The Sacrifice: Forbidden, Book 1
Page 23
She tapped her finger against the polished blade of the dagger. The click, click, click of her nail against the steel echoed in the silence that drew out before them. “I am in the service the divine family, same as you are.”
“Ah,” he said, his gaze drawing away from her lips to her eyes. Aramon sucked in a breath of his own as his hand rose up to touched the back of her hand that held the blade. At his touch, she drew in a sharp breath, her hand jumping beneath his touch. He pressed his fingers into her skin, stilling her hand between their bodies. “We choose to live in the service of others,” he said at length drawing out his words. “Because we are afraid to embrace life alone.”
He took hold of the blade, his fingers tracing across hers as he pulled it from her grip. He was surprised when she let him take it away, her fingers trembling beneath his brief touch. He drew up the blade, let it come up between them, tip pointed to the heavens. Her gaze flickered over the dagger, drawing up the dull steel then jumping to rest upon his face. “I am not afraid,” she whispered her voice wrought with conviction even as she spoke softly.
Aramon turned the blade about in his hand, the hilt jutting out at her. He nodded in a silent offering and she in turn retrieved the blade, letting it if fall lifelessly, unassumingly between them. “We’re all afraid.”
Despite his earlier intentions, Aramon found himself stepping back, putting purposeful distance between them. He said nothing further, the breath caught within his throat as he turned and descended the wall from which he had come. He crossed to his waiting mount, daring to steal one last look at her over his shoulder.
She stood in the balcony, her hair lit with the ethereal glow from the full moon above, stirring about her body in gentle shifting waves. She’d clasped her hands over the railing, watching him with unblinking, desperate eyes. Her gaze no longer tearful but longing, contemplative instead.
He paused, gave a half a thought to turning about, scaling the wall and taking her into his arms. He would not ravage her, but take her softly, tenderly. The thought was so absurd to his mind that it had him turning back and taking mount of his horse.
He yanked on the reins, drawing Ulrich away from the manor and away from the woman who stood on the balcony and silently summoned him.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or is that wicked seductions?
Devil Take Me
© 2008 Anna J. Evans
Annie Theophilus is used to life not going her way, but now the future is looking bright. She’s engaged and finally getting her happily-ever-after—until she catches her fiancé cheating. The garage seems to be the safest place for a well-deserved crying jag. Instead, it proves to be a portal from hell, out of which a sexy denizen of the underworld has just emerged.
Namtar, one-time death-bringer to mortals, has come through an Earth portal for one thing—power. If he can convince a human to willingly sacrifice mortality for eternity in the Underworld, he will gain the power he needs to get the queen off her throne and secure a future for his people.
But Annie’s seduction doesn’t go as smoothly as planned. Somehow she steals a piece of his heart, and he finds himself struggling with a depth of feeling he’s never known. Now, thanks to his own hesitation, they’re on the run from a murderous ex-fiancé and a few enraged demons.
How can he ask her to give him her soul—when all he can offer her is pain?
Warning: This book contains sex in a garage, sex on the run, and shades of BDSM experimentation between willing partners as well as graphic depictions of an insane demon queen punishing her male and female lovers with stuff that put the ick in icky…I mean kinky.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Devil Take Me:
Annie smiled and grabbed his keys from the dish by the door, happy they seemed to have made up so quickly. Sometimes their fights lasted for days, leaving her a mass of nervous symptoms by the time Roger finally quit brooding around the condo and slamming in and out of the door.
She took the stairs down to their garage at a trot, feeling decidedly more light hearted and even a little excited to go on her errand. Roger rarely let her drive his sporty little silver Mercedes and it was fun to roll back the top on the convertible and let the wind blow through her curls. Heck, she might even get a bottle of wine to go with Roger’s beer. It had been a long time since she’d had her favorite chardonnay and her class didn’t meet until eleven o’clock in the morning.
She could sleep in a little if she felt fuzzy, even though she had been getting up at six thirty to cook Roger breakfast. She didn’t want him to feel resentful that she got such a long summer break and lawyering stopped for no man or season. But one morning probably wouldn’t matter.
Ten minutes later, she was pulling up to the liquor store, still smiling from the feel of the summer sun on her face and the wind in her hair, when she realized she’d forgotten her purse. Again.
Roger was going to kill her. Her scatterbrained tendencies drove him crazy. She was always forgetting her purse or locking her keys in the car or leaving school without the stack of papers she was supposed to grade. Annie blamed it on an overactive imagination but Roger saw it as a sign of less-than-desirable mental health.
