In his frozen position he couldn’t see Harvester. The demon with the whip took off, leaving Reaver to stare at the ground, helpless to do anything but blink his eyelids.
The sound of fighting rang out, the clang of metal on metal, grunts of pain, thuds of dull objects striking flesh. And finally, a splash and a scream.
Harvester? He thought his pulse was racing and his heart was pounding, but he couldn’t feel anything. All he knew was a breath-strangling anxiety he couldn’t quell no matter how many times he told himself that it must have been the demon that went into the pool.
Footsteps approached. Reaver swallowed. The paralytic agent was wearing off, but it was taking its sweet time.
“Reaver?” Harvester kneeled next to him, and he would have breathed a sigh of relief if he could. She rolled him so he was on his back, looking up into the blackness. “You were hit with an anti-angel weapon my father invented. He’s creative that way. You’ll be okay. It wears off quickly.”
She put her hand on his chest and leaned in so he could see her face. Her cheeks were smudged with dirt and her bottom lip was split open, but she appeared to be unharmed. And yet, as she looked him over, her eyes grew haunted.
“It sucks to be helpless.” Her voice was so quiet he barely heard her. She stroked his face with her fingertips, and his heart lurched in his chest at her gentle touch. He felt her thumb swipe his jaw, and it came away with blood.
Suddenly, her gaze, which had been full of tormented shadows, became… hungry… as she looked down at the pad of her thumb. Her lips parted to reveal rapidly lengthening fangs.
Don’t do it… don’t do it…
She did it. She moaned as she slid her thumb into her mouth. She sucked greedily, eyes closed, and shit, he was torn between watching her fellate her thumb and worrying that the taste of his blood was going to lead to her wanting more. If she fed from him while he was paralyzed and unable to stop her, she could be swept away by bloodlust and drain him. He wouldn’t die, but he’d be comatose for days. Weeks, maybe. They’d never get out of here.
And where the ever-living f**k was Calder? Not that Reaver wanted that bastard to come back while Reaver was helpless. The assassin might be a professional, but he was also a demon with powerful, cruel instincts, and a vulnerable angel might be too much of a temptation.
“You taste… incredible. Like sex.” She swirled her tongue around the tip of her thumb as if giving him a visual to go along with her words. Damn, that was hot.
Her eyes popped open, and anxiety spiked. They were still green, but flecks of the deepest, darkest black were spreading, swallowing the whites.
Her evil was starting to show. Had his blood done that to her?
Her lips curved into a sinister smile. “We were in a similar situation not long ago. You were helpless. At my mercy.”
No shit. She’d cut off his wings and kept him immobilized and miserable, then she’d tried to get him addicted to marrow wine. At the time, he’d believed she’d enjoyed herself. But now he knew she’d been playing for Team Heaven… so had her enjoyment been an act? Or had all that time in Sheoul corrupted her enough that she truly had loved every minute she’d spent hurting him?
Harvester slid her hand up to his throat and lightly stroked his skin. Or maybe it felt light only because he was so numb.
“I didn’t want to do it, but orders are orders, aren’t they?” There was actually a thread of remorse woven into the dense malevolence in her voice. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. “You know what’s funny?” He loved how she asked questions when he couldn’t answer them. Harvester had really never needed physical implements of torture. Talking alone was adequate. “I liked having you at my place. I didn’t like for you to be in pain…” She licked her lips, catching a smudge of his blood that lingered in the corner of her mouth. “Well, not much pain.”
Her fingers trailed up and down his jugular, and both alarm and his hackles rose. Would she do more than talk him to death? She could wreck him with the Dragon Biter if she wanted to.
Or drink him into a coma.
“I was supposed to hurt you more than I did. I was supposed to blind you.” She brought her palm to his cheek and smoothed her thumb over the sensitive skin under his eye. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I held back out of compassion. I have none.”
Maybe not right this minute, but he was still going to call bullshit. He’d been on the receiving end of her care after Pestilence had beaten him half to death. He wondered if she was even aware that she was lying.
