And me. My pulse kicked up in response. Perched on the edge of the bed, I peeled off his sweater, taking the white T-shirt underneath with it. Rohan’s body was a work of art: lithe, sculpted, and mouthwatering. I ran my hands over his biceps and around his back to between his shoulders where he had a tattoo of the word “Kshatriya,” the warrior caste, scripted in Hindi in midnight black ink. I placed my mouth to his nipple, swirling my tongue, sinking into the familiar taste of him.
Rohan sucked in a breath. He hooked his fingers into the hem of my shirt, rolling it up my sides, buttons popping as the fabric edged up, tracing slow zigzags along my skin. Snapping open my front clasp bra, his calloused hands teased my nipples, giving me a sandpapery spike of pleasure.
Dizzy, my head lolled back, my hair sweeping my shoulder blades. My lids fell half-shut, heat slid down to my stomach. I rolled the heel of my palm over his hard cock. “I love feeling you hard,” I sighed.
He nudged my skirt up to my waist. “Allow me to return in kind.” His voice rasped against my skin.
I rocked against him. “It might take a while.”
“That would be a shame.”
“Huh?”
His right hand cupped the back of my neck, his lips trailing up my throat. He sucked my ear lobe, then whispered, “The drapes are open and that apartment building is rather close. Anyone could look inside and see me thrusting into you.”
My breath hitched.
One savage tug and my underwear was flung across the room. Rohan plunged two fingers inside me.
I moaned, bracing a hand on the mattress.
“Anyone looking?” He stroked me in long, slow swipes catching my clit on each pass.
I glanced outside. There was no hiding from that window a mere foot away, putting us on display to anyone next door who cared to look. And I swear it had gotten brighter outside, all the better to spotlight us. “No,” I squeaked.
“You sure?” His voice was a dark caress.
My legs trembled. I rocked back onto the heel of one stiletto, one stocking falling down like white gossamer to my ankle.
Rohan chuckled. “You like that? The idea of someone watching us. Hidden when you’re so very exposed.” He nudged my legs wider, his fingers thrusting deeper.
“Whatever.” The word ended on a moan as my hips began to rock.
“Bent.” He sounded satisfied.
I fumbled with the buckle of his belt but he arched away from me. “Your fault.”
“As if.”
“I didn’t have exhibitionist sex before you,” I blurted out in a breathy voice, despite Cuntessa admonishing me to “admit nothing.”
“Good.” He ran his tongue again and again over the peak of my nipple before scraping his teeth across the tip. The cool air in the hotel room failed to dampen the fever consuming me.
My fingers bit into his biceps, the steel bulge of muscle barely enough to anchor me. Dear holy… “Gonna come,” I panted.
He bit my shoulder. “Not yet.” He stopped and I mewled. I fucking mewled. I was torn between smacking him for killing my momentum and thanking him for prolonging the delicious pleasure coursing through me. Again I reached for his belt and again he twisted out of reach. But he did start stroking me once more. The multitude of rings he wore added a delicious friction and everywhere his bracelet rubbed against my skin left goosebumps.
I pressed against his palm, convinced I was about to lose my mind.
His mouth was hot against my ear. “I want to fuck you up against the glass of my hotel room with all of Prague laid out before us.” He caught my finger, sucking it into his mouth, matching the tempo of his strokes. His tone was so conversational. So mild.
The surge of lust that ripped through me at that image was anything but.
He smirked at my wild shudder.
“Enough.” My blood heated at the sight of him remaining so composed, so in control, while I was coming apart. “Get on the bed,” I ordered, unbuckling my shoes and kicking them off. They fell sideways on the carpet, my stockings quickly following, topped off with the puddle of my skirt.
Rohan tilted his head to look at me standing there in my open shirt and bra, but didn’t move.
“In or out, Snowflake. I’m good either way.” Lie, but I’d finished myself off before and I’d do it again if I had to.
“You want to call the shots?” Rohan dropped to his knees before me. “Have at it.”
