Demonic and Deserted (Eternally Yours Book 4) (3 page)

“Inés has to do my hair,” I squealed. “She’s probably freaking out.”

Aedan grabbed my ass, hauling me against his rock-hard erection. “Inés can wait.”

“Aedan, that’s rude.” I pushed him away, “accidentally” swiping the tight bulge beneath his pants. I knew I was being a tease, but I couldn’t help myself. 

“But I want you,” he begged, grabbing my hand and placing it back over his bulge. Aw, jeez. I really, really was tempted to run into the bedroom for a quickie, but then I thought of our honeymoon tonight, and how much better sex would be with a little suspense. 

I pulled back, crossing my arms. “No means no.”

I couldn’t help but smile when he jutted a foot forward, reminding me of a hungry predator, and I was a big, juicy fillet, tenderized and seasoned for a romp beneath the sheets.

I skirted the sofa, nearly tripping over our pale blue, -secondhand luggage. “Help me with these.” I picked up a suitcase and shoved it against him.

I grabbed the garment bag holding my wedding gown, a beautiful 1940s throwback my grandma had lent me. I’d fallen in love with the dress the moment my grandma had brought it from Heaven. It made me look like a pinup model, complete with a perky bustline and a tight waist that flared at the hips, concealing my womanly thighs. I’d spruced it up a bit with a red sash and glossy red pumps, and the result was fabulous. I couldn’t wait until Aedan saw me in it.   

“What’s in this?” He frowned, reaching for my bag.

I gasped, yanking it away from him. “It’s my wedding dress. Don’t look. It’s bad luck.”

“We’re already dead.” He chuckled. “I think we’re beyond superstitions now.” He opened the zipper.

Much to my horror, white taffeta and a red satin sash spilled out of the bag. 

“No, Aedan!” I shrieked, spinning, my hands shaking as I shoved the fabric back inside. I flashed him a warning scowl while clutching the bag to my chest.

Aedan stepped back, holding out his hands in a defensive gesture. “Ash, what’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing.” I fumbled with the zipper on the bag while averting my gaze. “I’m just nervous.”

“Nervous?”

I glanced up at him, and my heart twisted. He had this wounded look in his eyes, like he was my black Lab Jack, and he’d just been scolded for drag-racing his ass across the carpet.

I bit my lip, feeling like a ten-pound bucket of horseshit after all Aedan had done for me. I stared at my feet, unable to stand seeing the hurt in his eyes. “We’re about to make a huge commitment, Aedan.”

“I’m already committed to you. I’ve been committed ever since I risked my soul to save you from Hell.”

Aw, jeez. Aedan knew exactly how to trigger my guilt-trip sensors. They all went off simultaneously, blaring, “YOU’RE A SELFISH BRAT!” while neon strobe lights flashed “YOU DON’T DESERVE HIM!” in my brain. I covered my face with my hands, choking on a sob. “You must think I’m horrible.”

“No, I don’t,” he said soothingly as he took me in his arms, pulling me against him, his warmth radiating around me like an electric blanket. “If you’re getting cold feet, we can wait. “

“I don’t want to wait.” I looked up at him through watery eyes. “I want to marry you. I’ve never wanted anything more.”

He flashed a weak smile, wiping the moisture from my eyes. “Okay, so why are you panicking?”

“Mr. Head said we’ll get tired of each other,” I blurted and then instantly regretted it. Why would I ever listen to my asshole boss? 

Aedan laughed. “And you believed that jerk?”

“You’re right.” I smacked my forehead.  “I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. You’re a nervous bride.” Aedan tilted my chin, brushing soft kisses across my brow and nose before lingering a few moments longer on my lips.

I sighed into him, clutching his collar like a lifeline, even though I didn’t deserve this man. “I shouldn’t be nervous, not after what we’ve been through together.” After we’d thwarted an apocalypse, survived an army of angry spiders, defeated a soul-sucking dragon, and endured Hell’s horny water, we could make it through a lifetime of morning breath and arguing over leaving the toilet seat up.

Speaking of the toilet seat, last night Mr. Manners left it up again. After drinking too many margaritas with my grandma, Inés, Basil, and some girlfriends from work at my bachelorette party, I had to make an unexpected butt-crack of dawn trip to the bathroom. I’d been too tired and hung over to check the seat.  Since the ancient, clunky 80s toilets in level ten purgatory were slightly wider than my ass, I fell in with a splash and then a grunt.

