Her Demonic Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 5) (Reading Sample), Felicity Heaton [parable of the sower read online txt] 📗

lowered his face so all the man could see was the fury blazing in his now red eyes. Veiron growled low in his throat again, the feral sound rumbling through him, and felt his teeth shift to sharp crimson points and the skin around his eyes begin to blacken. The voice of reason at the back of his head screamed on repeat that he needed to calm the fuck down. The voice of pure primal rage obliterated it.

This man would pay.

The mortal panted beneath him, skin blanched and eyes staring in wild terror into Veiron’s red ones. His heart hammered, a jittery beat that made Veiron’s smile widen. He should fear. By the time Veiron finished with him, he would be pissing his pants.

Veiron shoved the man down into the tacky bar top, forcing him to bend backwards at a harsh angle. The mortal rallied and swung a punch at Veiron’s shoulder. Veiron felt nothing. He grasped the man’s wrist, twisted it until he screamed, and snarled in satisfaction.

“You ever... touch her again... it will be the last... thing you do. Do you... understand?” It was hard to form sentences when his head was pounding, blood rushing like a torrent through his ears, and he was trying to fight his desire to change completely and rip the man to shreds with his bare hands and trying to retain a little sanity so Erin didn’t see him for what he was.

She couldn’t see his face from where she stood, couldn’t see what this man did when he stared into Veiron’s fiery red eyes and saw the darkness around them and his sharp red teeth.

The lights above the bar dimmed, the area around him darkening as his rage began to slip beyond his control. Veiron sneered, flashing his fangs at the petrified mortal, relishing the gasp he released and the way his heart skipped several beats.

“Please don’t kill me.” Those words were jittery, quiet, a plea that spoke to his sane side and said that he should be satisfied now. He had the mortal quaking. Let him go.

No.

Veiron squeezed his throat harder, feeling bones creak and muscle bruise. The mortal choked and gasped, wheezed as he tried to breathe.

“Veiron?” Erin’s soft voice reached out to him.

No.

He shook away the part of him that felt soothed by her voice and growled in the man’s face.

“Veiron!” The sharper female voice and the cool hand that firmly grabbed his shoulder had him shutting down his anger in an instant because he knew what was coming next and he couldn’t allow Erin to see his face as it was now.

The woman hauled him to face her and his gaze flicked to Erin where she stood a few feet behind her. She looked horrified. Veiron cast his eyes down at the floor, not wanting to see in hers that she already thought he was a monster.

A demon.

“Do I need to remind you of my club’s rules?” the blonde in front of him snapped and swept the short strands of hair from her face with a defiant flick.

Her dark gaze locked with his.

Veiron shook his head and released his stranglehold on the piece of shit human male. The last thing he wanted to do was piss off the boss. She was fine when she was in a good mood, but when she lost her temper, her true appearance shifted over her skin, all scales and ugliness, and she could tear even the strongest angel a new one.

The man spluttered and coughed, and wheezed.

Veiron strode across the club, grabbed Erin’s hand, turned towards the doors and growled at the man on his way past. The human’s knees gave out and he crashed to the floor. Erin stumbled along behind Veiron. He knew his pace was too quick for her when her feet were sore from trekking through Hell but he needed fresh cold night air in his lungs to quell the heat of his rage.

“We have to leave.” Veiron shoved the double doors open. A few mortals and demons in their human forms milled around in the alley outside the club. They all backed away when they set eyes on him, giving him space. Probably the wisest thing they had done in their short or long lives.

He didn’t slow until he was three streets away from Cloud Nine. Each breath of cool fresh air soothed a little more of his anger and brought with it painful awareness of what he had done.

He had lost it.

He had exposed them both because of his inability to keep a lid on his temper where this woman was concerned.

His focus shifted to Erin. She felt shocked on his senses and he could hear her heart racing, and feel her hand trembling in his.

“I’m sorry.” Those were the words he had always found hardest to say but they came so easily tonight. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered and then her voice grew stronger. “He deserved it.”

“Who was he?” Part of Veiron feared the answer to that question. He had a feeling he knew what that man had once been to Erin and the thought that he had been allowed to touch her, to taste her and do everything with her that Veiron denied himself, had his chest burning and blood heating to a rolling boil.

Erin was his.

Erin was not his.

She was just a mission. As soon as he got her safely to her sister, he was gone. Goodbye. Sayonara. Have a great life. Erin was a complication that he didn’t need. She made him weak when he needed to be strong and keep a level head. He hadn’t spent the past few centuries plotting his revenge only to throw it away now that he was so close to seeing all his plans come to fruition.

“I went out with him a few years ago. It wasn’t my greatest hour. I dumped him after he hit on my sister and friends at my twenty-seventh birthday night out.”