“I held back because I dislike being told what to do.”
Well, they had that in common. But he still didn’t buy that she’d spared him pain out of an unwillingness to follow orders. But why the hell was she yammering on like this? Although he supposed there was nothing else to do while they waited for his paralysis to wear off.
“So,” she said, as if she hadn’t just rehashed one of the weirdest and worst times of his life. That he knew of, anyway. Anything could have happened during the thousands of years that were a black hole in his memory. “What shall we do to pass the time?” She grinned, a real wicked I’m-a-naughty-girl special. “I wonder if every part of you is as hard as your limbs.” Her gaze traveled down the length of his body, and if he hadn’t been stone-cold frozen, he’d have hyperventilated.
She wouldn’t.
Would she?
“Oh, chill out, you uptight pile of feathers. I’m not going to take advantage of your… stiff… condition. We have a little pact that will address that, don’t we?”
Yes, they did, but why she’d made him agree to pleasure her was still a mystery. He’d nearly vomited at the time he’d sworn to uphold the deal, but now that he knew the truth about her… okay, he still wasn’t thrilled. But the more she stroked his skin, the more she watched him with those half-lidded eyes, the more he wanted her to keep doing it.
And when she leaned even closer, until her lips were a mere feather’s width away from his, the more he wanted. Period.
Ten
Harvester really liked having Reaver at her mercy. He’d always driven her crazy with his pompous holier-than-thou attitude, and while she would never admit this to him, he usually seemed to have the upper hand when it came to their verbal sparring. It was a rare treat to have him silent and unable to argue.
Plus, the taste of his blood had been like a one-two punch of lust and loathing, reminding her how much she both despised him and wanted him. She hated that she wanted him, so she was going to punish him for it and take full advantage of his unfortunate circumstance for as long as it lasted.
“You think I’m an evil, skanky bitch, don’t you?” she asked, relishing the fact that he couldn’t answer. Smiling, she brushed his silky hair back from his eyes—a face like his should never be obscured.
“I’ll bet you’re wondering if I’ve been corrupted by all those centuries spent in Satan’s service. Am I right?”
Even though he was paralyzed, the whip’s effect was wearing off, and his expression was enough to let her know that yes, she was spot-on.
“Let me satisfy your curiosity.” She trailed a finger over his satiny lips, remembering how they’d felt on hers when he’d kissed her to seal the deal they’d made in Sheoul-gra.
Good grief, the boy could kiss. The last time she’d been brought to her knees by a mere kiss was with Yenrieth.
Funny how she couldn’t conjure up an image of what he looked like, but she most definitely recalled how he made her feel. Most of the memories were good ones that made her smile and made heat bloom between her thighs.
The rest… she couldn’t go there. Not only was it pointless, because he was gone and wasn’t ever coming back, but her time with him had been so long ago. She needed to concentrate on the future, uncertain as that may be.
“But I’m not sure corrupt is the word we should focus on,” she said. “I prefer… grow. I had to grow up fast down here.”
Reaver’s blond eyebrows climbed.
“Yes, I was an adult when I fell. But I was so naive. I wasn’t a battle angel like you, so I didn’t have the kind of contact you have with demons. I mostly dealt with humans. Stupid, evil humans I was charged with delivering justice upon, but humans nonetheless.” She trailed her finger from his mouth to his ear and spent a moment stroking the soft skin of his lobe. He was so… warm. “As you can imagine, I was in for a bit of a shock when I entered Sheoul. Looking back, I can see that I should have thought the whole thing through a little more. I definitely should have prepared better.”
Her cover story explaining her expulsion from Heaven, that she’d killed humans for fun, had been a good one, and the fact that Satan was her father only made it more believable. Bad genes and all that. But the reality of life in Sheoul had been more of a shock than she’d expected. The realization that her father truly was the epitome of evil had been devastating. For the first few decades as a fallen angel, on some lofty level she’d actually believed there was a kernel of good in him, a remnant of who he’d been as a Heavenly angel.
