by Kimber Lee
“What’s it like?” I asked, my wandering hand stilling when he reached out and grabbed my wrist.
“What’s what like?” he muttered, his darkened eyes on mine. “Being me?”
Well, that, too.
“No. Having sex with me.”
His gaze never wavered. “You’re different. Your energy, your life force, is more intoxicating than the average human’s,” he said quietly. “It’s intoxicating and it’s satisfying. I could probably go a few months without sex after being with you just once. I’ve never been with anyone like you,” he added, looking like he was trying to figure me out.
This worried me. It sounded like I was incubus catnip, which would explain Temp’s behavior. “Intoxicating? Like a drug or alcohol? You mean addictive?”
“Relax, Rae,” Andrei said dryly. “I’m not going to enslave you as my personal fuck-toy.”
The thought had never occurred to me until he said it out aloud. Images flashed through my mind of being locked in a dungeon for him to use for his pleasure whenever he was low on energy. I shuddered—whether from fear or pleasure, I had no idea.
“There’s nothing special about me,” I said, more to myself than to him. I leaned toward him and kissed him on the mouth, pushing him back until he was propped up by the mounds of pillows behind him.
I needed to dominate him. I needed to show him that I wasn’t afraid of being with him like this. I didn’t know why but I just felt like I needed to.
So I hoisted myself onto his lap and impaled myself on his manhood, taking him in to the root. I released a moan of contentment, holding onto his shoulders as I slowly rode him. His hands came around my waist, steadying me and I ran a hand through his silky curtain of inky hair, clutching a hank of it and pulling.
He made a guttural sound in his throat and thrust upward, sending a wave of pleasure through me. It hurt to be fucked by someone as incredibly endowed as he was. It hurt and it didn’t, because pleasure trumped pain any day. I couldn’t decide if I was in control or if he was. But dammit, it felt good! And I felt guilty that it felt this good.
I leaned in to him, shoving my breasts in his face for attention. Having his mouth around one aching nipple was driving me crazy, as was the intense feeling of him still buried inside me.
“Ah,” I gasped, when he nipped at my nipple with sharp teeth. The pain was surprisingly welcome and I decided that I liked it. Loved it, even.
What is happening to me?
“There, Rae,” Andrei growled, holding me down on him as he thrust into me. “Right…” He drove into me again. “… there.”
My inner walls clenched around him as I climaxed, crying out from such extreme pleasure. Andrei immediately turned me over, forcing me onto my back as he slammed into me, his thrusts faster, harder, angrier. A stab of fear shot through me when I saw his eyes briefly turn completely onyx—and then a shimmering, blazing crimson—when he came, the force of his ejaculation pinning me down into the mattress. I bucked under his weight—fear giving way to a second orgasm, and I dug my nails in his lower back, clawing my way up the hard planes of muscle.
Andrei barely flinched, even though I could feel that I’d drawn blood. Instead, he waited a beat before pulling out of me and sitting up, giving me his back. I watched in horror as the red welts I’d inflicted on the ridges of his back minutes ago healed. Unblemished tan skin was left in their place.
“Make me forget,” I choked out, pulling the covers over myself and hiding my nakedness.
Andrei turned at the waist to look at me. “What?”
“Erase my memory. I know you can do that. Please!” I paused, biting my lower lip. “Make me forget you.”
If I could pretend that this weekend had never happened, I would probably be able to look at myself in the mirror. Probably. The sight of him healing himself was enough to drag me back to the strange reality that I just had repeated sex with a supernatural creature.
Andrei was silent, his face chillingly impassive.
“Andrei, please!”
How could I live with myself after this? My father was rolling in his grave, I was willing to bet, disgusted and disappointed with me. I wouldn’t blame him. I felt the same way.
Andrei rose to his feet, wordlessly putting his clothes back on. I sat there wishing I hadn’t decided to choose tonight of all nights to get completely plastered. I had a massive headache to start with, and alcohol had been at least partly responsible for my weak will. Well, it was definitely responsible for my inability to sense Andrei Anghelescu’s demon aura.