He felt her shrug, as though it was nothing, but he heard the truth in her heart and the glimmer of her emotions that he could sense. The man had hurt her. He had betrayed her trust and her love.

Veiron wanted to kill him.

He kept his face turned away from Erin so she couldn’t see the change as it came over him, turning his eyes red and teeth crimson and sharp.

“We need to get off the street,” he said but it came out as more of a snarl and Erin’s hand tensed in his. He cleared his throat, reined his anger in, and tried to sound more normal. “I know a place where we might find sanctuary.”

Veiron stopped and looked down at Erin’s feet and her bare legs. She was shivering again and it wasn’t out of fear this time. The night was cold against his chest and back too. Sharing body heat sounded like a reasonable way of keeping warm.

“Come on,” he said and crouched with his back to her.

Erin climbed up onto him, her soft body pressing into his back and her thighs against his hips. Devil, she did feel good right there, snuggled close to him. She settled her arms on his shoulders as he straightened, his hands under her thighs, supporting her.

Veiron blew out his breath at the feel of her fingers sweeping across his shoulders and then down them. They paused and he kept walking, concentrating on the action to purge his desire to absorb the warmth and softness of her caress. If he didn’t focus, his wings were likely to erupt from his back and knock her flying.

Not the way he wanted her to see them for the first time.

Her fingers drifted over his biceps and then followed the sweeping curves of his tattoos to his back. She held onto him with her left hand and traced the tattoo on his right shoulder blade with her other one.

“They’re very beautiful,” she whispered, voice soft but not from her concentrating on his tattoos and being absorbed in following the design with her fingers.

There was desire in that voice, hunger in her tone that made him wonder if she was thinking about running something other than her fingers over his back.

Just the thought of her sweeping her tongue over his tattoos had him hardening painfully in his tight black jeans.

“Thank you,” he uttered, distracted by his thoughts and how good she felt against him.

He fought the urge to turn down the next dark alley, drag her around to his front, pin her to the wall and scratch the itch he had for her.

If he could just scratch that itch, that dark hunger to know her taste and her body, he was sure that he could get her out of his mind and get it back on his real mission. 

Wasn’t going to happen.

Veiron plodded on, hands burning where they touched her bare legs so close to her bottom, mind racing as she continued to swirl her fingers around every curl and along every spike of his tattooed right shoulder.

A shiver raced across his back and it had nothing to do with Erin’s touch this time.

“Hold on,” he said.

Time to run again.

He pounded the pavement with Erin clutching his shoulders, her rapid pulse thumping in his mind, whispering her fear to him.

“How many?” He felt her twist, knew she was looking back.

“Just three.”

He liked the way she said that. Just three. Like three Hell’s angels were nothing for them. They could handle such a paltry number.

He could, but with Erin around, he would be distracted, concerned that she might end up dragged into the fight somehow and injured.

“Veiron... they’re flying.”

That was just cheating.

Two could play at that game.

Veiron stopped, pulled Erin around so she was against his front, and started running again.

His wings burst from his back, he ran up the back of a parked car, boots denting the trunk and roof, and launched himself into the air.

Erin gasped.

Cold night air swept through his crimson feathers as he beat his wings, carrying them higher into the alley.

“You have wings. How do you have wings? You said you didn’t have wings!”

“No, you thought I didn’t have wings.” Veiron flapped them harder. Stay red. Please stay red. When his mood was degenerating as rapidly into anger and violence as it was now, it was normally impossible to keep the feathers on his wings. “This really isn’t the time for this argument.”

Erin mercifully remained quiet.

Veiron’s red gaze darted around, searching for the right direction. If he could get Erin to Taylor’s, he might be able to set her down and tell her to ring the bell and ask Wingless for help while he drew the Hell’s angels away.

He spotted the small square near Taylor and Wingless’s home and shot towards it. The enemy were gaining on him.

“How close?” he said over the noise of the wind.

Erin shivered against him, her body freezing under his hands. “Too close. They’re practically on us.”

“Fuck.” Veiron dived, heading back to street level, and beat his wings, desperate to put some distance between them and their pursuers. Erin tensed in his arms and buried her face against his throat. He levelled off but didn’t slow down. “Listen. I’m going to put you down and draw them away.”

“No.” She threw her arms around his neck and locked her legs around his hips. “No. I don’t want you to ditch me.”

“Stubborn,” he growled and tried to prise her off him but she did the most marvellous impression of a limpet he had ever seen. He couldn’t shift her without using more of his strength and he wouldn’t risk hurting her by doing so. “Fine. Change of plans. I’ll set us both down. You hide behind one of the parked cars on the street and I’ll fight the bad guys.”

“Liar.” She snarled the word at him. “You’re going to ditch me.”

He was. He didn’t have time to argue about it either.

Veiron hit the ground running, furled his crimson wings against his back, and peeled her