Not so much.
But what did that mean for her? Sometimes she didn’t know if there was any good left in her, either.
“Ah, well.” She dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand, not wanting to delve too deeply into questions she was afraid to be answered. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?”
Reaver took a deep, shuddering breath as his lungs unfroze. She didn’t have much time to drive him crazy. Which was fun. Maybe a little therapeutic, too. Oh, she wasn’t baring her soul or some shit, but since he already knew she’d fallen on purpose and with the cooperation of three archangels, he might as well know some of the story.
Let him see for himself just how evil she’d let herself become.
“The first two hundred years were the worst. Demons and other fallen angels love to torment the newbie, you know.”
She thought about that. Reaver had lost his wings once, booted out of Heaven and into the human realm as an Unfallen. But he hadn’t entered Sheoul, which would have turned him into a True Fallen, a fallen angel with no hope of ever being redeemed. Remarkable, really. Few Unfallen lasted long in the human realm. The temptation to enter Sheoul and be given new wings and powers as a True Fallen was too great.
“No, you wouldn’t know. Just trust me.” She smiled down at him. “You don’t trust me though, do you? Is it because I’m a fallen angel, or is it because it’s not in your nature to trust easily? Either way, you’re right not to trust me.”
She shoved to her feet, wincing at the multitude of bumps and bruises she’d taken during the battle. Worse than all of it, though, was the throbbing ache in her wing anchors. Unlike her other injuries, the pain of her wings trying—and failing—to regenerate was going to intensify and spread through all of her bones until she was crippled with the agony of it.
Harvester dug the canteen from out of Reaver’s backpack. Returning to him, she straddled Reaver’s body and sank down on his hard abs. “Are you tired of my talking yet?”
Reaver’s expression softened, but was she reading him wrong? He couldn’t possibly like hearing her ramble. Could he? Because if he did, she’d have to stop.
Except she kind of liked that he was listening.
Way down inside the murky deep freeze that was her chest, something stirred. Something bad, like angry wasps. Or butterflies. If she were human, she’d think she was getting sick.
She popped the cap on the canteen and carefully tilted it against Reaver’s lips. Water spilled into his mouth, and he swallowed eagerly. She kept giving him drinks in small doses until he blinked at her.
“Is that a ‘no more’? One blink for more water, two for no more.” He blinked twice. “You do know that if I was feeling evil I’d keep making you drink, right? It would be like angel waterboarding. We could make it a sport. How entertaining.”
Reaver rolled his eyes. No sense of humor, that one.
“You’re going to be talking soon, and that’ll ruin all my sinister plans to torture you with inane babbling, you know.”
One corner of his mouth turned up, knocking loose a crystal bead of water that had lingered on his bottom lip. The drop ran along the seam of his lips, drawing her gaze. Never in her life had she wanted water as badly as she did at this moment. His lips parted, and his tongue swept out to capture the drop.
She swallowed as if she’d been the one to taste the glistening bead, and she found herself leaning into him, rolling from the h*ps to slowly plaster her upper body against his. Was it her imagination or were his eyes darkening from radiant sapphire to a bold, lavish navy blue? Could he actually be turned on?
His clean scent invaded her senses, permeating every cell in her body. He always smelled good, even when he was covered in dirt, ash, blood, and the remnants of battle. It never took long for that honey-spiced angel fragrance to saturate his skin and obliterate everything else.
She wanted to kiss him. To taste those full lips again. The weird thing was that she always took what she wanted, but for some reason, she was hesitant about this.
Kissing Reaver would annoy him. Maybe even piss him off.
Right. Decision made.
She sealed her mouth against his. Months ago when they’d kissed to seal the sex deal there’d been an instant sense of familiarity the moment their lips touched, a bizarre and disturbing rightness that shook her to the core.
