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

They left the bleak village behind and entered a wide open area where the black cragged land belched flames and fiery orange cracks spewed lava. Erin couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be to live down here if she had lived in Heaven. She had no doubt that the other realm existed. She was walking through Hell with a fallen angel as her guardian. Why had Veiron fallen?

She glanced up at his face. Pain edged his dark eyes as he stared ahead into the endless black. Voicing that question would only hurt him and she had done enough damage already. He had gone through Hell to free her and was leading her out, taking her to her sister. She should have been thanking him, showing her gratitude, rather than playing the painful version of twenty questions.

Erin averted her gaze, no longer sure how to speak to him or what to say if she could find her voice. Shards of black rock edged the right side of the winding path through the fiery broken black fields, obscuring the way ahead. She frowned as they turned a corner and she saw a group of rickety rusty cages ahead. They weren’t empty.

Three women dressed in rags, filthy and emaciated, huddled inside them. They reached through the bars of their cramped cages and looked up at her, dark eyes wide and laced with tears.

As she approached, they pleaded her to help them. Veiron strolled right past them without even sparing them a glance. How could he be so unfeeling? He didn’t even break his stride.

She couldn’t ignore their cries.

Erin reached for one of them.

Veiron’s hand snapped around her wrist and yanked it back.

“Don’t,” he growled.

“But they’re scared and starving! I can’t let them just die here.” She wrenched her arm free of his grip and stood up to him. It was hard to intimidate a man who stood over a foot taller and around two feet wider than she was, but she wouldn’t let that stop her from trying.

“You damn well can because they’re starving all right, and if you open those cages, it will be you on the menu.” Veiron grabbed her upper arm and pulled her against his hard body, so her back pressed against his front.

Erin looked down into their dull eyes. “They’re demons?”

“One of the nastier kinds,” he murmured close to her ear, sending a shiver through her limbs. She barely resisted the temptation to lean back into his torso so she could feel his skin on hers.

Veiron launched a heavy boot at one of the cages, rattling it with a hard kick. The woman in it changed, brown-orange scales erupting across her flesh and her eyes burning blue as she hissed at him.

The creature spoke, lisping a language Erin didn’t understand through sharp teeth and with a forked tongue.

Veiron seemed to know it. He grunted, shrugged and levelled another swift kick at the cage.

“Tell him that if he listens to you,” he snarled and tugged on Erin’s hand, dragging her along behind him. “We have to keep moving. It isn’t safe here.”

Erin wasn’t about to argue but she didn’t understand Veiron’s sudden haste. The bruising grip he retained on her arm and the pace of his strides had her almost falling with each painful step she managed.

“I need to rest,” she said and he turned dark eyes on her.

“We can’t. Not now. Not here.”

“Because of that thing?” She hadn’t been born yesterday. “She’s going to tell the Devil, isn’t she?”

“The bastard won’t listen to her. She would need to escape that cage and reach the bottomless pit first. The Devil’s men would rip her apart before she even laid eyes on the old git.”

“Those horrible black demons with the red fangs and eyes?” She shuddered from the memory of them. “I never want to see another one of those bastards again in my life.”

Veiron suddenly released her arm and prowled on at a faster pace, heading up an incline. Erin tried to keep up but he was moving too quickly and her feet were killing her. Each step sent fire burning across her soles and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep going without a rest.

“Veiron?” she said but he didn’t stop. He kept going, the gap between them gradually growing, until he was more than one hundred feet ahead of her and she began to feel exposed and scared again.

Erin held herself and kept hobbling on, tears stinging her eyes. Her gaze darted around and she swore she could feel eyes on her, following her. She shivered, cold to the bone with fear, and her heart rushed in her ears.

“Veiron?” She tried again and he still didn’t acknowledge her.

He disappeared over the brow of the hill. Erin panicked.

She ran despite the fire that licked her feet and the pain that jolted her bones with each step. The land beyond the hill came into view as she neared the brow and she slowed when she saw Veiron standing there, his back to her and his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

The hill ended abruptly, as though someone had carved away the other half of it. It dropped off into a valley over a hundred feet below her. Bright, boiling fire filled the world as far as her eyes could see.

