“Oh, speculation. I think I’d enjoy that, too.” Just as she enjoyed reading financial journals. Just as she surfed to the stock listings the moment she got onto a computer. “So if you ever decide that you don’t want to work anymore, you can pass the reins to me.”
“I see.” He sat back. “This is your plot, isn’t it?”
“Taking over your company and making you a ton of money? Eeeeevil.”
His laugh shook right through her chest, seemed to loosen pieces of her there. Was this how emotions deepened? They rattled everything apart, then rebuilt on a stronger foundation?
She didn’t know. She only knew that her emotions were growing all over inside her now, like climbing vines that rooted deep and twisted around every available surface. There was contentment, as she sat and watched him drip a small amount of venom into the birdshot and stir it around. A hint of surprise when she smelled the venom’s fragrance, sweet like a peach. And trepidation when she remembered that he’d said it affected demons.
“Does the venom work on Guardians?”
“No. That’s why we’ll also start working on your hand-to-hand, and I’ll teach what I know of fencing.”
Sword fighting? She really preferred her boomstick. No need to get near anyone, no chance of being cut into pieces.
Her doubt and fear must have shown in her expression. Nicholas glanced up, studied her for a long moment. “All right. We’ll work on a little hand-to-hand now—and start with what will probably benefit you the most: avoidance and getting away.”
She looked around the small room. “Here?”
“We won’t need a lot of space.” His chair scraped back as he stood. He held out his hand. “Come on.”
She could get up on her own, but she couldn’t pass up the chance to touch him. His fingers wrapped around hers, and he tugged Ash to her feet.
And let go.
That wasn’t enough. She clenched her fingers together, trying to hold on to the feel of him.
He faced her in the center of the room. “You’re a demon. That means you’re thousands of years old, if not older. You fought in a war with Heaven—and this will come back to you, just like remembering that security code.”
That made sense. That made a lot of sense. Her procedural memory was intact. If she’d ever known how to fight, she’d remember how.
Of course, she hadn’t remembered how to fight when the demon had attacked her.
Nicholas raised his fists—a classic boxer’s stance. She recognized that, at least. Maybe she wasn’t a lost cause, after all.
“Wait. What about the Rules? How can I block you if I’m not allowed to touch you?”
A flat, icy tension moved into his expression, and she remembered: He’d been waiting for this. You’ll say, “Oh, Nicholas! I wish I could touch you, but I have to follow the Rules!”—and moments after I give you permission, you’ll punch through my chest and rip my heart out.
“I won’t rip your heart out,” she promised.
Some of the ice melted. “All right. I’ll give you permission to block me, and to make a hit in return. A soft hit, by demon standards. Nothing that could seriously injure a man.”
Because a demon wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to hurt one, if he gave her permission. Ash couldn’t imagine it. And with her strength, it might be easy to make a mistake and hit too hard.
So she couldn’t make a mistake. She had to be careful.
“All right,” she agreed on a deep breath. “I’m ready. What are we doing first?”
“Just avoiding me. It’ll be easy for you—too easy, actually. But if you practice with someone slower, it’ll still be more natural for you to react quickly if it’s a demon or a Guardian.”
Building up her reflexes. “Okay. I’m ready then. Go for it.”
“Okay.”
But he didn’t throw a punch. He looked at her over his fists. His mouth firmed.
Silence hung in the air for a moment.
Then he whipped around, shoving his hands through his hair. “Jesus!”
“What?”
“Even knowing what you are, that you can cross the room in a blink . . .” He shook his head, turned back, raised his fists again. Still, he hesitated.
She supposed he wasn’t used to punching women. She liked him for that. “Are you going to dick around like this when you’re up against Madelyn?”
His eyes narrowed. “No. I do wish you could shape-shift, though.”
“To look like her? No, thanks. You’d probably lose control and kill me.”
“Hardly.” He smiled a little. “All right. Are you ready now?”
Ash didn’t point out that she hadn’t been the one delaying. She only nodded.
His fist snapped toward her face. Oh my God, so fast. Her heart leapt . . . and his fist all but stopped. So he was pulling back anyway, throwing a little practice punch. It moved toward her at only a fraction of an inch every second or two—and okay, that was ridiculous. A baby could avoid that. Hell, a baby would be an old man before it hit him.
She frowned at Nicholas, wondering if he was just joking with her now. But no, he stared at her, his eyes and expression almost frozen. And she couldn’t hear his heartbeat. She couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. What the hell?
Her mouth dropped open as she realized: It wasn’t that they had no heartbeats. They were between heartbeats. Either time had frozen . . . or her perception of it had really, really sped up.
Incredible. How long did it take to throw a punch? A second? Yet his fist had only traveled three-quarters of the distance between them. She could have run around the room several times before it would touch her. Maybe outside to the tree line and back. Was the clock frozen, too? She glanced at it. The second hand didn’t move. Maybe next time, she’d try to time everything.