I could barely breathe for the emotion clogging my chest at the sight of him, this disheveled fallen angel giving me carte blanche. I suppressed my first instinct of “suck my clit.” I’d learned there were definite advantages to letting Rohan take his sweet time with all parts of my body. “Lick my thigh.”
Rohan curled a hand around the back of my knee. Head tilted, he positioned himself between my legs, the soft strands of his hair tickling my inner thighs.
I giggled until, teasingly, achingly slowly, he swiped his tongue along my skin, completing his path with a bite. That’s when I shivered. “I didn’t order that.” My voice sounded thick. My hands tightened in his hair as much for balance as punishment.
He bowed his head in atonement, pressing a kiss to the pale skin showing the faintest press of teeth marks.
“Undo your belt.”
He unbuckled it without comment, then waited, his hand on his fly, a question in his eyes.
“That too.”
The button popped open, Rohan again still. “The reins of power too much responsibility for you?” he teased when I continued to remain silent.
I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. “Considering my options. Why are you so willingly going along with this?” I didn’t trust his motives. Usually Rohan’s alphahole tendencies surfaced when I tried to direct the action.
“Because it still gets me what I want,” he said.
“What’s that?”
With a sharp jerk, he pulled his belt free from the loops. “You.”
I tackled him to the ground, tearing at his zipper. His cock sprung free. A quick sheath of latex, two hard strokes inside me, and my orgasm ripped through me. I shattered, pulled apart by the tsunami racking my body. My vision blurred, the world falling away. My head fell back as I cried out.
My cries set him off, jaw locked tight, pupils dilated, a hard shudder racking his body.
Blood pounded in my ears. If I’d had claws, I’d have unsheathed them with a snarl. I never came that fast. Never became raw desire. I’d perfected the art of keeping that side of myself in check. Until now. I didn’t want that.
Couldn’t have that.
Still laying on top of him, I seethed even as I luxuriated in the feel of him still buried inside me. Rohan was not generally a two-minute wonder. But he wasn’t freaking out that in me, he’d met the one person who challenged his precious control, was he?
He brushed aside the strands of my hair draped over us like a curtain and raised his head, moving in for a kiss.
My afterglow blew away. I rolled off of him into sitting position, pulling my shirt closed. No, he’d been in charge the entire time. Gotten exactly what he wanted and pushed me to a new edge in the process. I drew my legs in, resting my head on my bent knees, the only sounds in the room the rustling of his clothing as he dressed.
The buzz of my phone shattered the tense silence. I crawled over to the nightstand, and reached out, fumbling for it. Dr. Gelman had sent me a room number at the Bohemia International Hotel with the words, twenty minutes. Don’t be late. Brilliant. Ari’s best hope rested on an impossible time frame. “You need to go.”
Rohan didn’t answer. I didn’t take my eyes off the screen even though I was desperate to see the look on his face. See if there was longing, or regret. Or tenderness.
But what if this was just another game?
7
I shimmied back into my clothes, tossing on my long coat as I hurried down to the lobby and asked the desk clerk to call me a taxi. He replied it would probably take a good half hour and I’d
have better luck heading to Wenceslas Square, so I dashed over. Lo and behold there was one lone taxi pulling up to the curb. A well-dressed man was opening the back door for his wife. “Excuse me.” I waved at them. “Could I please have your cab?”
The man smiled at me. “I’m sorry, but–”
“Life or death,” I insisted, muscling between him and the now-open door.
“We have a meeting,” the woman informed me.
I placed a hand on my stomach, letting out a low moan. “My baby.” I used their momentary confusion to throw myself into the back seat and slam the door. “Bohemia International, please.”
The cabbie eyed me through the rear view mirror.
“Relax. I’m not going to bust out a placenta on your back seat.” Given the breakneck speed of our drive, he didn’t believe me, but he did get me there mostly on time.
I pulled out some Czech koruna from my inside coat pocket, careful not to lose my keycard and phone, and thrust it at him. “This enough?” I was too fuzzy to be certain I had the currency exchange right. He grabbed the money out of my hand at “must seize ridiculous overtipping before idiot tourist realizes mistake” speed.
