Chapter Twelve
Zara
I hadn’t expected Azrael to lift me like that, so suddenly yet so gently. One moment I was standing in the hallway. The next I was wrapped around him, my weight seemingly nothing to him. The hard planes of his body felt like a fortress against mine as he carried me down the hallway, his footsteps deliberate and unhurried.
“Az,” I whispered, my fingers curling into the soft fabric of his shirt.
“Sam. Call me Sam when it’s just us,” he said.
“Sam.” No, that didn’t feel quite right. “Samir.”
He didn’t respond with words. Instead, his arms tightened around me. His scent enveloped me -- leather, musk, and something uniquely him that I couldn’t name but had grown addicted to over these past days.
“You don’t have to carry me,” I said, though my body betrayed my words as I nestled closer to him.
“I know,” he replied, his voice a low rumble I could feel vibrating through his chest. “I want to.”
Two simple words, but coming from Azrael -- Samir Hamdi, Sam to his friends, and the Angel of Death to his enemies -- they carried power, like a vow. I’d learned quickly that he never said anything he didn’t mean, and he never wanted anything he couldn’t take.
The traffic outside created a distant hum, occasionally punctuated by the growl of a motorcycle that made me think of the club. Azrael’s brothers. The men who called him when there was a problem that needed permanent solving. The thought made me shiver, not with fear of him but with the knowledge of what he was capable of. I’d seen it firsthand.
“Cold?” he asked, misinterpreting my reaction.
“No.” I couldn’t lie to him, not now. “Just thinking about what’s coming.”
His jaw tightened, the only indication that my words had affected him. “Don’t.”
“How can I not?” I challenged, keeping my voice soft despite the steel behind it. “A handful of you against how many of my uncle’s men?”
“I told you --”
“I know what you told me. That the club has your back. That you’ll get my mom out safely.” I traced the line of his jaw with my finger, feeling the stubble that had grown throughout the day. He’d shaved off his beard yesterday, even though I didn’t know why.
Azrael paused in the middle of the hallway, his dark eyes finding mine in the half-light. At thirty-nine, the lines around his eyes spoke of years of hard living, but it was the intensity behind them that always captured me. Half Middle Eastern from his mother’s side, he had inherited her coloring -- swarthy skin, nearly black eyes, and dark hair that I’d wanted to run my fingers through countless times.
“Zara,” he said, my name like a prayer on his lips. “I’ve been the boogeyman that keeps men like your uncle up at night since before you knew there was evil in the world.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. Azrael had earned his road name for a reason. The Angel of Death. Their cleaner. Their executioner.
And somehow, against all logic and self-preservation, he had become my protector and was about to become my lover.
I clung tighter to him as we continued down the hallway, feeling the muscle beneath his shirt shift with each step. The man was solid, built by years of fighting and riding and surviving. My fingers brushed against an old scar on his forearm -- a knife wound from years ago, he’d told me, from a time when he’d been less careful.
“What time will you leave?” I asked, needing to know how much time we had left.
“To meet the club or to get your mom?”
“I mean tomorrow. When you meet with the others,” I clarified.
“Early,” he replied. “Meeting the others at the clubhouse no later than eight.”
The quiet rustle of my pajamas against his jeans filled the silence between us. We passed the spare bedroom, the one he kept ready but that no one ever seemed to use. Until I’d come here.
“You should sleep in my room tonight,” he said, as if reading my thoughts as we passed the spare room. It wasn’t a question.
“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere else,” I responded.
The thud of his boots against the hardwood floor created a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat. I matched my breathing to it instinctively, finding comfort in its regularity. Azrael was like that -- a force of nature you could set your watch by. I’d been watching him intently, wanting to know every little thing about him. And from what I’d observed, he was predictable in his routines, unpredictable in his actions. A contradiction wrapped in leather and danger.
