15. Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory
Zach
T he marks on my skin were an angry shade of red, like burn welts, and I hissed as I pressed on one scratching down my side, but it wasn’t the wraiths I was thinking of.
White arms, coated in soot. Gold feathers tinged with black. Deyva tearing down the demon with her bare hands, a wild predator’s rage and focus sharpening her face into something demonic. Demonic and beautiful, fierce. Azariah’s eyes creased with shame.
I closed my eyes and tried to push them both from my mind, but it was only the angel who retreated. Deyva remained in all her ferocious glory, an avenging angel, if angels had horns and looked bloodthirsty in battle.
She’s a hellion .
A hellion who saved my ass .
There was a thump and a giggle from the next room over and I covered my face to stifle my groan. Kais had grabbed a shower first and then come down to warn us. Deyva was with Stavros.
Feeding .
It had been over an hour now, and while the sounds I’d caught for the first half literally made me feel like I was about to burst out my skin—they sounded like they were dying in a way that had made me harder than I’d ever been in my entire life—now it was all just laughter and quiet talking, the occasional squeak from the bed.
Castration was an option, right? Because I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand feeling like this.
“How are you feeling?”
My thoughts about her were so loud, I didn’t hear the soft swishing of feathers as Azariah came to sit next to my bedside, a glass of water in one hand. His brow was pinched, his entire body wrought with tension. The complete opposite of the relaxed giggling and sighing coming from the other room.
“Pretty rough,” I admitted, accepting the water. “Thanks.”
I gulped it down greedily, not realizing until that moment how thirsty I was. A bright, feminine laugh floated up from Stavros' room. I got a mental image of him tickling her and as luck would have it, my next gulp went down the wrong pipe and I immediately started coughing.
“Here, sit up.” Azariah slid a hand along my upper back, gently pulling forward so I could catch a breath. His hand remained there even as my coughing dissipated, a warm, comforting weight with his thumb gently stroking the back of my neck.
“Thanks,” I muttered, stealing yet another glance at his face. “Again.” Ever since he came to our gate, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from looking at him.
His lips pressed with concern, brows still knitted as he met my gaze. “I failed you.”
“It’s…” I didn’t know what to say. He was right.
My knee-jerk reaction was to reassure him, to tell him everything was fine.
But he did fail us. We could have had the upper hand the whole time had he just kept his head in the game.
Deyva wouldn’t have had to go outside the gate and drain all her energy, wouldn’t need to feed so loudly from Stav in the next room, although I had a feeling that would have happened regardless.
“I screwed up too,” was my chosen reply before a nervous swallow. “I...should probably confess something.”
Azariah’s hand was in my hair now, fingers massaging the base of my skull. He scooted closer, until he was nearly lying in bed with me. The feathers on the tip of his wing brushed against my pant leg.
“Dear one, what would you ever need to confess?” he asked, gaze drifting to my lips. “You fought so bravely, a true soldier of God.”
“I don’t usually run in so recklessly,” I said in one rushed breath.
“I’m normally a lot more careful, but I—” My eyes lowered, taking in the long, athletic lines of the angel’s lithe body.
“I wanted to impress you, I guess.” My face burned, shame filling me from head to toe.
“To prove myself worthy to you. To God. I’m guilty of the sin of pride, and that too was no help to us. ”
Azariah didn’t react immediately and the shame pooled in my stomach. Then warm fingers lifted my chin, bringing my gaze back to his. Fuck, he was so beautiful to look at, I nearly wanted to shut my eyes. I didn’t feel worthy to gaze upon an angel.
And yet, today was proof that even angels were fallible. They made mistakes. Deyva mentioned something about her kind behind God’s first mistake. Was it just the nature of creation to have flaws? Could anything, even divinely made, ever be truly perfect?
“You are guilty of nothing , Zachariah.” Azariah said the words with such absolute conviction, it felt like he was speaking to every moment of my life when that oppressive feeling permeated through every corner of my soul.
Since I was a child, I believed I was destined to Hell for the feelings I had, toward boys and girls. Feelings I couldn’t seem to stop. The guilt was just as heavy on a ten-year-old as it was now, thirteen years later.
“I am guilty of so much,” I said, barely above a whisper.
