Yes, I would.
I took Ronan’s hand, and the void welcomed me.
10
When the light returned, we weren’t in an apartment of any kind, but instead, the cathedral where I’d summoned him.
Candlelight flickered faintly, casting the sanctuary in a soft glow.
“I didn’t peg you for the sentimental sort,” I said, casting a look throughout. The pews were gone, though the podium remained. No witches or warlocks were here this time. No summoning circle. No people at all, apart from us.
Two demons in a house of god.
“I’m not,” he said, and I sensed that amusement in his voice. “If you recall, you shot me after I was first summoned. My blood has been spilled on these stones. My magic will linger here.” My eyebrows drew together. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t want to say it. Ronan seemed to read the expression easy enough. “It should be enough to contain your fire, at least to this place.”
“You assume the fire will surface.”
His expression darkened. “You won’t be able to help it.”
Something about that felt vulnerable. In the past, when the fire had come out, it was because I was threatened. I needed it as a last-ditch effort to save my own skin. But this, letting it come out for other reasons?
I wrinkled my nose, not liking that one bit.
“Are we going to get this over with or not? I have a crash to go through. Time’s a tickin’,” I said, falling back on nonchalance as a mask.
“For someone that hates magic, you’re very eager to welcome it in.”
“For someone that claims to be concerned about me going through the crash, you still demanded I do this to know why my sister is in a coma,” I shot back.
He inclined his head, but he seemed in no hurry to get the exchange underway. “It’s a complicated problem,” Ronan answered vaguely.
“What is?”
“You.” With a single look from him, the temperature rose several degrees in the vacated cathedral. “You and your magic are out of balance. All demons feel this to some degree, but I have to assume yours is so extreme because you were not originally a demon. You were born human. The crash, as you call it, will only worsen every time until you are balanced. The only way to do that is to complete all three blood exchanges.”
Three. That number bounced around in my mind.
I rolled my shoulders back and twisted my lips. “Three doesn’t leave you much time to convince me,” I noted.
“Hence the balancing act.”
I hummed in response. “If all demons experience this . . . stasis—have you?”
“Once.”
I paused. His response was clipped. Cold. I narrowed my eyes, and he simply said, “No, I won’t tell you.”
“Why not? You seem to think it’s fine to dig through my life.”
“I’ll tell you a great deal about most things, and I won’t lie to you, but I’m not ready to share that. Some truths you have to earn.”
There was something profound and almost human in that statement. A vulnerability that he was covering. For all his magic, his years, his sheer power—part of him could still be hurt. Part of him was hurt, and he knew better than to share it with me.
I suppose that was where the difference was. He claimed to not want to hurt me, whereas I threatened to send him back to Hell regularly. In his shoes, I wouldn’t share with me either.
“I’m ready to earn the truth about my sister,” I said, turning toward him and squaring my shoulders. The shadow of a cruel grin told me he knew I was changing the subject and why, but he didn’t push it. Instead, he reached and unbuttoned his suit jacket, letting it drop with a quiet thud to the floor.
My heart sped up.
Tension thickened the air.
He didn’t reach for me, though. No. He switched to undoing his cuff links while he held my gaze. Never lowering it. Never looking away.
I swallowed hard when he began loosening his tie.
“I bet you thought I’d have pretty words for you before this. That just because I made you go to dinner with me that I’d try to court you.” He chuckled softly.
“Aren’t you?”
“No.” He didn’t visibly move so much as fade into shadow and reappear before me. Close enough I could see my reflection in his eyes. “You don’t want to be chased, but you don’t want to chase. You have no real desire for romance. Dinners. Flowers. Gifts. They all mean so little to you. It’s why the human never had a chance.” He reached up to brush a stray strand back, then threaded his fingers through my ponytail bound hair. He pulled, adding just a touch of pain.
“If not that, then what do I want?” I asked, more curious than I should have been.
“To be understood,” he said, our faces only inches apart.
“How presumptuous of you,” I murmured.
“Get on your knees.”
My mouth turned dry. My eyes flicked down to the blood-stained stone and then back up to him. “No.”
One side of his mouth curled further up in dark amusement.
“Very well.”
His lips came down on mine in a crushing kiss. The hand in my hair squeezed, and he used his grip to pull me to him. His tongue licked part of my lips, searching for entry. I groaned, and he used that slight shift to press forward, taking what he wanted.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Blood rushed to my head. My hands felt hot, yet cold. His tongue twined with mine. Tasting me. Consuming me. A very male rumble came from his chest before his other hand clamped onto my hip.
The crushing grip on my hair slipped away as he dropped to his knees.
I gasped as his face became almost level with my breasts. He cupped one and squeezed, watching my face for a reaction. I closed my eyes, tilting my head back.
“I agreed to the blood exchange,” I started, as that hand trailed over my ribs and down my side to latch onto the other hip. A featherlight touch brushed from my navel to the apex of my thighs. “Not this.”
“Mhmm,” he hummed. I didn’t want to look, not when I could feel his nose pressed into me, rubbing softly up and down.
