by Harley James
“I think my clothes off and on. It works a whole lot easier with these—”
He had her naked before she could even finish her sentence. The hot look on his face nearly flayed her alive. “Oh, Jessie, look at you.”
Her face heated. She grabbed the cozy throw blanket to cover herself. As an angel, she shouldn’t care what her belly looked like. Jeez.
“Oh, baby, no.” He pulled the fabric out of her hands. “You are a walking fantasy.” In the next moment, his clothes were gone, and she could see the evidence of his desire. He knelt down at the edge of the bed to massage her feet. With his hands. Then his mouth. His fingertips rubbed soothing and arousing circles up her calves.
She’d fallen in love with him. He’d protected her—over and over. Had given up his manipulative ways with—and for—her. Had loved her family—and her dog—as his own. “Thank you for finding such a comfortable place for Gramma and Grandpa to live together.”
“You’re welcome. Now, I’m ready to die with need for you, but if you don’t stop thinking right now, I’m going to have to take a cold shower.”
She laughed and came up on her elbows to look down at the earnest expression on his face. Well, some manipulations were for the best, she supposed. “But I’m thinking about you,” she teased.
“I know, I can read your mind. But right now, I don’t want you to think at all. I want you to feel, Jessica.”
Before she could speak, he leaned over her and scooped her into his arms. She thought he was going to resituate them, but he was standing and…
“What are you doing?”
Walking over to the pool. Her arms tightened around his neck as he descended the steps into the water. Her feet touched the water first. Deliciously warm. As the water closed around her belly, her head lolled against his shoulder. He readjusted her, parting her legs and backed her into the side of the pool, sliding a thick cotton towel between her wings and the tiled edge.
A seductive lethargy loosened her muscles. Her mind began floating, as weightless as her body.
“That’s better,” Nate breathed.
He was right. There was plenty to worry about, but it could wait for one night. Even if it was a few hours. They had right now, and she didn’t want to waste a second of it.
His lips were firm and soft at the same time, sketching a journey across the parts of her that still floated above the water. Her breasts, so rarely weightless, hovered near the surface. He drew one nipple into his mouth, then the other until she couldn’t bear the ache between her legs. Her hands pulled at his hair to draw him up so she could rub against his hard length. “I need you, Nate. Love me.”
“I do, Angel.” He guided himself to her center so she could feel the throb of him against her. She tilted her hips to drive into him, but he stopped her. The veins stood out in his neck. “Look at me, Jessie,” he rasped. “This is the final physical leap. The binding is eternal. Do you understand that?”
His rock hard chest abraded her nipples as she nodded. “Tell me what to say.”
His gaze flared. “Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori. Love conquers all things, so we too shall yield to love.”
“Love conquers all things, so we too shall yield to love,” she breathed. As he thrust inside her, she gasped, staring into his eyes, seeing her future, the struggles they would face together, their joining like a thunderstorm in her bloodstream. Electric, awesome, too much for words.
The water around them swirled, changing colors as they loved. Green, blue, orange, red, purple and back to green. He pulled her out into the middle of the pool and took her under water. They came up, mouths fused, lips gliding wetly. Her hands slid down into the water, caressing his flexing glutes as he spoke promises in an old language. He floated her back to the edge of the pool, gathering her closer as their bodies rocked together, his cheek against her shoulder, heavy, welcome, perfect.
My immortal.
A love like this would never die.
Never.
Never, he repeated. Tremors began in his legs. “Jessie…”
“Yes.” White trees, large and solemn, spouted up from the concrete, reaching skyward, their branches not covered in pine needles, not leaves, but pure white feathers. Raining down on them. In the water. Feathers everywhere, impossibly beautiful.
Her neck arched, hips reaching and retracting, inner muscles clamping tighter, faster. Pleasure surging as his strokes became harder, their skin sliding together, churning the water, the feathers swirling around them. Her mouth opening in a scream she couldn’t contain. His name.
“Nate!”
“My Jessie.”
She felt him inside, his essence joining with hers, the flash-burn searing them. The trees still throwing off their feathers, filling the pool, absorbing the water until, spent, they collapsed onto the thick bed of feathers, now dry, cushioning them as they lay together, catching their breath.
Jessie lay on her back, one thigh draped over his as his hand roved over her belly. The stars twinkled down at them while snowflakes danced and twirled in the dense air. Gradually her body cooled. She rolled to face him, her smile meeting one of his own. He came up on an elbow and brushed her hair back from her face, his gaze straying down to her chest.
“Thank you,” he said.
“The pleasure was all mine.” She couldn’t resist running a hand over his lovely, inked pecs and down that washboard stomach.
“Are you cold?”
“No. These feathers are resplendent!” She scooped up a handful and blew them into the night.
He laughed and hugged her. “Those feathers were all you, you know.” His voice was so full of love it took her breath away.
Wonderful! These were moments she’d savor and lock away to bring out in the dark days ahead.
For they would come.
