Her Demonic Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 5) Page 6

  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.