Claimed by the Demon (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  And he didn’t ask her to. That alone told her too much.

  So did the tension beneath her hand, the flex and play of muscle that sometimes trembled with an internal effort she couldn’t even begin to measure.

  “I’d stopped for gas,” Mac said. Finally telling her. He couldn’t be comfortable, his arms twisted to the side like that. The pillow she’d just tucked under his head seemed like a small thing. He didn’t even seem to notice it, eyes focused on some point on the wall. “Indiana, I think. I’m not sure. Things got confusing—” Under her hand, muscle went rock-hard; his eyes went dark and his jaw tight and his whole body arched ever so slightly.

  He forced his next words, fighting through it—fighting whatever had tried and come so close to possessing him. “It was late...one of those pitch-black nights. And there was this little bar next door, had food.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even see it coming. Two guys in a scuffle, one of them had a knife and this...meanness...”

  He looked directly at her then and shrugged, as best he could. “I thought the other guy needed some help.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Because that’s what you do, right?”

  The words didn’t quite seem to strike home for him; he frowned but let it go. “The guy with the knife knew how to use it. But he was...sick. Or high. Or something.”

  She wondered if he was thinking the same thing that crossed her mind. Or possessed. She only said, “Or something.”

  “He cut me before I even knew how far gone he was. And I—” Mac frowned, lost in that memory...searching it. “I must have gotten the knife away from him. I’m not sure. Just...suddenly it was three days later, and I wasn’t even in the same state. I didn’t have any of those cuts, and there was this...blade.” He took a deep breath. “I know more about it now. It’s...in my head. I didn’t know it thinks of itself as a demon blade, but now I do. I think...maybe it has a name, but it won’t tell me. I learned pretty damned fast that it would patch me up when things went bad. There’s a price for that, of course. And I learned what it wants.”

  She spoke softly, as if she might somehow avoid disturbing that blade. “That’s how you find the trouble spots. It tells you.”

  He nodded, finding her gaze again. “It feeds. It wants the glory the bullies feel and the horror from the victims. For a while, I thought it was me—wanting those things, feeding on those things. I thought I’d gone mad. For a while, I...” Maybe, he wanted to look away from her. His gaze flickered, then solidified. “I didn’t try very hard to survive the encounters it drew me to.”

  “Which,” she said, forcing her voice to remain steady in her throat and her hand to remain steady on his leg, “is how you know all about the price it exacts for patching you up.” She shook her head. “That explains what I found last night when I cleaned you up.” She said it so casually—and then suddenly realized the implications of that moment, the liberties she’d taken to touch and care. A flash of memory, gleaming flesh and small tattoo, the exact pattern of hair across chest and down defined muscle, denim waistband resting loosely over hip and—

  She flushed and made herself continue. “How some of the bruises were both new and old.”

  He was watching her. Closely. Really closely.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Did that blade just tattle on me?” And then she couldn’t believe it when her heart beat a little faster because there in the middle of this story of his, he gave her that little half-lift grin at the corner of that mouth made for it.

  It didn’t last. Maybe that damned evil-possessed impossibility of a knife felt his distraction. Maybe it knew more than she ever expected. But it got him, all the same. He gave a sharp, sudden grunt, twisting against it—jerking his wrists mercilessly in the handcuffs, his expression turning dark and wild—and this time the blade didn’t let him go.

  Gwen instantly pushed herself away to safety, out of reach but not untouched. Not to see his wrists stream blood, not to see his mind and body so ill-used.

  Her hand throbbed; she looked down to realize she’d again taken hold of the pendant. And looked back again at Mac, still raging against captivity, still less than sane.

  I think I know, he’d said to her. How she’d brought him back at the warehouse. And he’d been looking at her chest, which she’d taken to mean he was looking at her chest, but now she glanced down and saw for the first time what he’d seen.

  The clean spot.