“I never thought—” His hand paused on her hip, thumb absently caressing her skin. “I didn’t know love until you. Shh.” He put a finger to her lips when she opened her mouth to speak. A great fullness came into her throat at his vulnerable look. “All my life, I’ve forced things.”
“But you had to, Nate.”
“Maybe in the very beginning. But then I began to hurt people as much as I had been hurt. There is no courage in that. Then a hundred years later, you came along, and though I cornered you, manipulated you, you retained your dignity. Your strength and selflessness are humbling. I hope I can become more like you, Jessie.”
She came up onto her knees, kissed him soundly until he pulled her down on top of him. She leaned back, straddling him, her hands on his chest. “Let’s not forget, you nearly died for me, twice, hotshot.”
His hands squeezed her thighs. She scooted down to rub against the base of his groin to let their bodies start a new conversation.
One as old as time.
One that whispered and moaned, melded and illuminated.
Their bodies moved in rhythm, breath quickening, muscles clenching and releasing.
It was as much a girding for battle as a total surrender. They both knew it.
Embraced what was to come.
Darkness. Suffering. Death.
Her fingernails scored his chest from the violence of her release. He gritted his teeth, his body seizing moments before roaring his ecstasy to the skies.
And oh, how she liked it.
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The series continues… Each book is a stand alone with a happily ever
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Wanted by the Demon Hunter
Guardians of Humanity Book 2
Sneak Peek
Chapter One
Katherine
Aqua nightclub, Waikiki Beach, Hawaii
Death, darkness, demons. It was getting so damn old.
Katherine Evangelista breathed deep, and reached for the nearest wild-eyed, possessed female, ready to barter whatever was left of her soul for the strength to help this unfortunate human. Step one: force the young woman into the Devil’s Trap in the center of the dance floor where divine power woven within the circle would immobilize her body. Step two: release the evil spirit. Step three: wipe the woman’s mind and send her on her way. Step four: erase the entire episode from the non-possessed, human bystanders’ memories and get them the hell out of the club.
It sounded so simple. And for the last century, it had been.
But lately Katherine was beginning to wonder how many more exorcisms and mind-wipes she’d have reserves for. Her arms shook with the effort to evade the snapping teeth of the young, tan brunette. Recently, every soul purification rite had sapped her Guardian life force.
Worse yet, she couldn’t seem to recharge the way she had for more than one hundred and forty years. What was wrong with her?
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. Find a way or make one.
Her father had believed it was his duty to warn his two daughters’ revolving door of governesses that she was the stubborn one—as if the trait was a stain on her soul no amount of good behavior could erase—while her little sister was the beleaguered byproduct of an intolerably bossy sibling. She’d never forget the sound of their father’s low, angry voice talking to her mother behind closed doors. Just wait Annabelle, Katherine’s perverse obstinacy will cause us more grief than Mary’s tireless whining.
Perhaps what hurt the most was how her mother had never roused herself to Katherine’s defense.
Get over it already. These tweaks of insecurity reared up at the most inconvenient times. If people wanted to label her a bitch because she was assertive and goal-oriented, that was their prerogative. She had more important things to worry about.
Like how to put out that fire someone had started on the table closest to the dance floor.
“Stark!” she yelled over her shoulder for her lead security specialist as the possessed woman clawed and scratched at her face.
“Stark’s out on the pool terrace rounding up the other crazies.” Konani, the club’s most popular human mixologist, rapidly refilled a spray bottle of holy water at her bar station. “Give me a sec. I’ll grab an extinguisher!”
“No time!” Katherine finally caught both the woman’s wrists, then glanced up, using her water element to activate the nightclub’s emergency sprinklers. Crystal chandeliers and champagne buckets rattled with a sudden surge of power. She gasped as bone-chilling water spewed in her face, her biomagnetism failing to shield her like it usually did when she used her powers.
Clearly this last call for energy had consumed the final dregs of her capacity. I am one hundred and eighty percent done with today, and at least forty percent done with tomorrow.
She shook her head to dislodge her soggy blonde hair from her eyes, her white designer suit sagging on her frame. Screams of the possessed running amok in various perimeters of the nightclub rang in her ears, courtesy of one of Satan’s daughters.
Ancient archdemon Leviathan had decided to party at Aqua, Katherine’s little patch of purgatory on Waikiki, and brought with her a horde of soulless minions searching for human hosts. So far, Leviathan hadn’t performed any of the tricks that Nate Temple’s invading archdemon had pulled at his Minneapolis nightclub Mirage, but that wasn’t necessarily fortunate. The two low-key weeks since Leviathan had showed up in Hawaii were likely the calm before the storm.
Aqua’s human security team had observed a surge in possessions this week, but they should’ve posed no problem. Exorcisms had always been uncomplicated for Katherine. She spoke the right incantations, drew the malevolent spirit out of the human and into her body, blasted it with the mojo inside her, and voila!
Exorcisms-R-Us.
