without a scene, shall we?”

Revenant banked his frustration. He was used to getting what he wanted, but in this case, he was going to back off. For now. But he’d be back, and he wasn’t going to settle for any other doctor.

No, he wasn’t as through with Blaspheme as she’d like to think.