Demon Touch
Doranna Durgin
Ever since the night Alex Donally found the demon blade in his hand—and in his thoughts—he has been driven to fight evil. When he meets Deb Marchand, he feels compelled to protect her from her violent ex—and aroused by the visions of passionate encounters they both experience when they touch. The blade is showing them what they can have—if Deb can risk giving her trust and heart to a vigilante…
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 1
Sharp dark eyes, sharp jaw, black leather and habitual stubble, definite bad-boy attitude.
Deb had seen him in AutoStock before. She knew that face; she knew that confident walk. She knew how hard she had to pretend she hadn't noticed him at all.
Even though his visits to the modest little business had grown more frequent as Ohio bike-riding weather waxed along with spring, it was still difficult to keep her gaze from following him around the store. It didn’t help that he sometimes hesitated and seemed as though he might make conversation—although in the end he always moved on. With confidence. With that free-striding walk.
Except today. Today he pushed through the door like anyone else: with a hesitation at the stiff resistance of it, moving without the pent-up energy that so often characterized his walk. He must have seen the momentary drop of her jaw; he gave her a rueful grin from behind the black eye, the split brow, and the artfully bruised face, even less shaved than usual. "That bad, huh?"
Surprise, and surprise again. That he'd responded with humor. That he'd noticed her at all, after so many absent nods. Maybe that's why she warmed to him in spite of herself—in spite of the bruises, the sharp jaw, and the sharp look in his eye.
"You should see the other guy?" she suggested, and then immediately regretted.
But he only gave a short laugh. "Yeah," he said. "You should see the other guys."
Guys. Plural.
Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?
Run away, that's what.
But he'd already disappeared into the back of the store, returning shortly with a trickle battery charger tucked under his arm. Judging by the awkward way he handled it, she knew his torso—lean and fit beneath that black leather jacket—had fared no better than his face. He blew out a breath, every bit as rueful as the earlier smile, and swiped the heel of his hand across his brow in a gesture weary and resigned.
"I'm sorry," she said without thinking, flushing as he dug for his wallet. Just take his money, foolish woman. "I just meant…it looks like a tough day."
He made a noise she couldn't quite interpret—but his words were perfectly clear, and his tone flat—not the engaging response from a few moments earlier. "Nothing I didn't deserve."
She couldn't help it. She straightened, throwing her shoulders back. "No one deserves to get beat up."
He hesitated as he gave her a second look. Deb’s face also bore a scar near her eyebrows and her once-straight nose was now just so slightly offset. Even though her jaw had clearly healed, it still didn't sit quite straight.
Mementos from another life. He said simply, "I started it."
Of course you did.
She made herself take the credit card he handed her, casually run the charge through, check the signature as she was supposed to, and return it. Alex Donnally.
She hadn't meant to pay attention.
But his fingers fumbled the card on return, folding over hers—not quite letting go. She looked away from the register and saw by his stiff posture and his slightly narrowed eyes that he was distracted. She followed his gaze to the small parking lot where a cop car sat.
She knew the cop—an experienced man who often used their lot as a turnaround in this small, off-the-interstate town—a town close enough to Columbus to offer city advantages and far enough from that same city to give a cow-and-corn feel to it.
She made her voice matter-of-fact as she handed him the receipt to sign. "He doesn't come inside very often." And then, as he dashed off a hard-penned scrawl, "What did you do?"
She'd surprised him again, it seemed. "Nothing," he told her, but the smolder in his expression belied every word he said. "Do you think he'll believe that?"
"I doubt it," she heard herself saying. "I don't believe it."
Possibly the bravest words she'd ever said. Aside from three others she had once also said: I'm leaving you.
Although those words had just turned out to be stupid. She should have crept out in silence and saved her bones.
The second time, she'd been smarter. And he hadn't found her yet.
Yet.
But here and now, this man only looked at her as if he could see right through her unspoken turmoil and truly appreciate her honesty. As though in some strange way, it had touched him.
And then he winced and hitched over his side, one hand reaching inside his jacket…coming out with bloody fingers. He glanced out the storefront window, his gaze grim. The cop had opened the door of the patrol car to rest a foot on the pavement.
Deb discovered her copy of his receipt crumpled in her hand, her eyes riveted to the blood on his hand. She made a noise—even she wasn't sure if it came of fear or dismay.
He spared her a glance as he gathered up the trickle charger. "Will he walk around the store?"
She couldn't quite grasp the question.
"The cop," he repeated, his voice calm but insistent. "Will he come in and walk around the store?"
Her expression must have been enough of an answer; he cursed, low and short.
"You don't look very good," she told him, her voice distant to her own ears. He didn't, either—pale beneath his bruises, twitching visibly in reaction to some jerk of pain.
"I shouldn't have come out," he said, as honest as she'd been moments earlier. "Damned battery's going, and I'll melt the Magna's entire electrical system if I try to jump her. And I thought the worst—" He stopped, closed his eyes…forced a deep breath, pulling his shoulders back. "Was over." He caught her gaze and shrugged, quite matter-of-factly. "Wrong again."
