WIP Wednesday – Her Wicked Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 6) with Sneak Peek!

Since I don’t have a cover for the next Her Angel romance series book, HER WICKED ANGEL, and won’t have one for a while, I’m sticking with using one of my warning signs. I did make this one with Asmodeus in mind.

I’ve had a rough time with this book so far because the release of Unleash meant that I had a lot on my plate to do for that and it was really putting me off writing. Thankfully, I seem to have found my writing flow with this story again, and although it has been fits and starts today, I have managed to get the book up to 41500, increasing it by around 5000 words. That’s not too bad when I’ve been struggling to write these past couple of weeks.

I’m on a deadline with this book now. A serious one. I have to get it done in first draft by 5th June, and then have some very tight turnaround times on editing and proofreading in order to get it ready for release. I want this book to come out in September, but can’t make any promises right now. It’s tricky. I’m still not sure what my other release will be this year. It all depends on my muse. If he’s feeling up for it, I’ll write the next Vampires Realm book. If he wants me to write something else, well, I can only really do as he wants. At the moment, he’s leaning towards getting the first three Eternal Mates books written.

At least for now, Asmodeus is playing nice and we’re moving on his book again. He’s a rather wicked fellow, as you might imagine from what we’ve seen of him in Her Demonic Angel, and this morning I shared a snippet of one of my favourite scenes in the book on Facebook. I promised to post a larger snippet of that same scene here at my blog, so…

Here’s a teaser from the book so far… all first draft because I’m only just writing it so forgive any errors…

“Are you as powerful as Apollyon… or less powerful?”

“More powerful,” Asmodeus barked and glared at her. He was beginning to hate how she not only kept comparing him to Apollyon, but how she was making him feel inferior and broken, a mere shadow of a male.

False and unreal.

Not an individual.

He wanted to leave now.

He growled under his breath, his fangs itching to descend, and turned away from her, casting his hand out at the same time and calling a portal. The black swirling maelstrom formed before him. He’d had enough of this world. It did not live up to his expectations at all. It was noisy, bright, irritating and rude, and he didn’t like how uncertain and off-balance he felt. No one respected him here. They could all go to Hell.

Asmodeus grinned. Perhaps he could make this place Hell and teach them all a lesson they would never forget, because it would be the last thing they knew before they died. His claws sharpened. That sounded good.

“Wait!” Liora grabbed his left arm and tugged it backwards, her warm hands clasping it tightly. “Don’t go… please… I didn’t mean to sound pushy or upset you.”

“I am not upset,” he said gruffly and yanked his arm free.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. A mistake. She was so close to him, and so beautiful as she looked up at him with a strange mixture of fear and hope in her entrancing eyes. He should leave. He would if he could bring himself to move. He felt as though she had cast a spell on him and he was powerless to resist her. His fury melted away again, leaving him calm and docile, confused as to why he had been angry to begin with. His claws shrank back and his fangs ascended.

She wanted him to wait, and so he waited.

“I’ve been rude,” she whispered and then tipped her chin up and a spark of confidence broke through the fear and hope in her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s a flaw. My mouth just starts running and I couldn’t stop it. I’ll tamp it down and think before I speak if you stay. It’s just excitement.”

“Excitement?” That had him turning to face her. What was she excited about?

His mind supplied that he was the reason for her excitement. A stupid idea. No one had ever been excited to meet him. Scared. Terrified. Having a near-death experience. Or possibly a pre-death experience since he was normally there to kill them. Not excited though.

He had caught the way she had glanced at his extended claws and the fear that had followed her seeing them. There was no possible way she could be excited by his presence.

Liora nodded again. “I was excited to meet you.”

That was a definite first, and it only made him feel more out of place and confused by this world and this slight willowy female before him. “Most people are afraid to meet me.”

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “I’m not most people. I’ve wanted to meet angels all of my life and I’ve studied them all I could, and then Serenity fell in love with Apollyon and I met one, but… and don’t tell her this… he seems very stuffy.”

Asmodeus smiled. He couldn’t help it. The sight of it seemed to bring out her smile too, and it was dazzling this time, as if she had found someone she could swap notes about Apollyon’s faults with and was over the moon.

“So, when I heard about you, I really wanted to meet you… because I figured essentially you should be the opposite to Apollyon.”

Asmodeus cocked an eyebrow. “Evil?”

She had wanted to meet him?

She laughed, the sound sending a pleasant shiver through his body. “No. Fun.”

Fun? He really didn’t think she would see him as that if she knew the things he had done that he had considered fun. The thought of massacring these irritating mortals swarming around him was fun. Watching a demon’s head melt off in one of the lakes of lava while he held him fast, forcing him deeper into the fiery magma, was fun.

He had seen what mortals considered fun in the pool in Hell. Riding bicycles. Ponies. Playing various dull sports that didn’t involve severed demon heads and spears. The closest thing that mortals considered fun that he had also found interesting was hunting animals, and even that had seemed tame and dull once he had realised it involved distance weapons, not hand-to-hand combat with feral creatures capable of maiming or even killing the hunter.

Everything mortals did seemed sanitised and harmless, designed to thrill without any real risk to the participants.

No, he did not think Liora and he were on the same page, or even in the same book, when it came to what was fun.

“Will you stay a moment, Asmodeus?”

What do you think?