I will not inch away. I will not show weakness. “Sorry, it’s just, you’ve been around a long time, have probably seen humans do everything.” She paused, waiting for his confirmation. Confirmation he gave with a single nod. “I’m just surprised.”

He gathered a lock of her hair between his fingers, rubbing the strands together. The contrast between the blue-black of the lock and the sun-kissed sweetness of his skin was magnificent, almost magical.

If she wasn’t careful, she would throw herself at him. And she would find herself rejected and embarrassed, just like the other girl.

She had to remind herself that she wasn’t interested in a romantic entanglement right now. After everything she’d been through, she wasn’t sure how she would even react to a man’s advances.

While rape had never happened, plenty of other things had. Hands, wandering. Fingers, massaging. Tongues, licking. Her utter helplessness had disgusted and sickened her. And the fact that Fitzpervert had pictures of her…

Might vomit. Had he shown anyone? Did he sometimes laugh about the pain he had caused her?

“What’s wrong?” Zacharel asked.

She forced her mind to return to the cloud and the angel still towering in front of her. He had released her hair, had backed away from her. Snow once again rained from the tips of his wings, the air now so frigid little goose bumps were popping up all over her body.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she muttered.

He smacked his lips as if he tasted something foul. “You lie.”

“So?” See? Already dark memories were affecting her dealings with a man, tainting everything.

“So? I tell you the truth, yet you lie to me. That is intolerable, Annabelle, and I will not allow it.”

And how did he plan to stop it? “Let’s just say that if something’s wrong, it’s none of your business.” Just then, only one thing mattered. Answers. “Before, you told me I had been marked by a demon.”

He accepted the change of subject with a soft “Yes.”

“And he did this to claim me as his property?” She remembered waking up with burning eyes. She remembered the creature in her garage, clawing her parents to death. She remembered the way he’d kissed her—the worst kiss of her life.

“Yes. He must have seen you, desired you and decided to keep you, even if he couldn’t take you with him. Did he say anything to you?”

“Only classic B movie stuff. You know, I love the sound of trouble. And this is gonna be fun.”

“He didn’t ask you to belong to him, and you didn’t say yes?”

“Hardly. But he will come back for me, won’t he?” She’d always wondered. She’d always feared. And, according to Zacharel, fear was a draw for all kinds of evil.

A more hesitant yes was offered this time.

She wasn’t going to fear anymore. She was going to prepare. “Well, I plan to kill him when he finds me. So, on that note, I have one more question for you. Will you give me one of those fire swords?”

* * *

ZACHAREL PEERED DOWN at the human woman who had made him feel more in the span of five minutes than anyone had in the centuries since his brother’s death. He did not understand this, or her, or what was happening to him.

Those otherworldly blue eyes were filled with so many secrets, haunting secrets. He wanted to plumb her depths and discover everything she tried to hide. And he wanted to…touch her. Was her skin as soft and smooth as it appeared? He’d held her, but her clothes had prevented him from knowing the texture of her skin. Would her warmth seep past the layers of cold encasing him and consume him?

He wanted to kiss her, to discover if her taste would match her succulent scent. Wanted to know if her kiss would differ from Jamila’s. Wanted to know if she would enjoy his kiss as much as she had enjoyed the former boyfriend’s. And he hated that others had touched and kissed her without permission, the knowledge fanning to sparkling life an urge to maim and kill the culprits.

He had not wondered about these things before, had not cared who did what with whom. He, who had seen humans engage in every sexual act imaginable, had never even contemplated a female in an erotic way. Had never cared enough about anyone to experience any type of jealousy.

Until now. Until Annabelle. This girl was brave when she should cower, vulnerable when she should be hardened, kind when she should be cold. Exactly as Hadrenial had been.

But others had been brave, vulnerable and kind, as well, yet Zacharel had never reacted this way to any of them. And the fact that she kept reminding him of his brother should have doused any flames of arousal.

However, the flames were not doused.

Though he’d never preferred a physical “type” before, he clearly did so now. At the top of his What I Find Irresistible list? Blue-black hair, crystalline eyes and soft pink lips. Oh, and skin that appeared to be dipped in bronze and dusted with diamond powder.

