Tempting the Dark

by Michele Hauf

  But was this man now her enemy?

  No. She wouldn’t think like that. She needed help from Savin. And possibly protection. Even though he was the one person she’d best run from, he was all she had right now.

  When finally he parked the truck and jumped out to run around the front of the hood and open her door, Jett stared out at the dark building front where he said he lived. This was the fourteenth arrondissement. Not far from where she recalled a massive cemetery sat in Gothic silence amidst the bustling city. While she and Savin had lived in the country when they were children, their parents had alternated taking them into the city on the weekends to visit the parks and museums. Memory of those times made her heart again flutter.

  Could she have back that innocence? Did she want it back? What was innocence but a foul waste of power? The darkness within her would not allow her to ruminate on the past for long. Just as well. Time to move forward.

  Now Jett had ventured into the city again. With Savin. And he didn’t suspect a thing about her, nor had he asked how she had survived for so long in Daemonia. Which was how it must remain.

  She slid her fingers against the wide hand he offered, and stepped down onto the sidewalk. Her bare feet were scraped and bruised from running across the vast smoke-ice planes where cracks in the landscape were edged like razors. Pain had become but a bother to her. Healing would come quickly. Perhaps. She must be cautious about utilizing the skills she had been taught.

  “Your feet hurt?” Savin asked when she wincingly stepped forward.

  Pain in this mortal realm felt different than when she’d been in the Place of All Demons. It was acute. And the cool air brushed her skin roughly. A shiver ensured that she had grasp of the sheen she wore. She must be cautious.

  Without another word, Savin whisked her into his arms and carried her inside the building and up four flights of stairs without a catch to his breathing. Jett clung to the front of his shirt, noticing beneath her fingers the hard, sculpted muscles. And he smelled like nothing she had smelled before. Freshly exhilarating, yet rough. It appealed so strongly she nudged her nose against his shirt and inhaled. Was this what the princess felt like when rescued by the knight? How many times had they played such a game when they were children, always alternating who got to be the rescuer and who had to lie in dismay in wait of saving?

  Now that game had become reality.

  Why she had such a silly thought startled her. She had tried not to think about the simple human life she’d lost while in Daemonia. Too dangerous.

  He set her down, yet supported her by the elbow, before a door. A door inscribed with demonic repulsion sigils. Jett knew them well. One did not live in Daemonia for so long without gaining such knowledge.

  She tentatively reached to touch one of the symbols—and flinched.

  “Keeps the nasties out,” Savin commented. “Necessary. But, uh... Hmm... You’ve just come from there. Must have some residual gunk on you that will alert the wards. Let me take them down for you.” He swept a hand over the sigils and muttered a word she recognized as a demonic language. He knew so much? “There. Now it shouldn’t tug when you cross the threshold.”

  He pushed the door open. Cool shadows invited Jett to step inside the narrow loft as easily as if she were crossing the threshold of her childhood home after returning from a day at school. No tug from the sigils, either. Whew.

  Behind her, Savin muttered a reversal to seal the wards and closed the door. That action did pull at her system, but she disguised the sudden assault with an inhale and a sigh.

  When she saw him reach for the light switch, she said, “No. Uh... I can see well in the darkness. I, uh...think it will take a while to adjust to the bright.”

  He lowered his hand. “Yeah, okay. There’s moonlight anyway.” He gestured to a line of windows that ran across the ceiling, skylights catching the moonlight. Pale illumination sifted down over furniture and the cluttered walls of a living area. “This top-floor apartment is small, but it has its perks. You thirsty?”

  She was. And suddenly so cold, even though it had been warm outside. Jett rubbed her hands up and down her arms and glanced at the front door. No sigils on this side. Yet she was literally trapped now.

  What had he asked? Right. She nodded. “Yes, water. Please.”