Right?
Much like Gavin Turner’s assault on the plane, I didn’t see Andrei’s attack on me coming. One minute, he was standing beside the bed and the next, he was hovering over me with his hand firmly around the pulsing column of my neck.
I couldn’t scream—déjà freaking vu. But I wouldn’t have wanted to because, with his hand wound around my neck, Andrei had distracted me from what his real aim was—sticking two fingers up my sensitized sex and dragging out a gasp of surprise from my mouth. Deep inside me, he jerked his fingers toward himself and I whimpered, arching my back off the bed.
“Erase your memory?” he spat, his fingers furiously inflicting sweet agony to my insides.
His eyes were blazing, literally, and his face had become a picture of barely controlled rage—a rage that was unquestioningly directed at me. I couldn’t speak, but I didn’t have to answer his rhetoric, of course. The only thing I could really do was lay there and allow him to humiliate me by pleasuring me like this.
“Make you forget me?” The pad of his thumb was like hot coal on my swollen clit. “You can never forget me, Rainelle Erickson.” His fingers were bringing me close—in and out, in and out, round and round, round and round. And I was going to come… again. “I feel how wet you are for me and I want to fuck you again,” Andrei snarled, his eyes hungrily sweeping over me. “I am five seconds away from making you my personal fuck-toy. You have no idea how much you’ve just pissed me off.”
I groaned, shamelessly and frantically rocking my hips and pushing myself towards him. I could feel my juices trickling down my thighs and onto the crumpled white bed sheets.
How humiliating.
“My answer to your request?” Andrei crushed his lips against mine, forcefully prying open my closed lips and taking what he wanted. He pulled away, leaving me panting. “Go fuck yourself.”
And he rose, towering over the bed.
Before I could blink, he vanished, making me seriously consider finishing myself.
“Leaving without saying goodbye, Baby Phat?”
I whirled around, aware that Temp could hardly do anything to me in a hotel lobby full of people. I felt braver than I’d been the night before. Being sober, although a little hung-over, was a big plus.
I slipped my sunglasses to the crown of my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “You’d better get the hell away from me before I do something I won’t regret.”
Temp chuckled, flashing his extraordinarily pearly whites. “Charming, angel. Don’t you want to hit the Strip or something?”
I wrinkled my nose. “No, I want to hit you.”
“Come on, Baby Phat. I’ve got a pocket full of ones and I’m looking for some buns.”
I stood in front of my suitcase, glaring up at him. “Andrei’s your friend, huh?”
A strange look crossed his face. “Friend. Good one.” He straightened the front of his peach polo shirt. “He fucked you?”
Despite myself, a blush crept up my neck from inside my V-neck T-shirt, and I knew Temp could see it.
“He did,” he said, nodding. “I’m going to give you a word of advice, Rae,” he said grimly, his increasingly familiar dark brown eyes on me. “Someone like you doesn’t want Andrei in their pants. No matter how great the sex was, it’s not worth it.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “What about Paris? What about how you said he’d like me? Now, you’re looking out for me?”
“That was before I knew you,�
�� he quietly replied.
“You don’t know me! You know nothing about me!” I was almost crying from anger and frustration. My life was screwed up and it had only taken three days in Vegas for that to happen.
Temp reached out and placed his hands on my shoulders. “I know that demons are not your cup of tea, Baby Phat. I know that you’re a good person because you’re out here trying to put a suspicious woman’s mind at ease.” He tipped my chin up. “I know that you’ve probably already figured out how dark and cruel Andrei is. Not all of us are like him.”
I wasn’t a sappy, spineless female who needed a man to rescue her every five seconds, but I liked how safe and secure I felt around Temp—Temp, a sex demon, the same sex demon that had tried to force himself on me on my birthday. It was ridiculous but true.
“Sweetheart!” a loud voice trilled from behind me, pulling me out of my trancelike state and forcing me to turn around because it was practically in my ear. “There you are.”
