Maybe it’s all been leading up to you.
“I want you to think about it,” he said. “I don’t want you to make any hasty decisions you’ll regret.”
“And you’ll regret this one,” Riam grumbled.
“Hey,” Celeste said, giving Riam’s arm a shove. “You’ve said your piece. Thank you. But you haven’t thought to ask the opinion of the one who did give up everything for one of them.”
Riam gave a sweep of his arm as if to indicate the floor was all hers, then turned his back, pacing a few steps away.
“Look,” Celeste said, taking Madeleine’s hands. “When they stripped my wings and cast me to earth for loving a demon, they might as well have sent me to Hell for the shock of it. Simply having a mortal body hurt like I can’t describe. I came to earth often before that, but fitting in to life here was another matter entirely. For a long time I was alone. I didn’t have Damael, but he haunted my every moment, waking or sleeping. When I finally saw him again—it made it all worth it. Do I wish things could be different? Yes, of course. But would I do it all again?” She smiled. “In a heartbeat. For him.”
“Thank you,” Madeleine said quietly, a calm settling over her features as if this was the confirmation she’d been waiting for.
“I want you to think about it too,” Celeste said. “In the end, I didn’t have a choice, but you do. I can’t say what you’ll be facing if you go there.” She eyed Ash warily. “I’d be very careful, if I were you.”
“You don’t even have to tell me.” He was actually considering this, then. If he was honest with himself, he’d know he’d been considering it from the moment she suggested it. Rubbing a hand over Madeleine’s shoulder, he said, “It’s you I’m worried about. If you end up there alone…”
“Ash, you were willing to sacrifice yourself for me. How would I be worthy of that if I’m not willing to do the same thing for you?”
She wanted to be worthy—of him? What backward alternate universe had Riam dropped him into? He couldn’t speak; he could only look at her, her earnest blue eyes and soft, trembling mouth. Look at her and know he could never be without her as long as he was alive.
“I have an idea,” he said, but he was speaking more to Riam’s back than to anyone else. Seeming to sense that, the angel turned around. “But I need your help.”
Chapter Sixteen
Night fell. Madeleine stood alone on the balcony outside the bedroom she’d been given, looking up at the stars. A light ahem behind her turned her head. Riam lent his otherworldly glow to the darkness as he stepped out and joined her at the railing. She smiled at him and went on perusing the stars.
“This is absolutely what you want?” he asked.
“I just want him.”
“I think he has a good idea, giving you a glimpse of what you’re in for before you commit…but I wish I could change your mind about the whole thing.”
“You can’t.”
“Oh, I know.” He sighed. “You’d have been a force to reckon with, Madeleine. I’d have loved to have seen you wearing wings someday. I think you’d have made every demon in Hell tremble.”
“I doubt that.”
“I don’t.”
They spent a moment in silence. Madeleine closed her eyes as a breeze grazed her cheeks, and she pulled her light sweater closer. In a moment, Ash was going to drag the soul from her body as Saklon had tried to do. As she’d seen Ash himself do to someone else. Her heart thudded dully and a fine tremor shook her that had nothing to do with the wind’s chill. Earlier she hadn’t been afraid…and she still wasn’t. Exactly. She was simply apprehensive, she decided. She’d have thought she would have been terrified.
“There’s not a chance of that happening for me if I do this, huh?” she asked quietly.
He shook his head. “Ask Celeste what happens to angels who fall in love with demons. We can forgive a lot, but not that. I’d hoped once you learned what he was, what he’d done, you would hate him.”
She wanted to tell him she found that pretty f**ked up. But she bit down on the words. Riam didn’t have to help them tonight—he could have escorted Ash straight back to Hell as he was supposed to. Despite his position on the demons, he’d agreed to give this crazy scheme of theirs a shot.
“You wouldn’t happen to be a bit of a hopeless romantic yourself, would you?” she teased.
He chuckled. “Not at all. I leave that to the fickle mortal heart.”
“Oh, so I’m fickle?”
“No, not you. Obviously not.”
She reached over to touch his hand on the rail, almost expecting her fingers to go right through his. They didn’t. His hand was as solid as hers, but cooler to the touch. “Thank you. You’ve done so much for me, and you didn’t have to. I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier. And I’m sorry I can’t be everything you want me to be. It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“Madeleine,” he said, facing her and turning her so that he could hold her shoulders. “You are. You’re headstrong, loving, self-sacrificing and innately good. You won’t lose that even if you never wear a golden halo. It’s all right.”
She nodded, tears stinging her eyes. “Thank you. Can I… Can I give you a hug?”
“You’d better.”
