by Nadine Mutas
Something niggled at the back of his mind, and he held still until the thought made it through his lust-drenched brain. “I don’t have any condoms.”
She blinked then exhaled on a half-laugh. “Um, that’s okay. I—there’s a potion I take regularly that prevents me from getting pregnant. And…I’ve only been with one guy. We always used condoms.”
White-hot jealousy fired through him, making him growl. He knew about the guy, though. He’d seen her with her boyfriend while he’d been protecting her, and even back then, watching them together had sliced off little pieces of his heart. Nothing he could do about that, however. He’d never had a claim on her.
Not until now.
As if sensing the direction of his thoughts, she laid a hand on his cheek, her eyes softening. “I’m yours.” She stroked his skin, ran her fingers through his hair. “Only yours.”
“Yes.” He caught her mouth in a kiss of possessive passion, tempered with a tenderness that had him tremble inside. “Mine.”
The reservations he’d had, his fears of getting closer to her, his plans of leaving her? Fuck that. He’d stake this claim, and he would keep it.
With one hand he spread her knees farther apart, balancing his weight on the other, his cock nudging her slick entrance. Breath heavy, muscles tense, he met her gaze, and pushed inside. Shaking with the effort of going slow—lest he hurt her—he rocked forward little by little, until he was seated to the hilt in her tight heat.
He paused, ground his teeth against the urge to pound into her, to relish the thrust-and-slide into what felt like heaven wrapped in fiery sin. “You okay?”
“Yes. Start moving. Please.”
She wiggled against him, her inner muscles clenching around his shaft. Holy gods-I-don’t-believe-in. He breathed extra slow, forced his thoughts to entirely unsexy realms to push back the surge of pleasure.
“If you keep doing that,” he choked out, “I can’t guarantee I’ll last much longer.”
Her grin did all sorts of wicked things to his body. “Don’t hold back on my account. I’ve had mine. It’s your turn.” And she underscored her statement with another well-placed tightening of her feminine muscles.
With a groan of surrender, he shoved forward, gripped her leg harder with one hand and angled it to give him better access. Anjali’s throaty moan encouraged him to go faster. Letting go of all thought of needing to draw out his pleasure to increase hers, he thrust in and out in a rhythm of mounting urgency. The feel of her—wet, tight, hot—was an explosion of sexual bliss to his senses. He couldn’t get enough.
Anjali rolled her hips to match his strokes, holding on to him with one hand curved around his neck, the other gliding over his back down to his ass. She squeezed, pushed him harder against her.
“Yes. Right—there—” She let her head drop, eyes closed, lips parting on a moan. Shuddering, she writhed with the force of another climax.
One he could feel—spasm for spasm—with his cock buried inside her.
It was the most amazing thing he’d ever experienced. Knowing he’d done this to her, he’d given her this intense pleasure, it catapulted him into his own orgasm.
Heartbeat thrumming in his ears, his whole body tensed then relaxed as he emptied himself in her, waves of unparalleled bliss rushing through him. He stilled above her, relishing the residual tingles of pleasure traveling along his nerves, the way Anjali kept her grasp on his backside, her other hand caressing his hair.
She gave him a smile so full of satisfied affection it tugged at something deep inside him. He kissed her then, a gentle, tender kiss that held everything he couldn’t yet say to her. And she understood. Without a word, she lay on her side, pulled him down to her until his head was cradled in the curve of her shoulder, and she stroked his back, his hair, caressed him silently with touches that conveyed a feeling neither of them was ready to acknowledge with words.
When she left a while later—the pressure of reality invading their shared bliss—he stood in his living room, the apartment so empty despite the plethora of books filling it. He laid a hand on his chest, over his wildly thumping heart. It wouldn’t slow, wouldn’t calm down, much like his state of mind.
This, the line he’d crossed with Anjali, the course he’d set them on, it was madness. He couldn’t hope to make this relationship work, not with the size of the secret he needed to keep from her.