“We will have to go around,” Veiron said, voice deceptively calm and emotionless.

She could easily fool herself into believing that he had just gone on ahead to scout what waited on the other side of the incline but she wasn’t that sort of woman. He had intended to leave her. She had put her foot in it again. Was it because she had placed them in danger by trying to free those creatures?

“I wish there was an easier way.” Veiron looked down at her but she kept her gaze on the brutal landscape. There wasn’t even a path. It was endless fire. “Hell is ever-changing. A few days ago, we could have passed through this way. There is nothing I can do to make this journey easier on you... if I use my powers, they will know that I am here. With that demon wailing about you, it won’t take the Devil long to figure out that you’re missing and that you’re with me.”

“What sort of powers?” She glanced at him.

He grunted and turned away. “We can follow the ridge and rest up ahead. Can you manage it, or are you going to swallow that pride of yours and let me help you?”

She would rather he answered her questions and stopped evading them.

“I’m fine,” Erin said instead and began walking again, trying not to wince with each step so he had no reason to call her stubborn and force her to let him carry her. As much as she wanted to be in his arms, she didn’t enjoy the prospect of being slung over his shoulder again, and his current mood said he would be carrying her that way or no way at all.

Two hundred yards down the rocky path, Veiron shocked her by speaking.

“I could teleport you out of this place,” he said without looking at her. “I could materialise you boots so you didn’t have to hurt your feet and clothes so you felt more comfortable. I could even produce some viable source of nourishment or perhaps even water if I focused enough... although I am not sure how good it would taste. I could do a lot of things, but the moment I use a fraction of my power, everyone will know where we are.”

That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Erin sighed and wished that he could do all that for her too, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If Veiron not using his powers kept them off the radar of the locals and allowed them to get out of Hell unscathed, then she wasn’t going to complain. She touched his left wrist and he looked at her. He had told her a little about himself and she was grateful, because she knew that he had a good heart underneath his hard lethal exterior. He had used her to illustrate his powers and that told her that he cared about her condition and he wanted to alleviate her pain. She couldn’t let him use his powers, but she could let him use his strength.

“Can you carry me now?” she said and his look softened and he nodded.

Sparks of nerves danced in her stomach when he opened his thickly muscled arms to her, bent at the knee and wrapped them around her. He didn’t sling her over his shoulder.

He lifted her in one arm and slid the other beneath the crook of her knees, carrying her like a princess in a fairytale.

Erin leaned her head against his bare shoulder. “Thank you.”

He shrugged. “We’ll be somewhere safe soon. Get some shut eye and I’ll wake you when we reach it.”

Erin thought she was too wired to sleep, too alert to the dangers around her, but the moment she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of Veiron’s smell of aftershave, dirt and heat, a wave of fatigue crashed over her and the world faded away. She felt so safe in his strong arms.

Carrying Erin like this was a mistake. A grand fucking one.

Veiron stared down at her where she lay with her head nestled so sweetly against his shoulder, face soft with sleep and beautiful despite the smudges of dirt.

He should have tossed her over his shoulder. Like this, she was a temptation, so innocent and fragile in appearance, calling to his dark need to protect her. God pity anything that crossed his path while he was holding her like a sleeping babe in his arms. He would tear them asunder with his powers regardless of the fact it would light up his position like a beacon in the Devil’s mind.

He would kill without mercy to protect this delicate impish beauty.

They reached the place where he intended to rest with her and he was relieved to see that the area was intact, unaffected by the recent changes in the landscape of Hell.

He wasn’t pleased about something though.

He didn’t want to put Erin down or have to wake her. She had fallen asleep in under a second and clearly needed the rest. He had felt the change in her heartbeat and heard the switch in her breathing the moment her head had hit his chest.

How long had it been since she had last slept?

When was the last time she had felt safe enough to let down her guard like this?

It touched him that she trusted him, even after what she had said. Her words had cut him to the bone and he should heed them as the warning they were, that things wouldn’t end well for him if he didn’t start reining in the dangerous desires she stirred in him and forgot about her. She hated his breed.

Despised him without knowing it.

She never wanted to see another of his bastard kind. He could easily imagine the horror that would show in her eyes if she ever saw him in his true demonic form, and it was something he never