Her Wicked Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 6) (Reading Sample) - Felicity Heaton (rm book recommendations txt) 📗

Liora ran her fingers along the metal railing and her arm brushed his, sending a thousand volts jolting up it and through his body. His gaze whipped around to her and found her looking out at the city, not at him. He could have sworn she had been watching him a second ago.

“Are you as powerful as Serenity… or less powerful?” He couldn’t resist turning her earlier question against her, or staring at her. The streetlights illuminated her face, softening her features further. Her beauty entranced him.

She smiled, rosy lips curling slowly into it, and a light entered her eyes, a twinkle that he knew he had put there. He had never made anyone smile like that before and he found he liked it and wanted to make it happen again. He just wasn’t sure how. He had zero experience of being amusing or entertaining, unless you were the Devil. He could entertain his master no end by torturing demons for his viewing pleasure.

Asmodeus didn’t think that would entertain or amuse Liora.

“More powerful,” she echoed his earlier words and he found himself smiling at her.

Liora turned to face him, her left arm remaining leaning against the black railing, and held her right hand out in front of her.

She snapped her fingers and a glowing black rose made of light appeared in her hand.

She held it out to him and when he went to take it, she evaded his hand and brushed the soft warm petals over his bare chest. His heart thudded hard and the smile that had been working its way onto his lips dropped away. The air around him sizzled and the awareness of Liora he felt at times came back full force, flowing through him like electricity, coursing through his blood and making him hot all over.

Liora looked up at him, the action of tilting her head back causing her lips to part invitingly.

Asmodeus swallowed and fought the dark instinct to claim those lips and devour them.

Unless she wanted him to kiss her.

Was that possible? He had studied the couples in the area, and how they courted with smiles and laughter, and light touches that seem designed to arouse and excite the interest of their partner.

He wanted to kiss her.

No good would come of it though. It would only increase his desire to keep her from the Devil and fight his master’s orders, and it would only cut him when he failed and delivered her to that wretched male.

The black rose disappeared and her hand settled against his bare chest. It was shaking. She was nervous too, afraid of whatever this was that zinged between them whenever they were close.

Asmodeus raised his hand to cover hers and froze when a shiver bolted down his spine, hot and fierce, and the ground trembled.

“Conceal yourself,” he barked and she stared blankly at him. He cursed and cast a veil over her, and pushed her behind him at the same time, shielding her with his body and his black wings in case his spell failed.

A bright orange spot formed on the pale stone slabs before him and then forked outwards into a glowing fault line. The ground trembled again and the fiery line cracked open, becoming a fissure. Steam and smoke rose from it and the mortals in the area screamed and ran.

Liora shook beneath his hand that clutched her wrist but he could feel her power rising, growing in the face of her fear.

A Hell’s angel burst from the earth and beat his crimson wings. He drifted down to stand a few metres from Asmodeus and furled his feathered wings against his back. Whenever they travelled to the mortal realm, Hell’s angels preferred to use an angelic appearance, looking human for the most part. The dark-haired male’s red-edged obsidian armour gleamed in the light from the fiery streak at his feet.

Asmodeus had never liked the colour of their armour pieces. It was the only reason he hadn’t defeated one and stolen the breastplate and black plate that covered their upper torso or the vambraces that shielded them from wrist to elbow.

“Report,” the male said, voice gravelly and thick as the smoke billowing behind him.

Asmodeus straightened to his full height, his anger spiking over being spoken to without a shred of respect. He bared his fangs at the fallen angel and unleashed a fraction of his power, enough that the male would feel it bearing down on him but not so much that he would harm Liora.

“I meant to say… our master would like a progress report, King of Demons.” The fallen angel pressed his left hand to his black breastplate and lowered his head.

“Tell him that I have not yet located the female.”

The male lifted his gaze to him and a wary edge entered it. Asmodeus prepared himself, sensing the male was about to make a grave mistake and insist that he had found the female and demand he take her to the Devil.

The Hell’s angel slowly lowered his left hand to his side and a short black rod tipped with two curved red blades the length of his forearm appeared in his grasp.

A declaration of war.

The fallen angel’s eyes flashed red and the skin around them turned black.

He meant to take Liora to the Devil.

Asmodeus would not allow this male or any other to lay a single claw on her.