And yet, he craved a future with her—a real future—with every fast, insane beat of his heart. He couldn’t go back. Not now, not after what they’d done, after the pleasure he’d experienced in her embrace. Having Anjali in his arms, trusting, generously giving, looking at him with sensual hunger in her eyes, it would haunt him for the rest of his life. Just the thought of letting her go, setting her free to find this bliss with another man—it tore him to pieces on the inside.
No, he’d do anything to keep her, to stay worthy of her trust, her affection, her desire. Somehow, he’d make this work.
And maybe, just maybe, some secrets could stay buried forever.
5
Muscles trembling, Anjali heaved herself up the last stretch of rope and grabbed hold of the window sill. With an undignified huff, she pushed until her arms stretched and she could swing one leg over and into her room. Need to work on my wall scaling skills. Well, not that she ever thought she’d have to climb up the side of her family’s house and sneak into her own room on a regular basis.
But that was exactly what she’d done the past two nights. Pretended to go to bed early, stealthily left home once everybody else was asleep, and then crept back unnoticed before the break of dawn. One could think she was some unruly teenager up to no good, not an adult witch of twenty-two. But with a family like hers, where everybody was in each other’s business all the freaking time, and privacy was a concept redefined to mean the short moments when you had to use the bathroom, what else was she to do?
She landed on her floor with a thud, scrambled up, and peered out the window. There, leaning against the maple tree in front of the house, surrounded by swirling shadows only her eye could pierce, was the reason she acted like a love-struck juvenile. She waved at Thorne, and—apparently assured she’d gotten home safe and sound—he smiled, nodded, and headed back to the city.
She watched him walk down the street, below the faint hues of dawn on the horizon, and her heart was filled with the strangest mix of bittersweet pain and glowing joy. She’d spent the last two nights with him, stolen hours in the dark, and the more she’d learned about her shadow demon, the more she’d fallen irrevocably for him. He pulled at her heartstrings. He made her burst with happiness. And above all, he wrapped her in such tender affection, she felt cocooned from all harm. The way he looked at her, touched her, with such wonder and devotion it unhinged her.
They could make this work. Somehow, she’d find a way to gently break the news to her family, and she’d make them see that he was good, that he didn’t mean harm. Merle got the witch community to accept her demon lover, so why couldn’t she?
Not for the first time in the past two days, her thoughts wandered to her best friend Maeve’s older sister, and how the new Elder witch had fought and won for the right to keep her demon by her side, officially and untouchable as her husband and mate. It gave Anjali hope, made her dream of a future where she, too, could proudly have Thorne in her life, out in the open, not as a secret lover she had to sneak off to in the dark of night.
She changed and crawled into bed, the exhaustion of staying up most of the night—Thorne hadn’t let her get much sleep—pulling her under right away. For a few too-short hours, she caught some much-needed shuteye, until her cousin Kiran came barging into the room and told her in no uncertain terms that sleeping until ten in the morning really wasn’t fit for a witch her age.
Balancing her toddler daughter on one hip, Kiran waited for Anjali to peel herself out of the covers. “Come on, sleepyhead. Maa wants to see you in the kitchen.”
“Just a few more minutes,”
Anjali murmured into her pillow. “Or an hour or two…”
“Bas, Anju, you’ve slept enough. I don’t understand how you can be so tired. You went to bed at nine. That’s thirteen hours you’ve slept, and you still don’t want to get up? Are you sick?” Kiran marched forward and pressed a hand to Anjali’s forehead.
Anjali fought her off with flailing arms. “Stop it, I’m fine.”
“I’ll make you soup.” Kiran turned on her heels and strutted out, her daughter Sunita bouncing on her hip as she walked. “Maa-ji,” Kiran yelled as she descended the stairs, “Anju’s sick. I’m making her something.”
Dear gods, help me. Anjali rubbed her face with both hands. Sometimes, the prospect of moving out and living alone like Maeve had done seemed like a damn good idea. Then again, her best friend had had to pay a high price for her attempted independence from her witch family.