"What will you—" she started, and looked out at the cop, who was pushing the patrol car door closed.
He didn't let her finish. "I'll be inconspicuous."
She couldn't help it. She snorted.
He grinned back. "Yeah. I know."
She handed him the receipt. Skin brushed skin—too hot, as though he burned with fever right through to his very fingers—and her gaze jerked up to his. She would have asked are you all right but her body exploded into sensation and the words never made it out. His eyes, up far too close and personal; his breath on her skin. His groan in her ear, a possessively sensual sound that played out along every nerve ending she owned. His hand skimming along her body, her hands slipping under his shirt, finding a trail of crisp hair and tight, responsive skin.
She gasped and jerked away from the counter, stumbling back. If there was any consolation at all, it came in the utter astonishment on his face, the way his hand had clenched convulsively around the receipt—the way he seemed, for that moment, to have stopped breathing altogether.
But that sharp, dark gaze had her pinned, and it looked just as it had looked in her mind an instant earlier.
If the cop hadn't been on his way—
Of all the unexpected things she'd said to him, the next came the least expected of all. "There's a break room," she said, pushing the words past a tight throat; they came out with a husky edge. "It's got a door out to the tires. And from there—"
He flashed a look at the cop, then back to her, understanding. From there, an exit out back. He stood, caught
by the promise of her next words—caught, too, by whatever impossibility had just flashed between them.
She looked into his sharp, dark gaze, as if she knew who and what he was.
Chapter 2
Deb.
That's what her shirt had said, clear and plain.
Her eyes had been a different story—shouting out mixed and shifting messages. Light brown eyes in a collection of interesting features—a nose with a bit of a bump, chin just a little bit square, and a sweet and cautious smile. But those light brown eyes had done their best to hide from him, as they always did—looking away when he came in, looking down, looking busy.
And then, finally, yesterday she'd been caught in conversation—and to judge by her expression, caught was the word for it.
Never mind what had happened next—the invading connection of the demon blade. What the hell? he thought, and not for the first time. What the everlasting bloody hell?
It had surprised him as much as her; it had snatched him up and very nearly carried him away. The feel of her, so very real; the sound of her, right there in his ear; the very scent of her–
Yeah, the ride home hadn't been a comfortable one.
Not that Alex could blame her for her reaction—not for her previous reticence or her response to that startling moment. Any wise woman would run from what the blade had made of him.
The blade sat in its favorite spot, its favorite form—the Sgian Dubh. Hidden not in his stocking like a proper Scottish knife, but tucked at the small of his back where it somehow never lost purchase. And while it could take any form it pleased, when it pleased, it usually stuck to the basics—the Sgian Dubh, a basket hilt-sword, a dirk…sometimes even a claymore, but only when it was showing off.
All Scottish. Alex had no idea why, not during the years since it had bonded to him, not through the times it had pushed him, prodded him, shoved him into danger…saved him from it. Just as he had no idea what had made the blade, or what had made it choose him.
He only knew for certain what it had done to him.
So did Deb at AutoStock, to judge by the look of her. And she had helped him in spite of it.
Yesterday morning, he'd pulled into this parking lot sicker than expected, full of the blade's healing burn and too broken to fake it as he'd planned. Today he parked with only a fading tingle along his bones, a lingering stiffness in his muscles. He dismounted from his bike and stretched, glancing into the store to find her watching him through that big plate glass window.
She instantly looked away.
"Not this time," he murmured, holding his gaze on her until she looked up and found him again, and her eyes widened—understanding the message. Yes, I'm here for you.
He flipped open the Magna's saddlebag and removed the flowers he'd brought—spring snapdragons and daisies, with the tough winged stems and delicate flowers of sweet pea interspersed. Courtesy of his duplex neighbor, a young single mother who'd come to appreciate that the nighttime prowling that had once frightened her did in fact help keep her safe.
Deb looked at the flowers…looked back to his face…looked at the flowers…and yes, looked away again.
He opened the door with a much closer approximation of his usual manner than the day before—but didn't get any further.
The formerly neat store was a shambles, wiper fluid jugs scattered and broken across the floor, the rotating air freshener display tipped over and tiny lightbulbs scattered across the counter.
And Deb's reaction to his arrival—that was more than just dismay. Her clear olive complexion was pale, and her hair—normally pulled back in a tumble of a ponytail, the offside part dictated by a cowlick in that espresso-dark hair—disheveled.
Quietly, he set the flowers on the counter. "You okay?"
She said, "You need to leave now."
"Oh, no," he said, gently implacable. "I think here is exactly where I need to be."
Her words came of desperation—and he saw it then, that she feared what he would only escalate whatever had happened. "You don't understand—"
"More than you know." Even if the blade hadn't warned him—and whatever was happening, he suspected that was because she was here—safe—with him. And that the blade seemed, in fact, to have some sort of crush on her.