The pictures on the walls were sparse -- a few black-and-white photos of motorcycles, one of the full club lined up on their bikes, and a single color photograph of a beautiful Middle Eastern woman with Azrael’s eyes. His mother, who’d died of cancer when he was young. The woman who’d been gang-raped at fifteen and had raised her son alone, never knowing which of her attackers had fathered him.
As we approached the bedroom, I felt the tension in the air shift from something heavy with words unsaid to something charged with promise. The dangerous mission loomed over us, but it had created an urgency that made every touch, every moment, more significant.
Azrael paused at the threshold, looking down at me with an expression I’d come to recognize -- the look he got when he was memorizing my face, as if preparing for a time when I wouldn’t be there. It was both flattering and terrifying.
“What?” I asked.
“Just making sure this is what you want,” he said, his voice husky.
I almost laughed at the absurdity. As if I hadn’t made it clear from the moment I’d kissed him. As if my body against his wasn’t answer enough.
“Take me to bed, Samir,” I said, meeting his gaze without flinching. “We’ve only got tonight and tomorrow.”
His lips quirked into what might have been a smile on any other man. On Azrael, it was barely a softening of his usual intensity. But I’d learned to read it, to treasure those small breaks in his carefully maintained control.
“Then we better not waste time,” he said, and carried me the final steps into his bedroom, where the shadows from the hallway gave way to deeper darkness broken only by the pale moonlight filtering through partially drawn blinds.
I felt a flutter in my stomach -- anticipation, fear for the mission ahead, and the undeniable pull I felt toward this dangerous man who held me like I was something precious in a world that had taught him nothing was.
The moment Azrael laid me down on his bed, I felt the worn mattress dip beneath my weight, the familiar scent of leather and bourbon rising from the sheets that had absorbed so much of him. His body followed mine down, his weight both comforting and demanding as he settled over me, his dark eyes never leaving mine even as his hand found the curve of my hip. I reached up to trace the hard line of his jaw, feeling the contrast between rough stubble and the unexpected softness of his lips as they descended to claim mine.
The kiss started slow, deliberate, like everything Azrael did. Nothing rushed, nothing wasted. His mouth moved against mine with a precision that spoke of experience, but there was something else there too -- a hunger that seemed specific to me. I’d never felt that before, the sense that a man like him -- who could have anyone -- wanted me with such singular focus.
“Zara,” he murmured against my lips, my name becoming something sacred in his mouth. His hand slid up from my hip to my ribs, stopping just beneath my breast in a question that wasn’t really a question at all.
I arched into his touch, answering without words. The danger heading his way soon hung over us, making each touch feel like it might be the last, making each sigh more precious.
His bedroom was sparse, like the rest of his house. No clutter, no unnecessary decoration. A heavy dresser against one wall, a chair, a nightstand with a lamp, a gun, and a book dog-eared halfway through. The blinds were partially drawn, allowing slivers of moonlight to cut across the bed, highlighting the planes of Azrael’s face as he looked down at me.
“You’re thinking too much,” he said, his thumb brushing my lower lip, drawing my attention back to him.
“Pot, kettle,” I replied, earning a rare half-smile that softened his features and made him look younger than his thirty-nine years.
“Fair enough.” His hand moved to cup my breast, his thumb circling the nipple through the fabric of my tank top until it hardened beneath his touch. “But I’m thinking about you. Only you.”
I believed him. In that moment, with his eyes fixed on mine and his body warm and solid above me, I believed that the Angel of Death, the man whose name made hardened criminals tremble, was thinking only of me. It was a heady power that I never asked for but couldn’t deny wanting.
He lowered his head again, this time to trace the line of my jaw with his lips, working his way down to the sensitive spot where my neck met my shoulder. His teeth scraped gently against my skin, drawing a gasp from me that seemed to echo in the quiet room.
“I like that sound,” he murmured against my throat, and did it again, harder this time, bringing his teeth down in a gentle bite that had me clutching at his shoulders.
