Demon Ensnared (Demon Enforcers Book 4)

by Jenn Stark

  That sounded incredibly unlikely, but she wasn’t the one who had to prove it. “And what was your assessment?”

  “Tactically, these units are more capable than they honestly should be. I don’t know how they advanced robotics that quickly.”

  She leaned forward. “Agreed. If I hadn’t left the tent, I never would have seen how these units perform in the heat of battle. It—it’s extraordinary. I know AugTech is worried about assimilation into social settings, but I think that’s the least of their concerns. I wouldn’t glance twice at most of them. Setting aside the direct military engagement I know the company is seeking out, they could transform safety concerns in public settings. With no loss to human life…” She allowed her voice to trail off, as if she was stunned by her own words. “No loss.”

  Gregori nodded again, apparently pleased with her performance, and they fell silent. But as Angela stared out the window at the unbroken line of forest that made up so much of the Virginia hills outside of Washington, DC, she realized that not all her wonder was feigned. A security force that was completely dependable, unhackable, and that delivered on the promise that AugTech was making actually would transform security in America. How many mass shootings could be eliminated with a robot who had immediate access to all criminal data and all camera feeds with facial recognition software instantly recording and uploading data on every person in the area? That sort of identification tech was already in place. The question remained only on how to use it effectively. She didn’t know what AugTech was doing specifically, but if it actually was implementing its stated mission…wouldn’t that be something?

  Sighing, Angela reached for her briefcase. They had two hours of downtime before they arrived back in DC, and she had hundreds of pages of reading to do, emails to respond to, and texts to return. She needed to use the time wisely.

  Across from her, Gregori settled back in his seat and, to anyone not watching closely, seemed to fall asleep. She knew differently, however. He studied her from beneath his hooded eyes as she worked, the brilliant green missing nothing as she plodded through report after report. He watched her hands, her mouth, her gestures. He studied her so intently, it was almost as if he was gazing deep inside her, searching for answers to questions he hadn’t yet asked.

  She felt herself flush, her fingers tightening on her pen.

  She wanted him to ask those questions, she decided, the realization both a certainty and a surprise. She wanted anything he would give her, if she were honest.

  Whether he was a demon or human, empath or soldier or creature of magic—it simply didn’t matter anymore. Her path had led her to this point from the moment she’d first opened the witch’s spell book in her parents’ study and seen the cloud of magic burst out. Now, sitting here with Gregori, she felt more connected to another being than she ever had in her life. A crackle of fire burned through her bloodstream and made her heart pound faster, an awareness of power and possibility that called to her like a siren’s song—because of Gregori. Whoever he was, whatever he was…

  She wanted him.

  17

  Gregori eyed Angela with concern as they reentered her condo. While they’d been at the demonstration, Joe and her security team had temporarily removed her menagerie of pets and swept her place for any surveillance equipment, friendly or otherwise. Then they’d installed the best tech Simon and the Arcana Council could offer. Her place had also been swept by the Syx for any residual demon energy lurking in the ductwork, but they hadn’t found anything. Gregori shifted as Angela shut the door behind them, excruciatingly aware of her proximity.

  She tossed her bag on the couch, running her hand through her hair, some of which had slipped free of her elegant hair clip. “Joe texted that he’s setting up a perimeter detail on the building, but I asked him to keep the gang for a bit. They’re at the vet’s for wellness checkups under duress, but I’ve needed to get them there for a while. I…I just want to be alone with you, if I could. For just a little while.”

  Gregori braced himself as another wave of her need washed over him, need he was pretty sure she hadn’t fully identified yet. But he had. Partly because he was a former Fallen, a member of the Syx, with the heightened awareness and sensitivity that brought. And partly because he was a natural empath already bonded to Angela. That elevated their connection to a searing intensity, making her every thought, every emotion, every shift in heartbeat and breathing pattern as familiar to him as his own, down to the very dilation of the woman’s blood vessels. It was maddening, overwhelming, and it carried him along on a tide he not only welcomed but craved with every last ounce of his being.

  Gregori sighed out a long breath. Hugh had been wrong. He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t ready for any of this.

  “Gregori?” Angela asked uncertainly. She sat on the couch beside her briefcase, her hands clasped on her knees, seeming so oddly alone in a space normally filled with all the animals she cared for, desperately clinging to the reserve she needed to project in public…the reserve she was losing more and more by the day. She had easily explained away her flashes of anger and the completely foolhardy dash across the battlefield during AugTech’s demonstration, but her hair was no longer caught up in its ruthlessly tight ponytail, her suit was no longer so crisply pressed, and she seemed to not even realize she’d scrubbed off all her makeup and not reapplied it. She didn’t need it, of course, especially not with her emotion riding so high, flushing her cheeks and brightening her eyes. But the fact she didn’t notice its absence was telling.

  If he gave her enough time, she would. She’d pull back on the mantle of studied and calculated calm, present her expression of self-assured control to the world, and carry on. It was what she wanted, he knew—what she probably believed she needed.

