It startled her how quickly need ignited her blood, and her heart beat so hard she could hear her pulse in her ears. Without thinking, she gripped his arms and drew him closer, until she could feel his nipples harden through his shirt. How long had it been since she’d given in to a male like this? Not since Hutriel, and even then, she’d never had the desire to bite every button off a shirt just to get to his powerful chest.
Then again, Hutriel had been all about “proper” lovemaking. And proper lovemaking meant an orderly removal of clothing, and afterward, there could be no lingering looks or touches. There was no penetration, just a tangling of bodies and limbs as you surrendered your soul to the merging. An instant, all-over body orgasm was the reward, an orgasm that could last for hours and leave you drained for a day.
Sure, it was awesome with a capital A. But for all the soul-melding, it wasn’t especially intimate. Not on a physical level. And that was something she had desperately craved. Hell, she’d craved closeness of any kind after being denied it following her mother’s death and her father’s rejection.
Her father’s third rejection.
Azagoth shifted, dropping his hand to her thigh and lifting her leg to his waist, putting her core in full contact with his erection. Ecstasy speared her, spreading through her sex and warming her so quickly that she might as well have been in a sauna, not in ten below Arctic temperatures.
Arching against her, he slid his hand beneath her shirt. Oh, damn, the skin-to-skin contact was decadent, but as he began to smooth his palm upward, she went taut. She shouldn’t be doing this. Not when she was planning to leave. It wasn’t fair to either of them.
You’re worrying about him? The male who serviced seventy-two angels a year, plus the devil-only-knew how many demon females?
Yeah, she was kind of an idiot. But how could she feel such conflicting emotions all at once? How could she hate him but crave him? Want him but at the same time want to push him away?
The pull of the mirror rescued her from her own scrambled thoughts. She cleared her throat. “Are you still considering getting off of me?”
His voice was a silken whisper against her throat. “I’m considering getting you off.”
Heat flushed her body. “We’re going back in a few minutes.”
“It can’t be time.” His mouth trailed upward, along her jugular, and shivers of pleasure shot through her. “We just got here.”
It felt that way to her, too, and truth be told, she felt a twinge of disappointment herself. She’d meant to take him to the most horrible, boring place she could, and he’d loved it. She’d ended up having fun.
Total fail.
“Sorry, but—” She broke off, sucking air as his lips captured her earlobe. How could such a small thing feel so good?
“But what?” He traced the shell of her ear with his tongue. So. Very. Good.
The tug of the mirror intensified, becoming a buzz that drowned out all the pleasant things Azagoth was doing to her.
“But we have to go.”
His head came up, and his gaze bored into hers. “I don’t want to go.”
Crazily, neither did she.
But the chronoglass had other plans, and a moment later, they were back in Azagoth’s office, lying on the carpet.
He was still on top of her.
And his hand had moved to her breast. But the look on his face said that he was anything but happy to be back. His eyes were wild, glinting with anger and what she thought might be confusion.
He’d freaked out last time when they’d come back, but she’d never found out why. She’d written it off as Azagoth being Azagoth, but twice now was too weird to ignore.
He looked down at her, fangs jutting from his upper jaw. Those things probably shouldn’t be a turn-on, but then, she was rapidly discovering that there were a lot of things about Azagoth that shouldn’t be sexy.
And way too many that should.
“Hey.” She palmed his cheek, letting her thumb stroke the contour of his blade-sharp cheekbone. “What’s wrong?”
“Not...used...to...” He broke off, panting, his lips peeled back in agony. “Emotion.”
Emotion? How could he not be used to emotion? She’d seen him pissed as hell. She’d seen him smile. She’d seen him happy as a puppy in a meadow during their time travel jaunts.
But whatever was going on, it was clear he was in pain.
“Hey.” She tilted his face down, forcing him to look at her. His gaze was glassy, tortured, and so very different from how it had been a moment ago. “I liked it better when you were kissing my neck.” He groaned, his teeth clenched as if he was fighting with himself. Gently, she tapped on his cheek. “Focus. Come on, rein it in.”
“Can’t. Worse than...last time.”
Shit. She’d seen something similar before, when she’d been a young angel in battle training. The male named Dreshone had been an empath with such strong abilities that it had been hard for him to function. He’d undergone a procedure to have his ability minimized, but the price had been a big one; his own emotions had been dulled, which had made him an extremely lethal warrior, but once per decade, he’d suffered a meltdown of uncontrollable emotion that had required lockup to prevent him from hurting anyone or himself.
But as far as she knew, Azagoth wasn’t an empath, so what was going on?
“Azagoth, listen to me—” He snarled and started to push off of her, but she gripped his biceps hard and dragged him back down. “No. You aren’t running again.”
His deep growl rumbled through her body, reigniting the fire that had been burning her blood when they’d been lying in the snow. And wasn’t it funny that his anger was turning her on as much as his lips had been.
“Don’t...want to...hurt you.”
Yeah, she didn’t want that, either. “You won’t. You’ve never hurt any of the angels Heaven sent to you over the centuries.” News of that nature would have been the talk of the angelic airwaves.
“I never felt like...this.”
Maybe time travel had an adverse effect on him. “Just focus,” she said softly. “Focus on me.”
His gaze locked with hers, and she saw the moment he went from furious to...well, furious and aroused. And she knew, in that moment, that no matter what happened next, nothing between them would be the same again.
Chapter Ten
Azagoth concentrated on the female beneath him, his body a mass of writhing, twisting contradictions. Like the last time he’d come back from time travel, he was reeling from emotions he couldn’t handle.
Now it was happening again, only on a grander scale. The fissure that had opened inside him last time had cracked open further, leaving him overwhelmed with feelings. Joy, sadness, anger, jealousy. He wasn’t even sure what event or person each emotion was attached to. It was just all bubbling out, as if thousands of years’ worth of denied feelings were breaking free of their bonds.
This was what you wanted, asshole. You wanted to feel. Be careful what you wish for.
True enough. He’d been so cold inside for so long. And now he was cold and insane.
Distantly, he heard Lilliana talking. Felt her fingers digging into his arms. Felt her thighs clamping around his hips to hold him still. Felt her core pressed firmly against his raging erection.
Focus. He tried gathering the maelstrom of emotions together and forcing them down, back into the fissure. Focus. Reaching deep, he tried to separate out each one and associate it with an event, a person, anything to understand why he’d be so angry or jealous, but each time an image started to form, it scattered to the wind and was replaced by a black hole of fury.