Lily couldn’t face her empty rooms. There was only one place that seemed to offer enough warmth to offset the discovery that her warrior angel was a threat. She hurried up deserted stairways that led farther and farther away from guests and servants. It had been months since she’d visited this part of the palace and the hallway sconces were long cold, but she found her way easily in the dark
The conservatory was perched on the roof of one tower far removed from anyone who would disturb her. Ezekiel had given her the key shortly after her tenth birthday when she was old enough to come and go as she pleased. The great glass-walled arboretum was a Gothic wonder of spiderweb wrought iron and thousands of glass panels that rose into a dome high above the trees and plants below. It was tended by gardeners who always disappeared discreetly when she entered and tonight was no different. She barely caught a glimpse of a man with a bucket of tools when she turned the key and slipped inside. He vanished down a spiral staircase that led to storage rooms below.
Warm, dry air embraced her with an artificial atmosphere completely separated from the palace. She closed the door behind her and leaned her back against it. The scent of desert flora filled her nose as she breathed deeply. But best of all, sunlight caressed her chilled cheeks.
Ezekiel had brought a little of the Southwestern desert into the hell dimension with daemonic manipulations she didn’t understand. She supposed if Grim could travel pathways between worlds, then sunlight could as well. Within the great glass conservatory, one didn’t look out at the purple glow of the hell dimension. A soft, hazy desert sunshine bathed the glass with light.
Now that she’d seen the actual desert, the light in the conservatory soothed her even more. It had always been a sanctuary for her, a secret garden surrounded by hell’s shadows. She tried not to think what it would be like to leave it behind for good, to know that she could never return.
Instead, she wandered over the pathways to visit all of her favorites—the desert lilies, the climbing trumpet vines, the prickly pear cacti, the towering saguaro.
She paused to trail her fingers along the petals of one desert lily. She was saying goodbye.
Her heart pumped with slow, painful beats in her chest, the only noise to break the silence in the wake of her decision.
“You left the key in the lock,” Michael said. He came around the corner of the path, startling with his sudden presence, but also with the glint of sun on the gold strands that shone in his brown hair.
“I’m never disturbed here,” Lily said. The brass key with its stylized L and burgundy tassel had been a bauble to wrap and give to her on her birthday. After all, the gardeners came and went without the need of keys.
Michael continued to approach and the petals of the flower Lily touched began to tremble. She tried to draw back her hand, but Michael was there before she could move. His hand covered hers on the lily’s petal.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“I’m cold,” Lily said. And it was a lie. The conservatory was very warm even though the sunlight was an entire world away.
“I’m sorry I’ve disturbed your retreat,” Michael said, guessing the real reason for her trembling fingers.
“It was always temporary. The shadows are waiting just outside,” Lily said. She looked from his hand on hers up to his face.
“I never knew there was a garden up here,” Michael said.
The tension in his face and the intensity of his gaze weren’t softened by the lightness of his hand or his lowered lids. His fingers were steady, but he wasn’t unaffected by their contact. She was warmer than she’d been before. A flush suffused her skin, caused by Michael’s heat and her own rising affinity within.
“It was a birthday present from Ezekiel,” Lily explained.
Michael’s eyes widened in surprise and his attention left her for a moment to look up and around at the elaborate garden and engineering marvel of the greenhouse itself. He tilted his chin and sun seemed to worship his angular cheeks and the chiseled perfection of his masculine jaw.
“He gave you the sun,” he said softly. He closed his eyes briefly and then opened them as he looked back down at her again.
“I... I never thought of it like that,” Lily said. “Ezekiel is the king of daemons and daemons are...grand creatures. He tilts worlds based on mere whims.” She shrugged and pulled her hand out from under Michael’s. She was uncomfortable talking about her relationship with the daemon king.
“If you say so,” Michael said. But he looked at Lily with narrowed eyes as if his mind was focusing on speculations he hadn’t pondered before.
“I’m his ward. He made a deal with my father to protect me. That’s all,” Lily said. “Giving me this garden was easier than spending time with me and my mother.”
“I’ve never seen so many lilies in one place,” Michael said, gesturing to the profusion of petals around them. “It’s breathtaking.”
“That’s the affinity making you short of breath,” Lily said. Her own lungs were having trouble processing the oxygen necessary to keep her breathing normally in his presence.
