Demon Angel

"What are the terms?" she said, her voice hoarse.
    "You will resist me as I torment you, as I prove your lie and your humanity," he said. "And forcing it from you will take mine."
    "It is more like a wager than a bargain." Dependent not on an action, but an outcome.
    "A wager binds as closely, does it not?" .
    He knew it did. "You'll hurt me?" She swallowed. Though she had been joking before, it might be a way…
    "Yes," he said, his face carefully blank, and her stomach twisted.
    She jingled the cuffs. "These will not hold me."
    "The wager will." His lids lowered, his psychic blocks snapped back into place. The sudden absence of his emotions left her floundering to make sense of her own. "I have seen you do this to a human; but if you haven't changed, if you are demon, it will be nothing to you."
    She searched his face, could read nothing in his expression. "You know it isn't."
    "Then you best fake it—as I did for centuries. If you cannot hide your response from me, how will you from the Morningstar?"
    Was he trying to save her? Would he never learn?
    "He does not touch me." No one's touch, no one's kindness had ever affected her as Hugh's did.
    "He does not have to."
    She squeezed her eyes closed. He was right. "You'll destroy us both."
    "It is equal consequence, then." He hesitated, and she looked up at him. "I will not hide from you, Lilith."
    A reversal of their past. "And yet I must from you."
    He nodded. She laughed bitterly, but could not deny the temptation of having him open to her. Finally.
    And it was that temptation which decided her. "You are an imbecile to use a demon's methods."
    He tipped her chin up. "I know." Pressing his lips to hers, he inhaled, as if taking her into himself. "Shift. Full demon."
    It was a gentle command, one that didn't immediately register over the pleasure of that soft kiss. When it did, she smiled, shook her head. "You don't want that one; it will make this impossible for you." How could he desire the thing she became? It made her uneasy, ashamed, to think of him touching that form.
    But perhaps it would be easier for him to be cruel.
    "Your shape has never mattered; I have seen you in too many," he said, his eyes searching hers. "But it might be the mental defense you need. Shift."
    A defense… she did not know that she had any against him.
    But the wager had been made, so she transformed. And though he had seen her naked in this state less than fifteen minutes before, she was relieved when he told her not to vanish her clothing.
    Her brows arched. "Mandeville I left with his hose around his ankles. Will you do the same to me?"
    "Nay," he said, his voice rough. His hands trembled slightly as he brushed her hair back over her shoulders. "I won't leave you."
    There was more meaning in his response than in her question, but she had no time to ponder what lay beneath the statement. His fingers skimmed the crimson scales on the arch of her neck, his thumbs meeting at the hollow of her throat, then running the length of her collarbone. "They are like newly blown glass." At the point of her shoulder, he traced the rounded edge of a scale with his fingertip, then circled behind, back up under her arm. "But softer here." His head dipped, and he pressed his lips to the vulnerable skin.
    She clenched her jaw, her claws curling into fists over her head. So simple to break away, yet she could not. How long would he be gentle? When had he learned the torment was deeper when it followed pleasure? Had she been the one to teach him?
    "Perhaps you would perform a reenactment in other ways," she said and pulled in the long, slender branch from her mental cache, let it fall to the floor. No decay in that space; it was as supple as it had been in the thirteenth century. "I striped his ass with this."
    Hugh glanced down. "Perhaps you would have been better put to use preserving England's forests than whipping men with them." He cupped her bottom, lifted her against him. She gripped the hook with her hands, thought it might snap off— but, no, he easily supported her weight, her thighs alongside his hips, her wings pressed to the door.
    Ridiculous, to be thrilled at his strength when hers was exponentially greater. She could kill him with a squeeze of her legs, and yet it was pleasure she wanted when she pulled him closer, hooking her ankles behind the small of his back and forcing his erection hard against her. Exquisite pressure. She grinned as he drew in a sharp breath.
    He thought to play