Unless her perception was stuck this way now? Oh, God, she hoped not. Maybe it had just been an involuntary reaction, like a spurt of adrenaline into her system. A reflex, kicked into gear by instinct. If so, how long would it last? Would Nicholas be stuck like this for what felt like forever, or would Holy shit he was going to hit—
His fist smashed into her mouth. Ash’s head snapped back, and she staggered into the table. Pain shot through her lips, her teeth. Blood spilled over her tongue.
Gross. And, ow.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” His heart pounding—and her perception obviously back to normal now—Nicholas reached for her, cupping her jaw in both hands and raising her face to his. Horror and shock whitened his face. “Jesus. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, but the blood she could feel spilling from her split lip must not have convinced him.
“Ah, fuck. Goddammit. Come here into the light.” Though his voice was rough, his fingers were gentle as he touched her lip, her teeth. “Why the hell didn’t you move?”
Hot anger leaked through his shields. Not at her, though, she realized. Anger at himself. Guilt was mixed in with it.
“I meant to get out of the way, but I ran out of time.” She ran her tongue along her teeth, didn’t feel any broken edges. “Is my lip bad?”
“No. No, it’s already healed. You just need to wash it.” His gaze lifted from her mouth, but he didn’t let her go. Still cupping her jaw in both hands, he said, “Don’t do that again.”
“It didn’t hurt much,” she said. “Either that or I can take more pain that I realized. And I didn’t know how quickly a cut would heal. Now I do. It’s better to know both of those things.”
“Don’t do it again.”
She hadn’t meant to this time. But maybe she should have. “I should have made it part of my plot: how to make Nicholas St. Croix feel bad.”
His fingers tightened. That familiar flatness moved across his expression, the coldness into his eyes, as if to say that No, Nicholas St. Croix didn’t give a shit whether he hit a demon. But he couldn’t say that, because they both knew he did.
“Just don’t do it again.”
And now he
wasn’t talking about forgetting to move, she knew. He didn’t want her to do anything that might reveal how much he cared.
She nodded.
He let her go, moving back to the center of the room. “What do you mean, you ran out of time?”
“My perception changed, all of a sudden. I was watching your fist come at me, and it was like in slow motion. It was strange. So I was looking around, seeing what else appeared different, trying to figure it out . . . and I didn’t look back in time to miss your fist.”
He closed his eyes. Stopping himself from laughing—and it had sounded pretty ridiculous. Which made her believe that he’d stopped himself from laughing only because he didn’t want her to feel ridiculous, as if he were laughing at her. He need not have bothered. Embarrassment apparently hadn’t taken root among her other emotions yet.
Still, it was nice.
“So . . .” He cleared his throat. “You sped up. Did you do it on purpose?”
“No. It just happened after you threw the punch. Like a reflex.”
“Did it happen when the demon attacked you?”
Had it? “I don’t know. How much time passed from the moment he grabbed me by the car to when he stopped at the fence?”
“Less than a second.” A rough note entered his voice.
“It felt like forever. I tried to hit him about thirty times along the way. So maybe the reflex did kick in.”
“I don’t think it’s a reflex for the others. They just speed up when they want to. Can you move fast on purpose?”
“Faster than anyone I know.”
“I’ve seen that,” he agreed. “But that’s the problem: I’ve seen it. What about now? Bring to me a book from the shelf there.”
He pointed across the room. Ash raced for it, slapped it into his hand.
“See? That was only a second.”
“And I saw you. I couldn’t see the other demon move, or I just saw a blur at other times. You weren’t a blur.”
Ash narrowed her eyes at him. “I can be a blur. I’m a demon.”
“Then take the book from me,” he challenged.
Too easy. Wondering if it was some kind of trap, she snatched her hand out. He jerked the book away from beneath her fingers.
His grin irritated her. “Lucky timing,” she said.
“Then prove it. Grab it.”
Her hand shot out. He moved the book just in time. Her nails scraped over the cover.
She felt the points of her fangs digging into the inside of her bottom lip. “So you’ve got good reflexes,” she hissed.
“Ha! Look at you. Can’t take it from me, demon.”
Fuck that. Determined, she reached for it again. He jerked it back . . . and slowed. She snatched the book before he’d moved it an inch.
And for good measure, raced across the room.
Nicholas blinked, looking at the spot she’d been standing. He looked down at his hand, then found her standing by the stove. “Better,” he said. “Now come back here, and we’ll try a few jabs again. Don’t you let me hit you. Either move or block every one.”
She did—blocking most of them, just for an excuse to touch him, to catch his fist against her palm and slide her fingers against the backs of his. In the space of a half hour, using that different perception became almost natural. It wasn’t so much that everything slowed, she realized; she just reacted more quickly. So quickly that it didn’t matter when he changed up the hits he threw, faster and faster . . . getting his own workout, she realized. Well, this had worked out well for both of—
He spun and dropped, sweeping her legs with a kick. Ash shrieked and crashed to the floor onto her stomach. Prepared, Nicholas grabbed her wrists, pinned them over her head. His body came hard over hers, smashing her flat.
“No more permission,” he rasped in her ear. Winded from the workout, probably boiling in that sweater, his chest worked like a bellows against her shoulders. “The Rules are in effect again. But try to get out, anyway.”
