by Elle James
I crossed my arms over my breasts, wishing I hadn’t stripped so quickly upon entering my room. “No, I don’t like.” My mother had told me, and I had learned to believe her, that I was a lousy liar. This time was no different.
Blaise slid a finger along the curve of my calf and over my thigh.
I jerked the leg up against me, scooting back against the headboard. “If you’re staying, you’ll have to sleep on the couch. I’m serious. You distract me too much. And no one will take me seriously as long as we’re sleeping together.”
He tsked, that sexy smile all but melting my bones. “I thought you didn’t care what others thought of you.”
“I don’t. Except when they think I’m sleeping with a member of the team. If one can sleep with the little female cop, they all think they can sleep with me.” I frowned as deeply as I could. “I’m not a damned pinup girl or a porn star. I’m a cop, and a damned good one.”
Blaise reached for my ankle and lifted my foot, massaging the inside arch with his thumb. “No one can question your ability and determination. You’ve proven yourself time and again. Tonight was a great example. What you did in that warehouse was beyond amazing.”
I nodded, my brows pinching. “Too amazing, if you ask me.” Almost as remarkable as it was to have my foot massaged by a very sexy demon. My fingers wrapped around the amulet. “Was the amulet responsible for opening those locked doors?”
“Could be. And probably flinging me against the wall.” Blaise rubbed his elbow, his lips twisting. “I’ve seen similar amulets.”
“You have?” I leaned forward. Mistake. I could smell his skin, the light scent of leather and soap and the musk of lust. My insides sizzled, my pussy creaming. Damn. I’d sworn off fucking the demon and had only lasted a couple of freakin’ hours before my body turned traitor on me.
“The amulet is only as good as the innate power of the wearer. It can amplify, not create.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have any powers other than a super sensitive sniffer.”
“You underestimate you abilities, my dear.” He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm. “Are you sure you’re not a demon?”
I laughed. “You’d think I’d know something important like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Your powers could be latent. Most demons know who they are and start flexing their demon skills long before puberty. When their hormones kick in, their powers surge. They are taught to recognize and understand their powers in order to use them properly.”
“Are you insinuating that I might be a demon?” I snorted. “Get real. I’m as plain as apple pie and hot dogs. My mother never crawled inside anyone’s head as far as I know or threw a fireball or whatever demons do.” I pushed off the bed, heading for the shower, growing unease settling in my gut. I stripped out of my panties and bra, uncaring if Blaise watched. Hell, he’d seen everything in minute detail over the past couple weeks we’d been partners on the PIT crew and in bed.
Blaise followed me, leaning against the bathroom doorframe, his gaze slipping across my skin like a warm hand.
I ignored the tightening in my loins, and stepped into the shower.
Warm water sluiced over my head and breasts.
The damned demon couldn’t let it go. He pulled the curtain back. Water sprayed out on the tile floor. “What about your father? You didn’t even know him. You could be a halfling.”
Chapter Four
I stood still, water pounding against my skin not nearly as hard as my heart pounded. “Leave my father out of this. I’m not a halfling. You’re wrong.”
“But he could have been a demon.”
Blood thundered in my ears and I raised my hands to cover them. “I don’t want to talk about that man. He deserted us when we needed him most. Or wait.” I flung my hands wide. “Is that what demons do? Abandon the people they’re supposed to love?” Tears welled in my eyes and I blinked them back. “Is that what you’ll do?”
“Katya, demons, like humans, are not all the same.” He stepped into the shower, fully clothed and lifted my hand to his lips, water soaking his shirt and trousers.
No matter how badly I didn’t want it to happen, I couldn’t stop the tears from coming, mixing with the shower’s spray. “Damn it! Damn it all to hell! I swore I’d never cry again and look at me.” I pulled loose from his grip, backed against the wall and slid down the tile, wrapping my arms around my knees. “I’m tougher than this. I don’t fall apart. What’s wrong with me? I’ve never been so emotional.”
“Baby, you’ve held it together for a very long time.” Blaise grabbed my hands and tugged me to my feet and into his arms. He leaned back, fingering the amulet around my neck. “I think this amulet is enhancing more than power. It’s amplifying your feelings.”
As soon as he said the words, I could feel the truth in the way my body melted against his damp clothes. Every nerve, every ounce of blood moving through my system jittered, my hands longing to touch his skin, the apex of my thighs burning, my channel aching for him to fill me.
With shaking hands, I ripped at the buttons on his shirt, tearing them loose from their holes, pushing the material back over his shoulders and down his back. I unbuckled his belt, and slipped the button loose on his trousers, sliding the zipper down with more desperation than care.
Finally his cock sprang free into the palm of my hand and I caressed its hard, smooth length. Each stroke only stoked the fires burning deep inside me. I had to have him. Caution, thought and reason all flew out the window.