  And she remembered gripping the thing outside the warehouse, and she remembered her father’s reaction to it—how he’d coveted it, how he’d feared it...how he’d given it to her. Not as a gift, but because he didn’t have the strength to hold it—and he didn’t have the strength to use it.

  Amazing thing, adult hindsight. And hurtful. The thing she’d found comfort in all these years, and he had only just been using her, after all. Right before he’d tried to kill her.

  Her father, with a knife. Her father, a changed man. Her father, dead in mysterious circumstances.

  Demon blade.

  She wondered when Mac had figured it out.

  She pulled the pendant over her head, staring at the heavy, blunt metal features, trying to understand—

  He made an animal noise, one that spoke of rage and revenge and death and no respect at all for the human body breaking under the strain—chest heaving, sweat glimmering at his temples, face gone pale...blood soaking into the carpet.

  Gwen muttered self-imprecation. Who needed understanding? Just do it.

  She hesitated a moment, on the edge of it.

  And then, when what drove Mac allowed a lull in the fury, a chance for the body to breathe and recover, she threw herself at him. On him. The pendant in one hand, the other yanking open the unbuttoned placket of his shirt—thrusting the pendant upon him and hoping so very damned hard that it was the right thing to do and then not able to think much about anything at all as his face blazed fury and his body bucked wildly beneath her.

  He collapsed, trapping one foot under his thigh and throwing her completely off balance over him. Chest heaving, eyes closed, face turned from hers. She wasn’t even sure he was still conscious—not until she saw the moisture at the corner of his eye. Not sweat, but the involuntary tears of a body driven beyond what it could endure.

  She still had one hand free. She thumbed the dampness away. “There,” she said. “Shh. We’ll figure this out.” But sudden fear gripped her when he didn’t respond. Had she been too slow, too late? “Hey,” she said, and the uncertainty trickled in. “We will. We have to. I’m part of this now, I can see that—”

  His eyes flickered open, lashes dark and wet. Fully sane. Fully clear. “Gwen,” he said, his voice abused and ragged. “It’s not... It just...” He shook his head. “It’s clear. My head is clear. It’s just me. Whatever you’re doing...”

  “The pendant,” she murmured, certain of it.

  “I’m free, do you get that? My feelings are just...” That was wonder in his eyes, she was sure of it. “They’re just mine.” He lifted one hand, a foreshortened motion—one that had, she was also suddenly certain, been intended for a caress.

  She felt the heat of him beneath her then—damp with sweat, soaking his own shirt, radiating through his jeans. And realized, too, the intimacy of how they twined together, her leg still trapped and her hands on his body. The awareness of it flushed through her, and then she winced, realizing he’d know that—

  Except he didn’t seem to. Still caught up in the wonder of freedom, still catching his breath. She said, “You didn’t feel that, did you?”

  Puzzlement crossed his features, as much of a question as anything.

  “Me,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “I feel you, all right.”

  She made an impatient gesture with her free hand, indicating the tangle of their bodies; the other still pressed the pendant to his skin. “Not this. That voice inside. Tattling.”

  He shook his head. “No tattling. Unless you want to tattle on your
self.”

  She looked down at them, at their intersecting bodies, and then back to him. “I’ll just let you guess.”

  He laughed, a mere sharp huff of air. “Guessing. Now there’s a concept.” But his movement had jostled the cuffs, and a wince flickered over his face.

  Gwen could have slapped herself. She pried her foot free—no matter that it had been very pleasantly cradled just where his thigh met his butt—and pushed herself up, pressing the pendant down in emphasis before she gingerly lifted her hand. “Okay? That do you?”

  She hadn’t expected his reaction to be moderately cross. “Hell. Now everything sounds like an innuendo.”

  “Take it how you like,” she said, realizing suddenly that she meant it. So much emotional intimacy in this past day, beyond what any two strangers could expect of one another and twining with the fleeting moments of mutual want and response and no little amount of aching.