  He retrieved a glass from a cupboard and Jett marveled at the clear, clean water running from the tap. She’d forgotten how pure things could be. Unadulterated by the darkness she had learned to caress and rely on for comfort. When he handed it to her, she held the glass for a moment, taking it in. So normal. She remembered when her mother would hand her a glass of water. Drink it down. On to the next adventure, like chasing rabbits through the cabbage patch with Savin.

  “I’m not going to ask if you are all right,” Savin said. Deep and calm, his voice chased away her shivers. “You can’t be. You just came out of Daemonia. Maybe I should let you settle in and feel your way around the place for tonight?”

  She nodded. “Please.”

  “I bet a shower will feel great. Come this way.”

  She followed him through the living room stuffed with dark, wood-trimmed furniture and saw many guitars hung on the walls. Amongst them she noticed more demon sigils scrawled on the bare-brick walls. Some glinted at her, but none seemed to notice her presence.

  “I’ve only got one bedroom,” Savin said, “but it’s a king-size bed. Comfy. You can sleep in that tonight and I’ll take the couch.”

  She didn’t want to put him out, but—at sight of the bed, lush with a thick gray coverlet and pillows—pillows! She’d not laid her head on a pillow for so long. Jett decided to quietly accept the generous offer.

  Ahead, he flipped on the light in the bathroom and she blinked and stepped back. It was so bright.

  “Oh.” He noticed her discomfort. “It’s on a dimmer.” He turned a dial and the light softened. “You can shower and there are towels in the cabinet. I probably have a shirt you can wear to sleep in. Does that sound good?”

  She nodded again and realized she clutched the water glass to her chest. So precious, the clean water.

  Savin rubbed his bearded jaw. His deep blue eyes beckoned her to wonder if they were real. Never had she seen such blue irises. Lapis lazuli, she remembered, was one of the stones she’d collected as a child. Though to consider his eyes now, they looked sad. Concerned.

  “Tell me what you need, Jett.”

  She didn’t know what she needed, beyond the temporary safety she felt standing before Savin’s powerful build. In his home. Behind the sigils that would keep out demons. Of utmost concern was keeping any and all of those sorts away from her.

  “This is good. I will shower and sleep. I feel like I can sleep.” She rarely slept. To imagine lying for hours without nightmares? It seemed an impossibility. “You are too kind.”

  “It’s not a problem. I’ll be out on the couch if you need anything. You’re welcome to wander about, help yourself to whatever appeals in the fridge. Just...uh, do what you need to do. Make my place your own. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  Another nod was all she could offer. She didn’t want to talk about that place. Not right away. In order to move forward, she needed to put that experience behind her. To truly be free. But she was curious how Savin had escaped and how he’d come to be a man who reckoned demons out of this realm.

  “Good night,” he offered. When he brushed past her, the heat of his skin shivered over hers.

  Jett lifted her head and sucked in a breath. As she followed his exit from the room, the flutters returned to her heart and her skin flushed warmly. Was this what desire felt like?

  Chapter 4

  Savin did not sleep much that night. He lay there in the cool darkness, bare feet jutting over the end of the couch, thinking about the woman who slept in his bed not thirty feet away in the other room.

 
After watching Jett being literally sucked over the wicked lava falls in Daemonia, had he given up on her too quickly? Should he have lain there at the edge longer, waiting for her to emerge? He’d thought he had sprawled there for days. But he’d learned it was impossible to gauge time in such a place. He’d never cried so much as he had after losing his best friend. The remembrance zinged in his muscles with stinging aches and he almost thought to feel his skin burn now as it had then.

  That harrowing experience had been seared into his very bones. It had become a part of him. It was him. It was the reason why he reckoned demons. Such creatures did not belong in this realm. No human should have to experience what he had lived through.

  And now Jett was back. Alive, and seemingly sane. But how damaged must she be after living in that place for twenty years? He couldn’t imagine. The demons he reckoned to Daemonia were often vicious, wild, physically disgusting and, many times, homicidal. For a human to exist in such a place, and with those creatures, for any longer than he had survived there seemed incomprehensible.