Her heart still bruised from finding out about the ordeal Maeve had gone through, Anjali made a mental note to call her best friend again today. When Maeve had been abducted and tortured to near insanity, her face slashed beyond recognition, Anjali had been on a trip to India to visit family, had only learned what happened when she’d gotten back two weeks later. The need to be there for her friend, t0 give Maeve a modicum of normalcy after such horror by simply talking, hanging out, coaxing a smile from her, it was a driving beat against Anjali’s skin.
She sent off a text asking Maeve how she was doing and that she’d call her later, and then dragged herself out of bed, showered, dressed and ventured downstairs into the kitchen.
Aunt Madhuri was chopping herbs while some concoction boiled on the stove. When Anjali entered, her aunt looked up, her shrewd gaze taking in every detail of her appearance, and Anjali had to stifle the suspicion that Aunt Madhuri could see through her lies to the depth of her secrets.
“Kiran says you’re sick?” Aunt Madhuri asked. “What’s the matter?”
“No, I’m not, really. I feel fine. Don’t worry, Mausi.” She grabbed one of the samosas her aunt had made this morning. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Yes. I need you to patrol with me tonight.”
Her stomach made a dive for the ground. Patrol duty meant she couldn’t see Thorne… Swallowing her bite of the spicy fried pastry, she schooled her features. “Okay. Is something wrong?” She hadn’t had to patrol in ages, what with no sign of shadow demons around this area for a long time.
“A witch has been killed, and another has been injured. The wounded witch—Serena of the Holt family, I think you’ve seen her at Elise’s wedding—”
Anjali nodded.
“—what she reports about the attacker points to an erebos. We did some digging in the otherworld community, and there’s talk about a shadow demon in the vicinity.”
Cold dread spread outward from her freezing heart. This couldn’t be Thorne. It couldn’t. Aside from the fact that she’d been with him for the past two nights—and thus gave him an air tight alibi—she knew, felt it in her soul that he wouldn’t do something like this. It had to be another shadow demon who’d moved into the area.
“Who was killed?” she whispered, sympathy for the other witch family an ache in her chest.
“Penelope Ortiz.”
She’d known Penelope in passing, a quick-witted witch with delicate features and soft brown eyes. She left two young daughters behind. “How horrible.” She rubbed her breastbone, heart weeping for the two girls who now had to grow up without their mom. Don’t I know what that feels like.
“Yes.” Aunt Madhuri’s face was wrought with grief, spiked with simmering anger. “And we’ll catch the saala who did it.”
Like we caught my mom’s murderer? The thought flashed through her mind, and she barely held her tongue in check to speak it out loud. It wasn’t her aunt’s fault that they’d never found her mom’s killer. If anything, it was Anjali’s failure as a chaya darshini. A failure that weighed on her, creeping up on her and catching her unawares every now and then, only to steal her breath and make her heart ache.
“Aree, sweetu, none of that now.” Aunt Madhuri pulled her into a hug, her astute gaze having caught Anjali’s trembling lips, the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Don’t think like that,” she whispered in her hair, enfolding her in love and warmth. “It’s not your fault. You always gave your best, we all know that. Your maa-ji knows it, too.”
Anjali nodded, throat closed up and eyes burning.
“We’ll catch the demon this time. Ro mat, beta. Don’t cry.”
“Okay.” Anjali stepped back, wiped her eyes, and attempted a smile.
Aunt Madhuri stroked her cheek and smiled back. Kiran gave Anjali a quick hug from behind.
“Chalo na—come on,” her cousin said, and pulled her into the living room. “Sunita wants to show you something.”
And before Anjali knew what was happening, she was enveloped in laughter, smiles and the giggles of a two-year old.
I can’t come to see you tonight. Patrol duty. Will call you when I have a minute.
She’d sent the text to Thorne before she’d headed out with Aunt Madhuri, her heart sinking at the thought of how he would feel about not meeting her tonight. She was fidgety, gaze darting to and fro, fingers playing with her cell phone as she walked next to her aunt down the streets of the Pearl District. It was busy yet at this time of night, late shoppers strolling on the sidewalk, couples and small groups headed toward one of the brewpubs, and the inevitable homeless people wandering about, looking for food, shelter, or the sad pursuit of some addiction.
“Are you expecting a call?”