Asmodeus’s claws and fangs extended, his eyes blazed crimson and he snarled as he called his golden blade to his right hand. He released Liora, gave a powerful beat of his wings that tore a shriek from her, and shot towards the male. The man didn’t have a chance to block him.

He swung in an upwards diagonal arc with his curved sword and sliced straight through the male’s sword arm. It dropped and before it could hit the pavement, Asmodeus had spun around behind the male and decapitated him.

He came to a halt with his blade extended out at his side, blood rolling down its length and dripping to the ground, and breathed hard.

What had he done?

Bright light burst from the sky, the golden shaft encasing the dead angel. The body disappeared and the light faded, and Asmodeus continued to stare at the pool of blood that remained.

Something moved on his senses. He jerked his head up and had his sword at the ready before he had realised it was Liora. He lowered his weapon and sent it away, still reeling from what had happened.

Liora moved another step forwards and he moved his gaze from the blood to her. Shock filled every beautiful line of her face and it echoed within him.

“Why did you do that?” she whispered and stared down at the blood on the ground between them. “Was the female you mentioned me… are you supposed to take me to the Devil?”

Asmodeus’s shoulders slumped. There was no going back now. There was only going forwards. He had killed one of the Devil’s men and sent him back to Heaven. The Devil wasn’t a fool. He would know that it had been his doing and that it had not been the act of an angel of Heaven who happened to be in the city. There was no way of concealing what he had done.

He stared at Liora. It would be so easy to lie to her and say he had meant another female, and it was what he would have done with anyone else, but he couldn’t bring himself to say false words to her.

Even if the truth would drive her away.

Perhaps it was better that way.

She was safer away from him.

“The Devil sent me to the mortal realm to capture you and bring you back to him.”

Her eyes slowly widened with each word he spoke and her anger rose at the same pace, together with another emotion he found he didn’t like feeling in her.

Hurt.

“You were allowed to come to this world for the first time… because he wanted you to take me to Hell?” Liora’s hazel eyes narrowed on him and her power increased in strength, until it flowed around him, buffeting him like a strong wind, jabbing at him and shocking him. The ground beneath him shook but it wasn’t the impending arrival of a Hell’s angel this time. It was Liora.

The trees swayed, leaves breaking free of their branches to swirl around him.

The sky darkened, black clouds blotting out the early stars.

The streetlamps lining the square flickered and buzzed.

“You meant to take me to your master?” she hissed and her eyes darkened. Red ribbons curled around her fingers and up her arms, twining with black and purple. Lightning forked across the sky and slammed into the ground in the distance. He decided he was glad he had never met a witch before meeting her. He hadn’t anticipated the level of her power would be this strong and it was still growing stronger, and he had a feeling she was intending to use every ounce of it on him. She breathed hard, each one laboured, and struggled to speak. “This was all a sick game to you… lies and deception… a cruel and vicious… twisted game. You bastard… I thought… I wanted to see the real you and I guess I just did.”

She raised her hands to attack.

Asmodeus raised his in an act of surrender. “Liora… I have no intention of doing as the Devil bids. I swear it. I have not deceived you. These hours with you have not been a game. I do not want to let the Devil have you.”

He knew she had no reason to trust him or believe a word he had said, but a quiet, hidden part of him hoped that she would listen and wouldn’t hit him with everything she had. He wasn’t sure he could survive such a blow and he didn’t want the first female he had ever desired to kill him when he had done nothing wrong and had not yet tasted her lips.

Her magic faltered and her frown lessened. “Why not?”

Asmodeus laid it all on the line without hesitation, knowing it was the only way to halt her attack and convince her that he only wanted to protect her from the Devil, even though he was far from a white knight. He would be that for her if he could though. He would somehow find a way to show her that while he was born of darkness and evil, he was deserving of her light and good. Somehow.

He held his right hand out to her and focused hard on it, materialising something he had never created with his power before and never thought he would create either.

A black rose that he offered to Liora.

“Because I want you for myself.”

Liora reacted to Asmodeus in the same way she reacted to everything. She embraced her impulses and was in his arms before she could reconsider what she was doing or even contemplate how far south of crazy she was about to go. She tiptoed, slid her right hand around the back of his neck and dragged his mouth down to hers. The moment her lips meshed with his, he froze, going stock-still and as stiff as a board.

Either he didn’t want her quite as much as he had just said