  No coincidence that they were here together, this place, this time. No doubt what they’d so suddenly come to mean to one another—or the trust they’d each earned. The only question was how long it would all last.

  Gwen found herself not caring.

  What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

  And she shoulda been in Vegas.

  “Stay there,” she said. “I’ll get a washcloth for us, and we’ll see what we can figure out about those cuffs. I happen to have the key.”

  Chapter 10

  “I told you to stay there.”

  Gwen’s voice came insistent in his ear, sounding both irritated and worried. Her hands worked gently at his arm—patting, wrapping. The sound of ripping tape. The snatch of something at the hair on his forearm.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “But that’s not going to happen again.”

  He remembered it then. The blade, whispering so subtly in his mind, barely filtering through the effect of the pendant. Urging him, nudging him...pushing him to remove the pendant.

  “Ow,” he said, not opening his eyes.

  “Baby,” she told him. “You fainted.”

  “Passed. Out.” An important distinction there.

  A featherlight tight brushed across his brow; he belatedly recognized lips and wished for them back when they’d gone. “Go to sleep,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

  He did, for the moment, believe her.

  * * *

  Gwen’s voice came tired in his ear—something reassuring, which was all that mattered for the moment. Her hands moved gently over his skin—damp cloth, healing touch. His arms throbbed; his body ached.

  “Just patching you up again,” she said. “Please excuse me if I don’t even try to resist enjoying it. The touching part, anyway. Not the bandaging part.”

  “Ow,” he said.

  “Baby,” she told him. “You had already fainted.”

  “Sleeping.” Definitely a distinction to make.

  Her fingers trailed down his side, unexpectedly proprietary. “Go back to sleep,” she said, as if she was actually the boss of him. “You’re safe for now.”

  He did, for the moment, believe her.

  * * *

  Something snored in Mac’s ear.

  A quiet, girly snore, there and gone again.

  Mac opened his eyes. Saw, to his relief, not the filthy carpet in the nighttime darkness, but instead the more distant ceiling.

  In the dark. The almost complete darkness, obscuring every fine detail—just as it should but as he barely remembered it ever doing. Before the blade.

  The pieces fell into place. He was on the floor of their hotel room, on his back—one hand still cuffed to the bed, his head on a pillow, his shirt gone, a blanket soft against his skin.

  His free arm, pretty much asleep, curved around Gwen as she used his shoulder for a pillow and tickled the side of his face with her magnificent hair. She draped over him, her leg resting over his, her arm heavy on his chest, her hand resting directly over the faintly raised tattoo over his heart.

  Her breath tickled his skin.

  His arms still throbbed; his body still ached. The blade hadn’t worked on it, not any of it. A glance at his cuffed arm showed him the pendant, duct-taped to his lower arm above the bandaging there. Hot pink even in the darkness. Yay?

  Slow as he was, he could put it together. She’d gone out, gotten supplies, cleaned him up again—proprietary hands—and trusted him just enough to uncuff one arm. Leaving him to heal the old-fashioned way—slowly. Without interference. Without any price to pay.

  I’ll pay it sooner or later.

  Of that much he was sure. As soon as he lost contact with the pendant—or it failed on its own—the blade would come roaring back, exacting its price for these moments of freedom.

  Freedom.

  His mind, his own. His thoughts, his own. His feelings...

  His own.

  His body...

  That, he thought, currently belonged to Gwen.

  “Mmm,” she said, barely waking, rubbing her cheek against his bare skin.

  Oh, hell yeah. All Gwen’s.

  He found himself grinning.

  She lifted her head; he thought he discerned a frown. A reach, a stretch, a soft grunt, all during which she managed to push herself quite firmly against him, and a light clicked on. Mac made a sound of protest, squinting away, but figured it out quickly enough—the inadequate little dresser lamp, relocated here to the floor.

  She said, “Was that a grin?”

  He said, “Come here,” and trapped her leg beneath his own.

  “Me?” she asked, waking fast, brow lifted—some sarcasm there. Challenging him.