After screaming like a banshee, and calling Aedan every swear word in the book, he’d stumbled into the bathroom with half-lidded, groggy eyes, grumbling because I’d woken him from his beauty rest. Then he’d the nerve to laugh, his eyes bugging when he saw me flailing, trying to free my butt from the crapper’s hungry jowls. He grabbed both hands, tugging me a few times before I flew out of the toilet with an angry “pop,” falling on top of him. I was so mad, I’d jabbed him in the gut. He buckled over with a grunt, but he’d gotten off easy. My wet ass had been imprinted with the angry red ring of shame. I went to bed pissed off, scooting to the edge when he’d tried to cuddle. 

The toilet seat had been down when I woke up this morning. Even more surprising was that Aedan’s dirty socks and underwear had found their way to the hamper. And they said miracles only happened in Heaven. By the time I’d gotten out of the shower and sat down to a steaming cup of coffee, scrambled eggs, and bacon, I’d forgiven my fiancé. Besides, how could I have resisted his puppy dog eyes and pouty lips? We’d parted with a warm hug and a kiss, a really deep, panty-wetting kiss.  He’d begged me not to go into work. I should have listened. I’d known Mr. Head wasn’t going to fire me. Could my boss have been right? Was I subconsciously trying to get away from Aedan?

“You’re awfully quiet.” He kissed my forehead before looking at me with a playful smirk. “What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”

“Oh, nothing. Just can’t wait to be Mrs. O’Connor,” I lied.
Jeez, Ash, what a way to start off a marriage.

“Well then, my beautiful bride,” he said as he laced his fingers through mine, “let’s hit the elevator.”

I
wordlessly followed my fiancé out of our apartment and to the other end of the hall, where Archangel Cam had installed our private elevator. I smiled at Aedan when he pressed the down button that would take us to the top level of hell. Yeah, we were getting married in Hell because some of our friends hadn’t been pardoned by God and were still stuck down there. Technically, it wasn’t really hell, since they were living in the Nephilim Army’s abandoned pyramid. Still, the thought of getting married anywhere near the vicinity of the fiery pit was starting to feel like a mistake. Talk about bad luck. Exposing my wedding dress to the groom paled in comparison to saying our vows in the Devil’s den, no matter how much it had been spruced up.

Just as I started having real doubts about our venue, the elevator door dinged open, and I numbly followed Aedan inside. The elevator was darker than usual. A fluorescent bulb overhead was out, and another flickered as if the fuse had a short circuit. I really didn’t feel comfortable traveling to Hell in a dimly lit elevator. Actually, I didn’t feel comfortable traveling to Hell at all, but Aedan didn’t seem to be bothered by it.  When he pressed that sub-level one button, my stomach nearly jumped into my throat.

No turning back now, Ash. You’re about to say “I do” for eternity.

Eternity. I couldn’t even fathom how long that was, because it never ended.

Never, ever.

An eternity of coffee grounds, dirty socks, and toilet seats in the upright position.

The metal doors shut with a squeak, and the elevator lurched.  My eyes bugged out, and I knew I looked like an animal caught in a trap. Aedan turned to me, a frown marring his brow.

“Ash,” he said as he laced his fingers through mine, “everything is going to be all right.”

I swallowed a lump of nervous tension. What was wrong with me that I was terrified of marrying the man of my dreams? “You promise?” I pleaded, desperately searching his face for reassurance.

He wrapped a strong arm around my waist, pulling me against him. “I promise, sweetheart.” He raised my hand to his lips, placing tender kisses on each knuckle and causing that slow drip in my underwear to turn into a steady trickle.

I leaned into his warmth, placing a hand on his chest, soothed by the steady rhythm of his heart. “I love you,” I breathed. 

His eyes shone like starlight as he smiled down at me. “And I love you, more than my very soul.”

“Oh, Aedan,” I cried, circling my arms around his neck as he captured my lips in a heat-searing kiss.

When his hands wandered down my back and cupped my buttocks, that trickle turned into a stream as he lifted me up, pressing my backside into the elevator wall. I wrapped my legs around his waist, grinding my soaking undies against his erection while he deepened the kiss.

Hot damn! I’d never wanted elevator sex so badly in my life. I frantically fumbled with his belt, but then my hands went limp when he pulled aside my undies, flicking that swollen nub, and then inserting a finger into my tunnel of love. I moaned into his mouth as he finger-fucked me, deep and hard with that blessedly thick finger, his knuckles grinding into my swollen, buzzing button, that secret sweet spot that made all my sensual alarm bells go
DING, DING, DING
! 