Michael allowed his fingers to trail down the lily and she watched, transfixed by his rough fingers on the delicate silk of the petals. Then she gasped when he lifted his hand to touch her face. Each ridged pad sent a thrill of response from her sensitive skin to other neglected places that longed for his caress.
“You call to me, Lily. But I don’t think we can blame it all on the affinity,” Michael said softly. He seemed to savor the feel of her skin beneath his fingers, tracing the soft hollow of her cheek down to the edge of her lips. She breathed out, carefully trying not to move, but the exhale caused her mouth to open slightly and his attention was drawn down. He lightly touched his thumb to the swell of her lower lip and Lily inhaled sharply. She tensed as fire coursed from his touch to her entire body, igniting erogenous zones she hadn’t known she possessed.
“It’s your Brimstone blood,” Lily said. “You can’t resist the way we’re drawn together.”
“Can’t? I’ve controlled my burn for years. Something else draws me to you. The need to warm. To protect,” Michael said. He teased his thumb across her lip, a rhythmic, whisper-soft caress again and again. “You’re missing the fact that I don’t want to resist, Lily. Especially here where there’s no danger in indulgence.”
He leaned down then to replace his thumb with a sudden press of his lips to hers, but he slowed immediately to carefully capture the lower lip he’d been teasing between his teeth and bathe it with his tongue. All the while he kept his eyes open and watched her reaction.
Her knees went weak. Molten heat flowed between her legs. And the rest of her fell from a great height where she’d been trying to keep herself distant from the seductive daemon prince who challenged her every resolve.
Michael caught her. He wrapped his arms around her and kept her on her feet, pressing her against his solid, hot body. She reached for his suit jacket and crumpled his lapels in her fists. No longer focused on staying on her feet, she only wanted him closer. He complied by deepening the kiss. She opened for him, mouth and soul. Perhaps she was saying goodbye to everything she held dear, but Michael didn’t have to know. He couldn’t know. If this was farewell, she wouldn’t hold back now.
“I don’t want to invade your refuge, Lily. I want to be asked. This is your garden. Your palace. Your home. Invite me inside or I’ll walk away. I’ll show you just how much control I have over this damned Brimstone in my blood,” Michael said.
He said it all against her lips and he punctuated each word with long, slow tastes of his delving tongue. She was burning from the inside out so much that she wondered how she hadn’t turned to ash and blown away. The aura of affinity was full force around their bodies and he scorched against her skin. Could he walk away? If so, he was stronger than she was. Her legs had stopped responding from the second his mouth claimed hers. But he was right. It wasn’t only affinity and Brimstone. She was hungry for Michael, the man, the daemon prince who was caught in otherworldly manipulations as she was caught.
The man she would lose before she trapped him on the throne he’d always hated.
“Please. Stay. This garden has always been the place I came to forget the world outside. We can forget together,” Lily said.
“Already done. Every time I taste you everything else fades away,” Michael said.
A rush of adrenaline shot to her heart, causing it to pound as he punctuated his words by lifting her off her feet. She grasped his shoulders, but didn’t protest when he sat her on the edge of a raised stone wall that enclosed the beds of desert lilies. Not even when he joined her and pressed her back to crush the flowers beneath their combined weight. She didn’t mind the springy earth beneath her or the prickles of the greenery. The mashed petals released a sweet, fresh scent that enveloped them. The scent combined with the hint of smoke that always lingered on Michael’s skin when his Brimstone heat had risen in response to her touch.
Michael shrugged out of his jacket and spread it beneath her head and shoulders when she lifted to accommodate the gesture. She noticed he took extra care around her arms even though they no longer pained her. Then he looked down as if he found her laid back on the tuxedo and crushed flowers a compelling vision framed by the pale blush of her rumpled silk gown.
He had a halo of sunshine around his hair and his face was in shadow. But she could still see the familiar sharp angles of his cheek and jaw. She reached up to touch the side of his face. He stilled beneath her fingers, drawing in a breath and holding it. The kachina might have been a likeness of his real father, but he was still her warrior angel. He would be forever, even when they were apart.
“Not a very soft bed,” he said.
“It’s perfect,” Lily argued.
“Your burns?” he asked.
“Sybil helped me. They’re almost healed,” Lily said.
She could see shadows shift over his eyes as her words reminded him of his burns and how Sybil had tried to help him long ago, but he won the war against bad memories for once.