The Bohemia International was about five times the size of my hotel, featuring rows of stone archways at ground level and a couple of spires for good measure. Hurrying into the lobby and through an airy inner courtyard with liberal greenery and small café tables, I grabbed a glass elevator up to room 614. I wiped the sweat off my brows with the back of my sleeve, smoothed down my hair, and knocked.
The door swung open and I was sucked through.
I plummeted downward, crashing in a heap on a cracked stone floor. Pain spiked through my left hip, stealing the air from my lungs. I rolled onto my back to get a sense of my surroundings. Either the overbooked hotel had resorted to renting out musty caverns or… Well, I wasn’t sure what the “or” could be. None of my research or training so far had made any mention of alternate dimensions. Especially a musty one encrusted with stalactites and stalagmites, pulsing faintly with a dim red light.
I sat up, every gravity-defying inch upwards drawing a hiss out of me. My hip must have fractured. It wasn’t broken because I was able to hobble onto my feet, whereupon my left heel snapped off. I removed my other shoe, tossing them both aside, then took off my stockings as well because they were slippery. Seeing as the ground was rocky but not sharp, I’d manage in my bare feet.
Before I’d taken a half dozen steps, a remarkably well-groomed troll materialized and rushed me, brandishing a spiked club. My arms flew up to block it, which was useless. More helpful was the instinctive full body blast of electricity that forked out toward him. I glowed bright blue from the level of magic I was accessing.
The current snaked around the demon. His body stiffened, convulsing, and he lost his hold on the club. I flinched as it smashed into the ground at my feet, the spike on top splitting the stone to embed itself like Excalibur.
Since the creature was ensnared by my power, I circled it, looking it over. Warty and drab, the sole resemblance this troll bore to its namesake dolls was its shock of bright green hair.
“I’m pressed for time, dude,” I said. The troll bared its rotted teeth at me and I threw an arm over my nose. “Where am I?”
The troll snarled out some words in a language I guessed to be of Northern European origin, since to my ears he sounded like the Swedish chef on The Muppets.
I tapped my ears. “No babel fish. English?”
He spat a phlegmy glob at my feet.
“That attitude won’t get you very far.” I peered into the gloom around me. Whatever portal I’d come through was gone, leaving a lot of stone wall behind me. Up ahead, the cave floor sloped down so I limped over to take a closer look. A dank passageway led off into the pitch black. Probably full of monsters, but it was the only way out of this place.
Since the troll wasn’t going to play nice, and accessing his weak spot meant a lot of time spent weakening his leathery skin, I shot a bolt at one of the heavy pointed stalactites hanging above him. It crashed onto the top of his skull, and while he was literally too bone-headed for the spike to impale him, it still walloped him hard enough to knock him out. His eyes rolled back into his head and he hit the ground with a thud.
“Good talk.”
Keeping one hand on the stone, I hugged the right wall, hoping that I wouldn’t come to any forks in the road. I moved at a snail’s pace, doing my best to ignore the jarring pain with each carefully placed footfall. My shallow breathing was a creepy horror movie soundtrack and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. If there was ever a place for a hand to reach out and grab me, this was it.
I lost all sense of time down there, hyper-alert for any danger, my pain pulsing in rhythm with the accelerated beat of my heart. The sharp heat of the tunnels pressed in on me, turning my hair into lank strands. I tied my jacket around my waist. A heavy load but I’d need it again if I ever got out of this place.
When I got out.
Eventually, a faint glow of light shimmered up ahead. Half-convinced it was a mirage, I limped toward it, whimpering and glassy-eyed. I came out into a dim, cavernous space, the floor ending in a giant chasm. It was impossible to jump, and I had no rope to swing across. I glared at the black pit. I hadn’t fought demons, and convinced Rohan to do the stupid song, and played nice with the Brotherhood to have my plans for Ari thwarted by a giant hole.
Wings rustled above me.
Fingers of unease slithered down my spine. There was a reason no one ever looked up. I hunched my head into my neck, tilting my entire upper body backward to stare up to the top of the rock wall disappearing in the inky darkness.