He had no doubt it was responsible, somehow, for what had passed between them. No matter that it had never done anything of the sort before—although since the night Alex had found the blade in his hand and in his mind, it had driven him. From place to place, from deep night action to roadside rescues—looking for harm and hate and sorrow, hunting bullies and bad guys and evil. A vigilante, the blade—and glorying in the blood it drank along the way.
Not a thing of goodness. Just a thing that had found a way to get what it wanted.
He pushed the flowers in her direction. "These are for you, by the way. Thank you."
Judging by the blush now on her high cheeks, her thoughts had matched his, going to that moment when the blade had connected them. Then her eyes widened and she spoke without thinking. "You don't mean—that is, you mean…the cop…"
He offered her the faintest of grins. "I mean the cop."
But she winced, then, as the sounds of a break room vending machine under attack reached the front of the store.
Ah.
He reached for the hilt of the Sgian Dubh. It turned warm in his grip, reshaping—flashing a glimmer of blue lightning even in daylight. Deb frowned slightly, clearly not sure if she'd seen what she thought she'd seen—and by the time Alex brought the thing down against his thigh, the blade had rearranged itself into a stout collapsible baton.
The blade's way of showing off. Not quite Scottish at that.
"Stay here," he told her, not heeding the harsh edge to his voice, or the note of command he had no right to give. He didn't care.
"You don't understand," she said, more fervently than before. She did an end-run around the stubby L-shape of it and put herself in his way. "You need to go. He's here because of—" And then she couldn't quite bring herself to say it.
He got it anyway. "Because of me." He shouldn't have been surprised—he was. He shouldn't have felt the fury of it, after the number of times he'd dealt with just this—he did. He shouldn't have felt the weight of it, adding to what already lived on his shoulders.
He did.
"You need to go." She lowered her voice—wincing as the vending machine crashed to the floor in the break room. "Someone saw you here the other day. He wanted the receipt from your purchase—the address."
Of course they did.
She said, her voice even lower, "He's just trying to intimidate me. If you go, nothing will come of it."
"Because you don't intimidate easily," he said, filling in those blanks.
Something flashed in her eyes. "I intimidate at the drop of a hat," she told him, unexpectedly harsh. "But I'll get over it." Her gaze raked over him, growing more uncertain as it hesitated where his eyebrow had split, but now showed only a faint gap in the hair. "Don't even think about it. I saw what you looked like yesterday."
"I got over it," he said, deliberately echoing her words.
"If you go," she repeated desperately, "nothing will come of it."
Another vending machine crashed to the floor—the soda machine, to judge by the tremendous bounce and rattle of cans.
Deb flinched at the sound, and Alex's temper snapped. "Something has already come of it," he growled at her, and the blade latched onto his intent, warming to his hand in its baton form…full of guile and thirst. Leaving her protest in his wake, he headed for the break room.
Deb should have stayed where she was. She should have called the cops, she should have called her manager from his lunch run. She should have done a lot of things.
She surely knew better than to follow on the heels on the man named Alex Donnally—a man with violence in his eye and violence written on his body—even if it had, astonishingly, somehow almost healed from the bruises and cuts she’d spott
ed yesterday.
She found Alex in the break room with the baton held low, his shoulders filling the doorway. He didn't give the corn-fed tough guy in the room a chance to respond to his presence. He said, low and hard, "If you touch her, you're dead."
A derisive snort met his words, and a midwestern Ohio drawl. "Like the other night? When we took you down? We could have killed you then."
"If you could have, you would have," Alex said, no particular concern in his words. "I'm telling you this—you don't touch her. If you and your boys feel the need to teach me a lesson, you come to me."
"This is your lesson," the guy said, and kicked something inside the room—a chair, Deb thought, flinching back against the wall. It was easy to picture the scene—beefy ex-football player grown into a town tough, his light brown hair shorn close, his features crude, and his expression full of the bully. "You stay out of our business, or we'll get into yours."
"My business," Alex said, "is to stop your business. Or I can stop you. Either way."
Who were they? What business? Surely she hadn't ended up in the middle of a turf war…
Another snort from the bully. "We can take care of this right now."
"Your choice," Alex said, and he went into motion. The guy shouted; metal clattered to the floor. A chair, plastic and metal, bounced off the wall and rebounded into those on the floor, a clash and skitter that momentarily overrode the impact of flesh on flesh—swift, precise blows, the thwack of the baton—a cry of pain and a moment of cessation, with nothing but heavy breathing she somehow knew didn't come from Alex.
"The other night," Alex said, "you had some luck. It won't happen again. The other night, I didn't kill anyone. I wouldn't count on that happening again, either."
Just as she'd seen, barely hidden in him at all. Violence in his eye, violence written on his body.
Deb crept closer, getting an angle on the room as Alex shifted aside, leaving the tough guy a path to the back exit. Alex said, "I know you don't believe me yet. But you will." And then, so casually, he crouched beside a spatter of blood—a glimpse of the tough guy told that tale. Mouth bleeding, hairline streaming blood, one wrist clutched in the other hand.
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