Ecstasy Unveiled(86)

The door to the pit creaked open, and an unfamiliar blond Seminus entered. “I’m Tavin. Detharu sent me to heal you.”

This was a first, but Lore wasn’t going to complain. “Just don’t touch my dermoire,” he said to the Sem. He didn’t know if it would kill the guy or not—Lore’s brothers and sister were immune, but he didn’t know if it was because they were siblings or because they were Seminus demons, and he didn’t want to test that right now.

“If you can knock me out while you’re healing me, do,” Lore gritted out. “Otherwise, we’re looking at a shitload of trouble.”

“You’re close, aren’t you?” Sin asked quietly, and Lore nodded.

Tavin cocked a blond eyebrow. “What’s he close to?”

“Gutting you with his teeth. And that’s just for starters.” Sin stood. “Put him out, or you won’t have a chance to wish you had.”

Lore woke, completely healed and lying on the ground outside the Harrowgate near his house. Someone had even cleaned him off and dressed him. Probably Sin. She’d nursed him through a lot of beatings.

The rage still burned in him, but whatever Tavin had done during the healing had eased it a little. The fact that he was no longer in pain helped a lot, too.

He hoped he could keep a handle on his Incredible Hulk until he talked to Idess to figure out who the hell would have framed him, and why. Her theory that this whole thing was about him and not her was starting to seem more plausible.

He had to find this Rariel guy and get Rade back. Crazily enough, it wasn’t even because the kid was his nephew. It was just the right thing to do. He laughed at that as he approached his house. Idess was rubbing off on him, infecting him with her do-gooder angel vibes or something.

He entered his shack through the back door, and before he’d made it five steps, Idess was in his face. “Damn you! How dare you sneak away like that! I’ve been looking all over for you. And—” She paused in her tirade to look him over. “You didn’t get tortured. You’re okay.” She flew into his arms, startling the hell out of him and knocking him back a step. “Thank the Lord, you’re okay. The guilt was killing me.”

“Yeah,” he said, hoping she didn’t notice that he’d had to speak around a lump in his throat. Or that he now had a raging boner. “I’m okay.”

She pulled back. “So where did you go?”

“To the den.” Gently, he set her away from him and eased around her. He’d grossly underestimated his body’s response to her, and even now it vibrated with the need to throw her down and take her hard and fast. It was partly about the rage, and partly about the fact that it was just… Idess. He wanted her, and there was no denying it. Wanted her so badly that when he’d been strung up in Deth’s torture chamber, he’d entertained crazy ideas while in the haze of pain.

He wanted to bond with her so she’d be his forever. He wanted to come inside her over and over, so that his semen would act like a drug, becoming something she craved as her orgasms became stronger and longer-lasting. But he wasn’t a purebred Sem, so could any of that happen?

Even if it could, she was an angel. They couldn’t be together. Not permanently. No doubt the big guy upstairs frowned on demon-angel relationships, and even if not, she’d be Ascending soon. Leaving him.

But all of that was a moot point anyway. His stupid death gift ruled out a relationship of any kind, and if that wasn’t enough, they had the elephant named Kynan in the room.

Grinding his molars in frustration, he made a beeline for his booze, and stopped short at the layout on the table. Pasta with chicken and an olive-packed red sauce. Garlic bread twists. Colorful steamed vegetables. His stomach growled like a south Sheoul tar pit.

“I thought you might be hungry when you got back.” Her hands came down gently on his shoulders, and the lump in his throat grew bigger. “Because if you were tortured…”

His heart clenched. She’d been worried about him, and she’d worked off her nervous energy by cooking. Her fingers began a deep massage into his shoulders as he bit into a bread stick and groaned. And she was a fantastic cook, too. He could barely make a sandwich.

She was mate material, pure and simple. The fantasies that had kept him sane during the torture came back to him in stark detail, and the rage that had been building inside him was replaced by a primal urge to mate. To make her his.

“An angel who cooks.” His voice was rough with the effort he was expending to not jump on her. “Who knew you had it in you?”