  Yet there existed demons of all sorts, natures and aptitudes, and some were even—surprisingly—benevolent. Edamite Thrash being one such example. Savin could only pray Jett had been guided and sheltered by one possessing a modicum of kindness.

  He had so many questions to ask. Why had they gotten sucked into Daemonia? It was something he’d asked himself thousands of times over the years. Never had he gotten an answer. Might Jett have brought back that answer with her? He wanted to know, if she could tell him. But he must be careful with her, allow her time to heal and to adjust to the mortal realm.

  Hell, he was thankful she was alive.

  Hours later, the sun prodded Savin out of a snore. He rubbed a hand over his head and then his shaggy beard. He needed a shave. He tended to avoid the manscaping bullshit and suffice with a shower and comb. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

  Except now a pretty woman lay in the other room. He didn’t want to scare her. Might be time to dig out the razor.

  Rising, he tugged off the long-sleeved shirt he’d slept in and unbuttoned his jeans as he walked toward the back of the flat. There were no doors between the living room and bedroom, so he peeked inside before entering. Jett lay still and was covered by the sheet, so he quickly snuck through the room and into the bathroom, closing that door quietly behind him.

  Turning to meet his reflection in the mirror above the freestanding porcelain sink, he sneered at the gruff man who rarely smiled back. How long had his eyes been so dark and sullen? Was that the appearance of a wild man or a scruffy hermit? He really had developed a lack of concern. Kept the demons back, he figured. They feared his appearance. Heh. Not really. That was what the sigils were for. Protection and repulsion.

  He traced one of the finely tattooed sigils on the underside of his forearm. Composed of circles within circles and some directional arrows along with demonic repulsion sigils. Sayne, the ink witch who’d put the bespelled ink down, had promised him they would be effective against most demons. Of course, he could never be impervious to all because there were so many breeds of demons in existence.

  There had been one occasion when Savin met a demon who had not been repulsed by any of his sigils. That demon had initially been locked in a cage in the bowels of the Acquisitions’ headquarters. Later, Savin had ended up working with Gazariel, The Beautiful One, to help track down a vicious vampiress intent on invoking a spell that could end the world by smothering all mankind with the wings of fallen angels. That was a long story.

  Savin found his way into some serious shit at times. Like it or not.

  Hell, he liked it more than not. Kept life interesting. And, well, it was what he knew how to do.

  Flipping on the shower, he stripped down and grabbed the razor from the medicine cabinet. Time to make himself more presentable for his guest.

  * * *

  Jett sat up on the big, wide bed. She’d slept? Grabbing a pillow, she hugged it to her chest, burying her face in the rugged scent of Savin Thorne. She hadn’t smelled anything so good. Ever. The man entered her pores on a brute whisper of masculinity and crisp fall leaves, and stirred up thoughts that didn’t so much surprise her with their eroticism as rise to embolden her.

  Was she still asleep and in a dream?

  While she was in Daemonia, dreams had been elusive. Actually, nightmares might have been the only reverie possible there. When attempting to recline and rest, she’d learned to shut down her thoughts. To sleep? Surely, she had. According to Savin, it had been twenty years that she had been absent. A person couldn’t survive so long without sleeping.

  “Twenty years,” she whispered.

  Twenty years according to the mortal realm’s timekeeping.

  It was impossible to track time in Daemonia. Night and day did not exist. The seasons of gray and white and rust did. Gray crept in on mist and eeriness. White had shocked with ice and the crackly lava flowers she’d grown to enjoy despite their charcoal scent. And rust? Fire and screams.

  It was late summer here in Paris. Perhaps. She hadn’t taken careful note of the field and surroundings last night before Savin pulled up on the road beside her. But it was warm. Such comforting warmth teased at her skin. In all her time in that place, she’d not known such a gentle and undemanding temperature.

  Now she was determined to open her arms wide and embrace it all. Take it back in and flood her system with the muscle memory of a normal life. She must once again become a part of the human race.

  Was it possible? She didn’t have a clue. But she would not relent until she was proved either right or wrong.

