STORY EXCERPT

Everything on John hurt. He had trouble breathing but tried not to cough because every hack that he made tore at his throat. He could barely move, and his eyelids felt heavy and swollen. He managed to force them open anyway.

His vision was blurry, and he could barely see. This could not be the light, the place where all angels went after they were killed in battle. John was much too hurt for that to be possible. Maybe he was in Hell. He had made a deal with a demon, after all, and turned his back on his duty. So it only made sense.

Someone was touching him, moving him around and picking through his…pockets? He had pockets?

“Kale,” he said, but the sound of his voice was wrong. It was small and weak, barely more than a wheeze of breath out of his mouth.

His vision finally righted itself, and the man above him was not Kale. It was some human John did not recognize in a fake-leather jacket. He scowled down at John, who was wearing normal mortal clothing instead of his regular armor for some reason.

“Nothing on you, prick.”

When the man punched him, John actually saw stars. The strike against his cheek hurt when it shouldn’t have. The pain lingered when it should have faded. Something was very wrong here.

When he cleared the tears from his eyes and looked up, the man who had been attempting to rob him was long gone.

The night was cold, and so was the pavement he lay on. John lifted himself up and found that he was most definitely not in Hell.

A park. He was in a human park. Somehow he’d come here and had been left on the trail. Who left him here? Where was his armor? Where were Luke and Derek? Most importantly, where was Kale?

His memories were as foggy as his vision had been seconds ago, and John tried to shake the mist out of his head.

Mistake. A pulsing pain flared to life behind his temples and his eyes. He clutched at his head and focused, trying to will away the pain.

It went away, eventually, and not because he’d used his energy to heal himself. There was no energy within him. He felt cut off somehow. That was not right. He would be cut off if he was dead, he suspected that much, but clearly he was alive and on Earth.

There was a bench just over to his right, and no one slept on it or was near it that he could see. John gingerly picked himself up and moved to it. Every joint in his body, every muscle, everything, hurt like he’d just come back from battle with a fire troll or two. Especially the place where he’d been punched. It was a relief to finally put himself on the bench and simply relax.

He looked down, trying to examine himself.

The clothes he wore were definitely mortal in nature. Jeans, as he believed the dark pants he wore were called, and the simple T-shirt that clung tightly to his chest did nothing to protect him from the elements.

It was wet from having lain on hard, damp pavement, and there were now small rocks on him and bits of mud. He smelled.

That thought particularly caught him off guard. He smelled. John lifted his arm, feeling foolish as he did, and took an experimental sniff.

He lowered it down and turned away from the smell. Yes, it was definitely coming from him. That should not be. He was an angel. Even after the harshest of battles, his body should not be releasing an odor like that.

Unless he was no longer an angel.

A tiny, mischievous laugh sounded from the spot just beside him. John turned his head down to see the little, orange, fist-sized demon, almost perfectly round in shape with wide snake eyes and a long smile that showed off many razor-sharp teeth. It pointed its tiny pitchfork at him and laughed, nearly doubling over as it did.

John reached out to smack it, to knock it off of its stick-thin legs and put it on its back so he could watch as it scrambled for balance.

His hand went straight through it, and the little creature laughed harder, taunting him. He glared at it. “Away with you. You will get nothing from me.”

Of course, the little pestering demon did not go. More arrived, of varying colors, to help it make John’s misery complete. Some had little bat-like wings on their backs. Others held more pitchforks, or even small scythes. They continued to make faces at him, to laugh, and some even pricked at his hands with their weapons, though barely hard enough to draw blood.

Their very presence annoyed him. He wanted to lash out at them, to shout at them to leave him alone to his sulking, and to stop making those wretched sounds and attacking him with their pathetic weapons.

He did not move. He took a calming breath and allowed them to go about their small mission, doing his best to ignore them.

He knew what this was. John was human now. Perhaps this was his punishment for turning his back on the council. He’d been right. There had been half-breed demons born on Earth, and Hell had sent full-fledged demons here to tempt them into giving over their souls, either by killing innocent people or by killing themselves.

There had been three of them that John knew about, and he’d sent three of his most loyal soldiers out to find them while he worked in Purgatory trying to free the souls the demons had collected to be their power supply.