And what if she didn’t want to? He lay on top of her, and she could feel each hard muscle through her clothes.
Please let them disappear, she prayed. And his, too.
Apparently, God wasn’t listening. Her clothes remained on.
Nicholas’s grip relaxed slightly. “Ash? Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she said, and realized too late that she shouldn’t have replied. If he was determined to make her get out of this despite the Rules, pretending to be hurt would have done it. And it would have been pretty evil, too.
Next time, she thought, and then couldn’t think at all when he shifted his weight slightly, lifting off her torso and trapping her thighs with his legs. As if he’d suddenly forgotten that she didn’t need to breathe—or recognized a weak spot in his hold.
But she could have told him that there were no weak spots. Not a single inch of hard flesh against hers felt weak at all.
“Ash?”
“I’m thinking.”
About Nicholas sliding her jeans down. About his thighs slipping between hers and pushing them wide. About him slamming forward, taking possession, filling her slick flesh with explosive pressure and heat.
She closed her eyes. Oh, God. She tried to open her legs, let his weight settle in between—but she couldn’t. Her thighs pressed against his and if she moved him against his will, without permission, the Guardians would come and kill her.
Frustration bit, sharp and deep. Though she was strong, she couldn’t move her hands. Though she was strong, she couldn’t lift him off her. Though she was strong, she was trapped here, because she couldn’t throw him off and she couldn’t touch him even though he could do any damn thing he pleased . . . even not touch her when she so desperately, desperately wanted it.
Fuck this. And she knew exactly how to make him let go.
She opened her eyes, and crimson light shined through the blond hairs curtained over her face, a glow against the wooden floor. “I want to have sex now.”
Nicholas stiffened above her. His grip on her wrists tightened.
“I don’t have sex with demons.”
She knew. But suddenly, she also realized why she couldn’t feel him everywhere. He’d shifted his weight, adjusted his legs, braced his knees. Why had he lifted part of his weight off her? She didn’t need to breathe. But he liked to conceal information.
“But you want to. Your cock’s as hard as steel right now, because you were up against me, and you liked it. And you started thinking about fucking me.”
Only a guess, but the right one. He released her hands, let her up. Before she’d even gotten her feet under her, he’d stalked across the room. Putting distance between them.
And it had worked. Her breath came out as a sudden laugh.
He turned at the sound—and God yes, she’d been right about his erection, too. Confined behind denim, his penis might not have been monstrous, but that thick bulge looked exactly the right size to her.
She glanced up. Nicholas was staring at her in surprise, but also a reluctant admiration.
“So that was—”
“A plot, yes.”
And now there was something else sweeping across his expression. Disappointment?
“But I do want to have sex,” she added.
“Demon,” he said, before joining her in the middle of the room again. “That wouldn’t have worked against one. They wouldn’t have felt anything.”
“I think you’re wrong about that.” Because she sure as hell felt something. Her nipples hadn’t just spontaneously hardened and she wasn’t wet through to her core for no reason at all.
“Try it on a demon,” he offered. “We’ll see who’s right, and who is dead. Demons can make their dicks hard, too, you understand? But they don’t want it. And teasing them won’t scare them off.”
Ash didn’t want a demon, anyway. “All right. Accepted. It won’t work against anyone but you.”
His lips thinned, but at least he didn’t lie and say it wouldn’t work on
him, either. He turned and walked away. To put space between them again? But no, just to shake off the frustration. By the time he circled the room, he had his serious face back on.
“All right,” he said. “You weren’t ready for me to drop. So we’ll do the sweeps again, and this time you avoid having your feet knocked out from under you.”
Avoid it? Maybe not if he got on top of her again. “And the Rules?”
“Same as before. No injuries.”
Well. She could just turn it around, then.
Ash dropped, sweeping her leg around just as she’d seen him do. He went down, hard—but no injuries, because she caught him, cushioned his fall with a hand behind the back of his head.
Before he could react, before his heart pumped another beat, she pinned his wrists, straddled his stomach. She lowered her face to his, and was looking into his eyes when she saw him realize what she’d done.
“Goddammit. That was . . .” His gaze fell, fixed on her lips. His throat worked as he swallowed. “Nicely executed. Good job.”
“Thank you.” Ash grinned, sliding her fingers down to grip his hands. She easily hauled him to his feet again. “Do you want to practice avoiding the superfast demon again?”
She did. This had become her only way of gaining permission to touch him. If he wanted to, she’d practice this all night and day.
Nicholas’s jaw clenched, and she watched the struggle that played through him. He did want to. He didn’t want to. But she knew which would eventually win, because only one would leave him better prepared to face Madelyn.
Finally, he nodded. “Yes.”
But his answer didn’t please her quite as much as Ash thought it would have. Maybe because Yes wasn’t enough. Because although it was what she wanted him to say . . . she wanted him to say it because he enjoyed her touching him, too.
So maybe she was beginning to feel a little frustration, after all.
CHAPTER 12
Lying on his side, Nicholas half opened his eyes to a dark room. Sleep still heavy on him, he almost fell into it again before the noise that must have woken him came again: the opening of the stove, the low thud of wood being tossed in.
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