It was a woman, and I recognized her as if I saw her in the mirror every day—which I sort of did. She hadn’t changed over the years, which was impossible because I’d last seen her twenty-one years ago. Dressed in a white figure-hugging sleeveless dress with her strawberry blonde hair framing her heart-shaped face, she looked like the angel I’d always thought she was—until she took off with a demon.
My mother hadn’t aged a day.
For a minute, I was shocked that she would recognize me after all these years—twenty-one years, and more so that she’d act so blasé, as if we’d only lost each other in the supermarket or something.
“Give Mommy a hug,” she said in her vaguely familiar sultry voice… and then she threw her arms wide around Temp.
Chapter 4
“Dammit, Ma,” Temp muttered, stepping out of her stifling embrace. “How’d you find me?”
“You think you can hide from me?” she grumbled good-naturedly. Her eyes swiveled in my direction as if she just noticed me. “Men,” she said conspiratorially, giving me a wink. “Give them an inch, they take a mile. Well, in my son’s case, several thousand miles, considering the last time I saw him was in Italy.”
She hadn’t noticed that I was completely dumbfounded and had barely heard what she just said. Temp hadn’t noticed either. And I was too puzzled to even think straight.
Her son, I thought, shocked to the core.
Of course, my own mother didn’t recognize me and I hadn’t expected her to. The last time she’d seen me, I was still wetting the bed and wearing pigtails. She, on the other hand, looked the same, which could only mean one horrifying thing—she’d sold her soul to the devil for immortality. In order to be with the demon she loved, I was willing to bet.
I quickly did the math. She’d been thirty-five when she’d left and Temp looked to be in his early twenties. This meant that she’d been pregnant with him when she’d disappeared, which made him roughly twenty-one or so. But did demon halflings age like normal people? Or could they freeze time as they so pleased? My head was spinning with the possibilities that I could feel a migraine coming on.
“Mom,” I breathed, and she looked at me strangely. The word tasted strange in my mouth, like sushi in peanut butter.
“Fed too hard on this one, huh?” she teased Temp, and he patted my back.
“This is Rainelle, Ma,” he said politely, as if introducing his girlfriend to his mother. God, he didn’t know and the idea of what he nearly did to me, wanted to do to me, made me taste bile. “She knows about us. She’s immune.”
“Rainelle?” Her voice became vague, as if she dimly recalled another Rainelle she’d met a long time ago but couldn’t, for the life of her, remember where.
“Lauren Madeline Wilson,” I snapped, anger surging through me. I hadn’t said that name in years.
Lauren Madeline Wilson’s eyebrows shot up to somewhere below her hairline. “Excuse me?”
“I’m Rainelle Erickson, not that you care or remember.” My voice was cool, but inside, something shattered with the realization that what I’d just said was probably the truth.
My mother’s eyes flashed with recognition and she took a step away from me, looking me over in disbelief. I could finally see the little things Temp had inherited from her—namely, her coffee-brown eyes and Phoenician nose. And then I felt nauseous, so nauseous it hurt. It was one thing to willingly have sex with a demon, but to procreate in the process? Despicable.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Temp asked, impatiently tapping my back with his fingertips.
But I was too focused on staring my mother to death. Immortal or not, she was just as susceptible to my death glares as the next person. The only reason I wasn’t throwing myself at her was because the hotel lobby was incredibly crowded.
“Rainelle,” Lauren murmured weakly, “Oh, my!”
“Ma?” Temp’s voice was uncertain.
“How could you?” I snarled, all my pent-up bullshit swelling to the fore. “How could you hurt us like that? Did you even love Dad? Me? Or was great sex just too excellent an offer to pass up?”
A passing bellhop gave us a curious glance, no doubt catching the end of my sentence.
My mother’s eyes widened and she had the grace to look embarrassed.
“You two know each other?” Temp asked, his tone impatient.
Lauren nodded, her eyes still locked with mine. “Temp, Rainelle’s your half-sister.”
“Well, this is about as awkward as it gets,” Temp remarked, downing his second Budweiser that morning. He set the empty can back on the table, staring at me from beside Lauren.
