Climbing onto the cushions next to her, he gathered her against him and tugged a blanket down over them both. She stiffened at first, and he understood that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lingered with a female after sex. They came here for one purpose, and it wasn’t to be cuddled.
He’d never longed for any kind of connection after sex either, so this thing with Lilliana...it felt foreign. And yet, it felt right.
And as she rested her hand on his chest, directly over his heart, he knew it was right. Now he just had to figure out how to stop the emotional blowouts he kept having when they came back from time travel. Of course, if sex was the key to stopping them in their tracks, well, he supposed he could deal.
He just hoped Lilliana could, too.
Chapter Eleven
Azagoth didn’t know how long they laid on his couch, bodies tangled together as they caught their breath, but eventually, Lilliana, her head on his chest, began to trace lazy circles on his abs. The intimacy of it—of all of this—left him in a state of awe and, truth be told, anxiety. Somehow, she was drawing emotion out of him, and he couldn’t help but wonder how damaging that could be.
“Azagoth?”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you volunteer for this job?” Postcoital drowsiness permeated her voice, and he experienced a flicker of male pride that he was responsible. “To lose your angelic status and live among demons?”
He shrugged, knocking one of the pillows off the sofa. “Someone had to do it.”
“Bullshit.” Her fingers skated over his rib cage in an almost playful sweep. “I might be young, but I know that no one sacrifices freedom without a good reason.”
He tucked one arm behind his head and gazed up at the wood-beamed ceiling. “Didn’t you read everything you could find about me before you decided to become my mate? Surely you had an entire term devoted to me in history class.”
“Three terms, actually.” She drew the number 3 on his sternum. “You’re quite the historical figure. The first term was devoted to your life as an angel known as Azrael and the events leading up to your expulsion, and the second and third terms were devoted to your life as Azagoth.”
“I got three terms?” He grinned. “Nice.”
But damn, the name Azrael brought back memories. And how odd was it that he preferred the memories he’d made as Azagoth over those that went with his Heavenly name?
“Yes, well,” she said, “the history I learned painted you as an entitled playboy who chose to lose his wings because he’d rather rule an empty kingdom than follow others in paradise.”
It figured that historians would twist the facts to fit whatever agenda they had. Angels were no more scrupulous than humans when it came to molding the truth into fact-based fiction.
“Then what’s the point of asking why I chose this life if you already know?”
“Because only a fool believes everything they read or are told.” She dragged the backs of her fingers up his sternum, and pleasant tingles followed in their wake. “So what’s the real story?”
He supposed he owed her the truth, given what she was committing to. It was just so strange to owe anyone. He was the one who usually held all the I.O.U.s.
“I did it because I was tired of feeling,” he said simply, because that’s what his long-ass story boiled down to in the end.
Pushing up onto one elbow, she frowned down at him. “Feeling what?”
“Everything.” He kept his gaze glued to a rough-cut beam overhead. “Did your history classes teach you that I was an empath?”
Her brow shot up. “But you were an interrogator with the Internal Corruption Investigation unit. Empaths aren’t allowed. How can you torture people if you can feel everything your subject feels?”
“At the time, no one knew I was an empath. And it wasn’t all torture,” he said, maybe a little defensively. “Most of what I did for the ICI was ask questions. Being an empath gave me an edge when it came to detecting lies.”
“Which is why you were the most successful ICI interrogator in history,” she mused. “It was you who uncovered Satan’s plot. You were unstoppable. Until you mysteriously quit and disappeared for a few centuries before returning to volunteer for the Grim Reaper gig.”
Those few centuries had been the worst years of his life, so full of loneliness and regret. Funny how when you had no one to talk to, you relived everything you ever said and did, and when most of it wasn’t pretty, you learned to hate yourself real fast.
“I quit because I was a cocky, spoiled, arrogant playboy, just like you said. I kicked ass at my job and I knew it, and then one day I got it wrong. I was so sure of myself that I mistook a young angel’s fear for a family member for fear he’d get caught lying. Long story short, he was innocent, and he lost his wings because of me.” He glanced over at her, expecting to see disgust on her face, but all he saw was curiosity. “Naturally, at the time I didn’t blame my bad judgment on my arrogance. I blamed it on the fact that I wasn’t a powerful enough empath. You know, if only I’d been even more empathic, I wouldn’t have screwed up. So I did something stupid, a mystical spell went wrong, and one day I was the most empathic angel the world had ever seen.”
She cocked her head, and her hair tickled his chest. “So what happened? You don’t seem to be all that empathic to me.”
“No kidding.” There was a crack in the ceiling beam. He should get that fixed. “What happened is that my world went to shit. I couldn’t be within a mile of a human or I’d feel everything they were feeling. Being within a hundred yards of an angel would drive their emotions and thoughts into my head like a knife. So I left ICI and isolated myself for two hundred years. It wasn’t until a call was put out for volunteers to oversee Sheoul-gra that I realized I could do something useful again. The benefit being that here in the demon realm, my empathic ability doesn’t work.”
“I’ll say,” she muttered.
“What I didn’t anticipate,” he continued, “was that I’d lose more than my ability to feel what others feel. I’ve lost my ability to feel almost everything.”
“You’re saying you don’t feel pain? Or anger? Or joy?”
“Anger stirs, but barely and not often. Otherwise...” He shrugged. “I’ve even lost my ability to feel heat. Only the ever-present biting cold. If not for the fire, I think my flesh would turn to ice.”
“That’s why the fire doesn’t produce heat, isn’t it? Because you absorb it all.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “What I wouldn’t give to be warm. Even when you took me to the desert, I could barely feel the sun on my skin.” He took her hand and dragged it to his right pec, directly over the skull engulfed in flames tattoo. “These tattoos were designed to contain pain and emotion. I took them from one of the Four Horsemen, Thanatos, in hopes that I could access the pain. And for a while, I did.” He sighed. “It was...glorious.”
“Pain was glorious?”
He took a strand of her hair between his fingers. It was so soft, so different from the hard, cold texture of the world he’d created around him.
“I was happy to feel something...anything.” Bringing the curl of hair to his nose, he inhaled her fresh scent. “But it didn’t take long to drain the tats. Now they’re as empty as I am.”
“I’m sorry, Azagoth.” Her pity put an end to this party, and he sat up with a curse. “Oh, no,” she said, grasping his wrist. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t need—or want—her sympathy. He’d made his bed and he’d lie in it. With her, preferably. But he did want her to understand that it wasn’t her job to make him happy. Nothing and no one could do that.