Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

the bedroom after a bath, dressed in a black silk robe, drying her hair with a thick white towel. When she saw him, she dropped her towel, stumbled a few steps toward the door.
    “Wait,” he said, blocking her way. “Don’t call for your Gatekeepers.”
    “Why shouldn’t I?” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “How do I know that you’re not planning on torturing us all?”
    Any explanation, any words he wanted to speak were stuck on his tongue.
    The message he had come to deliver hung in his mind, unspoken.
    The Company is planning on obliterating you.
    Too late already. He was dragged off course and drugged into senselessness, merely by her presence. He was losing his edge, and wandering into dangerous territory. She had some strange hold over him that he could not explain.
    “What is it you want?” she asked, the question that had been burning between them all this time. “You said no more games. We could play at this forever, waiting for the other to give in. We will be sitting here for another century. Stuck in this stalemate of wills. Or we could simply give each other what we both want. But you have to tell me what that is.”
    She thought he had come for seduction. Maybe he had.
    Whether he had really come to warn her, he doubted severely.
    He resisted. And yet, somewhere deep within him, the answer to her question surged up within him. What he desired was simple.
    You.
    Luciana was the only thing he wanted at this moment.
    She was what he wanted most, and what he absolutely could not have.
    “Say it,” she whispered.
    What he wanted could not be voiced, at least not to a lady. She might not be a lady, but she was still a woman, and at that moment he was struck wordless by an odd silence that had nothing to do with mere shyness.
    No, he was flat-out shocked by his own desires.
    He wanted to plunge into her.
    To take her against the wall like a wild animal and not stop, to take her in every way he knew and in ways he had not yet begun to imagine. To let go of his angelic nature for just one instant. To give in to the desires of his physical body. Desires that had not been truly sated for a very long time. Desires that could not be fulfilled with the politeness required of intimate relations with other angels.
    “Enough talking. Let me show you what I want.”
    He kissed her, far more urgently than he ever had before.
    In that kiss, he felt her response, every bit as demanding and impatient as his.
    He pulled open the silk tie holding her bathrobe closed, letting the garment fall open. His hands moved over her body, exploring its contours, fingers dragging on her still-damp skin. Moving up her back, he reached up to cup her breast, caressing, testing its heaviness in his hand. He fondled her, felt the nipple tighten beneath his thumb. In his pants, his cock throbbed, at maximum pressure and ready to explode.
    She moaned, a sound that vibrated all the way into his gut as she moved against him, arching up into him, offering herself to him.
    In that moment, he felt the possibilities open up, as though the universe were cracking wide-open and offering itself along with her. As he gazed into the green depths of her eyes, he saw infinite possibilities.
    Perhaps things could be different between them. That possibility arose in his mind for the first time.
    What if…? he asked himself. What if the woman standing before me wasn’t a demon? What if we weren’t mortal enemies on opposite sides of a never-ending war?
    Julian Ascher had been a demon. He had found redemption in the arms of his lover.
    Was it possible…? Brandon’s mind began to churn through the possibilities, contemplating exactly how he might be able to reform her. It wouldn’t take much, he reasoned.
    She already seemed amenable, responsive to his lead.
    She ran her hand down the front of his jeans, fingers teasing open the button of his fly.
    What are the consequences of sleeping with her, anyway? he wondered fleetingly. Serena St. Clair survived, although barely....
    But he was not Serena. He knew that if the woman who had her hand on his most vulnerable appendage chose to sink her claws into him, it would be game over.
    “That’s it. It’s just a matter of getting it out,” she whispered.
    “Getting what out?” He held her at arm’s length, separating them a little, his eyes flickering nervously over her half-bared body as she stood in front of him.
    She ran a finger down his chest. “The darkness in you. You’re not