Anjali jumped and scrambled to stash her phone in her purse. “No, I was just…in thought.”
“Maybe you should be more in search.” Aunt Madhuri raised her brows, lips pursed in admonishment.
“Of course, Mausi.” Shame heating her face, she resumed scanning the streets, the crowd for any sign of unnatural shadows. She owed it to Penelope to be at the top of her game, to do everything in her unique power to find that erebos, and bring justice to the Ortiz family.
They turned into the darker streets of the district, the parts less gentrified and hip, where fewer visitors liked to venture. This was a popular demon hunting ground, close enough to the buzzing streets of the more touristy lower Pearl District and downtown, yet with many a dark corner and abandoned buildings to hide in. Chances were good the shadow demon might frequent this area, too.
Aunt Madhuri stopped, her body tense, eyes fixed on the other end of the alley they’d just entered. “Stay behind me,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Anjali dropped her voice to a hushed murmur, too.
“I think I saw a life snatcher demon over there. I’ll go check it out. Stay back.”
Anjali nodded and moved to the wall, her breath forming a trail of puffs in front of her eyes. Leaning against brick, she kept scanning the area while Aunt Madhuri walked to the end of the alley and rounded the corner with careful steps.
The air shifted next to her, heat and swirling shadows brushing up against her skin. Before she could utter a scream to alert her aunt, a hand clamped over her mouth. The shadow enveloped her.
“Shh, it’s me.” Thorne’s face came into focus.
Relief let her heart plummet. She took a deep breath—and bit his hand still covering her mouth.
“Ow!” He yanked his hand back, brows drawing together. “What was that for?”
“For almost giving me a heart attack! Don’t sneak up on me like that, especially when I’m on patrol.” She exhaled then rose up on her tip toes and placed a kiss on his lips. “I’m so sorry I had to cancel for tonight, but my aunt drafted me to join her. How did you find me?”
He shrugged, one side of his mouth quirking up. “I’m good.”
Oh, that cheeky half-smile of his, it would steal her heart over and over.
“That you are.” Grinning, she stepped back a little, made sure she wasn’t concealed by his shadow cloaking.
When
he reached for her hand to pull her into the shadow again, heat and hunger in his eyes, she shook her head.
“I think it’s better if I stay out of the shadow. If my aunt comes back and can’t see me, she’ll blow a fuse for worry.” At that, she threw a glance over her shoulder to check whether Aunt Madhuri was still gone. All clear. She turned back to Thorne. “Maybe I can sneak off after I’m done patrolling.”
“I’ll stay with you.” He paused and tilted his head as if considering something. “I could help you.”
“Uh, I don’t know.” She bit her lip, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Listen, the reason I’m on patrol tonight is that another shadow demon is rumored to be around. He’s killed a witch and wounded another.”
Thorne grew preternaturally still. Eyes going cold, he stared at her a moment before looking away. “I’m sorry for the witch.” His voice was as chilled as the night air.
“Do you know anything about that other erebos? Have you heard anything?”
He shook his head, gaze downcast, brows drawn together. “I—”
Before he could finish that sentence, a white-hot blow of magic hit the brick wall behind him, missing him by only a foot. Pieces of brick crumbled to the ground, leaving a dent the size of a basketball in the facade.
Thorne jumped to the side while Anjali whirled around. Aunt Madhuri stood halfway down the alley, arm outstretched and glowing with residual magic. Damn, she’d probably seen her talking to the shadowed corner, put two and two together and figured she was speaking to an erebos.
“Get over here, Anjali. Move away from that demon scum.”
“No, wait.” Anjali stepped in front of Thorne, blocking Aunt Madhuri’s line of fire. Her aunt couldn’t see Thorne since he was still cloaked, but if she threw another spell in his general direction, she might hit him anyway.
“What are you doing?” Her aunt’s face was a study in appalled confusion. “Are you protecting that demon?”
“He’s not the one we’re looking for.” Anjali held out her hands in a placating gesture. Without taking her eyes off Aunt Madhuri, she turned her head a little, spoke over her shoulder. “Run.”