In the past, meditation, rest, and a good diet had always restored her powers. But for whatever reason, she’d been unable to rejuvenate lately. Right now, she was too tired to even turn off the water works she’d instigated overhead. And it was doubtful she’d have enough energy to wipe the minds of the non-possessed humans cowering in the club’s dark corners witnessing all this shit. She’d probably need to call one of her Unholy Inc partners for help. Damn.
“Blood, pestilence, and horror! Blood, pestilence, and horror will visit the earth!” the possessed woman screeched.
Katherine shoved the woman the final two feet into a chair inside the Devil’s Trap, catching a glimpse of her wet suit cuffs, now stained pink from bloody fingernail scrapes on her wrists. She pursed her lips. “Ish. I despise pink.” Her gaze came up to pin the woman with a stare she hoped would demoralize the evil spirit using her as a meat suit. “And I loathe demons who repeat themselves. Now, sit still, or I’ll torture you before I dispatch you back to Hell. Tottering maggot,” she finished under her breath.
The twenty-something woman shook her long, wet hair vigorously, then turned and sank her teeth into the nearest thing—another possessed human—this time a male who happened to be a fingernails-down-the-chalkboard shrieker.
Ugh. A person’s reaction to a demonic body invasion was as varied as the range of human personality. Yet recently, she’d seen nothing but the crazed type.
And today was panning out to be a spectacular waste of makeup.
Katherine glared at the possessed woman once more, then turned to another member of Aqua’s security team. “Maddox, get the iron chains soaked in holy water for this perky thing. She’s a biter.”
The haunted look in the black man’s dark eyes vanished with his assignment. Katherine had found Maddox homeless and delirious on Detroit’s mean streets last year. He was human, but a powerful telepath who could hear the thoughts of others. Unchecked for years, the ability had nearly driven him insane.
Some days Katherine wondered if she was doing the right thing by pushing him to delve deeper into his psychic nature instead of medicating it out of him. Might be more humane that way. But then again, she was a hard-edged ogress who didn’t like the easy way out of anything.
She may be physically frozen at twenty-five years old—her age when she’d died—but she was much too set in her ways to change now. So yes, she would continue to push Maddox to control his ability. And some day, she would celebrate when those tormented shadows no longer darkened his eyes.
Katherine watched Maddox’s tall, athletic form vanish into the storage locker to retrieve the chains, wishing she was anywhere but here right now. Guardian leader Alexios was going to be cross about how damaged these humans were before she got them exorcised, but right now it was proving difficult to give a damn. Being a Healer Guardian had its perks, but most of the time, it just sucked.
She turned from the Devil’s Trap to identify her next target in the nightclub’s dim blue and white interior. Instead of another human ravaged by evil spirits, her gaze landed on a white tank top plastered to her distant-relative-turned-best-friend. Jade Matson’s honey brown arms made the sign of the cross in front of every possessed soul as she swaggered toward Katherine, every bit the voluptuous jazz singer whether she was up on stage with a mic in her hand or not.
“I leave you alone for a couple hours to get some shut-eye, and the whole place goes to pot. How’d you manage that?” Jade’s smile flashed brighter than all the chandeliers in the club.
Katherine rubbed her temple. “This isn’t amusing.”
Jade pulled a rosary out of her pocket and flashed it at a foaming-at-the-mouth, possessed man running full throttle toward her. He dropped dramatically, then convulsed. “Oh, come on, I can’t think of a better way to start a Saturday!”
“You morning peop
le are so annoying. Then again, so are mornings. And people.” Katherine grabbed the seizing man’s arms, while Jade pocketed the rosary and then scooped up his legs. Katherine blinked water out of her eyes, yelling over her shoulder, “The first person to shut off these wretched sprinklers gets a five-hundred-dollar bonus!”
As they lugged the writhing man into the Devil’s Trap, Katherine felt Jade’s gaze, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk.
“Kat.”
Katherine frowned. It was that tone. Katherine had never enjoyed a single conversation when Jade used it. “Not now, Jade, for glory’s sake!”
“Lady K!”
Katherine looked toward the second floor balcony, receiving a series of hand signals from Stark. She nodded at him, then glanced back at Jade. “The crew rounded up the last of the possessed from the upper balconies and pool terraces. Stark indicates there’s five, maybe six more to go on this level.”
“Okay, we can handle that, but first, I gotta tell you something…” Jade trailed off, and the expression on her face made Katherine’s skin prickle.
“What did you do?”
Jade’s eyes were steady on hers. “Don’t freak out.”
Katherine’s pulse jolted, but she kept her features composed. “You should know by now hysterics aren’t my thing.”
Jade nodded once, then frowned. It wasn’t reassuring.
“Ari’s on his way,” she blurted.
Weightlessness rushed through Katherine. She sank toward the plush white leather of the nearest bench. Jade reached out to aid her, but Katherine smacked her hands away.
“You called him?” A free agent, Ari Grimmson wasn’t part of the Unholy Inc network of Guardian nightclubs.
