The angel’s eyes flicked briefly to Aisling. He spat the word “Abomination,” then lunged toward Zurael, blade in front of him as though he were fencing.

Zurael easily eluded the thrust. A laugh escaped. He slashed, sending severed wing feathers fluttering to the rooftop.

The angel swung then, eyes glowing, the arc of his swing carrying the blade to where several steps and a lunge were all it would take to reach Aisling.

Zurael launched himself upward and the angel followed, knowing he had the advantage with the extension of the sword.

Pride might keep the angel from summoning others to assist with the kill. But it was no guarantee others wouldn’t soon arrive, alerted by the sound of Zurael’s passing through the barrier, drawn by the trail his energy signature left when he transported between Earthly locations.

He dropped to a far corner of the roof, and waited until the angel was nearly on him to turn into a swirling mass of particles. The ice chill of the blade barely missed him before Zurael reclaimed the demon’s shape. Struck and drew blood this time.

A scream erupted from the angel, the enraged sound of a bird of prey instead of a man. He lunged forward, swinging the sword with savage ferocity as his blood left a trail across the roof.

Zurael retreated, driven backward by the near mindlessness of the assault. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aisling trying to stay far away from the fighting. But her movement drew the angel’s attention. The sudden gleam in the angel’s eyes was the only warning he gave before halting his wild swings and launching himself toward her.

Too late Zurael realized it was a trap. With the swiftness of a falcon the angel turned, slashed, opened a deep wound across Zurael’s chest.

Cold seeped into Zurael, so pervasive it froze the breath in his chest and filled his mind with the sound of his own scream of agony. Only his training saved him from a death blow. Instinctively he twisted away, used the barbed tip and whiplike strike of the demon tail as a weapon.

The angel screamed. The blinding glow of the blade disappeared as his concentration faltered and his sword arm slickened with blood.

Zurael tried to move in for the kill. But the cold was spreading, making his reactions slow as it seeped deeper into his being in an effort to reach and extinguish the Djinn fire at his core.

Aisling.

The heat she generated in him, the protectiveness he felt for her helped him fight the angel’s icy poison.

His flesh mended, chased out a chill that should have required a visit to the House of the Cardinal in order to heal so quickly. But just as he was mending, so too was the angel.

Zurael lunged forward, talons drawing blood, turning white feathers crimson.

The angel jumped back, knocking Aisling to the ground. Deadly swords appeared and elongated in both of his hands. “Abomination!” he said, slashing downward at Aisling.

“No!” It was wrenched from Zurael, torn from the depths of his soul in the same instant Aisling’s stark face and terrified eyes were seared into his mind.

He flung himself forward and was greeted by a blinding flash, a boom so loud it shook the building and rolled across The Barrens like a shock wave from the human’s destructive bombs.

For a second he was frozen in place, held in a doorway of ice and infinite darkness. And then he returned to find Aisling rubbing her hands over his chest, calling the Djinn fire at his core with her worried touch and angelite blue eyes.

“Are you okay?” she said, her voice quivering, not hiding her fear for him.

He grabbed her wrist, suddenly aware of the sun-shaped charm trapped between her palm and his flesh. The memory that had eluded him earlier returned with clarity.

In his mind he located the book kept with so many others in the House of the Serpent library. Turned its pages and saw the powerful token. “You touched the angel.”

Aisling shivered. “I sent him home, wherever that is.”

Zurael read her face, saw her thoughts as clearly as if they were his own. She was a child of the ghostlands, but she was still human. She still had a human’s instinctive, genetically programmed reaction to the alien god’s warriors-to cower and worship, to prostrate herself in their glorious beauty and accept their judgment.

Fierce emotion gripped him, mixed with pulsing pride. She’d been found in the presence of what she thought was a demon and named an abomination, yet she’d had the strength of will, the presence of mind, to use the charm the witch had given her and cast the angel from the human world. She was as worthy as any Djinn.

Clouds covered the moon, offering some protection. He peeled his bloody shirt off. And because it wasn’t of the human world, he was able to will it to ash so it wouldn’t be used to track him.

Zurael scooped Aisling up in his arms. In three steps they were airborne, flying rapidly to a place where he hoped they’d be safe from both guardsmen and angels.

His emotions churned. A lifetime of belief and teaching was lost to their chaos, in the lava-hot flow of desire coursing through his bloodstream.

Zurael was barely aware of landing on the fifth-story ledge of what might once have been an apartment balcony. He had no conscious thought of entering the darkened space other than a predator’s quick, instinctive searching for the presence of others.

He was feverish, burning from the inside out. He became more so when Aisling whimpered, so attuned to him that she kicked off her shoes so he could strip her from the waist down before pressing her back to a smooth wall.

Her arms went around his neck, her legs around his waist, trapping the hard length of his cloth-covered erection against her fevered, wet folds. “Aisling,” he whispered, glad the clouds no longer obliterated the moonlight so he could see the exquisite beauty of her face.

She was delicate and desirable. Had enslaved him from the first moment she whispered his name on the spirit winds-only now he acknowledged it willingly.

“Aisling,” he whispered again, touching his lips to hers, parting them with his tongue and taking her breath, her spirit, her moan of pleasure-and returning the same.

He’d worried over it, feared it. But as he felt their souls touch, dancing and merging like twin flames, euphoria filled him.

Despair to match the height of his joy would follow if he was separated from her for any length of time. But he couldn’t care in that moment when they were one being.

In heated darkness their tongues rubbed and twined, teased and tormented. It was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. It became something he’d forever crave.

Each of her whimpers lodged itself in his heart, filled him with a satisfaction like no other. He smoothed his hands over her back, felt a renewed surge of primal satisfaction that she accepted him regardless of what form he took.

With a thought, the wings and demon-tail disappeared. His hands left her long enough to free his erection from his pants so he could grasp her hips and lift her until his cock head was positioned at her opening.

They both shuddered with ecstasy when he slid into her hot core. He groaned when she freed his hair, tangled her fingers in it and held him tightly to her as her tongue twisted and mated with his.

Sensation bombarded him. Savage emotion ruled him. An uncontrollable hunger swept through him with the devastating force of molten lava.

Aisling belonged to him. No one-not angel or human, supernatural being or Djinn-would deny his claim or take her from him. No one-not even The Prince would keep them apart.

He freed her hair and reveled in the silky feel of it. He gave her his breath when her lungs screamed for air.

His cock mimicked the thrust of his tongue, plunged deep and hard, with dominating force. And she responded with moans of pleasure. She welcomed his aggression by softening against him, becoming more submissive; she acknowledged by her actions that she belonged to him completely and without question.