Zacharel’s attraction to her was driving his thoughts, he knew that, but he had no weapons to combat it. He was too inexperienced, had never come against anything like this. Somehow, though, he had to find a way to resist her. He also knew that once a man feasted at the table of temptation, he would not leave it, would glut himself again and again.

But…she wasn’t a temptation he had to resist to remain in the heavens, was she? And what would be so bad about feasting on her, learning what it felt like to have her softer body pressed against his harder one? She was not expressly forbidden to his faction.

He gritted his teeth. Already he was a step closer.

He studied her more intently. Colors were not something he’d ever cared about unless they pertained to camouflage, yet the pink she now wore complemented her Asian ancestry perfectly. He knew what waited underneath those clothes, had stripped her during her sickness. But he had paid no attention to her feminine curves. Now he wondered…

Another step.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, suspicious. “I’m guessing it’s not about the weapon I requested.”

His cheeks heated with embarrassment and he spun away from her. He couldn’t lie, but he wouldn’t tell her the truth, either. Therefore, he would ignore her.

“Zacharel?”

Even her voice appealed to him. Soft, lyrical, firm yet beseeching. He’d noticed before, but now…yes, now everything had changed. Yet another step.

“The sword,” he said. “You say you want one, but could you really take a life?”

“Yes,” she replied, the assertion offered without any hesitation. “I have before. Demon life, that is, not human, just so we’re clear.”

Surprising that she’d found the strength to defeat an enemy most of her kind couldn’t see and often denied. “Even still, I will not give you a sword of fire. I cannot, for only my kind may carry them.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed.

“But there are other ways.”

Immediately she brightened. “Will you teach me?”

He did not have time. He had an army to train, battles of his own to fight. And he did not like the thought of her fighting a race of creatures without any limits to their depravity. But whoever had marked her would want her back, whether he’d left her willingly or not—especially when he learned that Zacharel had her. More than one-upping each other, demons lived for one-upping angels. And this demon would not hesitate to hurt Annabelle in the vilest of ways to do so. No demon would.

How she had survived even this long, Zacharel wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” he found himself saying. “I will teach you how to kill demons.”

CHAPTER SIX

THANE RETURNED TO ZACHAREL’S cloud with a dossier about Annabelle Miller’s very short, very miserable life. The new leader of the Army of Disgrace, as so many of their peers had begun to call them, accepted it with his customary politeness. Meaning, none at all. Zacharel was as cold as always, offering no murmurs of thanks but giving a curt nod of dismissal.

More and more, Thane actually liked the warrior’s directness. Liked Zacharel, too, and that was a fact that shocked him to the marrow of his bones. He hadn’t been part of an actual army for more than a hundred years, and he never would have joined another if his Deity had not commanded him to follow Zacharel…or else.

At first, Thane had seethed. How dare anyone tell him how to spend his time? If he wanted to laze in bed, seduce any female that caught his eye and fight every demon he encountered, he would. But what he decided, his boys decided. They were one for all and all for one, or however the humans said it. That’s how things worked with the three of them. He, Bjorn and Xerxes were in this together, whatever this happened to be, and he could not allow them to rebel because he could not allow them to suffer the consequences. Thane could endure anything but that.

Now, three months into their new arrangement, he was suddenly glad he had not rebelled. Well, he had rebelled against Zacharel with little insults here and there, but he had also joined the army rather than fall. He realized the lack of leadership and structure had rubbed him raw, that his life had been nothing but a chaotic mess and he’d needed order somewhere.

Thane flew to The Downfall, a pleasure house in the Deity’s section of the heavens. Over the centuries, more and more of the Deity’s angels had succumbed to temptations of the flesh. They had needed a place to indulge without judgment from anyone but themselves, and so Thane had given them one.

The Downfall belonged to him. He, Bjorn and Xerxes lived there, as did the immortal lovers they kept. Lovers that never lasted long, for each male preferred new and different.

Despite this proclivity, they had not yet warranted the ultimate fall, though Thane knew they teetered on the brink.

Angels in the Deity’s faction fell from grace because they welcomed evil into their hearts, because they habitually cheated, stole, lied—yes, it was possible—or committed cold-blooded murder. Because they succumbed to the follies of hatred, envy, fear or pride, or because they refused to turn away from some sort of depravity.