  And he, as a member of the Syx, dedicated to protecting Angela Stanton and keeping her safe, should give her what she wanted. Should allow her to keep shoring up the walls she’d so carefully built to protect herself from the world around her. Should allow her all the rationalizations and intellectual rabbit holes she could manage to chase down so she could keep the desperate agony she’d buried deep inside her from swallowing her whole.

  He should.

  He wouldn’t—couldn’t, at this point. But he should.

  He crossed the short distance to the couch and wingback chair, but instead of taking the chair like any rational human would, he lifted a boot and shoved the coffee table out of the way with a sharp, swift motion.

  Then he dropped to his knees in front of Angela.

  “Oh!” she managed, pulling back a little on the couch, her hands dropping from her knees to grip the cushions on either side of her legs. “What are you doing?”

  Gregori leaned closer, his eyes dark and intent. “You know I’m an empath.”

  Sudden awareness zipped across her expression, and her cheeks colored. But to her credit, she didn’t back down. “I do,” she said.

  “And you know what that means?”

  She started to speak and couldn’t, then cleared her throat to start again. “It means you can feel the emotions of anyone around you, particularly somebody with whom you have, um, bonded. Which I assume we have.”

  “Not only the emotions. The sensations. The reactions, every nuance of change to your breathing, your heart rate. I can sense your pain the moment you’re injured—”

  “And you can sense how I’m feeling, if I’m not injured. If that’s not what’s hiking my heart rate or making my hands shake,” Angela whispered. Her eyes had sheared away from his gaze to drop to his mouth, which caused a responding urgency to well up inside Gregori, a desire twin to Angela’s own. He let his mouth open slightly while leaning yet closer, and could practically feel Angela’s eyes dilate.

  “I can sense all those things,” he rumbled. He was close enough to feel the touch of her breath on the skin of his neck where his shirt was open at the collar, feel each of the tiny hairs on his arms prickle with awareness of Angela’s every s
hiver. “And I can imagine what it would feel like to hold you, kiss you, because those thoughts are so powerfully etched into your mind that they have become one with your emotions. But I’d rather you give me permission to take you into my arms so I can experience that firsthand.”

  “I…” She swallowed, and her cheeks went scarlet as a new thought struck her. “You’re not just doing this because I want you too, though, right? I mean, as much as I want you to—”

  That was all the permission Gregori could stand to wait around for. With his own blood pounding in his ears, he closed the distance between them, his arms going around her as he pressed her back against the cushions. Though it wasn’t the first time he’d kissed a woman, it might as well have been for all the millennia he’d walled himself off from feeling any emotion for anyone else.

  The touch of her lips detonated something within him, driving his need with such startling intensity that it blanked out everything else. All he could do was just allow himself to be carried along on the tide of it, his mind blown by the sheer wonder of how strongly he felt and how perfectly right it was for him to be here with Angela in this moment.

  She responded hungrily to his kiss as well, leaning up into him, her hands reaching to curl into his shirt, pulling the material out of his trousers until she could slide her hands along the length of his abs, laying her quivering fingers flat on his chest.

  Gregori hissed with the contact, and Angela immediately pulled her hands back, breaking her kiss to peer at him worriedly. “Did I hurt you?” she gasped, and he shook his head, leaning away only long enough to pull his shirt over his head and wrench off his belt.

  “You can’t hurt me, Angela.” Not exactly true, but he wasn’t about to explain the finer points of human-demon interaction. Right now, all he could focus on was the way his own body was changing, not just the glamour of his humanity, but the demon form beneath, the crippled, misshapen husk he’d been cursed with the moment he’d turned his back on God’s children and sinned. Even that broken body was caught up in the glory of both the emotions and feelings that poured through him. The basic connection between two creatures of energy in light and darkness, in need and want, in love and hate. That one had been born to walk in the light and one was condemned to eternal darkness didn’t matter anymore. They were together in this moment, and this moment would be enough. This moment was everything.

  There was a pressure at his waistband, and he glanced down to find Angela’s hand tugging at the rest of his clothing. He knew he should stop, or at least that he should make sure this was what Angela truly wanted. She had gone through much at the hands of the worst of his kind, and even though he didn’t want to be a demon, he knew what he was. He should ask—

  “Gregori,” she implored, turning her face up to him again. Her eyes shone with a need so strong, it was bordering on panic, her mouth set in a determined line. “If you don’t take the rest of your clothes right off right this instant and make love to me, I swear I’m going to rip them off with my bare hands and then I’m going climb right on top of you and screw you blind.”

  Angela clapped both her hands over her mouth, but it was too late. Gregori, his jaw clenched tight against emotions she could only guess at, tilted his head back and laughed as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.

  He stood up just long enough to kick off his boots and wrench off his trousers and boxer briefs in one quick movement. Wrenching off her own clothes, Angela gaped in astonishment as Gregori slung his clothing against the wingback chair. She’d never seen anyone so perfectly formed. In some small corner of her mind, she knew all of it was glamour, but that didn’t matter anymore. The man who regarded her with such open adoration was like something out of a dream. Easily over six foot five, Gregori towered over her. The muscles she’d always known were there under his clothes now stretched and glistened in the muted light, drawing her eye inexorably down to the apex of his legs, where his shaft was full and ready…and definitely proportionate to the rest of his body.