The material of his shirt was smooth beneath my fingers. I tugged at it, wanting to pull it off, needing to feel more of him, needing the barrier gone. He helped, yanking it over his head and tossing it onto the chair across the room. It landed perfectly, as if even in the midst of passion, Azrael couldn’t allow disorder.
His chest and abdomen were a terrain of scars and tattoos that mapped his life. Bullet wounds, knife marks, the Devil’s Boneyard insignia over his heart, and above that, in Arabic script that flowed like calligraphy, a woman’s name. “Your mom?”
He nodded. I traced her name with my fingertips, feeling him shudder beneath my touch.
“Cold?” I echoed his earlier question, knowing full well he wasn’t.
“No,” he admitted, his voice rougher now, less controlled. “Just… you.”
I smiled, pulling him back down to me, my hands exploring the muscled expanse of his back, feeling the ridges of old scars. Each one a reminder of close calls, of violence survived, of the dangerous world he inhabited and that I had stepped into willingly.
He slowly removed my tank top and tugged down my pajama pants. When he tugged the fabric away, exposing my skin to the cool air and his heated gaze, I felt vulnerable in a way that had nothing to do with nudity and everything to do with the intensity with which he looked at me.
“Beautiful,” he said, the word simple but heavy with meaning coming from a man so economical with praise.
My breath caught as his mouth descended again, this time to the newly exposed skin of my collarbone, my chest, the curve of my breast. His stubble scraped deliciously against my sensitive skin, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. I arched up, seeking more contact, more friction, more of him.
Azrael’s hand slid beneath me, large and warm against the small of my back, supporting me as his mouth closed around my nipple. The wet heat of it tore a moan from my throat, loud in the otherwise quiet room. The only other sounds were our breathing, increasingly ragged, and the occasional distant rumble of traffic.
“Samir,” I gasped as his teeth grazed sensitive flesh, sending sparks of pleasure-pain radiating through me. “Please.”
He raised his head, his dark eyes finding mine, pupils dilated with desire. “Please what?”
“More,” I managed, my hands moving to the buttons of his jeans. “Everything.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips before he bent to capture my mouth again, this kiss deeper, hungrier than before. His tongue swept against mine in a rhythm that promised other, more intimate invasions to come. I fumbled with his button fly, my usually deft fingers clumsy with want.
He pulled back, just enough to help me, pushing his jeans down his hips and kicking them off with an efficiency that spoke of practice. When he returned to me, there was only the thin barrier of his boxer briefs between us, doing little to hide his arousal.
My hands skimmed down his sides, feeling the subtle shift of muscle beneath taut skin, the occasional ridge of scar tissue, the sharp jut of his hipbones. When I reached the waistband of his underwear, he sucked in a breath, his control slipping just enough for me to notice.
“Keep that up,” he warned, voice like gravel, “and this’ll be over too quickly.”
“We have all night,” I reminded him, hooking my fingers beneath the elastic and tugging down. “And I want you. Now.”
Need flashed in his eyes -- hunger, possession, and something darker I couldn’t name -- and then he was moving, helping me remove that last barrier, then reaching for the drawer in his nightstand. I stopped his hand.
“I’m on the pill,” I said. “And I’m clean. You?”
“Clean,” he confirmed. “Get tested regularly.”
A necessary precaution in his world, though I didn’t ask and he didn’t elaborate. There was enough trust between us now that I believed him without question. And enough desire that I didn’t want anything between us, not tonight.
He settled back between my thighs, the weight of him both comforting and thrilling. I felt the hard length of him against me, hot and insistent. His eyes held mine as he positioned himself, one hand braced beside my head, the other guiding him to my entrance.
“Tell me you want this,” he demanded, his voice strained with the effort of holding back.
“I want this,” I said, my hands sliding up his arms to his shoulders, feeling the tension coiled there. “I want you, Azrael.”
He pushed forward slowly, filling me inch by deliberate inch, his eyes never leaving mine. I watched his face, fascinated by the play of emotion across features usually so controlled -- pleasure, concentration, and something that might have been awe.