My lips parted in ecstasy. Heat flooded me.
“Ronan,” I said in what was meant to be a chastisement and instead came out a guttural moan. Fuck me.
“Gladly,” he murmured.
I must have said that last part out loud. “No, that’s not what I—”
Words were lost on me as he started to suck through the material of my jeans. That wicked tongue of his snaked out, pressing into the seam of my pants and creating delicious friction.
“Tell me to stop, Piper,” he said, goading me then going back to his ministrations. My hips bucked, and my knees weakened.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
His fingers dipped into my waistband, then pulled, ripping my jeans from my body like they were made of tissue paper. The very real dry spell I’d been under for far too long was really coming back to bite me in that moment.
“The blood exchange,” I said through gritted teeth.
He hummed against me, not lifting his mouth, but he pulled both hands away. I breathed a little easier, at least for a moment.
Then one of those hands skimmed the back of my thigh.
I shuddered, and he squeezed the back of my knee gently, lifting it over his shoulder.
“Now wait a minu—”
With my legs partially spread, he used the better access to his advantage and locked his teeth around my swollen clit. The rough scrape of fabric had me grabbing fistfuls of his hair to hold myself upright.
That was the wrong move.
He moved his hand from my leg to my ass and dropped the other to the one leg still bracing my weight. Lifting me as if I were nothing, he put the other leg over his shoulder and held me there with his face between my thighs and wide palms cupping my ass.
The world tilted. My back touched something cool
and rough.
The floor.
That bastard.
“If you’re going to tell me no, you should say it now, but you should know it’ll be near impossible to stop when the second exchange is complete,” he uttered. I looked down the valley of my chest to see him staring up at me from between my legs.
My panties dampened.
His nostrils flared, eyes darkening.
Pulling together the bruised remains of my will, I said, “No sex. I agreed to the exchange. Let’s get it over with.”
I’d been with my fair share of both men and women. While I wasn’t lax with my body, per se, I did take pleasure where I could find it because there was little else that was good in this world these days. Having a casual fuck buddy and having sex with Ronan would be two very different things. I was sure of it.
Much as Nathalie preached about scratching the itch, I wasn’t sure if it would instead only burrow deeper beneath my skin.
Unlike past partners I’d rejected and left, Ronan didn’t get angry. He didn’t lose his shit or try to force me, though I was fairly certain he could if he wanted.
No. Ronan crawled up my body, pressed a searing kiss to my lips, and then flipped us. Now I was straddling his lap while he sat on the stone floor. The new position was better, but not by much.
I placed my hands on his shoulders, and he grabbed my hips once more.
I didn’t wait for permission, or for him to try some underhanded manipulation by asking for more. I lunged forward and sank my teeth into the slight dip of his throat where it met his shoulder.
Ronan grunted.
Copper smeared over my tongue.
Thump.
Thump.
Thu—
My heart stopped. My canines lengthened into tiny fangs. Fire and magic funneled through my veins like an angry storm looking for an outlet.
Rage settled over me, and had my eyes been open, I knew red would have tinted them.
I felt the call of violence deep in my bones as I drank from him and lost touch of myself.
The hard bulge pressed against me twitched. I rocked forward into it, my fingers like claws as they pressed into him.
The hands at my hips pulled me closer, thrusting our bodies together.
Pressure built in my core. The blood on my lips and feel of him beneath me ignited something inside. Something primal and powerful.
I clutched at him as he pulled away.
“Piper,” he grunted. “I only have so much control—”
I growled as I gulped down another mouthful of his blood.
Fire was sparking in my hands. Those white-hot embers catching on his shirt.
Ronan grabbed the end of my ponytail and pulled sharply. While my strength was far greater than before, it still didn’t trump his. I reeled back, taking a chunk out of his neck and making him hiss in pain.
He gave it a full second, and in that time, three things happened.
His neck healed.
My mind cleared.
Then he bit me back.
Those embers turned to a blaze as our clothes went up in flames. Just as I lost myself in him, he seemed to lose himself in me. Pleasure cocooned us both, and without the confines of clothing, I felt his bare cock brush against my entrance. A shudder went through me, and weak to my own desires, I strained to take him.
But that hand on my hip hadn’t moved. It held so painfully tight I didn’t budge. Even as he brushed over my wet, sensitive flesh, our bodies never joined. I never took him in me and filled that bitterly empty gulf inside.
Black and white fire danced over our skin, twirling and twisting around us.
It burned, and we burned with it.
But without that joining, release evaded me.
I moaned low, a tortured mewling sound I would regret when the fog cleared.
But it was my own fault. I’d said no sex, and Ronan was holding us both to it. Literally.
That didn’t mean the prick couldn’t find it in him to tease me.
And tease he did. Knowing he was so close, feeling his burning skin hot and hard beneath my hands, was a whole other kind of suffering. My legs stiffened, so close to the cusp, but not close enough. Not without friction.
“I hate you,” I murmured, lost in the haze, but trying desperately to hold on to the only thing that may be strong enough to carry me through.
