Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

intent on mastering.
    A sheen of sweat covered his massive, tattooed body, muscles flexing as he moved in her, working her with an expertise that was sinfully divine.
    She came then, the waves of her orgasm washing over her, ravished by the wild bliss he had orchestrated inside her. Pounding over the rock-hardness of him.
    He had always appeared as an enemy to her. That was what she knew of him: that he was a Guardian. But in the ecstasy of her orgasm, she saw him for the first time. Saw him for what he really was. Saw into his soul and saw the flare of brilliant light there that could only be one thing.
    Divine.
    In that moment, he thrust deep inside her. As she looked into his eyes, she knew that he was with her in that place of untamed rapture she had never known existed.
    Then they lay joined together, gasping for breath as the storm passed into stillness.
    In her bed, beneath the canopy of silk where she had lain so many nights, lonely and unfulfilled, she trembled, unable to control the shiver that ran through her, sure in her knowledge that the devil himself would find some way to intervene.
    Finally seducing him ought to have been a great accomplishment. The possibility for finishing her sacrifice to the devil was laid out before her. A mere brush of her fingertips away. Yet, now that she had him here, draped over her, his hand still closed over her naked breast, she found herself completely unwilling to carry out those plans.
    Under the bed, the syringe of cyanide remained untouched.
    * * *
     
    As he lay in her bed, in the jumble of silk that tangled around them, drowning in the aftermath of their lovemaking, he knew the possibility that love with a demoness might well unleash some uncontrollable dark side of him. Just as Luciana had said.
    He was a millimeter away from falling.
    “Just think. It could be like this forever,” he said.
    “I don’t know how you dreamed you could change me. Just by fucking me?” she whispered, smiling a little in the darkness. “You don’t have that kind of power over me. Not like that insipid little Serena has over Julian. Your heart is so much darker than hers could ever be.”
    And at that moment, he knew she was right.
    He might not be a rookie angel like Serena St. Clair.
    But he had so much more resentment in him. So much more anger.
    He had somehow expected Luciana to soften, and she showed no sign of it.
    “Get out,” said the demoness.
    He felt the prick of a needle at the side of his neck. Saw her thumb hovering on the plunger of a syringe, poised, ready to inject.
    “Whatever you wanted to accomplish tonight is never going to happen. Go, before I shoot you full of poison. While you can still walk out of here on your own two feet.”
    * * *
     
    After he left, she capped the syringe and placed it back under the bed, still full of cyanide.
    She lay in the darkness, listening to the rapid beating of her own heart. She heard the flutter of wings and the coo of a pigeon departing from the balcony outside her window. And she knew that the sense of peace he had brought had departed with him, drained from her body.
    But it was not replaced by the same centuries-old bitterness as before.
    The desire to kill had also been drained out of her. The desire for revenge was dull and sluggish, her mind grasping for the memory of it. Merely a few days ago, that desire had raged in her bloodstream. Now it was more like a distant trickle.
    All because of Brandon.
    She shivered, the implications of such a change crashing over her.
    I cannot let go of that which keeps me alive, she thought. There is only one place left to go. One person left in Venice who can help me.
    She rose from the bed, dressed herself and went to cut some roses from the courtyard, to take as an offering to the darkness she would now call upon.
    * * *
     
    Brandon climbed back down the darkened facade of Ca’ Rossetti and slipped into the night.
    Lucky.
    That was all he could think. Why she had kicked him out, he had no idea.
    But it was the only thing that had saved him.
    Returning to the Company’s encampment across the canal was out of the question. He had been cooped up in there for far too long. Tossed out of Luciana’s bedchamber after intercourse with the demoness, it would be impossible for him to face Arielle.
    Not now. When the feeling of the demoness’s body was still hot on his skin. When his body still sung from the nearness of her.
    In the absence of a car to lose himself in the power of