When he was fully seated within me, he paused, both of us adjusting to the sensation. I felt stretched, completed, connected to him in the most primal way possible. My legs came up to wrap around his waist, changing the angle and drawing him even deeper.
“Fuck,” he groaned, the curse sounding like a prayer on his lips.
“Yes,” I agreed, rocking my hips against his in invitation. “Please.”
He chuckled softly, then began to move. Long, measured strokes that spoke of his iron control even in the midst of passion. His eyes remained locked on mine, watching each reaction, learning what I liked, what made me gasp and clutch at his shoulders.
I’d been with men before, but never like this. Never with this level of intensity, of focus. Azrael made love the way he did everything else -- with complete commitment and deadly precision. Each thrust was calculated for maximum effect, each touch designed to elicit the strongest response.
Our bodies moved together in the muted light, finding a rhythm that felt both new and familiar. I ran my hands down his back, feeling the shift of muscle as he moved above me, the light sheen of sweat that made his skin glow in the darkness.
“You feel so good,” I whispered, needing him to know, needing to break the silence that had fallen between us, punctuated only by the sounds of our breathing and the subtle creak of the mattress.
His response was to angle his hips differently, hitting a spot inside me that made stars explode behind my eyelids. I cried out, my nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks. He did it again, and again, relentless in his pursuit of my pleasure.
“Look at me,” he commanded as I felt the tension building, my body tightening around his. “I want to see you.”
I forced my eyes open, meeting his gaze as the wave crashed over me. The orgasm rippled through me with an intensity that bordered on pain, my body arching beneath his, my inner muscles clenching around him. Through it all, he watched me, his eyes burning with something that went beyond desire.
Only when the last tremor had passed did he allow himself to chase his own release, his rhythm becoming more urgent, less controlled. I held him tightly, my lips at his ear, whispering encouragement, wanting to give him even a fraction of what he’d given me.
When he came, it was with a groan that seemed torn from deep within him, his body tensing above mine, his face momentarily unguarded in a way I rarely saw. For those few seconds, he wasn’t Azrael, the Angel of Death. He was just a man, vulnerable and human.
He collapsed beside me, careful not to crush me with his weight, one arm thrown across my waist in a gesture that felt both possessive and protective. Our breathing gradually slowed, our heartbeats returned to normal as we lay together in the quiet aftermath.
I turned my head to look at him, finding his gaze already on me, watching with that intensity that never seemed to dim. He traced idle patterns on my stomach, raising goose bumps despite the warmth of the room.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, my voice sounding loud in the silence.
He considered the question, taking his time as he always did. “That I’d like to keep you here. In my bed.”
The simple admission hit harder than a flowery declaration might have. From Azrael, it was probably the highest form of love, the most precious gift he could offer.
“I can take care of myself,” I reminded him gently. “If that’s why you want me here…”
“I know.” His fingers continued their path across my skin, dipping into the hollow of my hip, tracing the curve of my waist. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep you safe anyway. And it’s not entirely why I want you in my bed.”
I understood then what he wasn’t saying -- that this mission was about more than club business. It was about removing a threat, about making the world safer for those he cared about. About me.
“Come back to me,” I said, turning to face him fully, my hand coming up to cup his cheek. “After this task is completed. Come back to me.”
Something flickered in his eyes -- a promise, a determination. “I always finish what I start, Zara.”
It wasn’t quite an “I love you.” It wasn’t quite a promise to return. But from Azrael, it was enough. For now, it was enough.
I nestled against him, my head finding the perfect spot on his chest, just above his heart where I could hear its steady beat. His arm tightened around me, his lips pressing a kiss to the top of my head. Outside, the world continued to turn, oblivious to the bubble we’d created in this room, on this bed.
Tonight, in the arms of a man who dealt in death but held me with surprising gentleness, I found a peace I hadn’t known I was seeking. And as sleep began to claim me, I realized that somewhere along the way, without intending to, I had fallen in love with the Devil’s Boneyard’s Angel of Death.