I screamed when my orgasm claimed me, my slick walls clenching tight around his finger, and when he circled my clit with the pad of his thumb, I cried again, as that little buzzer thumped against him like a bass drum.

When he broke the kiss, breathing hot and heavy against my cheek, I threw back my head with a satisfied groan and closed my eyes as I slumped against the cool metal of the elevator wall.

Hot damn.

Okay, as long as Aedan was willing to finger me into oblivion, I’d put up with an eternity of raised toilet seats. 

I smiled when I heard Aedan unbuckle his belt. I was so incredibly sated, I didn’t even care if we got caught.

“I’m going to make this quick,” he said before hoisting me and seating me on his engorged dick.

My eyes flew open when his swollen head ploughed through my tight channel. “Ohhh!” I yipped as he buried himself to the hilt.

He thrust once, twice, three times, and then stilled with a grunt. 

As his cock ballooned and spurted against my swollen center, my libido came back to life, and I ground against him, trying to sneak in one more orgasm before the elevator door opened. It didn’t take long for Aedan to catch on and match my rhythm. A second orgasm ripped through me like a bolt of lightning. I hollered his name while digging my newly manicured French-tip nails into his shoulders. I thought I felt a nail wedge loose, but I didn’t care, because that orgasm was still zinging through me like a bullet ricocheting in a metal chamber, and I was going to keep grinding my hunky piece of man meat until every last twitch and shudder left me as boneless as a jellyfish.

By the time I melted against his chest, I was panting harder than a ninety-year-old chain-smoker who’d used up her last oxygen tank. After our breathing slowed to near normal, we both shared lopsided smiles as he slipped out of me. Gentleman that he was, he procured a handkerchief from his vest pocket and shoved it between my legs like a makeshift maxi, but as wet as we’d both been, I didn’t think even a super-plus, maximum absorbent nighttime pad with wings would have been enough to hold what was gushing from inside me.

“Thanks, sweetie.” I pulled down my skirt as I squeezed my legs together, hoping he didn’t expect me to return that handkerchief until after it had gone through the wash cycle a few times. 

“My pleasure,” he said with a wink as he buttoned his pants.

I grabbed his handsome, rugged face in my hands, kissing the tip of his nose before wiping pink lipstick off his collar.

Sheesh. I didn’t remember kissing him there. I frowned as my attempt to remove the stain only widened the blemish.

I yelped when Aedan jerked my hand away, squeezing my poor fingers in a crushing grip.

“Aedan,” I cried. “You’re hur—” I held my breath when I saw the look of panic in his eyes.

“Did you hear that?” he breathed.

I shook my head, fighting back the lump of bile that rose into my throat as the realization hit me. How had Aedan and I managed to have foreplay and sex without the door opening on us, and why did the elevator feel like it had stopped moving?

* * *

Sergeant Santiago Sanchez

C
allum O’Connor and I cautiously followed Archangel Cam through the pyramid’s atrium garden, enclosed at the top of the structure and surrounded by four, slanted glass walls that converged at the tip. Once a lush paradise, it was now a humid jungle of dead trees and plants and rotting vegetation. The place smelled like fermented eggs because of the flesh of the brown fruits littering the soil. It sickened me to see such a beautiful sanctuary reduced to decrepit pit in only a matter of days. I held my blowtorch like a combat weapon, finger poised on the trigger should the spiders show themselves. So far, they’d kept well hidden, submerged within the fruits they’d destroyed. Cam stopped a few yards in front of us, wielding an even bigger torch nearly the size of a cannon. He was dressed like us, covered head to toe in a protective suit much like the kind worn by medical people entering a quarantined zone. Except they only had to keep out germs, not prevent thousands of hungry arachnids from busting through the seams and eating them alive. I worried about the air holes on my face mask. Though they were much smaller than the spider God had crushed, they were wide enough to fit a spider’s leg, or God forbid, a stream of venom.

Cam silently motioned for us to fan out. Our plan was simple. Burn the place down. Scorch every last tree and all of the harvest the priestesses had worked so tirelessly to cultivate. Leave the pests no place to hide and nothing to eat. Then seal off the garden from the rest of the pyramid. Seemed simple enough, though it was anything but.  O’Connor wordlessly moved to the right, slipping through the vegetation with the experience of a seasoned soldier. Though he’d never served in a war, as I had, he’d learned enough survival skills after having lived over a hundred years in Hell.