Page 49 of Angel I Am Not

“I know what I said.”

“You’re delivering on that shit later.”

Nick nearly doubled over, and even Zel laughed hard enough that he had to drag in a breath before falling into step beside us. Luc tightened his arm around me and kept walking, muttering under his breath about how all three of us were going to kill him.

For someone I had been warned might be dangerous once he wanted something, Gluttony was surprisingly easy to be around. The fact that I already wanted to know how he tasted was probably going to become a problem.

Ariuk

There was no orgy. Again.

There was, however, a whole lot of posturing between three demons who had apparently decided that arguing about Dante was more important than the fact that I was stretched across the couch with my thighs squeezed together and enough frustration humming beneath my skin to make me want to bite somebody.

Zel had spent the last ten minutes pacing the same strip of carpet while Luc tried to reason with him and Nick periodically made everything worse.

“He did lie,” Nick said from against the wall.

Luc shot him a glare. “Stop fucking helping.”

“I’m not helping. I’m pointing out that he’s right about that part.”

Zel turned at the end of another lap. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank him,” Luc snapped. “Neither one of you is listening to what I’m actually saying.”

It was incredibly rude, especially after Luc had very clearly promised me an orgy in that alley.

A few days ago, I had been trying to figure out how to become a slightly better angel after Uriel supposedly lost his mind and challenged God. Now I was Temptation, whatever the fuck that meant, living with demons, possibly bonded to seven of them, and trying not to interrupt a serious conversation by asking whether anyone planned on making good on the sex they had teased me with all night.

Heaven had spent twenty-eight years teaching me to suppress anything that felt too good, and apparently my response to freedom was to swing violently in the other direction. I was still deciding whether that counted as personal growth.

“Would you just listen to me?” Luc finally snapped, and my attention shifted immediately because Luc shouting was never a good sign. He usually held himself together until the pressure had somewhere else to go, and I had already seen what happened when that control broke. “We cannot just march downstairs and demand Dante explain himself. You already know what he does when he doesn’t want to answer.”

Zel stopped pacing and turned toward him, dragging both hands through his hair before letting them fall against his sides. “He talks around the question until you forget what you asked. I noticed.” When Luc asked why they were still having the argument, Zel’s jaw tightened before his gaze slid toward me. The agitation around him felt different from Nick’s anger. Nick burned hot and immediate, every irritation looking for something to hit. Zel’s frustration was heavier, almost restless, like one answer only created another question he couldn’t stop reaching for. “Dante sent me looking for impossibilities. Then you two show up with one, and she’s fucking Temptation. He knew something. Maybe not everything, but enough.”

Luc crossed his arms. “And yelling at him is going to magically make him honest?”

“No, but doing nothing isn’t scratching the itch either.” Zel looked at Nick for half a second before his attention settled back on me. “That’s the part people never understand. Everyone hears Gluttony and thinks food, sex, drinking too much, whatever. It isn’t that simple. I get one good thing and immediately want to know what the next one feels like. One drink becomes five because maybe the fifth tastes different. One touch becomes another because now I know what that patch of skin feels like and I want the rest.”

Nick leaned against the wall, studying him with a look somewhere between curiosity and amusement. “Sounds exhausting.”

“It fucking is.” Zel barely spared him another glance. His eyes dropped to the way my legs had shifted closer together and his mouth curved just enough to make heat crawl up my spine. “I smelled her in that alley and one breath wasn’t enough. Then I touched her and wanted more skin. I spent the whole walk back thinking about what she tastes like, and now I’m sitting here pretending I give a shit about Dante when she’s ten feet away from me.”

I sat forward before I could stop myself, and Luc noticed immediately because of course he did. Nick’s grin widened, but Zel was the one whose expression changed completely when my thighs pressed tighter together.

“This conversation has become significantly more interesting,” I admitted.

Luc pinched the bridge of his nose while Nick snorted beside him. Zel crossed the room slowly, gaze fixed on my mouth before drifting lower. “You want to know what the problem is, Angel?” I should have objected to the nickname, but I nodded instead. He stopped between my knees and leaned down just enough that his breath brushed my lips. “If I put my mouth on you, I already know one taste isn’t going to be enough.”

My pussy clenched so hard I nearly saw stars. “Come again?”

That finally made him smile. I caught the front of his shirt and tugged him the last few inches closer, widening my knees around his hips. “Then stop talking about it.”

His eyes darkened as he looked down at my hand fisted in his shirt, then back at me. “Angel.”

“You keep saying that like it’s going to scare me.”

“It’s not supposed to.”