  A clatter from inside the bathroom clued her she was not, indeed, dreaming. Savin must have finished in the shower. And before she could decide if she should leave the bedroom to give him some privacy, the door opened. Steam wafted out on a sage-scented cloud. And a god wearing but a towel emerged.

  “Oh, you’re up.” Savin hooked his hand on the towel where it was tucked at his hip.

  Jett dragged her gaze from his face—he had trimmed what had been a wild beard to something a bit more ruly—down over his wide and solid chest. That was a lot of muscle, and all of it was tight and undulated in curves and hard planes and... She had seen demons who looked like they pumped iron in a gym. They’d had muscles of blackest flesh or coldest steel. Some breeds’ physical makeup had been so terrible as to reveal bone and organs. But this man? Those muscles did not wrap about a rib cage that lacked within it a beating heart. Savin Thorne was a hot drink of the clearest, cleanest water she’d ever desired.

  “Did you sleep?” he asked.

  “Sleep?” Adjusting her gaze from the tantalizing ridges of muscle on his abdomen, Jett hugged the pillow tighter to her chest, sensing a weird increase in her breaths. Which, when checked, she realized was want. Need. Hunger for the man’s muscles pressed up against her body. “Uh, yes. Surprisingly. I think that’s the best sleep I’ve had in ages.”

  “That bed is comfortable. I, uh...”

  He glanced to the cabinet on the other side of the bed that stood up against the wall.

  “Oh, you need to get dressed. I should let you have some privacy.” She dropped the pillow and walked to the edge of the bed on her knees, but Savin beat her to the cabinet, and if she climbed off the bed, she’d step right up against him.

  “It’s cool,” he said. “I’ll just grab some things and change out in the living room. I’m sure you want to use the bathroom. You can use whatever you like. I might even have an extra toothbrush in one of the drawers. Toothpaste is in the cabinet.”

  Toothpaste. That sounded so decadent.

  “How about we take a walk down the street and find something to eat?” he offered as he claimed some clothes. “Then we can talk.”

  “Talk?” Not about Daemonia. She wasn’t ready for that. And she wasn’t sure she would ever be. “Sure. It’ll
be great to get out in the fresh air. It’s not something I’ve had...” Uh... No. She wasn’t going to detail what was now her past. “Thank you, Savin. It was weird luck that you were out there in the country to help me.”

  “It was. But also not a coincidence.” He took her in with a shadowed glance. His eyes were deep blue and his thick brows were low above them, granting him a dangerous mien. A force to, literally, be reckoned with. “That place where the rift to Daemonia opened last night is exactly where it happened.”

  Jett nodded. It. Yes, it had been. That day long ago when her life had been irrevocably altered.

  “Sorry.” He winced. “You probably don’t want to talk much about all that. We’ll take it slow. I’m hungry. Soon as you’re ready, we’ll head out. Feel free to raid my clothes. You might make a dress out of one of my shirts, you’re so tiny.”

  He strode around the corner and Jett slid off the bed to look through the clothes cabinet. She’d found a T-shirt to sleep in last night and it hung to her thighs. Her hand glided over a pair of gray sweatpants with a string tie at the waist. It should serve until she could buy clothes that fit her.

  Might Savin lend her some money to get her life established? She would need it because she had no means to a job or even knowledge of how to acquire the basics such as food, clothing and shelter.

  Had she done the right thing?

  The innate part of her that had seen to her survival in the Place of All Demons rose within her, reminding her she was not the same girl who had been taken out of this realm so long ago. She was stronger, and more vital. And she would have whatever she wanted, using her wiles if necessary. Let no man, or demon, stop her.

  “I will,” Jett whispered decisively. “And he will help me.”

  In the bathroom, she found a new toothbrush and Savin’s comb. Her hair was a tangle and hung to her waist. Also, it was no longer the color it had been while she was in Daemonia. She wasn’t sure if she missed that or not. She’d often worn it braided and back, but she no longer had consorts to aid or help her dress. Such a loss.