AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t touch me. Just give me the direction.”She glanced at him.
Mouth pressed into a grim line, he pointed. Eden marched away. The walk was long and winding. The woods came alive again. Birds chirping. Insects buzzing. A breeze cooling her flushed skin. The wildlife was unafraid of the two correcting her path every few yards.
Damn, she knew she traveled far. Stumbling along, she self-corrected twice, then four more times. The fifth time, she went to her knees. About to tip over from exhaustion, arms banded around her. Scooped up and taken to the air, she had no choice but to cling to the demon who’d saved her from face planting.
That didn’t mean she had to look at or talk to him. In fact, he didn’t exist, wasn’t flying her to the cottage/prison, wasn’t keeping her against her will in a bubble not even he controlled.
Where was the other asshole? She cranked her head around, searching.
“Seren is gone.”
Good. Agone also leaving would be perfect. As soon as he set her down.
Ten minutes later, her wish was granted. Gently, he delivered her to the porch. Eden stormed through the cottage and didn’t stop until she was in her bedroom, stripped, and in the shower, then under a comforter and her head buried in a pillow.
Yeah, she’d killed another demon. She wasn’t stupid enough to celebrate when that made her public enemy number one.
And the two beings meant to protect her... Could she really count on them? Or would they betray her the first chance they got?
Chapter 14
Eden woke, and it was still dark outside? Was it the same day or tomorrow? A glance at her cell told her sixteen hours had passed. Damn. Was it possible to sleep for sixteen hours straight?
A vague memory of stumbling to the bathroom a few times surfaced. Preferring oblivion, she peed and climbed right back between the sheets. Now, she was awake with her brain tumbling over the drastic left turn her life had taken.
She’d never had it easy. Raised by her father after her mother died when she was seven hadn’t been horrible. He was a good man who kept a roof over his daughter’s head and food in her stomach. Everything else was beyond him. Affection, attention, conversation, praise, they were beyond his scope. When a heart attack took him the day after her eighteenth birthday, she buried her father, sold the house, and never visited his grave. She’d met Harry at a Walmart. She had been holding an EPT kit. Her hand trembled as silent tears dripped from her eyes.
Eden helped her sneak the kit into the bathroom and waited while she peed on the stick, and then celebrated when it was negative. They were besties ever since. And now, she was a badass demon slayer, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Harry wasn’t there to share the moment. Be her Willow. Help her. Tell her how to survive this new reality. Eden had no one.
“What the hell am I going to do without her?”
She felt his presence and couldn’t look at him, not with her heart bleeding out.
“Eden.”
Agone’s voice washed over her in a gentle caress. Inside her room, he stood in the center, shirtless with just a pair of jeans on his body. He approached, moving like water through the shadows. In the shifting moonlight peeking between her blinds, his body was a study in brutal perfection, every line chiseled perfection. She’d seen him shirtless in his demon form and found him arresting. Agone, half-naked in his human form, with all his defined, bulging muscles, blew her away. He was seduction wrapped in flesh. All the aches and slight pains vanished, replaced by a different ache. A throbbing heartbeat centered between her thighs.
He halted inches away from the bed, letting her savor the scruff on his squarish jaw. His sensuous mouth and his red eyes gleamed at her from beneath strong, thick brows.
He wasn’t human. Yes, he could pass easily, but he wasn’t human.
Her peaked nipples, her slick core, her racing heart, and eager body did not care.
“I can feel your pain. Let me take it away.”
She pushed the comforter away and sat up. “You can do that?”
“Yes. Seren as well.”
Seren wasn’t there. Agone was. “H-How? What do you do? Touch my forehead?”
He edged closer. Automatically, she scooted over, giving him room to sit. He took her hand, stroked his rough fingers across her palm. “Something like that.”
His touch calmed the pain in her heart. She leaned into the comfort of his body and let her head rest on his chest. He stroked her back, his touch soothing. “You would forget your friend.” His voice was a low rumble in her ear. “Forget she was in your life. No Harry. No pain.”
His offer tempted her. But forgetting Harry, her sister in everything except blood, Eden couldn’t do that. With the pain came memories too precious to erase. No. To keep those memories, to give them the importance they deserved, she had to keep the pain. Harriet Green would live forever in her heart.
Eden eased away to look at the demon who held her. Today, in that moment, there was nothing demonic about him. He was just an impossibly handsome man, comforting her during the worst moment of her life. He cared.
