Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

Diel’s nostrils flared. The Brethren kills were drawing closer—that was the only thing keeping him from tearing from the manor and going to the church himself.

He didn’t wait for his brothers; he raced up the stairs to his room and headed straight for his closet. He was on autopilot, ripping his fighting clothes from their hangers and throwing them on. When he was done, his feet fumbled as he passed the bed. The sheets were still rumpled from sleep, from where he had fucked Noa the night before. And as Diel lowered himself to what had become Noa’s side of the bed, he could still smell her. The lavender-and-sweet-musk scent of her skin was imprinted on the cotton.

A feeling akin to a knife being plunged into his gut ripped through him. He choked, clutching the sheets so tightly that the cotton began to tear. But the agonized feeling only increased, as if he was hemorrhaging, bleeding out from a wound that wouldn’t heal.

He released a deafening roar, clawing in rage at the sheets. His chest tightened, and he felt as though the muscles in his arms and neck would slice apart. But after minutes passed and his voice weakened, rasped and raw from the endless scream, Diel panted for breath, looking down at the pile of shredded sheets.

He swiped a single white piece, folded it and clutched it tightly in his palm. As he stared down at the bed, he saw Noa’s dark eyes looking back at him. He saw her long pink hair splayed on the pillow as she slept. And he saw her on top of him, rocking back and forth as his cock filled her, her lips parted as she came, skin damp and milky, shining like a fucking moon goddess.

He could see it so plainly, so fucking vividly, that he ached, an ache so deep it threatened to bring him to his knees. Diel backed away from the bed. He was too close to the edge, too close to breaking, to fleeing the manor alone and hunting down Auguste and the fucked-up Witch Finders that held Noa captive. He wanted to give himself over to the evil swirling inside, the dark side of him that only craved one thing: death, and lots of it.

Diel threw open his bedroom door and raced down the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he brought the shred of sheet to his nose and inhaled. Diel felt his monster flash its elongated fangs and extend his knife-like claws. Noa should be with them both. She was theirs, and no fucker would live to see the next day if they hurt a single hair on her head.

Diel found himself running to the door, as if he wasn’t even in charge of his own body. But as he reached for the doorknob, he ripped his arm back. The muscles ached at the effort it took not to give in to his murderous nature and fucking go.

Limbs tense, using all his strength to try and stay in the liberated body Noa had gifted him, Diel staggered back into the foyer. He whipped his head around the empty space, searching for somewhere to go, something to do. He turned and ran. He didn’t know where he was headed, but found himself in the armory. He ripped open the door to the wide, deep closet, and the sight of guns and knives and every fucked-up weapon a person could ever think of smiled back at him. His monster paced in excitement.

Diel walked up to the weapons and pulled them down, one after the other, arming himself with as much as he could carry and still fight—a handgun, a rifle, knives of all sizes, grenades and knuckledusters.

When he was loaded with weapons, he rocked on his feet. It still wasn’t fucking time to go. He squeezed his eyes shut, but all he could see was Noa sitting before him in the underground tunnel system the Coven used to call home. Smirking at him, unafraid, as she kept him in a cell.

His mind wandered again, on its own journey, and took him to the night in the folly. To the moment he’d fought Noa, to the very second he’d felt the collar open and drop from his neck. To turning on Noa, monster and man dueling for dominance. His and Noa’s bodies crashing together like boulders. Then her underneath him, his lips smashing to hers as he sank deep inside her, feeling things he had never felt before. An addiction to Noa, a sense of right engulfing his senses.

Then he thought of her never leaving his side afterwards. Until earlier that day … until she sacrificed herself to give him back his sister, Noa’s final act of charity for the fucked-up monster she had fallen in love with. But it had taken her away from the monster. From the man who couldn’t even breathe without her.