His eyes cleared and he reached for the fastening ties of her overskirt. He slowly began to manipulate the knots that held them together. His attention stayed on her face as she breathed in with every tug of the strings he pulled and softly released each gasp as the ties loosened. Until her hand caressed from his face to the opening of his shirt and pressed against the heated skin of his neck; then his eyes closed and he hissed in a sharp inhalation of reaction.
Her overskirt slid open and spread beneath her. It provided another layer of padding on top of the flowers, an impromptu, bohemian quilt of patchwork silk. There could have been shards of glass beneath her and she wouldn’t have noticed. Not when Michael moved his attention from the released fastenings to the skin of her legs that had been fully revealed.
Her fingers trembled on the buttons as she worked to open his shirt while his calloused hand lightly smoothed from the edge of her sheath’s skirt down to her knee and back up again, to find soft warmth between her thighs.
“You’re softer than your namesake’s petals,” he whispered. Then he moaned and closed his eyes again because she’d finally worked all of his buttons open to find the muscled expanse of his chest and the flat plane of his lean stomach. He sucked in air as she caressed softly over the white ridges of his scars, banishing the memory of pain with the current rush of desire.
“Could you walk away now?” Lily asked. He slid his hand under her skirt to cup her hip, and her breath came faster. Her skirt rode up high on his lower arm. She was light-headed with need. Her heartbeat wasn’t isolated to her chest. It had claimed other parts of her as well, thrumming a call for his touch between her legs.
“Would you want me to?” Michael countered. He’d opened his eyes again to watch her as he teased his hand closer and closer to the apex of her thighs.
“No. Don’t go,” Lily gasped.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. It was a low groan, a sensual promise. One Lily opened her legs to encourage. He took advantage of her movement, sliding his hand over the silk underwear she wore beneath her sheath. Silk was no real barrier, but it was too much. She moaned in protest at the thin scrap of material preventing his touch from finding her throbbing clit. “No, Lily. I couldn’t walk away. But it isn’t the Brimstone that rules me. It’s you.”
He pulled her underwear down in a soft, swift move that left her completely bare to his fingers. He tossed the silk to the side and his fingers returned to seek and find the focused point where her pulse throbbed. Lily cried out, swiftly claiming a sharp orgasm against the tender expertise of his calloused fingers under his intense, watchful eyes.
And then he swooped down to devour her cries with his hot, hungry mouth while he continued to pet and play her. There was no rush. They didn’t have forever, but they had tonight with no Rogue threat hunting them down. He took advantage of the decadent hours stretching ahead of them. Gently filling her with thrusting fingers and questing tongue.
Lily luxuriated in the tastes and textures of his mouth—wine-sweetened, rough and smooth—but she also sought further access for her own explorations of his beautiful body—scars and all. She fumbled blindly for his belt and was rewarded by deep groans of approval. She arched her hips against his fingers as they mimicked the connection she craved, but she wasn’t distracted from the need to release his erection. He bulged beneath the trousers she struggled to loosen. His heat called to her. She impatiently unfastened his button and brought his zipper down.
He pulled back from the kiss and they both looked down to where her hand reached to slide his underwear out of the way. His freed cock sprang forward to bump against her mound. But he continued to use his fingers to rhythmically fill her even as his penis teased against her.
She tensed and her intimate folds squeezed his fingers as intense pleasure arched through her again, buoyed on by his attention and the thick, throbbing evidence of his need.
Lily reached for her own top. She shifted and ripped the smooth silk down to expose her breasts. The dress was ruined. She didn’t care. He rewarded her boldness by leaning down to suck one distended nipple and then the other. He bathed the pink tips of both globes with his hot tongue while she reached to grasp his erection in a trembling hand. He arched his back into her grip and Lily held on the best that she could against his enthusiastic thrusts.
The aura of affinity competed with sunlight around them. And Michael’s eyes glowed with twin flames.
“Who we are brings us together—including the legacy in our veins,” Lily whispered. “Don’t deny your Brimstone. You don’t have to resist it or control it. Not with me.”
She urged him closer and his hand slipped away to grasp her hip. She opened for the wider girth of his erection and he settled between her thighs. He was engorged and it was a tight fit, but she was slick and ready, eager for the jerk of his impatient hips as he filled her.