She didn’t know exactly where to put her arms, because his wings were in the way. But she managed. Maybe some of his light would rub off on her, because she needed it.
Inside the bedroom, Ash was waiting, giving them some privacy. His expression was dark, and he and Riam exchanged curt nods as Riam left the room, leaving them alone.
God, she did love him. He seemed to cast a shadow over the room’s pale, pastel décor as they regarded each other across the slight distance between them. Then he opened his arms, and she rushed into them, clinging desperately to him and giving release to the tears she’d managed to hold in with Riam.
“Make love to me,” she whispered. “I need to be with you one last time…like this.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than his lips met hers. Then clothes were coming off, a slow revealing she knew both of them savored. She gasped and bit down on a curse when she saw the marks and bruises on his flesh, fresh tears brimming in her eyes though she’d thought she couldn’t shed any more.
“They hurt you,” she said, trailing her fingertips over an angry red welt with the barest of brushes.
“Already healing.” He took another brief taste of her lips. “I’m resilient. All I could think of was getting back to you.”
“Oh, Ash, I love you.” She didn’t know how to say what she meant without sounding incredibly mushy, that she wanted to give him all the love he’d never had. So she tried to show him with her kiss, the gentleness of her touch on his wounds. There were so many she could hardly touch him at all without brushing against one. But he never winced, never drew away from her. If anything, he only grew more impassioned.
He kissed her and caressed her until she ached, until her legs gave and he lowered her to the bed. Her br**sts, her thighs, her belly…he subjected them all to a slow exploration, deliberately avoiding the needy place between her legs until she wanted to scream with frustration. When finally he did venture there, he found her slick and ready. He waited until that desperate, frenzied moment when the tip of his c*ck was poised at her entrance before he returned her words.
“I love you, Madeleine.” And he sank into her, smothering her cry with his kiss. With slow, smooth strokes, he nudged her to the edge of bliss and sent her tumbling into its welcome depths again and again. It was thrilling with no barriers between them. When he came, she felt it, loved the sensation of him spilling into her as he shuddered and groaned in her ear, and she found a completeness with him she hadn’t quite realized had been missing before. She knew just who he was now, what he was.
In the sweet moments afterward, as they lay catching their breath, he placed his hand against her cheek. “I had it all wrong.”
“Hmm?”
“I was wrong. I always looked at it as if you belonged to me. It was the other way around all this time. I belong to you. If I had a soul, you stole it centuries ago.”
She smiled dreamily at him, letting herself get lost in his dark eyes. Whatever they would face tonight, they’d face it together. It was going to work. It had to. “No matter what I said the other day in my apartment, I’m yours, Ash. This is one soul you didn’t have to steal.”
“Well, here we are,” Maddie said with a little laugh a couple hours later. She and Ash sat on the bed facing each other. Riam stood silently beside her. Maddie would’ve happily stayed in bed with Ash for the rest of the night—or the rest of her life—but it was time to see if her crazy plan would work.
Ash nodded. “After everything we’ve been through, I never thought it would come to this.”
She reached up and laid her palm against the side of his face. He automatically turned his head to kiss it. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”
Ash’s eyes had never reflected light, something she’d noticed with some curiosity a few times. Now, she swore she could see something shining in them. “If I didn’t think there was a chance, I wouldn’t do it.”
“Okay.” Somehow that made her feel better, that he had even a modicum of hope. “I’m ready.”
More than anything, she was afraid of feeling the way she had when that other demon had attacked her—the horrific, scalding pain was still a fresh memory. Ash must’ve been reading her thoughts as he took her hand. He looked deep into her eyes and she tried to draw upon the strength she saw there.
“It’ll only hurt until you’re detached. Once you’re completely pulled free, you won’t feel anything.”
Panic set off inside her as she remembered floating in a black void of numbness. “Will I be able to see or hear—”
“Yes, although not the way you’re accustomed to seeing and hearing now. You’ll sense your surroundings, though. You’ll know I’m with you.”
She nodded, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Okay.”
“Take my hand,” Riam said. She obeyed, still holding on to Ash with her other. It was an odd sensation, touching both of them: one hot, the other cool. A strange energy zinged through her.
“Please make it fast,” she said, hating how small and pleading and cowardly she sounded all of a sudden.
Ash’s gaze never left hers. His black eyes seemed to fill her universe. Power was rising there. She could see it. At the last instant, she instinctively wanted to throw herself away from him, but he didn’t give her a chance. His free hand shot to her chest and everything within her tore loose. She had a moment to emit one cry at the agony of it, then his fingers dug into her flesh, twisted and pulled…and it was over.