by Cathryn Fox
Her arms slid around his back and held him to her, moisture sealing their bodies together as they made love, both pushing and pulling, giving and taking, and touching intimately as they indulged in one another.
Her cunt tightened and a deep sense of satisfaction rolled through him as he took in her flushed face and the look of ecstasy in her eyes. As emotions ripped through him, his cock throbbed, and he knew he’d reached the point of no return. “Baby, I’m not going to last.”
She chuckled softly, and touched his face as she murmured, “I’m already there, Blake. I’m already there.”
Her muscles tightened around his cock, and he threw his head back. “Jesus…”
“Come with me,” she murmured.
Panting hard, he gathered her tight and held her as he drove deep, pumping once, twice before he released himself, never wanting the moment to end.
After a long time he inched back and brushed her hair from her face. “Jesus, girl, I love the look on your face when you come for me.”
She grinned, and once again it triggered another craving in him. He’d like nothing better than to spend the day, the week, forever in bed with her, but they both had work to do and they both knew it.
Blake clenched his jaw and shook his head. “You keep looking at me like that and I’ll never get out of here.”
With that Sunny glanced at the clock and put on her best professional face. “We need to move.”
“I know.” Blake planted a long, soul-searching kiss on her mouth before climbing from the bed. He took a quick shower and pulled on his clothes. As she too, got ready, he tossed her another look before moving to the door.
“Be careful,” she said and her concern for his well-being touched his deep.
His heart thumped and he hated to leave her. “You too.” With that they both went their separate ways, stepping back into their roles, eager to put a stop to Trevor’s monstrosities.
Hours later Blake found himself at the bar, carefully taking stock of the patrons—including Sunny’s partner who seemed rather preoccupied by the ladies and didn’t appear to give two shits about Sunny’s well-being. Conscious of the way Neal was watching his every move, Blake moved about easily, putting on his best professional face as he slipped into bartender mode.
As Blake carefully polished another glass and placed it on the shelf behind the bar, Neal helped himself to a bottle of water from the bar’s fridge. He cracked it open and took a long swig.
“The hot little blonde is watching you,” he said, nodding in Sunny’s direction.
And Blake didn’t like the way Neal was watching Sunny. It made him wonder just how much of her he’d seen back in Blake’s hotel room earlier. The bastard.
“That’s the problem with women,” Blake said, slamming the fridge door closed a little too hard with his hip. “Once you screw them, they think they own you.”
Neal never took his eyes off her, his expression turning just a bit too calculating for Blake’s comfort. “She any good?”
Blake shrugged. “I’ve had better.” And if you touch her I’ll rip your fingers off one by one, then shove them up your ass. “There’s something weird about her.”
“Yeah, well.” Neal set his water on the bar and grabbed one of the glasses. He mixed up a Daiquiri with enough skill to show he’d done it before. Then he pulled a little bottle out of his pocket and emptied something into the drink. He lifted the drink to Blake, whose uneasiness escalated to full-scale red alert. “A few ounces of this will make her normal.”
Blake almost went for his throat. He knew a challenge when he saw one. But then he thought of that movie, he thought of Cass, he thought of Sunny’s cover and he thought better.
He kept his own face blank, but cold sweat chilled his spine as he watched Neal cross the room to where Sunny sat with the ski bunnies.
Sunny smiled over at him and all he could think about was how she’d tasted when he’d kissed her goodbye. Her smile dimmed a little when he didn’t return it.
“The bartender asked me to give you this,” Blake heard Neal say. Demon genes came in handy sometimes. Neal set the drink on the table in front of her.
Don’t drink it, Blake thought at her. She was a cop. She should know better. Right? Blake shot her partner a look, thinking he just might need him, but he walked through the door with two bunnies on his arm, unaware or uncaring of what was going on around him. Under the circumstance, Blake had no time to go after him. Knowing Sunny needed him here to keep his eye on her, he turned back to face her and hoped like hell she could read his distress through the professional mask he wore.
Sunny glanced over at Blake, then up at Neal. She pushed the drink away with her fingertips. “Tell him thank you, but I’ve had my limit for the night.”
“Are you crazy?” Tabby whispered loudly. She shoved the drink back in front of Sunny. “You don’t say no to Blake Ashen.”
Blake figured things couldn’t get much worse than this. If she didn’t take it now, someone was going to start wondering why not. Neal already knew he and Sunny’d been at it.
Sunny reached for the drink, smiled over at Blake and took a small sip.
He was really worried now. She might know better than to actually drink the whole thing, but by accepting the drink she’d given Neal an excuse to sit down and talk to her. And that wasn’t what Blake wanted. It wasn’t what he wanted at all.
Michelle’s mind raced, trying to remember all she could about date-rape drugs, wondering how much she could safely drink before she found herself in serious trouble.
She had to assume he wasn’t trying to kill her, at least not yet. Surely she should be able to drink a few sips before it kicked in. Spilling it would be too obvious.
“For Pete’s sake, Sunny,” Tabby said in exasperation. “Not much wonder you can’t get laid. If you aren’t going to drink that, then I will.”