  He thought back over it—the moment in front of the hotel, the night of battle and illness, the day crammed with such intensities of vulnerability and trust that might not come in a decade of partnership. “Let me,” he said, pulling her close with that one numbed arm, abruptly enough so she lost all her breath in a short laugh, “be perfectly clear.”

  She let herself fall on top of him—hesitating there for a moment, pressing against him from top to bottom and tangled along the way. When her smile came again, it was slow. “Yeah,” she said, moving subtly against him—not so subtle that it didn’t inspire an instant catch of his breath, a tremble of return thrust. “This was pretty much there from the start, wasn’t it?”

  Probably he was supposed to say words. He didn’t have them. She took his face in her hands—thumbs stroking the stubble of the past day, mouth coming down on his, hair tumbling free to surround them. Her leg twined between his thighs, her shirt crept up to give him soft skin, her breasts pressed against his chest with nipples sprung hard. One hand left his face to creep down his chest, lying flat against his stomach and reaching lower.

  And all of it, all of it, was his to feel. His...and hers. The swell of sensation, the rush of heat. The groan in his throat born of wanting, the wicked hard thump of his heart pounding in his chest and ears. Gwen’s hand reached his belt buckle. He sucked his stomach away, making it easy.

  She froze, however briefly, and then tipped her head back and laughed.

  “Ha ha?” he said, breathless and bemused.

  “Ha,” she said. “Do you see us? Rolling around on the floor a day after we first saw each other, one of us handcuffed to the bed and the other of us about to go down his pants?”

  “It works for me,” he said and then cursed softly as her hand slipped in under the belt. “It...totally...uh...”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It works for me, too.”

  And a moment later, he managed to say, more or less, “Cuffs?”

  She left his zipper alone to push back her hair and regard him with regrettably serious eyes. “Ditch the knife-sword thing?”

  Two syllables. He could do it. “Pocket.”

  “Oh!” she said. “Pocket diving!” And went for it.

  He cursed, and crushed her close, and forgot he was supposed to be kissing her—straining against the cuff, straining against her hand, straining against
sanity in the very best kind of way.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That is an impressive...sword.”

  “Cuffs, dammit!”

  “Must be the other pocket.”

  It was, in fact. By the time she found the blade, working it free and withdrawing it with two very cautious fingers, he’d used his one free arm to roll her on top of him and start in on her neck—tender, silky skin, warm beneath her hair, smelling of her shampoo, tasting faintly of salt and ahh, there, that little earlobe with its three little gold hoops—

  She stiffened, making a soft noise in her throat.

  “Uh-huh,” he murmured, right into her ear, and nibbled. His hand worked its way down her back, found her waistband, slipped under to cup soft, warm flesh.

  “Oh,” she breathed and shifted to offer better access, trembling against him just as he’d been straining moments earlier.

  He jerked her a little closer. “Cuffs.”

  “Cuffs,” she repeated blankly. “Oh! Cuffs!” And sat up, straddling him, tossing the blade across the room with vigor and moving against him so perfectly that his eyes rolled back and his hips lifted. She froze right where she was, hands at his chest, her gasp the only sound in the room. “Oh,” she said again on the next breath. “You— I—”

  Not that he could truly hear her. Not with the blood pounding through every part of him and his body straining and the heat gathering, perfectly normal just-between-two-people heat.

  “You!” She pulled off her shirt in one swift motion. No wonder those breasts had felt so perfect in every way, because there they were in that dim light and they so obviously were completely unfettered by a bra. She stood long enough to jerk off her shorts and that dim light shone golden on pale and lightly freckled skin. By then all he could do was whisper, quite hoarsely indeed, “Cuffs...”

  She’d already gotten the belt; she bent to his pants, pulling them over his hips with quick efficiency, all the quicker when he lifted to make it easier but only as far as the shoes he still wore. She was more careful with the underwear, cupping him until he growled, reaching for her—