His hands caressed my ass and he lifted me, wrapping my legs around his waist. Positioned over his throbbing cock, I edged downward, eager to have him inside, stroking, pumping and thrusting deeply.
“Not yet.” He kissed my neck and pulled his wallet from his soaked back pocket, handing it to me. “Behind my credit card.”
I fumbled, my mind awash in a haze of lust, my fingers moving jerkily until they curled around a foil packet.
“Even demons can get a woman pregnant without contraception.” His wickedly sexy smile sent shivers of anticipation skittering across my breasts.
My clumsy fingers tore at the foil and I growled my annoyance.
Blaise leaned me away from him so that I could slip the condom over his length. I rolled the rubber down to the base.
Once cloaked, he shoved my back against the cool tile and thrust into me.
I moaned, my pussy clenching as his girth stretched me so deliciously tight.
He moved in and out, setting the pace.
My body tensed, my legs tightening around him, every cell buzzing with the impact of everything he was doing to me. I moved to meet his every thrust, to absorb as much of him as my body could take. When he thrust one last time, I catapulted over the edge, energy pulsing from every pore of my being. A rush of wind blasted through the room as if a door had opened in a hurricane, ripping the curtain off the rod and sending the shower’s spray across the tiny bathroom.
When I could think again, I stared around the room at the damage. “What the hell just happened?”
“Baby, you got more than you bargained for with that amulet.” Blaise lifted me off him and set my feet on the floor of the tub. He stripped out of his shoes and trousers and grabbed the bottle of my favorite body wash and squirted a healthy dose into his palm. “Let’s work on controlling the energy, channeling it into something more positive than destroying your apartment.” He smoothed the soap across my breasts, w
orking the liquid into a bubbly lather, his hands swirling around my nipples.
For the first time in my life, I was glad I was female. Not just a cop with tits, but a real, feminine woman, with soft and sensitive skin.
Warm, coarse fingers smoothed over every inch of my body, washing me then rinsing the suds away. I closed my eyes, to the unbearable heat radiating out of me, forcing myself to calm in the eye of the storm of longing, threatening to overwhelm me. A power from within pushed to get out, the same flash of energy that had blown the curtain away.
I fought to control, to direct the force inward and contain its effects.
“That’s better,” Blaise murmured, his hand sliding down my belly toward the core of my being that pulsed and throbbed, eager for more.
Instead of burying his fingers in my pussy, Blaise reached around me and turned off the water, swung me up into his arms and set my feet on the bath mat. Grabbing a towel from a shelf, he went to work drying my body.
“I can dry myself, you know.” I couldn’t keep my hands off him, my fingers sliding across his naked chest, edging downward toward the dark, crinkly hairs at the base of his cock.
The demon’s skin stretched taut over solid muscle.
“Are all demons built like weight lifters?” I grasped his cock in my hand, my breath catching, my control slipping.
A waft of a breeze lifted my hair and spun it around my face.
Blaise leaned close, his lips grazing my earlobe. “Control, my sweet.”
His breath on my skin fanned the flames inside.
“And no. Only demons who work out are built like weight lifters.”
The heat burning my insides sent blood racing through my body, and my breathing grew labored. I had to have him again. Soon, or I’d explode into a million horny pieces. My leg circled his, hooking around the back of his thigh. “Are you going to make love to me again? Or do I have to throw you on the ground and get the party started?”
He chuckled, the sound a bit strained. “I think the amulet is influencing your desire and mine. It’s like a drug to your system. I don’t think you would be saying what you’re saying or doing what you’re doing if you weren’t wearing it. I don’t want to take advantage of the situation.”
“A noble demon?” I snorted. “I don’t care what’s making me hot and horny. I want you. Now if you don’t want me, I’ll try to understand.” I struggled to wrap my mind around the possibility of not making love again with the demon. Another growl rose up my throat. “The hell with that. Are you or aren’t you going to make love to me?” I pushed his chest, forcing him through the doorway into my bedroom.
He let me, capturing my hand as the backs of his knees bumped against the mattress. “Think about it, Katya. Earlier, you didn’t want anything more to do with me. Now you’re ready to jump me for sex.” Blaise grasped my arms and spun me around. I tripped and fell on my back on the bed. Blaise leaned over me, pressing his legs between my thighs. “I want you more than I’ve wanted anyone...ever. Don’t temp me when you’re not in your right mind.”
“I feel like I’m in my so-called right mind for the first time in my life.” I grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him down on top of me, my lips slanting over his, my tongue pushing past his teeth to stroke.
The tension eased from his shoulders and he sighed into my mouth. He pulled back enough to stare into my eyes. “I can’t fight you.”
My brows rose and I gave him a lopsided smile. “Why are you, then?”
He pressed his cock between my legs, nudging at my entrance. “Take off the amulet and see if you still feel the same.”