Nothing had changed. The feeling was still there. The strange rightness should scare her, and it did, but it also felt so good she wanted to weep, and that was something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
The sound of fighting rang out, the clang of metal on metal, grunts of pain, thuds of dull objects striking flesh. And finally, a splash and a scream.
Harvester? He thought his pulse was racing and his heart was pounding, but he couldn’t feel anything. All he knew was a breath-strangling anxiety he couldn’t quell no matter how many times he told himself that it must have been the demon that went into the pool.
Footsteps approached. Reaver swallowed. The paralytic agent was wearing off, but it was taking its sweet time.
“Reaver?” Harvester kneeled next to him, and he would have breathed a sigh of relief if he could. She rolled him so he was on his back, looking up into the blackness. “You were hit with an anti-angel weapon my father invented. He’s creative that way. You’ll be okay. It wears off quickly.”
She put her hand on his chest and leaned in so he could see her face. Her cheeks were smudged with dirt and her bottom lip was split open, but she appeared to be unharmed. And yet, as she looked him over, her eyes grew haunted.
“It sucks to be helpless.” Her voice was so quiet he barely heard her. She stroked his face with her fingertips, and his heart lurched in his chest at her gentle touch. He felt her thumb swipe his jaw, and it came away with blood.
Suddenly, her gaze, which had been full of tormented shadows, became… hungry… as she looked down at the pad of her thumb. Her lips parted to reveal rapidly lengthening fangs.
Don’t do it… don’t do it…
She did it. She moaned as she slid her thumb into her mouth. She sucked greedily, eyes closed, and shit, he was torn between watching her fellate her thumb and worrying that the taste of his blood was going to lead to her wanting more. If she fed from him while he was paralyzed and unable to stop her, she could be swept away by bloodlust and drain him. He wouldn’t die, but he’d be comatose for days. Weeks, maybe. They’d never get out of here.
And where the ever-living f**k was Calder? Not that Reaver wanted that bastard to come back while Reaver was helpless. The assassin might be a professional, but he was also a demon with powerful, cruel instincts, and a vulnerable angel might be too much of a temptation.
“You taste… incredible. Like sex.” She swirled her tongue around the tip of her thumb as if giving him a visual to go along with her words. Damn, that was hot.
Her eyes popped open, and anxiety spiked. They were still green, but flecks of the deepest, darkest black were spreading, swallowing the whites.
Her evil was starting to show. Had his blood done that to her?
Her lips curved into a sinister smile. “We were in a similar situation not long ago. You were helpless. At my mercy.”
No shit. She’d cut off his wings and kept him immobilized and miserable, then she’d tried to get him addicted to marrow wine. At the time, he’d believed she’d enjoyed herself. But now he knew she’d been playing for Team Heaven… so had her enjoyment been an act? Or had all that time in Sheoul corrupted her enough that she truly had loved every minute she’d spent hurting him?
Harvester slid her hand up to his throat and lightly stroked his skin. Or maybe it felt light only because he was so numb.
“I didn’t want to do it, but orders are orders, aren’t they?” There was actually a thread of remorse woven into the dense malevolence in her voice. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. “You know what’s funny?” He loved how she asked questions when he couldn’t answer them. Harvester had really never needed physical implements of torture. Talking alone was adequate. “I liked having you at my place. I didn’t like for you to be in pain…” She licked her lips, catching a smudge of his blood that lingered in the corner of her mouth. “Well, not much pain.”
Her fingers trailed up and down his jugular, and both alarm and his hackles rose. Would she do more than talk him to death? She could wreck him with the Dragon Biter if she wanted to.
Or drink him into a coma.
“I was supposed to hurt you more than I did. I was supposed to blind you.” She brought her palm to his cheek and smoothed her thumb over the sensitive skin under his eye. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I held back out of compassion. I have none.”
Maybe not right this minute, but he was still going to call bullshit. He’d been on the receiving end of her care after Pestilence had beaten him half to death. He wondered if she was even aware that she was lying.