Just for that, Michelle was tempted to let her have the drink. Instead, she raised the glass to her lips and pretended to take another small taste. Already, her tongue felt numb. What on earth had he put in it?
Neal slid into the booth beside her. “What’s with the ladylike little sips?” he asked, winking at the other women at the table. Before Michelle could stop him, he raised the drink to her lips and tilted the glass. She swallowed a large mouthful out of instinct.
The hell with worrying about being too obvious. She jerked hero head back and the rest of the drink spilled down the front of the sweater beneath her open ski jacket, although the cold, satisfied smile in Neal’s eyes told her she’d gotten enough.
She was in it up to her ass now, and she had to get out of there—just as soon as she found her feet, which seemed to be AWOL.
Then Blake was at her side. He had a towel in his hand and was helping to mop her up. Michelle’s head, however, was no longer in the game. The room was spinning and her tongue felt two sizes too large for her mouth.
“Christ, that hit her fast,” she could hear Neal saying, sounding for all the world like he gave a crap. “This is all my fault. I guess she’d already had too many. Ash, my man. Why don’t you take her other arm and we’ll help her up to her room?”
Where was Tabby, who was supposed to be her friend, in all this? Michelle wondered indignantly, trying to find her missing feet. She was going to let two strange men manhandle Michelle back to the room they shared?
Of course she was. She probably thought a threesome might do “Sunny” some good.
A hand slid beneath her jacket to the gun in the shoulder holster Blake had asked her to start carrying, and for a moment, stark terror filled her. Then the hand shifted and it was Blake who hoisted her up and found her feet for her.
“I’ve got her,” he said. “Lead the way.”
Blake caught her as her knees gave out, hoping like hell that she was playing along.
So this was how they found their victims. Or at least one of the ways, because he’d be surprised if it had actually worked on Cass. Even half-demons
had a pretty good tolerance for any kind of drug. That was why they went for the hard stuff.
He lifted Sunny into his arms, relieved to find how light she was. Definitely, she was at least partly playing along because dead weight was harder to carry. And thank you, Jesus, she’d actually started wearing her gun.
The trick now was to make sure no one else discovered it.
He wasn’t surprised when Neal took the service elevator to the basement. He was a little more surprised to find Trevor Black already waiting for them.
“Put her over there.” Trevor gestured for Blake to drop Sunny on the bed. Blake carefully rolled her to her side so she could more easily reach her gun if she had to. But it worried him that she wasn’t moving at least a little.
Trevor was watching him with all the warmth of the lizard he was. “How would you like to be in movies? We blank out your face so customers can picture themselves in the lead role. It’s all part of the fantasy. Neal’s already been in a few. Haven’t you, Neal?”
Rage unfurled inside him and he fisted his hands at his side. Jesus, what cold bastards. Blake would rather go up against a demon any day. Better the monster you knew. And understood.
These men were conniving pricks, and things had gone too far, farther than he’d ever expected. He needed to get her out of there, now.
As he formulated a plan, the only one he could come up with under the circumstance, and the one and only he thought would allow him to get her to safety he said, “Maybe next time.” Blake shot a shriveling glance at Neal, who already looked like he had a woody the size of his arm. Cold, sick bastards. “If your friend here had let me finish what I’d started to say to him, rather than just go ahead and slip her a drug, I could have told him that she’s probably a cop.”
Trevor’s eyes flicked to Sunny, still motionless on the bed. “Kill her.”
Fuck no.
Neal slipped a gun from his waistband, not even bothering to question the command. Not only were they cold-blooded, they were stupid.
Jesus, he really hadn’t thought his plan would backfire like this. He assumed they were at least smart enough to figure out what he meant. Apparently assumptions were dangerous. His mind raced a million miles an hour and it was then that he realized he was going to have to walk them through this, step by step. This was going to work, he assured himself. It was a good plan. And it had to work.
“Wait. Where there’s one cop, there’s always at least one more, and we don’t know who it is. I have a better plan.” Sunny still hadn’t moved. Right now that was a good thing. “So far she’s got nothing on us. We put her back in her own bed. We tell her someone slipped something in her drink. We apologize like shit, tell her we’re doing an internal investigation into it, give her a false lead, and just like that, she’s off on a wild goose chase.”
“That’s assuming she’s really a cop,” Neal said.
Blake laughed but there wasn’t any humor in it. “You think I can’t tell when I’ve been screwed by a cop?”
Michelle kept her eyes closed and her breathing steady, wishing like hell she could kick his half-demon ass. Not just because he’d told them she was a cop, although that was big part of it. It was because he was trying to get her out of that room, and there was no way she could leave. Not now. She’d never get another chance to get back in. She tried to clear her head enough to think, but it was hard. She’d like to drift off into sleep and let Blake take care of the whole frigging mess. But if she let them take her from this room, she’d never get a search warrant. She’d been drugged and that meant her testimony wasn’t worth squat.
As Blake negotiated for her life, however, she came up with a plan she thought just might work. If she discharged her weapon in here, she’d have proof that she’d been in the room and it would officially become a crime scene. There would then be grounds to search it. She could swear in court that she’d fired her weapon because she’d thought her life was in danger, and the fact she’d been drugged would work in her favor. Women weren’t slipped date rape drugs for the good of their health.