He pulled back, making a popping sound, suckling the skin while not actively biting. The burning ache didn’t dissipate, however. The need didn’t die down. While my head had cleared from the blood-drunk high, the desire refused to abate.
“No, you don’t.” His voice was deeper than I’d ever heard it. Thick with hunger. He was struggling, just as I was, yet he had infinitely better self-control. “But you might by the end. If I were a better man, I would complete the bond now and let you go.”
He lifted his head from my neck. Our noses were nearly touching. Our breath mingled. “But I’m not a good man, and I don’t care because I’ll have you all the same.”
My lips parted, but I didn’t get a chance to respond.
Later I would think about those words he’d said.
Or I would have, had the edges of my vision not begun to darken and the hot flashes come on.
The crash.
Stasis.
I didn’t have long.
The void wrapped around us as Ronan teleported me back, still naked and panting, and embarrassingly wet. I felt him moving my body but didn’t register that he’d stood up until we reappeared in my room inside Nat’s apartment.
Down the hall, an eighties power ballad was blasting, Nathalie’s shit-singing along with it.
Cold fell over me, making my skin pebble. My teeth started to chatter as Ronan set me on my pale blue bedspread.
His hands left me, and the cold seeped in deeper, any warmth I’d felt leaving me with him.
I hated it. This feeling of helplessness that was coming.
Ronan stepped back, and my hand whipped out. I used the last of that strength and rage to grab his wrist and hold him there.
“Tell me,” I said, as I slumped to the side, prepared to give in once I had my answer.
“Bree,” Ronan started. “Her consciousness was transported to another realm. That’s why she never woke up, and why she won’t until her spirit is brought back to this one.”
Sleep was calling to me. The crash was imminent. A fogginess buzzed in my mind as I tried to fight it.
“Another realm?” I asked, my whispered words hardly a breath.
“My home dimension. Mine and Aeshma’s.”
I had already lost the battle with my own consciousness, but I was holding on to the very edge of awareness. Black crept in. Heaviness dragged me under. Try as I might, I couldn’t fight it any longer.
I heard his final words as a faraway echo when the crash fully claimed me, and they were worse than I ever could have dreamed.
Your sister is trapped in Hell.
11
Ronan
Her consciousness slipped deeper into stasis with every passing minute. The red of her rage magic draining from her brands. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly for a few suspended moments, similar to when she was dreaming. But she hadn’t been under long enough to dream . . .
I peered into her mind and found myself shrouded in a night so black I couldn’t see through it. It surrounded me like a cloak, veiling wherever her mind had gone. I pushed harder, but it was to no avail.
Somehow, some way . . . she’d locked me out.
I didn’t like it. Not one tiny bit.
But there was nothing to be done. I wouldn’t push to the point of breaking her, no matter how curious I was. There were lines even an atman shouldn’t cross.
Still coming down off the high of her blood, the taste of her skin, and the feel of her lips—I stepped through the void and into the witch’s living room.
The singing cut out in favor of a mumbled curse.
“Really, Ronan? You can mind-m
eld and cross entire dimensions, but you can’t manage to magic on a pair of pants or something?” she groaned loudly. “I swear, just as bad as Piper . . .” She disappeared around the corner and down the hall, leaving me in the living room not having said a word. A few seconds later, she returned and threw a wad of fabric my way. Sweatpants. “Those were thirty dollars. I expect to be repaid with interest.”
I lifted a brow at the tiny female, and she crossed her arms, then jutted her chin toward the pants. “You’re supposed to wear them, in case that wasn’t obvious.”
I shook my head but did as she asked and donned the sweatpants, as she called them. My search through the Antares Coven’s memories didn’t cover the more mundane things in this world.
“Piper is in stasis,” I said after a moment. Nathalie walked around the kitchen counter and pulled a teakettle off the stove.
“I figured as much, given you look like you murdered someone. I’m assuming she went through with the second exchange?” she asked without lifting her eyes from the tiny teacup she was pouring steaming water into.
“Yes, but I don’t know how it will affect her. You’ll need to watch for signs of dehydration and starvation. If she appears to be degenerating—”
“I’ll keep her alive, Ronan. If there’s magic I need that I don’t have, I’ll contact you or go to the good Señora. She may give Piper shit, but she wouldn’t let her die.”
I nodded and ran a blood-stained hand through my hair.
“If the ex shows up again, let me know.”
“He won’t,” she replied in complete confidence. The witch lifted the teacup to her lips and blew softly, hot steam scattering. “I used the blood in the hall for a spell that would make him forget why he was here if he ever entered the building again. He won’t be bothering Piper, at least not here.”
I cocked my head, taking in the witch with a keen interest. “You don’t have the magic for that.”
“I never said I did,” she replied, then took a sip of her tea. Nathalie hummed in appreciation before setting the cup back down. “Señora Rosara is a very skilled witch. I had her do the spell, and in return she gets two ounces of crushed jasmine leaves.”
Haunted by Shadows: Magic Wars: Demons of New Chicago Book Two Page 7