“No.” Azariah’s eyes were bright and laser-focused. I knew he could see it all. The tainted parts of my soul. The desires that would damn me, no matter how devout I was. “God made you this way. And he made you perfect. ”
“How—”
The question evaporated into nothing when Azariah’s lips touched mine. Barely a ghost of a touch at first, just the warmth of his breath. And then the soft, but firm pressure of the most sensual mouth I ever felt.
My lips parted on a gasp of pure shock at first, then the electric desire singing through me at the contact.
Azariah’s tongue darted out, searching for mine which couldn’t stop itself from seeking his in return.
This was nothing like the fast kiss he planted on me in the chapel.
That might have been friendly affection, but this .
There was no mistaking this. Heat surged in my body, my injuries all but forgotten as my cock stirred to life. Fuck, this was good. Too good.
I’d only kissed one other person before, and his lips were chapped—the kiss a clumsy rush so as to not get caught.
We had been anyway, and then I ended up in this Godforsaken place.
The same place where an angel was now caressing my neck and face as he was kissing me, sensual tongue licking as he took soft pulls of my lips.
I never wanted him to stop touching me. Was this what Stavros felt like with Deyva?
I’d never fault him again if it felt as good as this.
My cock was aching for a hand, a mouth, anything.
But a lifetime of shame for my desires, and promises of eternal damnation ever since I understood what Hell was, did not evaporate with a few amazing kisses.
“Az…” I murmured, the first syllable of his name prompting another flick of his tongue inside my mouth. “This…” A light suck at my lip with a graze of teeth. “...is a sin.”
“Is it now?” His voice was low, husky as his mouth skimmed to my neck. “Does it feel like a sin?”
He sucked the skin just above my rapid pulse, sensation and ardent need coursing through me as a moan escaped my throat. My hands had clasped his arms before even realizing I’d held onto him, the hard muscles flexing under my palms.
“Too good to not be,” I sighed, angling my head back despite myself. His mouth felt like heaven on my neck and I wanted more of it. I wanted his mouth on every part of my body and to explore him the same way.
“God made you to enjoy this.” Az returned to my lips with a soft peck. “So enjoy it.”
He cupped the side of my neck for a deeper kiss that I was all too eager to return, his palm sliding over my collarbones and splaying flat on my chest. My heart crashed against his hand as our foreheads touched, his nose nudging mine as he waited.
Azariah was a fucking angel. He wouldn’t be doing this if it was wrong, right?
Imperfect as he may be, he still carried out the Word of God, still enforced His divine laws.
The scriptures could have been interpreted wrong, with some kind of agenda in mind.
Holy beings like angels knew the truth of God’s Word, didn’t they?
My decision made, I pulled him in for another kiss.
He let out a pleased hum as he returned it, our tongues mating as our lips slid across each others’.
This time I dared to touch more of him, sliding my hands around the top of his back.
The edge of my palm grazed where his wing jutted out from his shoulder blade, and he shivered with a moan, breaking our kiss with a loud gasp.
I yanked my hands away. “Did I hurt—”
“No, Zach.” He mouthed down the column of my throat, hands pressing my shoulders in a gentle prompt to lay down. “But every moment you’re not touching me is fucking torture.”
My back now flat to the shitty mattress, the next kiss came from above me as Azariah straddled my hips.
His good wing extended over the edge of the bed, as if shielding us from prying eyes.
As his body lowered, his cock nudged mine, solid as iron through my borrowed pants, and I couldn’t fight the moan that followed, nor how my hips bucked to feel more of him.
“Az…” He caught my mouth in another kiss as I attempted to say his name, my fingertips drifting down his firm abdomen to pause on the waistband of his pants.
“Do it, Zach,” he urged with a small thrust toward my hand. “Touch me. Take what you want.”
“What in fucking Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory is going on?!”
Azariah’s wing folded back as he sat up, revealing a very rumple-haired and angry Deyva in the doorway.
Her irises were blood-red, petite nostrils flaring above her well-kissed, scowling lips.
She took a step into the room, hands clenched at her sides, murderous gaze trained on the angel on top of me.
I lifted to my elbows, my instinct to scoot away until my back hit the flimsy headboard.
Azariah turned to her, his hand up as though attempting to calm a wild animal.
We had both seen what she was capable of—ripping the heart out of a fucking demon general.
She looked ready to do the same to Azariah.