My hand closed around the smooth, stone amulet, its warmth seeming to flare with my touch. Maybe me demon bodyguard knew what he was talking about. I lifted the strap over my head and dropped the amulet onto the nightstand. “Happy now?”
His eyelids drooped over deep brown eyes. “Yes.” Blaise thrust deep, filling me, driving deeper with each stroke.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, digging my heels into his buttocks, urging him closer and deeper until our bodies felt fused as one. My breathing became sporadic and hitched when the tingling started in my fingers and toes, racing inward to my core. I spread my thighs, my heels falling to the mattress, my back arching away from the comforter as I pitched over the edge. “Blaise!”
The light bulb in the lamp on my nightstand exploded, spraying glass across the sheets and floor. I didn’t care.
Blaise rose to his knees, shoved a pillow beneath my bottom and he rode me hard, pumping in and out until his final plunge, deep, hard and forceful. His body tight, he held my hips steady as his cock throbbed against the walls of my channel.
When the tension left his shoulders, he dropped to the mattress beside me, hauling me into the curve of his body, spooning me like a lover.
“You exhaust me,” he whispered into my ear.
I yawned and stretched out my arm, my skin coming into contact with the delicate shards of light bulb glass. “What just happened?”
“Sweetheart, you blew it again.” He smoothed the hair away from my temple and brushed a kiss to the spot. “Apparently, the amulet has bonded with you. As long as it’s near, it will enhance your powers.”
“I told you, I don’t have powers. It’s all in the amulet.” I turned in his arms. “I need to get rid of it before someone gets hurt.”
He nodded, touching the tip of my nose with his lips. “We will. We’ll have it placed in the Tribunal’s secure vault. Until it’s contained, it will be a target.”
“Think we should go straight there?” I yawned again, my eyelids drifting closed.
“We’ll go...later.” His arm slid around my middle and he pulled me against his chest.
The light beneath my eyelids and the sounds of the city faded as I drifted off to sleep. Thoughts of the amulet and its former owner spun around my head.
Nicolae was after the amulet. Once it was in the protective vault, he’d no longer have use of me. I wouldn’t need Blaise to play bodyguard. I could banish my sexy, resident demon and get back to serious cop work and repairing my reputation among the PIT crew.
* * *
“Katya, wake up!” Blaise shook me.
My eyes popped open and I struggled to remember where I was. The room was dark, the only light from the streets and signs outside, shining through the thin curtain over my bedroom window. I sat up, pushing a mass of hair back off my face. “What’s wrong?” I sniffed. “Smells like dog.”
“Exactly.” He stood beside the bed, shoving his feet into his damp trousers, tossing his shirt over his shoulders and his leather jacket over it. “Get dressed. I believe we’re about to have company.” He tossed my jeans and a T-shirt in my direction and hurried toward the window overlooking my fire escape. “Shit. There’s a dozen or more werewolves gathering on the street below.
I leaped from the bed and dressed in the jeans and shirt and shoved my feet into my boots. “What should we do?”
“We can’t go down the stairs or the fire escape. They’ll be watching them.” Blaise eased the curtain to the side, careful not to give the crowd below any indication we were on to them. He moved the curtain slowly back in place. “We go up.” The demon headed for the door to my apartment.
I grabbed the amulet from my nightstand and slipped it over my head, running to catch up with my bodyguard. “We’re trapped.”
“We’ll go up to another apartment and borrow their fire escape and get down that way.
”
“If there are so many of them, how will we escape notice?”
“We won’t, but if we lead them on a chase, we can divide them and only have to face a few, rather than the whole pack.”
I nodded. “Why don’t we call for backup?”
“By the time they get here, we’d be dead, Nicolae would have the amulet and all hell would break loose.”
“Good point.”
Blaise eased the door open and peered out into the hallway. “We’ll go for the stairwell. Be quiet in case that’s the way they’re coming up.”
“Got it.”
The demon led the way, running lightly down the tiled hallway, the sound of his shoes muffled by carpet.
I held my breath and followed, my ears straining for any indication the werewolves were near. I could smell them as much as I had when they were on the street and I was on the third floor of the building.
The creak of rusty metal hinges cut through the silence.
Coming to a halt, I cringed and opened my ears, expecting to hear a shout.
Instead I heard footsteps on the stairwell, heading up.
“Hurry,” Blaise whispered, waving me forward.
I entered the stairwell and started up, taking the steps two at a time, trying to remember to breathe as I passed the fourth floor and fifth. When I reached the fifth floor landing, I pushed the door open and stepped through.
Blaise bumped into me, inching the stairwell door closed behind us. “Why this floor?”
“I know someone who lives on this floor. He’ll let us into his apartment. As long as he’s home. What time is it?”
“After seven.”
“Holy hell. We were supposed to go back to the station at five for the debrief on Nicolae’s capture and escape.”
“I’m not worried about being late. Right now I’m more worried about being killed. Which apartment?”
