I dragged my lips up her throat, nipping her soft flesh along the way, gentle but firm enough to make her gasp and squirm in my arms. I kissed up her neck, her chin, then paused when her lips were level with mine.
“Yes,” I said with more sadness in my tone than I’d intended. “I’m the god of all things dead and forgotten. It shouldn’t be shocking that I’m not the most attentive keeper. But with you…”
I reached up to wring the excess water from one of her soaking locks of hair before tucking it behind her ear. “With you, it’s different. Ever since I caught my little thief scuttling around in the Petherick tomb, I can’t stand to think of anything else.”
“That’s why your brothers kidnapped me.” Her tone turned somber, her gaze distant, even as the last tingling sensations of her orgasm worked through her and she twitched in my arms. “They think you’ll get back to your job if I’m not around to distract you. They don’t know you at all, do they?”
I laid us down carefully at the bottom of the gondola and tucked her against me. She snuggled close, her face buried against my chest. Her heart was beating so hard, I could feel its thrum against my stomach.
Staring down at her head, I gently stroked her hair as her breathing steadied and her muscles relaxed. She was right. My brothers had known me for millennia, and yet, they didn’t know me at all. This human had known me for not even a full week and somehow knew me better than they ever would.
My fingers threaded through her hair, combing out the tangles and idly winding a strand around my knuckle. “They may be my brothers, but they’ve never been family.”
Family. Ha. That word had little meaning to me, and the thought of it only stirred the smallest twinges of loneliness. That was how it had always been for as long as I could remember. Even in my human life, from the little I could recall, I’d been alone, a soldier with no one to wait for me had the war not taken my life.
But maybe it didn’t always have to be that way.
My attention dropped back to Rayven in my arms, and I found her peering up at me through her dark lashes. Registering the anxiety churning behind her doe-like eyes, I frowned and pulled her closer. “I’m not going to let them hurt you.”
She was looking right at me, yet her gaze was distant. “I don’t want to wake up.”
A creature like me barely registered pain, but the ache in her voice sent an invisible dagger straight through my heart. The tears rolling down her cheeks gave it an extra agonizing twist.
“Shouldn’t you be able to summon me or something, now that you have my soul?”
“That’s not how it works, Rayven.” My voice came out hardly more than a rasp. “But by the nine Hells, do I wish that wasn’t the case.”
“What if Belphegor kills me before you find me?”
I bared my teeth, and every sinew in my body went rigid. Even the thought of Belphegor taking Rayven’s life, the thing thatbelonged to me and me alone, sent me into a rage. “He won’t. I’ll fucking kill him.”
“You’re going to kill him anyway! That won’t stop him from….” Her words began to wobble, and she trailed off. The tears had stopped, but then something worse happened. Her expression shifted, not a hint of emotion on her face. She looked resigned, like she was making peace with whatever Belphegor planned to do with her once she woke. “I guess it doesn’t matter if he kills me. You’ll just resurrect me, right?”
A sharp sensation hooked into my gut.
There was pain worse than death.
Knowing Belphegor, his plans to torture Rayven would be more complex than the other demon lords. Chances were, he wouldn’t kill her.
The Lord of the Gluttony was probably the worst of them all because he would hurt her in ways I couldn’t fix with magic.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that. All I could do was flash her that smile she hated to love and reach down, tugging ever so softly on her nipple piercing, just enough to make her gasp.
My mouth crashed down over hers to capture her sexy little mewl. I nipped her lower lip and growled into her mouth, “That’s right...”
My hand slid up her arm, and my thumb rubbed over the three marks I’d cut into her flesh. “You’ll never escape me. Even gods can’t keep you from me. No matter how deep through Hell they drag you, I’ll find you. I’ll decimate anything and anyone who stands in my goddamn way. Do you fucking understand me, little human?”
Days ago, Rayven would have cringed away. She would have fought me. She might have even willingly gone with my brothers if it meant escaping me.
Now, my vow seemed to comfort her. “Alright. When you get here, I want you to hold Belphegor down...”
Knowing the shapeshifter, he’d enjoy that too much. I bit back the thought and let her finish.
She drew back and pinned me with this mischievous look that had me hard again.
“And I’ll be the one to cut off his head. I’d say we should fuck on his headless corpse to celebrate, but from what I know of Belphegor, I think he’d like that too much.”
Chapter Thirty-One