“I held back because I dislike being told what to do.”
Well, they had that in common. But he still didn’t buy that she’d spared him pain out of an unwillingness to follow orders. But why the hell was she yammering on like this? Although he supposed there was nothing else to do while they waited for his paralysis to wear off.
“So,” she said, as if she hadn’t just rehashed one of the weirdest and worst times of his life. That he knew of, anyway. Anything could have happened during the thousands of years that were a black hole in his memory. “What shall we do to pass the time?” She grinned, a real wicked I’m-a-naughty-girl special. “I wonder if every part of you is as hard as your limbs.” Her gaze traveled down the length of his body, and if he hadn’t been stone-cold frozen, he’d have hyperventilated.
She wouldn’t.
Would she?
“Oh, chill out, you uptight pile of feathers. I’m not going to take advantage of your… stiff… condition. We have a little pact that will address that, don’t we?”
Yes, they did, but why she’d made him agree to pleasure her was still a mystery. He’d nearly vomited at the time he’d sworn to uphold the deal, but now that he knew the truth about her… okay, he still wasn’t thrilled. But the more she stroked his skin, the more she watched him with those half-lidded eyes, the more he wanted her to keep doing it.
And when she leaned even closer, until her lips were a mere feather’s width away from his, the more he wanted. Period.
Ten
Harvester really liked having Reaver at her mercy. He’d always driven her crazy with his pompous holier-than-thou attitude, and while she would never admit this to him, he usually seemed to have the upper hand when it came to their verbal sparring. It was a rare treat to have him silent and unable to argue.
Plus, the taste of his blood had been like a one-two punch of lust and loathing, reminding her how much she both despised him and wanted him. She hated that she wanted him, so she was going to punish him for it and take full advantage of his unfortunate circumstance for as long as it lasted.
“You think I’m an evil, skanky bitch, don’t you?” she asked, relishing the fact that he couldn’t answer. Smiling, she brushed his silky hair back from his eyes—a face like his should never be obscured.
“I’ll bet you’re wondering if I’ve been corrupted by all those centuries spent in Satan’s service. Am I right?”
Even though he was paralyzed, the whip’s effect was wearing off, and his expression was enough to let her know that yes, she was spot-on.
“Let me satisfy your curiosity.” She trailed a finger over his satiny lips, remembering how they’d felt on hers when he’d kissed her to seal the deal they’d made in Sheoul-gra.
Good grief, the boy could kiss. The last time she’d been brought to her knees by a mere kiss was with Yenrieth.
Funny how she couldn’t conjure up an image of what he looked like, but she most definitely recalled how he made her feel. Most of the memories were good ones that made her smile and made heat bloom between her thighs.
The rest… she couldn’t go there. Not only was it pointless, because he was gone and wasn’t ever coming back, but her time with him had been so long ago. She needed to concentrate on the future, uncertain as that may be.
“But I’m not sure corrupt is the word we should focus on,” she said. “I prefer… grow. I had to grow up fast down here.”
Reaver’s blond eyebrows climbed.
“Yes, I was an adult when I fell. But I was so naive. I wasn’t a battle angel like you, so I didn’t have the kind of contact you have with demons. I mostly dealt with humans. Stupid, evil humans I was charged with delivering justice upon, but humans nonetheless.” She trailed her finger from his mouth to his ear and spent a moment stroking the soft skin of his lobe. He was so… warm. “As you can imagine, I was in for a bit of a shock when I entered Sheoul. Looking back, I can see that I should have thought the whole thing through a little more. I definitely should have prepared better.”
Her cover story explaining her expulsion from Heaven, that she’d killed humans for fun, had been a good one, and the fact that Satan was her father only made it more believable. Bad genes and all that. But the reality of life in Sheoul had been more of a shock than she’d expected. The realization that her father truly was the epitome of evil had been devastating. For the first few decades as a fallen angel, on some lofty level she’d actually believed there was a kernel of good in him, a remnant of who he’d been as a Heavenly angel.
