I felt him everywhere, inside and out, his words proving true. He really stamped himself into every cell in my body, and I reveled in the sensation. I wanted him imprinted onto my very soul.
Clutching my thigh, he plunged into me faster, harder, until my teeth rattled with the force of his thrusts. Not that I cared. Not when I needed his ferocity with a relentless greed of my own. I clenched my legs around his hips, dug my nails into his back, bit the curve of his neck. I’d never before held on to anything as desperately as I did to him.
His energy licked over my clit, and that was it.
Pleasure burst in my core, coruscant explosions of bliss that stole my breath.
“Azazel,” I moaned, riding the cresting wave of my orgasm, riding him.
He clamped me tight with his one hand around my back and buried the other in my hair. Tugging my head back, he exposed my neck, placing a hot kiss on my racing pulse, while he continued pumping into me. One, two, three more thrusts, and he followed me over.
Hearing his husky moan as he found his release made me shiver with delight. I could become addicted to that sound, to the feeling of him inside me when he groaned like that, knowing I gave him this pleasure.
Well, to be honest, I could become addicted to him.
Chests heaving with our fast breathing, we shared the air between us, lingering in this moment of blissful intimacy.
My hand on his cheek, my heart on my sleeve. “I love you,” I whispered.
Raw and open, I bared myself to him more than to anyone. I’d never said these words before, not to someone who wasn’t family or my best friend. And yet now they seemed barely enough to express what I felt for him.
It was enough for him. His eyes flashed lightning, his energy a cascade of heat over my skin, his touch reverent as he traced my mouth with his thumb. “Tell me every day.” His hand was warm where he cupped my cheek. “Tell me again and again, until I kiss the words from your lips.”
With a smile, I murmured, “I love you.”
His hand on my throat.
“I love you.”
His fingers gliding over the swell of my breasts.
“I love you.”
His thumb flicking my nipple.
“I love you.”
His lips on my jaw.
“I love y—”
His mouth on mine, stealing the words.
I love you too, he spoke in my mind, and I melted into his kiss.
Chapter 21
“Ready?” Azazel’s eyes met mine.
I blew out a heavy breath—or would have, if I hadn’t been in ghost form. Even though my body was incorporeal, I could have sworn sweat still slicked over my skin, my pulse fluttering.
We stood in the backyard of my father’s house in Gresham. The wind rustled the leaves in the tree above us, yet I didn’t feel the air in my spirit form. Sunshine glinted off the water drops from the most recent rain shower, and somewhere a block over kids were laughing and squealing. The world went on about its business, oblivious to the demon and the ghostly human in their midst.
We’d come here soon after our return from Lucifer’s palace, and now I clenched my hands at my sides, my emotional state somewhere between numb and uproariously agitated. This was it. We were about to release my father’s soul here on Earth.
I nodded at Azazel and braced myself. “Do it.”
He pressed a button on the small box in his hand, it sprang open…and with a bright flash of light, it spat out its content. A shape appeared on the ground—a man on all fours. Trembling, he let his head hang between hunched shoulders. When he looked up, his eyes were unfocused, but their color was a shock of familiarity. Hazel, a mirror image of my own.
Brown hair cut short, his face an aged version of the one I once knew so well, my father stared unseeing at his surroundings. My chest squeezed tight. I hadn’t seen him in so long, I’d almost forgotten the details of his features. Time had deepened the lines around his eyes, his mouth, had sharpened his cheekbones and jaw.
But he was still the man I’d looked up to as a child, the one who held my hand until I fell asleep when I was scared, who always slipped me extra candy when mom wasn’t looking.
Heart heavy with too much at once, I raised a shaking hand to my throat.