“I can’t resist, Lily. I lied. There’s no controlling this. Not now,” Michael said. Beads of sweat evaporated off his brow as quickly as they rose up on his skin. A slight haze of humidity surrounded his half-naked body as she held on to the frenzied movements of his hips and met them again and again with her own.
“No control. Not now,” Lily repeated against his neck as she nipped his salty skin. Later she would worry about regaining control. Later she would worry about sacrifice. For now she rode the pleasure as it claimed her one more time. She cried out as he buried himself all the way to her womb with a final thrust that brought his own release. His heat filled her and they were closer than they’d ever been for long moments until they fell back down to the reality of crushed flowers and the scent of earth.
* * *
He didn’t care if the wings tried to reject him for the rest of his life. He would wear them for Lily. To protect her. He’d felt the same wholeness when he’d worn them to help her against the stone Rogues. The same satisfaction in finally having a tool to channel the protective instincts that burned in him as surely as his Brimstone burned. That they’d immediately rejected him afterward didn’t matter. He didn’t care if he had to endure the pain of ill-fitting wings. He would wear them and he would convince her that he wanted to. That he accepted the throne. He embraced it even as he embraced her.
She was so warm in his arms. And it was a replete, soft warmth unlike any he’d felt before. He hadn’t been seduced or manipulated. He loved. And if it was as passionate as a daemon loved so be it. He was half-daemon after all.
* * *
Michael’s grip eased only after hours of sleep. Lily watched him as the distant sunlight from another place and time tracked across another world’s sky. He was as miraculous in her garden as the sunshine. It didn’t matter if the kachina had foretold the presence of his father in her life. She would always remember what it had been like to love the warrior angel she’d always loved—in the flesh.
Finally, when twilight settled over the garden, she disengaged herself from his heavy arms and rose. She did the best she could to dress in the crumpled remains of her dress. The torn bodice necessitated her borrowing the tuxedo jacket. He didn’t wake. He slept the deep sleep of the satiated on the lily garden’s ground.
This time she left the key in the lock when she slipped away. She would never visit her sanctuary again. Michael had blessed her with a memory that would have to heat her in its place.
Somehow she wasn’t surprised when she found Grim at the top of the first stairway as if he was keeping watch over their tryst. She was taken aback when he turned and led the way instead of staying with his sleeping master. But she was glad of the company. The staircases and hallways were cold and dark. Far more chilly than she remembered. She didn’t think the sconces provided heat as well as light, so the cool shadows spooked her. Grim padded with sure-footedness toward her rooms. He knew the way. He always knew the way. As long as the destination wasn’t heaven, he could find it.
She avoided looking too closely at the riot of carvings on the walls. When they finally reached hallways where torchlight gleamed, she tried not to jump at shadows on the wall. The chill was probably only a reaction to leaving Michael’s Brimstone heat. She would have to get used to the cold.
Once Grim escorted her to her bedroom door, he sat and waited for her to go inside. He didn’t follow her. He also didn’t walk or fade away.
“Are you protecting me? Or keeping an eye on me to protect your master?” Lily asked. Grim was more intelligent than an ordinary dog. He could sense and see things that even some humans wouldn’t see. He might understand that her bargain with Ezekiel was still in play. He might not understand that her decision had already been made to thwart the daemon king’s schemes.
“Whatever your reason, I’ll accept a watchdog for tonight,” Lily said. “But beware of cold shadows.”
Grim’s eyes swirled with fire and his tongue lolled from his mouth. Sitting at attention, his head almost came to her shoulders. No wonder he acted like he had little to fear.
Lily slowly entered her rooms and shut the door behind her. She placed Michael’s jacket on her pillow and went into the bathroom to wash away the soil from the garden. Afterward, she pillowed her cheek against the jacket that held Michael’s smoky scent and slept fitfully, less afraid of shadows than she was of the man who might come to find her in her sleep.
* * *
At first Peter was trapped in an endless scream he fought against for hours that seemed to stretch on for an eternity. His entire focus was on closing his wide-open mouth, which had unaccountably turned stiff and unresponsive. His force of will was still strong. Several times a living presence passed him in the darkness and he was enlivened, better able to feel and move.
Finally, he brought his lips together.
Only then, when his focus slowly shifted elsewhere, did he understand where he was.
Peter spent hours ending his first scream as a carving on the walls of the daemon king’s palace in hell. Then he spent several more hours opening his mouth to scream again.