I stirred my black coffee, unable to take my eyes off my mother. She, on the other hand, was looking everywhere but at me. I missed my flight for this crap and I was anything but happy about spending another second in The Kamenev.
It was a good thing the hotel’s dining area was well-ventilated and filled with sunshine because I was afraid of what I’d do if I ever got these two people—demons—alone in a dark place. Decapitation was at the top of my list.
I turned my attention to Temp. “You were trying to get into my pants. You honestly had no idea that… well, that… this?” I gestured at all three of us.
His face contorted with unmasked disgust. “I might be a sex fiend but incest is not a turn-on,” he said through gritted teeth. “In fact, I might just give up sex altogether and die of starvation to avoid sleeping with family members I have no inkling of!” He said the last part with his eyes narrowed at Lauren. “Explain yourself. Now, Ma!”
“Actually, I don’t care. I need to get out of here,” I muttered, getting to my feet. “You’re lucky I don’t have the means or opportunity to slash your throat.”
“Sit,” my mother commanded, her chocolate brown eyes finally meeting mine. “Please.”
I sat.
Minutes of silence rolled by and I waited, my patience quickly waning.
Finally, Lauren began, “I loved Raymond. I really did.” She was caressing her mug of hot chocolate. “But I’m in love with Vitaly. It wasn’t fair to your dad but I couldn’t help it. You can’t help who you fall in love with.”
“Do you hear yourself?” I instantly snapped at her. “In love with a demon? Don’t you understand that you were seduced? Controlled?”
My mother shot me a dirty look. “That’s what I am, too. A demon,” she said, her voice brittle. “And FYI, Rainelle, I can smell Andrei’s essence all over you like cheap perfume.”
Heat enflamed my cheeks. She could smell his “essence”. Seriously? Could every other demon here smell his “essence”?! Could they smell that I just had sex with one of their kind?! Like animals in the wild, could they all smell who I had sex with?! I averted my eyes from Lauren, mortified.
“If what Temp says is true, that you can’t be seduced by one of us, then you had sex with Andrei willingly,” she went on, “So forgive me if I refuse to be judged by you.”
“That’s too fucking bad, Mom,” I choked out, “beca
use you ruined my father’s life so I have every right to judge you! You know how he spent his final years? Chasing demons! Looking for Vitaly! Chasing them like a madman because of you. And one of them killed him.”
Lauren looked away. “That was his prerogative, Rainelle.”
“Bitch!” I roared, leaning forward and gripping the white tablecloth in my hands. I directed all the rage I’d built up over the years at her. I felt it leave my body and get sucked up by hers. “You did that to him! You drove him mental with heartbreak and all you can say to that is that it was his choice? I’m going to fucking kill you!”
“Hey,” Temp said gently, placing a hand on my arm. “Calm down.”
I sucked in a deep breath, counting to five before glancing at him. It was perplexing but I felt safe with him. Safe and… calm. It was strange, since his and Lauren’s combined aura was making me woozy and giving me a headache. I also realized that I probably couldn’t kill my mother. Not in public. Probably not ever.
“Rainelle, you have to understand,” Lauren was saying, dragging my attention from Temp.
“Understand what?”
“That I was a bored housewife. My life was going nowhere and I was getting old.”
I couldn’t believe how shallow and selfish she sounded. “You had me! I was six. Six, dammit! I needed you!”
She shook her head. “No. You didn’t. Raymond doted on you.” She paused, taking a delicate sip of her drink. “The first time Vitaly came to visit me, your father had gone to some seminar for a weekend. Vitaly had been in a fight with another demon and needed to heal. He… took me and I…”
“I really don’t need to hear this,” Temp grumbled, “and neither does Rae.” Clearly the story of his parents getting together wasn’t a favorite topic with him, as well.
“Fine. But I will say this, Rainelle. I fell in love with Vitaly the second I saw him.” She bit her lower lip. “Your father had told me about his father and his father’s father before him being hunters. But I’d pushed all that out of my mind until… until Vitaly. And then I knew that I wanted to be with him forever. So I… made a deal with Andrei. I sold my soul to Lilith.”
