Page 25 of Wings of Ashes (Wings of Ashes #1)
CHAPTER
“ J ust because you are bored with your life does not mean you can attach yourself to mine for a good time .”
Bael snorted at the memory of Nix saying that to him.
Of course, he was bored with his life. People were boring. Classes were boring.
It boggled his mind how students took notes and worried over tests and assignments every day while Bael knew what they should worry about.
Flames. Screams. Smoke. Ash.
Bael shook his head, reminding himself that while he attended the academy, he was not there. Not home. Not back in Hell yet. But he would be back there, once his mission at the academy was complete.
He had never planned for her .
Bael leaned over the small amount of space between their desks in history class. His body always pleasantly hummed when he invaded her personal space. Mmm, she smells like roasted marshmallows again today .
“So…do you know who potion-ed you?” Bael asked Nix. A swallow bobbed her throat, and she did not answer or glance his way. His eyes narrowed on her. “You do know,” he realized.
She did not have a very good poker face.
Nix ignored him and pretended to listen to Professor Gargoyle drone on and on about some dry topic. At least, Bael assumed she pretended to listen to the professor.
Who actually wanted to hear about history? That shit was in the past. Now, if there was a class on the future, Bael might be willing to listen to an hour-long lecture. Well, maybe half an hour. Definitely fifteen minutes.
Bael tapped a finger on her desk. “I want a name. Now.” Who the fuck thought they could potion her?
Nix sighed, and Bael wanted to press his mouth to hers and swallow the sound. Want to fucking suck her lips until her soul flies out and I get to keep it. I want to have her. All mine. He blinked in surprise at his own possessive thoughts.
She muttered softly, “You’re taking this security detail thing too seriously.”
The next second, Bael’s switchblade flashed in the classroom lighting. The knife gleamed in his long, nimble fingers.
“What does the potion do to you?”
If some guy had used a love potion on her to make her think he was her mate, Bael would kill him. Happily.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ll keep drinking reversal potions until I’m…fixed.”
Bael spun his blade in his hand. “All you have to do is give me a name…”
“Careful.” Nix eyed Bael with as much caution as she eyed the blade. “Someone might think you actually care about me.”
“It is odd, isn’t it? This protectiveness I feel over you.” He patted his chest as if feeling around for proof of a heart. “Caring about someone isn’t something I do. I don’t care about anything.”
Nix rolled her eyes and finally glanced at Bael, making delicious eye contact. Her blue eyes were different today. Not quite the startling cerulean they were the day before; instead, there were specks of bronze shining in them today. A deep, russet gold-copper color.
She remarked, “You must care about something.”
He learned not to care about anything a long time ago. Care, and there is a weakness . To care about something meant there was a perfect opportunity for the most painful, personalized torture. Indifference meant less suffering.
Bael exhaled, tapped his chin, and feigned deep thought. “Does the color of your panties count?”
“Absolutely not.”
Bael stabbed his blade in the wooden top of his desk and cracked his knuckles. His hands wanted to be on her. Palm on her back. Arm around her shoulder. Fingers in her hair. Tongue on her clit. Probably not all at the same time because Bael was only so flexible.
He leaned further over the wood of his desk to speak onto her cheekbone. “This feeling you stir in me is very unsettling.” Unsettling. Dangerous. Thrilling.
She licked her lips. “And why is that?”
Bael leaned back but fastened his hands over the metal bars of the bottom of her chair.
He slowly dragged her desk closer to his, not wanting space between them. The sound of her chair scraping the floor with the movement snagged Professor Gargoyle’s attention, and he scowled at where Bael winked at him.
Close to her ear, Bael said, “I am not a good guy, Swan Lake.”
“Oh?”
“I am not a hero, ready to save a swan princess damsel in distress.”
“I’m not a damsel.”
“But the distress part is still up for debate?” Bael smirked and tugged her chair even closer to his. Their outer thighs touched, and Bael reveled in the spicy scent of her arousal spiking the air. “The fact that I care enough to hurt someone who threatens you is a peculiar thing.”
She shot him an expression of duh . “You don’t often offer to help others?”
“I am a demon.”
Nix nodded, and her gaze fell over his face and body for a moment. Was she trying to remember all the horrible things she knew about incubi? “Just because we are something, doesn’t mean we need to be a certain way,” she said.
“Aw, you think you can change me?” Bael chuckled darkly. “Baby, I was raised in Hell. I watched others being tortured. I had to fall asleep to the sound of their screams and their cries for help. Day after day. Hour after hour.”
Something in Nix’s expression abruptly changed. Her lips pursed on a sharp inhale and curled into a scowl. Her furrowed eyebrows framed wild, pissed off eyes as she stared at him.
Bael’s chest twinged in pain when he saw it.
For the first time, she looked at him with pure hatred.
Bael had slept through people crying out from torture? Instead of trying to help them, he chose to tune them out?
It reminded Nix of her heartless captor, who kept her caged and laughed when she bled and cried. Her captor, who showed no empathy during the four years of torture she endured.
He is a demon . A monster. Soulless?
If Bael had stumbled across Nix in her future, caged and screaming for help, would he have just walked away?
“You never tried to help them?” she asked in an enraged voice that grated at a low volume.
All she could imagine was her screaming in her cage after being injected with mysterious liquids that broke her mind with the horrible pain, and an indifferent Bael watching her from the opposite side of the room.
“Of course, I did,” he replied in an angry voice that mimicked hers. “When I was a young demon, before I knew any better.”
“But now you wouldn’t?”
Bael reached over to play with a piece of her pink hair. “One time, an old man, who could hardly walk, was being brutally flogged. Screamed for three days straight.”
Bael paused. “Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. I broke the rules and stopped it. I was impulsive back then.” Bael smirked, and Nix rolled her eyes. “I begged to receive the punishment in his stead, trying to save him from the pain.”
Nix watched quietly as Bael’s eyes glazed over at the memory. He seemed to fade away, into it. Reliving it.
He told her, “I lasted about six days before I couldn’t take anymore. My back and wings were so bloody and scarred by the end of it that I had to sleep on my stomach for two years, or risk permanent damage to my flight. I was ten.”
Nix’s stomach turned. “ Gods .”
Bael shrugged. “I stepped in to lessen a man’s torture, a man’s pain—and for what?”
Nix shook her head and said, “I am sure it meant a lot to him—” Bael’s sharp expression shut her up.
“Turned out he was a rapist who killed thirty-three teenage girls in his mortal life.”
Nix’s mouth hung open in shock.
“I have learned not to stand in the way of fate,” Bael said simply. “In my wise twenty-one years of age, when I see someone in pain, I mind my own business. I let bad things happen to bad people.”
Bad things happen to good people too, Bael , Nix wanted to tell him. After all, any experiences he had would be skewed in Hell. But he looked so serious for once. She did not want to interrupt him.
“I don’t rescue or defend or protect people.”
He gazed deeply into her eyes and twirled a lock of her pink hair around a finger. She swallowed, and he watched her pupils dilate with arousal.
“And yet… If you told me the name of the person who potion-ed you, I would make them beg to experience Hell once I was done with them,” he promised in such a gravelly, threatening voice that the hairs on the back of Nix’s neck stood up in fear. “Now…we’re going to play a little game.”
Nix blinked.
Suddenly, she was sprawled over a desk, completely naked.