I squinted at the pinprick of light at the top. Going back wouldn’t get me anywhere and going forward would end in a “Wile E. Coyote off a cliff” impersonation. I considered my options, quickly realized I didn’t have any, felt for my first toehold, pulled myself up, and screamed. Fractured hips and rock climbing were not a match made in Heaven.
It was incredibly slow going. Two minutes in and sweat ran in rivulets between my shoulder blades. Three minutes in and my vision started to tunnel. Five minutes in and my entire body shook like a nine-point earthquake. I glanced down, finding myself maybe ten feet from the ground. Nowhere close to where I had to get to, but far enough up that I hugged the wall, frozen. Except for my hip joints that blazed in agony.
I was well and truly screwed. And I didn’t mean the fun kind that ended with Rohan’s hands on every part of my body. At least the troll wouldn’t eat me since given the slight curve of the rock wall, I’d be falling straight into the Pit of Despair. Hopefully the chasm was deep enough for the fall to immediately kill me because if I had to lay at the bottom with a broken neck until I dehydrated to death, I was going to be extremely pissed off.
A deep rumbling shook the cavern, raining a shower of small stones down upon me, and knocking me sideways. I swung out, my left arm windmilling as a zmey, a three-headed dragon demon, roared up out of the darkness.
I curled the fingertips of my right hand into the rock face, willing myself to hang on for a few more seconds. Why climb when I could fly? I whistled sharply. “Taxi!”
The zmey flew closer.
Come on. A bit more.
As it opened one of its mouths to belch fire at me, I launched myself off the wall with a scream. The zmey jerked its head up, its flame going wild above my head.
My hand slid over its scales, slicing open my palm. Slick with blood, I grappled for purchase along its body, managing at the last second to grab a back leg. The hot swampy stench of dragon undercarriage assaulted me. I gagged, swallowing against the metallic bile in my throat, hanging on for dear life, one-handed, my feet dangling over the chasm.
The demon shook me harder and harder, trying to dislodge me.
I blasted sharp bursts of current from the top of my head at its underbelly while tugging on its leg, trying to steer it up to the top of the rock wall.
<
br /> The zmey roared in anguish and dove into a tight spiral, its screeches decimating my poor ears.
Soupy wind gusted against my face, blowback from the flapping of its massive wings. I squinted against the grit blinding me. Deeper and deeper we descended into the chasm, the light growing darker and more menacing. At least adrenaline had pushed my pain back.
A bit of blackened demon flesh plopped onto the top of my head. I yelped, jerking it off me hard enough to crack my neck. Blood streamed down my arm, now shaking with the exertion of hanging on to its flailing leg one-handed.
Blasting the dragon only encouraged it to speed up.
The zmey kicked at me with its other leg, flexing its talon and catching my firing arm. A sharp heat blazed up my skin, black dots blurring the edges of my sight. With a hard buck, the demon dislodged me. Totally enveloped in darkness, I fell the last few feet to the ground.
I landed on something spongy. Partially eaten corpses. I slid in a nest of bones and decomposing bodies that I couldn’t see, but would be able to smell for the rest of my life. It smelled like sulfur and my veggie drawer at home before Mom threw out the broccoli she’d made me promise to eat that I’d let go frothy with mold. Burying my face in my shirt did nothing.
The darkness was so all-encompassing that I started hyperventilating, convinced I couldn’t breathe. That did little against the smell and nothing for my dizziness.
The faintest scrape of the demon’s talons on bone gave away its position off to my right. Unable to rely on my sight, my hearing was jacked to the point of this merest whisper trumpeting like Dolby surround.
I pushed forward in the opposite direction, hands outstretched, wishing the dragon had feathered its nest with, well, feathers instead of people. I groped blindly for the chasm’s wall, but its slime-covered slickness offered no way out.
The zmey changed position, its weight redistribution shifting this garden of people and causing me to sink. Scrabbling for purchase, I seized a rope, using it to pull myself up those precious inches back to the surface.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-3 (Nava Katz Box Set) Page 35