  Dear God in heaven above…

  And then he was on her again.

  This time when Gregori kissed her, there was no hesitation, no uncertainty. He cradled her, pressing his lips to hers as if he was coming home. With just the hint of his gentle pressure, she opened her mouth to him and accepted his tongue as it ran over the seam of her mouth and tucked inside, generating a whirlwind of sensations unlike anything she’d felt before. She was no virgin, she’d had plenty of sexual partners, but always before, she’d given of herself with the understanding that there would always be something more that she could hold back, a barrier she could place between herself and whoever she was with that would allow her to remain in control.

  Not only was that barrier not there with Gregori, she didn’t want it to be there. The raw excitement of being with this man, knowing that he felt every emotion, every sensation as she experienced it and that he wanted, craved even more, made her feel like she was inhaling the most addictive drug in the universe.

  “Gregori!” she gasped as his lips left hers to drag a trail of kisses across her cheek and along her jaw, every new inch he explored setting her on fire. “How—”

  “It’s you—and me—together,” he groaned back. “Loop.”

  With that, she finally put it together. What she was feeling wasn’t just the physical sensations between them, but everything else as well—and not just what she was feeling, but what he was too. The experience was entirely shared. Her every desire was reflected back to her, reinforced with the power of Gregori’s needs and desires. As he drew his lips along her jaw, he opened his mind to her, swamping her with images and feelings, colors and sounds, and music and words of light and magic. A thousand years, two thousand years and more of terror and tears, sorrows and joy, everything that had overloaded him for so long that he had never been able to share with anybody else, he poured into his every kiss, his every sigh. He turned with her then, sinking back against the cushions as he pulled her up on top of him. Her legs spilled over either side of his broad thighs, but she pushed his hands away to take the lead.

  As intense as her need was for him, she didn’t want to rush this.

  Gregori hissed as she leaned forward to run her hands down his trembling abs, but he didn’t stop her. When she wrapped her fingers around his straining cock and leaned into him, he went mute, and she didn’t dare stop for fear that he might ask her not to go further. She drew her tongue along the edge of his shaft. He bucked in response, his hands clenching into fists on either side of her. In that moment, she knew anything she asked of him, he would do. Any boon she demanded he would grant, whether it was within his power or not. He offered himself completely and utterly to her, she had only to take what he was giving.

  So she did.

  Shifting her body up, Angela slid down over Gregori’s cock, seating him deeply inside her. The pressure was extraordinary, stretching her almost to the point of pain, but she wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Not now. He reached up to touch her face gently—so gently—as if she was a revelation of some deep and arcane mystery that had eluded him for centuries, then she was caught up in her own sensations once more. Placing her hands on his broad chest, she braced herself and began moving. Slowly at first, and then with gathering intensity, until Gregori’s hands came up on either side, bracing her hips, then driving her even harder, faster. The way their bodies were positioned, she could feel her own release building impossibly fast, spiraling up within her as she clenched her hands into fists. She was determined not to finish before him, wanted to see him tumble over the edge, when the expression on Gregori’s face shifted. He withdrew one hand from her hip, keeping her tightly braced to him with the other as he dropped his fingers between her thighs and brushed the bundle of nerves there.

  Angela jerked in response, but he didn’t let her go, instead rocking her forward, lifting his hips to meet her forward thrusts, absorbing her every gasp, shudder, and tremble as he quickly ratcheted up
her own responses until she teetered on the brink of release. But she couldn’t…she wouldn’t…

  She grabbed his wrist. “Together!” she demanded.

  “Together,” he agreed, and he rotated his hand until their fingers interlaced, and he lifted his other hand so that those two hands could join as well, and they moved forward together, sharing each breath, each sigh, their gazes locked on one another as the need built once more within them and crested over, built and crested and rose again, until there was no going back, there was only going forward…and then…and then—

  She dropped off the edge of the world.

  18

  Gregori came back to his senses in a rush, barely able to stop himself from catapulting off the couch. But he instinctively sensed more than intellectually registered that there was a woman sleeping soundly on top of him, curled safely within the protection of his arms. He stared down at Angela, his mind racing, his overloaded senses taking a moment more to fully process what had happened between them. The intensity of their shared release had gone beyond the physical to the emotional and psychic, and Gregori drowned in a sea of emotions he could no more stop than he could understand.

  As he moved to gather Angela to him more closely, she shifted as well, and he smiled as she instinctively stiffened. It wasn’t as if either of them hadn’t been aware of what had just happened, yet it already felt like that experience had occurred a million years ago in a faraway place. Behind the torrent of his own emotions—now strangely evening out with Angela’s awakening—he couldn’t even fully recall the details of what had passed between them. Only that he wanted, more than anything, to do it again.

  His body instantly reacted to that thought, and he shifted just in time, easing Angela off him before she could detect the change in his glamour—his glamour, which technically was supposed to be under his control at all times. The inconvenient reaction went the rest of the way toward refocusing his mind, however, and when Angela turned to face him, he thought he was more or less prepared for the blast of emotion that would accompany her first glance.