It was probably the wrong thing to think in the moment, but there was something absurdly sexy about it.
“There’s nothing to be angry about, First—”
“You’re on top of him ! You both have raging hard-ons!” She pointed and we both dumbly looked down, as if checking to make sure. “I tasted lust in the air and thought nothing of it at first. I figured Kais or Zach was just jerking off.”
“Um, no,” I protested. “I don’t do that—”
“But the taste kept getting thicker and more potent, and what do ya know?” Deyva spread her arms out, palms wide toward us.
“I tasted angel lust in there too, and thought, no, he wouldn’t.
Even though he’s an arrogant prick who turned his back on an active battle to chit-chat, he wouldn’t dare actually make a move on the most pious and naive priest here. ”
“Hey, I’m not that naive—”
“And here we are!” She crossed her arms, still glaring daggers at Azariah. “Even for you, Fallen for whatever fucking reason, this is fucking low.”
“Ah, lighten up, succubus.” Azariah resumed sitting next to me, his sculpted shoulder lifting in a casual shrug. “It was consensual. Wasn’t it, Zach?” He looked over at me, blue eyes still flicking over my body in a heated gaze.
“Yes,” I whispered. I wanted him to keep looking at me like that, to feel his mouth on me again.
“He is a priest! ” Deyva snarled, angling her chin down in a way that made her horns look longer. “He made vows.”
“Hah,” the angel barked out. “Says the woman who’s been fucking one for days. You know as well as I do, all that purity stuff is bullshit.”
“It isn’t to him!” she growled back. “He takes those vows seriously. You’re just fucking with his head.”
“What’s going on?” Kais poked his head in from the hallway, water droplets still in his hair and tan skin from his shower, a towel around his waist.
“What I told you would happen,” Deyva said, her gaze softening just slightly at the sight of him.
“All right now,” Azariah stood up from my bed, his erection thankfully gone. I didn’t need it distracting me. “Let’s all just take a—”
“No.” Deyva got in his face, nearly a full foot shorter than him, but no less deadly.
At the right angle, her horns could have speared up through his chin.
She looked mad enough to do it too. “You don’t dictate shit around here.
This settlement is under the care of these three men.
I don’t know why you’re here or what you want, but you’re obviously invested in fucking this place over in some way.
And as long as I’m here, I’m not fucking letting you. ”
No one dared to interrupt the standoff, to break the thick, palpable tension between the angel and the demon. But it wasn’t that simple, was it? The horned woman from Hell saved our asses, saved me . And not just my life, but my virtue. Which for that matter, did it even fucking mean anything?
“Get out of my room,” I insisted gruffly, swinging my legs down to the floor. “All of you.” A stab of pain shot up my side, making me wince.
“Zach—”
Azariah and Deyva started toward me at the same time, their hands outstretched to help, comfort, or touch me for some other reason, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care, I just wanted everyone gone.
“I said, get out!” I huffed. No one moved, so I pushed past them and out the front door of the cottage, heading for the only place that ever made any sense to me.
The chapel doors were propped open, allowing people to come and go. I didn’t care for anyone’s company, but hopefully people would know to stay clear. I was here for myself, not for them today.
I slid into an empty pew near the front, the soft whispers of prayer surrounding me fading into background noise as I clasped my hands together and pressed my forehead to my hands.
Stavros and Deyva fucked on that altar, so I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.
Even here, in the most sacred and holy of places, I couldn’t escape her.
I couldn’t pull myself from the confusion. Everything about her was paradoxical. She fed on sex for Christ’s sake, why would she care if I had broken my vows with Azariah?
She just cares.
The thought bubbled up from a random place, but it clicked and solidified in my conscious mind. She wasn’t just fucking Stavros to feed on him, she cared about him. She cared about all of us. Otherwise she wouldn’t have drained herself, risked her own life to fight that demon.
She wouldn’t have run out of the safety of the gate to save my ass. She wouldn’t have been watching us like a hawk to make sure we were okay.
Just say it .
“I misjudged her,” I whispered to my folded hands. “I was ungenerous and unkind. I was too proud of my own piety and I failed to see another person’s good intentions.”
Shame rose up, making the back of my neck hot, as if God’s stare was burning into me. But there was no answer from Him, only the one ringing in my own mind.
I owed that succubus an apology.