The last thing she needed was the “maybe you need to get on some sort of medication” talk again. She knew some people needed medicine to get by, to battle depression or stabilize their moods, but she didn’t think she was one of those people. She was happy most of the time, and she never endangered anyone with her forgetfulness.
Frantically, she searched through Roger’s ashtray and the little hidey-hole between the bucket seats. After two or three minutes and a very undignified hunt underneath the seats themselves, she managed to scrape up nearly six dollars. It was enough for the beer, but not the wine she’d been looking forward to. Still, given the choice between wine and a night free from ranting about her space cadet tendencies, she knew exactly which one she’d choose.
With a sigh of relief, she locked the car and dashed into the store. She grabbed Roger’s favorite brew and headed to the checkout, already planning her excuse as to why she hadn’t filled up the car. She would just tell Roger the gas station on the corner had been out of the Premium brand and she hadn’t wanted his beer to get hot. Then she’d pop the top on one of his bottles, discretely grab her purse and head back out to the car. A little falsehood, but nothing that would keep her up at night wallowing in her own guilt.
“ID please,” the clerk at the counter said, with a look that said she doubted Annie was old enough to buy cigarettes, let alone alcohol.
“I’m thirty, I swear to God on a stack of Bibles, cross my heart and hope to die. I know I look young but it’s just because I’ve gained weight. I promise I’ll come in and show you my ID tomorrow but I forgot my purse. See, I was even going to pay with change from the car,” Annie babbled with a laugh as she held up the three rumpled dollars and fistful of quarters she had managed to scrounge from the floorboards of the Mercedes.
“Sorry, I can’t do that.” The woman didn’t look sorry, she looked supremely disinterested, barely sparing Annie a second glance before she turned her attention back to her long, fire engine red nails. The nails even had little flames on the tips, making Annie wonder if the clerk was trying to project a she-witch-from-hell image or if it was merely a lucky coincidence her manicure reflected her personality.
“Listen, my fiancé had a really, really bad day and is dying for a beer. He’s going to be really upset if I don’t come back with a cold six-pack. Can’t you please let me pay for these so I can go?” Annie begged, imploring the clerk with her best gooey-brown-eyed stare.
“I can’t risk it, sorry.”
People who said they were sorry, but weren’t—sucked.
“Okay, fine. I’ll be back in a few minutes, after I go get my ID—which I promise is going to show that I’m thirty.” Annie managed to keep all but the slightest bit of frustration from seeping into her tone. She knew the woman was only being cautious, bu
t a little compassion would have been welcome.
“Whatever.”
Then she had the gall to yawn, without even bothering to cover her mouth.
Annie held her tongue and stomped back to the car. No sense wasting her energy with a person like that. She’d look on the bright side instead. At least she could buy a bottle of wine if she went back and got her purse. She was really craving a glass and a little chardonnay buzz would help keep her from taking Roger’s inevitable lecture too seriously.
So it happened that Annie found herself pulling back into her condominium complex a good twenty minutes before she should have been. And so, it also happened, that she turned the corner to her garage just in time to see Carla open her door and a man in a rumpled black dress shirt and grey suit pants—a man who looked incredibly like her very own Roger—step out onto the front stoop.
And so also did she witness, with her very own eyes, Carla and Annie’s fiancé engaged in a kiss that could never be confused as friendly. Carla’s tongue was halfway down Roger’s throat and his hand was caressing Carla’s bare thigh, sliding up to disappear underneath her too short skirt.
“No.” Annie felt the world spin around her as her hands tightened on the wheel.
This couldn’t be happening. Roger couldn’t be running across the complex for quickies with Carla. Her dreams weren’t crashing and burning right in front of her eyes. The engagement ring on her finger meant something. It meant Roger loved her, wanted to marry her, wanted her and no other woman for the rest of their lives.
Or so she had thought, dreamed, counted on with every last ounce of her being. Her luck was supposed to have changed for the better. Finally, bad luck Annie was going to see that one wonderful dream she had prayed for since she was a little girl become a reality.
But it wasn’t going to happen. She’d lost out again, proving everything she touched took a turn for the worse.
Suddenly a wave of despair and anger swept over her skin with enough heat to start a fire. Her vision blurred, and she was hardly aware that her foot began to ease off the brake and back onto the gas. The only thing Annie would remember when giving her report to the police was that she had been making a wish over the sound of the screeching tires. To please let her find herself anywhere but here, anywhere but still stuck in her own body, forced to pick up the pieces of what was left of her happy ever after.
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