Not so much.
But what did that mean for her? Sometimes she didn’t know if there was any good left in her, either.
“Ah, well.” She dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand, not wanting to delve too deeply into questions she was afraid to be answered. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?”
Reaver took a deep, shuddering breath as his lungs unfroze. She didn’t have much time to drive him crazy. Which was fun. Maybe a little therapeutic, too. Oh, she wasn’t baring her soul or some shit, but since he already knew she’d fallen on purpose and with the cooperation of three archangels, he might as well know some of the story.
Let him see for himself just how evil she’d let herself become.
“The first two hundred years were the worst. Demons and other fallen angels love to torment the newbie, you know.”
She thought about that. Reaver had lost his wings once, booted out of Heaven and into the human realm as an Unfallen. But he hadn’t entered Sheoul, which would have turned him into a True Fallen, a fallen angel with no hope of ever being redeemed. Remarkable, really. Few Unfallen lasted long in the human realm. The temptation to enter Sheoul and be given new wings and powers as a True Fallen was too great.
“No, you wouldn’t know. Just trust me.” She smiled down at him. “You don’t trust me though, do you? Is it because I’m a fallen angel, or is it because it’s not in your nature to trust easily? Either way, you’re right not to trust me.”
She shoved to her feet, wincing at the multitude of bumps and bruises she’d taken during the battle. Worse than all of it, though, was the throbbing ache in her wing anchors. Unlike her other injuries, the pain of her wings trying—and failing—to regenerate was going to intensify and spread through all of her bones until she was crippled with the agony of it.
Harvester dug the canteen from out of Reaver’s backpack. Returning to him, she straddled Reaver’s body and sank down on his hard abs. “Are you tired of my talking yet?”
Reaver’s expression softened, but was she reading him wrong? He couldn’t possibly like hearing her ramble. Could he? Because if he did, she’d have to stop.
Except she kind of liked that he was listening.
Way down inside the murky deep freeze that was her chest, something stirred. Something bad, like angry wasps. Or butterflies. If she were human, she’d think she was getting sick.
She popped the cap on the canteen and carefully tilted it against Reaver’s lips. Water spilled into his mouth, and he swallowed eagerly. She kept giving him drinks in small doses until he blinked at her.
“Is that a ‘no more’? One blink for more water, two for no more.” He blinked twice. “You do know that if I was feeling evil I’d keep making you drink, right? It would be like angel waterboarding. We could make it a sport. How entertaining.”
Reaver rolled his eyes. No sense of humor, that one.
“You’re going to be talking soon, and that’ll ruin all my sinister plans to torture you with inane babbling, you know.”
One corner of his mouth turned up, knocking loose a crystal bead of water that had lingered on his bottom lip. The drop ran along the seam of his lips, drawing her gaze. Never in her life had she wanted water as badly as she did at this moment. His lips parted, and his tongue swept out to capture the drop.
She swallowed as if she’d been the one to taste the glistening bead, and she found herself leaning into him, rolling from the h*ps to slowly plaster her upper body against his. Was it her imagination or were his eyes darkening from radiant sapphire to a bold, lavish navy blue? Could he actually be turned on?
His clean scent invaded her senses, permeating every cell in her body. He always smelled good, even when he was covered in dirt, ash, blood, and the remnants of battle. It never took long for that honey-spiced angel fragrance to saturate his skin and obliterate everything else.
She wanted to kiss him. To taste those full lips again. The weird thing was that she always took what she wanted, but for some reason, she was hesitant about this.
Kissing Reaver would annoy him. Maybe even piss him off.
Right. Decision made.
She sealed her mouth against his. Months ago when they’d kissed to seal the sex deal there’d been an instant sense of familiarity the moment their lips touched, a bizarre and disturbing rightness that shook her to the core.
Nothing had changed. The feeling was still there. The strange rightness should scare her, and it did, but it also felt so good she wanted to weep, and that was something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