Of course if she discharged her weapon one of them would most likely return fire, but that was a chance she was willing to take. She’d just have to trust Blake to watch her back, like he’d promised. The man was part demon. He might as well put that to good use.
Michelle reached for her gun, rolled from the bed and fired—all in one fluid movement.
Except “fluid” was a relative term to someone who’d been drugged and she didn’t exactly master the element of surprise. The first return shot caught her high in the chest and felt more like a solid punch. The second shot she didn’t feel at all.
Blake didn’t have much time to react when Sunny pulled her weapon. Neal, his gun already drawn, managed to get off one shot at her before Blake’s fist caught him in the side of the head and dropped him like the sack of shit he was.
As Neal fell, his finger tightened on the trigger again, but the second shot went wild and hit the wall behind Blake.
The roaring in Blake’s ears and the sudden terror on Trevor’s face told him his eyes had flashed to demon yellow.
“Jesus,” Trevor breathed. “Your eyes. They look like—”
Blake didn’t give a damn what his eyes looked like. Sunny was bleeding all over the floor.
He picked Trevor up by the throat and slammed his head against the wall, not caring if he killed him and rather hoping he had. He tossed the limp body aside and rushed to Sunny.
He clamped his hand over her chest, trying to stop the bleeding, only to realize that most of it was coming from beneath her. He carefully lifted her to check the damage, then squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of it. The exit wound was far worse. She was going to die, right there in his arms, and it struck Blake hard what it was he was about to lose. Other than his mother and his sister, Sunny was the only woman he’d ever known who was strong enough to see him for who he truly was and face him as an equal, unafraid.
A world without Sunny was a world he no longer wanted to be a part of. The demon in him roared to life, unleashed, and when the demon world called out to him, for the first time in his memory he didn’t bother trying to resist it. Instead, he breathed in its darkness and let it consume both Sunny and himself.
The room tilted. When it righted again he was in a different place and a different world. And this world, oddly enough, felt much more like…home.
Bright yellow eyes approached them from out of the shadows, and with a snarl Blake tracked their progress, prepared to protect Sunny with his own life. She wasn’t dead yet.
The yellow eyes had a face, then the face had a body. Clad neck to toe all in black, the demon halted a few paces away from them. Blake, even in his demon rage, hesitated before it. Heat curled around him.
“So this is the demon slayer,” it mused, its attention focused completely on Sunny and disregarding Blake as something unworthy of interest.
Too late, Blake realized what he’d done. This might feel like home to him, but he’d brought Sunny to the one place that would be unlikely to welcome her.
It extended one hand to her and Blake bit out a warning. “Touch her and you’ll die.”
Its eyes went to Blake as if seeing him for the first time. Then, it laughed at him. “I’m not going to harm her,” it said. “I’m wondering what it’s worth to heal her.”
“Anything,” Blake said, not daring to hope but unable to hold a flare of it back.
The demon seemed even more amused by that. “Is it worth giving up your sister?”
Cassie was there, shrouded in darkness. The blank, empty look on her face, her once-violet eyes now a steady, yellow glow, tore an even deeper hole in Blake’s soul. The demon stroked her cheek. “You can’t have them both,” it said to him. “Choose one.”
Sunny’s weight grew heavier in his arms, the dampness of her blood seeping into his clothes and chilling his flesh, and Blake knew he was losing her.
But he was losing Cass too, and he’d
loved Cass his whole life. One woman was his future, the other his past. The demon in him, the part of him that refused to compromise when it came to something he wanted, rebelled. “I’m taking them both.”
Cass’ face was no longer empty. She looked at him, violet banishing the yellow, and her voice was soft when she spoke. “I’m not ready to go back, Blake. I don’t know if I ever will be.”
And then Blake understood. The demon didn’t hold her. She was here by her own choice, because the mortal world had become too much for her. In her own way she was as damaged as Sunny, and she’d chosen this place to heal. Just as he’d sought it out when he realized Sunny was dying.
The difference was, Sunny couldn’t survive here. Cass could.
Blake looked at his sister, loving her and offering her whatever strength he could and silently begged for her understanding. Then he held Sunny out to the demon.
“I choose this one,” he said. “I’ll pay any price.”
The demon grinned.
“The debt won’t be yours,” it assured him. “The debt will be all hers. And I think I would like to have the demon slayer in my debt. I would like that very much.” It ignored Blake again as it stepped in close and laid its hand on her still body.
Color and warmth slowly flowed back into her face and the soft fall of her hair brushed against Blake’s forearm as she shifted her head to one side. Then suddenly it was light, not darkness, surrounding them, calling Blake back to the mortal world.
“Tell her I gave her life,” the demon called after him. It laughed again, softly this time, but with a delight that made Blake shiver in spite of the heat it expelled. “And tell her I gave her a small gift to go with it.”
Blake found himself back in the underground room of the hotel with Sunny still in his arms. And when she opened her eyes to look up at him, they shone with a warm yellow light.
* * * * *
Michelle didn’t remember much of what happened over the next few days other than that she’d spent much of them asleep in a hospital bed with Blake refusing to leave her side.
