Page 33 of Crimson Soul
THIRTEEN
Lilith
Hot tears dripped down on my face from above. I had cocooned myself in a fluffy blanket on the bed. Even wrapped up in all the warmth, my body was freezing.
“Please, Lilith. I hate seeing you like this,” a distorted voice said between sobs.
Breaking my cocoon, I shifted out of it and reached toward the voice. “Aziel,” I mumbled, “don’t cry.”
I hated it when he cried. My sweet, strong demon guard. He was fucking scary when he needed to be, and he was only soft for me. But I’d put him through too much over the millennia. I missed him so much.
He gave a sharp inhale of breath as I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to mine. Before his lips made contact with mine, his essence poured from his lips, trickling down my throat. The fuzziness in my brain started to fade as his essence spread through my body. His body was stiff as I tangled my hands in his hair.
It was longer than I remembered…
Oh, fuck.
Reality slapped me in the face, and I jerked backward.
I’d lost track of time again. Once my essence hunger set in, my body gave out. It’d never affected me like this before the fucking bracelet, but I didn’t even have the energy to be angry. Laying still seemed to help curb the pain more than anything else did, so that was what I did.
My eyes popped open, and Gabriel’s tear-streaked, shocked face came into focus.
“How fucking dare you!” My hand struck forward, slapping him across the face.
His eyes glowed brighter as he held his cheek and moved off the bed. “How dare I what? Save your life? You called me that fucking demon’s name, but I still let you feed off my essence.”
“What a fucking pleasure that was.” Tears welled up in my eyes. I’d almost kissed him.
“It’s not the first time you’ve fed off my essence, Lilith. Do you not remember we were in a relationship at one point? Or are you purposely trying to break my heart again?”
My temper flared. “Break your heart? You drove your fucking sword through my heart!”
“Oh, not this again.” He shook his head, white strands of perfect hair flowing every which way. “It was a millennium and a half ago!”
“It was only two decades ago for me!” I threw off the rest of the blankets and jumped off the bed, stomping toward him. “That’s how fresh your betrayal is with me.”
“My betrayal?” His halo flashed above his head as anger blazed in his eyes.
Fear writhed in my lower abdomen, but I clenched my fists together and my nails bit into my palms. The pain kept me from flinching away from him. I was stronger than he was. Maybe not physically with the fucking thing around my wrist, but mentally. He couldn’t break me again.
“I trusted you, Gabriel. I cared about you. When you asked to meet me, I met with you without any hesitation.”
He stepped forward, towering over me. “You were fucking that demon when you were engaged to me. I bet you fucked him while you were fucking me too.”
I straightened my spine and tilted my head up to meet his gaze. “No. When you and I were sleeping together, Aziel and I weren’t together.”
“And when you stopped sleeping with me a few weeks before the wedding?”
“That’s when I started sleeping with Aziel.”
“I’ve never been enough for you.” Tears swam in his eyes, and my chest squeezed.
Empathy I didn’t realize I had, came to the surface, but I pushed it down. He didn’t deserve my empathy after what he did to me. “It’s not you, Gabriel. It’s Aziel. I fell for him.”
“What does that demon have that I don’t?” The halo faded from his head and his shoulder slumped.
“I can’t give you an exact reason why, but he was there for me. Always by my side, and eventually, it turned into something more. I fell in love with him before I realized it.” I sighed, turning my back to Gabriel as I walked over to the bed to sit on the edge of it.
