Whilst I was away, Cover Him with Darkness CAME OUT!!! - it's available on Amazon even though the official paperback launch is still to come.
So here goes ... and the set-up for this scene is that, released now from his prison, the fallen angel Azazel is pursuing Milja through her dreams.
Amazon US : Amazon UK
It was a room full of international models. The women looked that way anyway, and I was sure that some of their faces were familiar from magazines. The men mostly just looked incredibly well-heeled and pleased with themselves. Both genders stood around holding cocktail glasses and laughing as they talked. Photographers prowled the crowd armed with oversized flashbulbs. Through open doors I could see an azure sea, but inside the room were full-sized palm trees and a colossal aquarium two stories high, in which sharks swam among brightly colored corals.
It looked like the champagne party of the year.
I walked through slowly, looking left and right. My own dress was bright scarlet and nearly floor-length, though it left my arms and a deep V of cleavage bare. The material was soft and clung to my thighs like silk kisses.
Azazel just didn’t like underwear, I was forced to accept.
I found him sitting in a leather armchair, talking to a group of people around a small table. He hadn’t bothered to get dressed up at all, but looked exactly as he had last time—which was enough to make my blood race. He beckoned me over, but there was no space for me to sit so he patted his knee. I perched obediently, and he drew me into his lap.
“Where are we?” I asked. Sitting like this, our heads were just about on a level. He slipped one hand over the small of my back, caressing me, and my spine arched like a cat’s.
“I’ve no idea. Some party. I thought you might like to try this very very expensive drink.” It came in a fluted glass and looked like champagne with little flakes of gold in it. It tasted like sunlight and went straight to my head with the first sip. “Nice?”
“Yes. Azazel…why me? Why do you want me?”
Just for a moment he took his attention off my body and looked me in the face. “What a strange thing to ask.”
“I mean, look at you. Look at you! You could have practically any woman here that you wanted, even without threatening to massacre her family or reduce her country to ash or whatever your usual chat-up line is. Really beautiful, clever women. Why me?”
“You think me devoid of all sentiment? You were there. You fed me. You freed me.”
I recalled only too well what Uriel had said about me feeding him. I wet my lips.
“What was your last girlfriend like?”
He watched my expression, smiling slightly. “A little shorter than you. Long red hair. Mismatched eyes—one brown, one green.” There was a glint of teeth beneath his lip. “Are you jealous of a woman dead five thousand years, Milja?"
“Hell no. I just…wondered.”
“She was an oracle, in a village on the edge of a great river. She would breathe the fumes of certain leaves and tell people what futures lay before them, and she would dance under the moon to call the wild ibex down from the steppe. I was…very fond of her.”
I wondered what the hesitation hid. He looked a lot calmer in this new dream, I thought, though his right hand was stroking my back and his left caressing my thigh in a way it was hard to ignore. I thought of his wild dancing Pythia and asked, “Did you have any children?”
The light went out of his eyes. “We had three.”
That shook me, for some reason. “What happened to them?”
“The boys were killed. The girl…I don’t know. I hope her mother hid her.” He put his face to my hair and inhaled. “Talk about something else.”
“I’m sorry.”
His fingers slid into the valley of my breasts and he kissed my temple.
“I met the Archangel Uriel.” It was the only conversation topic that I could bring to mind. Between neckline and navel my scarlet dress was held closed by loops of golden wire snagged over filigree toggles. Azazel was fiddling with the top one. For a moment he went still.
“Be careful of him.” His whisper was warm on my ear, but I couldn’t see his face. “He’s not your friend.”
“I worked that one out.”
The first loop fell open, revealing a little more of my cleavage. Azazel had me sat semi-facing the other people round the table. I wasn’t remotely interested in them, but I wondered if they were watching. A glance from under my lowered lashes told me they were, sort of, though carrying on their own conversations.
“Will he come after you?”
“What?” Azazel’s voice was lazy and full of husky tones that made me shiver. His lips brushed the whorls of my ear.
“Will the archangels come to lock you away again?”
“They might. Would you be sorry?”
I shuddered. There were hot and cold flashes running up and down my body, and I could feel the tight points of my breasts poking against the sheer fabric of the dress. A second loop slipped, and now my neckline was not just low but plunging.
Azazel celebrated by touching my nipple through the cloth and tracing a circle that made me whimper under my breath. “You like being watched,” he said.
“That’s not true.” My mouth had gone dry.
“You like me touching you in public.”
I was sweating lightly. It’s shame, I told myself, as he returned to the toggles and slipped a third. It’s shame, not excitement. The men around the table had mostly stopped talking now, their conversation stumbling to a halt. A woman giggled.
“Please,” I whispered, closing my eyes.
“I own you,” he said. “You are mine. These are mine. If I want to…I will bare you in front of everyone, Milja. And you will let me.”
He tugged the slash of my dress open—just a little, not enough to be obscene—and slipped a hand beneath to play with my breast. Just fingertips. My nipple felt like a blazing sun as he traced orbits. “What’re you doing, man?” someone said weakly. “That’s not right.” “Azazel!” I whimpered.
“Do you want them to see, Milja?” His voice, thick with lust now, was hot against my ear. “Do you want them all to see how you belong to me? I will let them look at your breasts. Then I will pull up your dress and put my hand between your legs and make you come. You won’t be able to stop me. You won’t be able to stop yourself. All these people will see.”
“Smile everyone!” A burst of light went off beyond my closed lids.
I looked. I couldn’t help it. The little cluster of socialites at the table were blinking and staring and didn’t know where to put themselves. Two photographers stood before us, and another flash went off capturing the whole group.
“Hey,” said one of the paparazzi, realizing what was going on under his nose and suddenly focusing in on Azazel and me in our big armchair. “We have seen.”
I didn’t have the wits left to wonder at his odd phrasing.
“You’re mine,” the fallen angel growled. Then he let his fingers drift out from their nest, catching the cloth as they went. He revealed my left breast in full, my nipple haloed in pink like a rising sun.
Flashguns exploded.
He took the loose cloth at my shoulders and drew my open dress off, baring me from throat to waist. Back straight, eyes lowered, blushing and shuddering, I sat upon his lap and knew myself owned.
Amazon US : Amazon UK (the paperback is released at the end of the month in the UK)
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