Azrael
Ihadn’t slept.
I had however, spent the night, the way I spent most difficult nights, by sitting in the chair by the window with a book.
Even thought I wasn’t reading it, not really, because my attention remained on the house across the street.
Lila’s light had gone out around midnight.
But around three am, it had come back on and it had stayed on after that.
My thoughts had drifter to the past briefly.
I had once faced execution, in a century I preferred not to think about.
I had faced exile. I had stood at the edge of the Hellgate and looked into something that had no bottom and felt nothing that resembled fear.
None of it came close to sitting in a chair waiting for Lila Hart to decide whether I was worth fearing or loathing.
She knocked on my door around seven a.m. and I almost welcomed the sound before I realized that might spell the end of whatever it was between us.
I closed my eyes for just a one moment before twisted the door knob and opening my front door.
Lila walked straight past me without a greeting and without a smile. She walked into my living room, turned around, and looked at me with her arms crossed and her chin up and her expression giving absolutely nothing away.
"You have exactly one chance to explain yourself," she shrugged.
"Fair enough,” I took a break and closed the door gently behind me.
And so…I told her everything.
I told her what I was, where I had come from and what it meant to guard the Hellgate. I explained to Lila about living in the town of Blackthorn Ridge before it had even had a name. That I had lived here for about five hundred and thirty seven years doing daily maintenance and and being isolated.
I explained that I was forever bound to this side of the Earth, and the only thing keeping the hellgate in her backyard closed.
Forever.
She listened to all of it without interrupting once. She sat on the far end of my sofa with her knees pulled up and her coffee going cold in her hands. Lil watched my face with the focused patience of someone filing information away rather than reacting to it.
When I finished, the room was quiet for long enough that I started to understand what the verdict was going to be.
Then she said, "So you've been alone all this time?"
I looked at her. "Yes."
She looked around the room slowly, taking in the shelves and the single coffee mug and the book I had been failing to read all night, and then she looked back at me.
"That's a long time to eat dinner by yourself," she said quietly, with no pity.
I didn’t say anything as there wasn’t much as to say. I watched her get quiet again, and then she asked the question I’d been waiting on since she walked through the door.
"What did you do to get sent here?”
I looked at the floor. "I failed."
"Who?"
The silence that followed was long enough that she could have filled it with anything, and she chose not to fill it at all.
“Generals of Hell who trusted me,” I said finally.
She waited but I didn’t elaborate much further, and she didn’t push me. I understood in that moment that she was giving me the same thing she had given me since the first night she moved in, which was the particular grace of not requiring more than I was ready to give.
She reached over and quietly took my hand.
I looked down at her fingers wrapped around mine and could not identify what I was feeling with any precision, only that it was very large and had been waiting somewhere beneath five centuries of careful distance to be felt.
She studied me for a long moment after that, with an expression I was learning to read as her processing something she had already mostly decided.
"Can I see you?" she asked.
I went still. "What?"
"The real you." She held my gaze steadily. "Will you show me?"
I searched her face for fear or revulsion and only found Lila looking at me with contentment.
Slowly, I let the glamour fall away to reveal my crimson colored skin. The black markings spread like living shadows and my horns curved back from my temples . Finally my eyes went black from edge to edge.
She stood up immediately and walked over to me, reaching up to trace one horn with her fingertips. “They’re warm.”
I nodded, “They are…”
She smiled, soft and wondering. “They’re beautiful.”
I had no words as she explored the scars at my neck, then met my eyes. I explained about the claim, the choice, and the promise.
She placed her hand on my chest. “I know exactly what you are now. And I’m still here.” Her fingers brushed the side of her neck. “I’m choosing you. I want all of you.”
The second time Lila and I became intimate was nothing like the first. The first time had been sex in a basement.
But this time…this was deliberate and sacred.
I kissed her deep and slow, tasting the sweetness of her mouth while my hands stripped her bare.
The moment I laid her on the bed, her scent exploded: thick, honey-sweet omega slick already leaking down her thighs.
My dick throbbed, knot swelling heavy at the base as I settled between her spread legs.
“Look at you,” I growled, voice wrecked. “Dripping for your Alpha already.”
I dragged the thick head of my dick through her soaked folds, coating myself in her slick, then pushed in with one long, relentless stroke.
Lila moaned loud, her pussy fluttering and gushing around every inch.
I fucked her in deep, sensual rolls of my hips, letting her feel the stretch, the heat of my crimson skin against hers.
Her hands fisted in my horns, pulling me down as I drove into her. Slick squelched obscenely with every thrust, soaking my balls and the sheets beneath us. I wrapped one hand in her dark curls and tugged, arching her neck so I could lick and bite at her throat while I fucked her harder.
“So fucking wet,” I rasped against her skin. “This tight little omega pussy is sucking me in.”
Lila cried out, legs wrapping around my waist, heels digging into my back. “More… Azrael, please…”
I gave it to her, harder and deeper. The wet slap of our bodies filled the room alongside her broken moans and the filthy sounds of her slick. I reached between us and rubbed her swollen clit until she came hard, screaming, walls clamping down like a vice as fresh slick flooded out around my dick.
I didn’t stop the, and flipped her onto her stomach, yanked her hips up, and slammed back in, mounting her like the demon I was. My hand fisted tight in her hair, pulling her head back so I could growl in her ear.
“Gonna knot this pussy. Fill you until you’re leaking me for days.”
“Yes… fuck, yes…” she rasped out.
My knot swelled huge, catching at her entrance.
I rutted deeper, forcing it past her stretched rim.
Lila wailed as it popped inside, locking us together.
The bond snapped into place at the same moment, like a warm, golden, unbreakable feeling…
while I ground my knot against her g-spot and came with a savage groan.
Thick ropes of cum pumped into her, over and over, mixing with her endless slick until it was dripping down her thighs in messy rivulets.
She came again on my knot, shaking and sobbing my name, milking me with rhythmic pulses that dragged my orgasm out even longer.
I stayed locked deep, grinding slow and filthy, one hand still fisted in her hair while the other reached around to rub her clit through aftershocks that left her whimpering and gushing.
We stayed tied like that for a long time, panting, sweating, my crimson body curled around hers, horns framing her face as I kissed her neck and whispered how perfect she felt, how she was mine, how I would never let her go.
When my knot finally went down, I pulled out slowly, watching a rush of mixed slick and cum spill from her swollen, well-fucked pussy. I gathered her into my arms and kissed her slow and deep, tasting the satisfaction on her tongue.
Sunlight was coming through the curtains when she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and brushed her fingers lightly over the fresh claim mark on her neck. I appeared in the doorway behind her and she caught my eyes in the reflection.
“This is never coming off, is it?” she said, voice husky.
“No.”
She studied it, then smiled,small, satisfied, and thoroughly fucked. She turned and wrapped her arms around my waist.
“Good,” she said.
I held her close, feeling a peace I hadn’t known in five centuries.
“One more question,” she murmured into my chest.
“I’m afraid,” I chuckled.
“You should be.” She pulled back with that mischievous sparkle. “Do the horns always stay out during sex?”
I closed my eyes and she burst out laughing, bright and wild, and I laughed with her.
For five hundred years, Blackthorn Ridge had been my sentence. Standing there with my mate in my arms, I finally understood it wasn’t anymore.
I was home.