The first two he’d sent had succeeded in their missions. He did not know about the third. He’d been trying to heal Luke from the wound John had given him, pouring all of his energy into the man, trying to ward off the corruption in his body that had been quickly killing him.

ADULT EXCERPT

“This does not mean we can stay together,” John said, oddly out of breath. He was suddenly aware of the sound of his heart thumping in his ear.

Kale nodded. “I know,” he said, and he pressed his lips to John’s once more, and this time he did use his teeth.

Once again John found himself comparing Kale’s nips to Annabel’s. She had bitten him with the intent of causing pain and breaking the skin. Kale’s teeth pressed down on John’s bottom lip, but he did not bite down hard. If anything, his teeth only stimulated John’s experience when he suckled on his lip, and John felt the fires inside of him building higher with each new touch. For that, John started to think of them as love bites, rather than attacking bites.

He must have learned how to do these things whilst he’d been a mortal. John would have known if Kale had been doing this with any of the other angels back in Heaven.

Kale grabbed him by the hips and pulled him close. The shock of pleasure when their cocks rubbed together made him gasp, and Kale thrust his tongue into John’s mouth.

John stopped resisting and used his tongue as well.

He put his hands into Kale’s hair and pulled him as close as he could. He could not resist. Not now. Let him at least have this before they were separated forever. Those few kisses they had shared at Samael’s house were nowhere near enough to satisfy him.

John wanted to take some of the control in this kiss, and when he pushed his tongue back against Kale’s, he was somewhat surprised when the other man relented almost immediately.

His moan of approval when John put his hands on Kale’s ass only served to jolt his cock within his jeans, and he nearly came.

This was nice. He would do this with Kale. He wanted the other man, he’d desired him for so long, and now he was going to have him.

He pushed Kale down on the bed, and John fell on top of him. They barely took the time to separate their mouths when their teeth came together, but their hips remained firmly in place as they moved against each other, grinding and humping quickly, trying to bring each other to the pinnacle of pleasure.

Kale thrashed beneath him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he gripped John’s waist and pulled him closer. “Fuck. John, oh!”

John wanted to say something to him. He wanted to tell Kale how handsome he was like this, how he had longed for him for what seemed like a small eternity, and how he yearned for him now.

He said none of those things and instead watched as Kale’s face twisted in pleasure, his mouth opening just enough for John to catch sight of his pink tongue as he gasped and grunted.

John wanted to be inside of him. He did not want either of them to come like this, not until they had the chance to really come together. He abruptly stopped moving his hips and lifted himself off of the other man.

“What are you doing?” Kale asked, his voice stricken and nearly panicked until he saw the way John was pulling at his clothing.

“I cannot use my energy to get these off. Take your clothes off,” he ordered.

Kale, used to following John’s commands instead of giving them, did as he was told immediately, and in a brief flash, he was naked.

Then he put his hands on John’s, stalling him as he struggled with his belt.

Kale smiled at him. “It’s better if you let someone help you with this.”

Again, John had to assume that Kale knew such things from his time as a mortal. He’d been young when he had died, but he had also gone through his fair share of experiences.

John trusted him and removed his trembling hands from his belt to put himself into Kale’s more capable ones.

The other man kept a steady grip on him, but his deep brown eyes continued to look up at John, as though searching for approval as he undid the belt and popped open the button beneath it.

It was only when he pulled down the zipper and heard the sound of the metal teeth slowly pulling apart that John’s heart rate started to go up, and with the extra space his swelling cock suddenly had, his face became warm. Almost unbearably so.

Kale was at eye level with his aching prick, or he would be when he pulled it out of his pants. At the moment, they were bulging, giving proof to the other man of his arousal for him, and John felt oddly embarrassed.

He had become aroused for Annabel, but that had only been because he had to if he wanted their bargain to take effect. This was entirely different. It was of his own doing. There was nothing here for him to blame for his body’s reaction. He wanted Kale, and now the other man knew it without any doubts.

“I’m going to touch you now. Can I?” Kale asked, his fingers dipping under the waist of John’s jeans.