by Harley James
“Huh.”
He patted the sofa cushion again. “Come.”
She yielded, sinking down beside him. Right beside him, close enough that their thighs touched.
“What do you wish to know?” His voice was gravel-toned.
She rested her head against the arm he’d laid across the back of the sofa, her eyes closing in the moody blues and grays of the darkened space. “I don’t even know.”
“I’m sorry…about all of this.” He was surprised to find he really was. When was the last time he felt remorse over anything?
She sighed, and he longed to taste the skin beneath her ear.
“I used to believe that if I wanted something badly enough, I could make it happen through blood, sweat, tears—whatever it took.” She sighed. “But when Joaquin got sick, I realized how naive that was. Since then, I’ve been barreling forward, accomplishing as many things as I could as fast as I can because I’ve been afraid.”
She lifted her head, turning toward him in a move he mirrored. “Afraid that we only have so much time to delude ourselves. To fly under the radar of that force in the universe that says we only have so long before something bad needs to happen. We hope maybe it’ll miss us. But it doesn’t. It never does. And maybe there’s a question for you. Is life all about cosmic balance? Do light and dark, good and evil have to be in balance for life to go on?”
“Per ardua ad altiora tendo.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she breathed.
“Through adversity, I strive toward higher things. That was the response I received when I asked a similar question many, many years ago.” Centuries, actually.
“Who did you ask?”
“Alexios, the original Guardian.” Who happened to be two-and-a-half thousand years old, but that information could wait until later, too. “It means challenges shape our character. We grow when we suffer. It’s an important perspective, but a musician friend of Jessie’s helped me understand growth through another lens.”
“What other lens?”
“Contrast.” He took her hand in his. “We need adversity to push us into the hard times because we sure as hell don’t walk into them on our own. We don’t understand how good we have it until life begins to suck. In the same way, we can’t know light without darkness. Or pleasure without pain. One reveals the truth of the other.”
He unlaced their hands, bringing his palm to run up the length of her arm. His expanded senses felt the goosebumps rise under her sweater.
She slowly smiled with her lips and her eyes this time, and it nearly stopped his heart. “I appreciate the theory, but you don’t have to torture me to make me understand pleasure.”
He leaned forward to kiss her, the meeting of their mouths a kaleidoscope behind his eyelids, a rush of magma through his blood. One of his hands cupped the back of her head, the other slid down the rear seam of her jeans, the tips of his fingers curling under her well-shaped ass.
She gasped against his open mouth when his fingers pressed intimately. He pulled her onto his lap, then turned them as one, leaning back against the sofa, forcing himself to be still as she straddled his hips and slowly unbuttoned his shirt.
His eyes never left her face. He was coming to memorize the lift of her cheekbones, now more than a little flushed, the delicate sweep of her eyebrows, the narrow lips, and large blue eyes that asked him to help her forget about all the scariness, if only for a little while.
He would oblige with all his might.
He wanted to rush. To help with the infernal buttons of his starched shirt. Not rushing was torture. But the hedonism of being undressed by her stayed his hands. “Pleasure is enhanced by the agony of anticipation. Ergo, my theory stands,” he murmured.
“Stop talking, Englishman.” She yanked his shirt from his trousers and dispensed with the final few buttons as he held her hips.
Full, soft hips.
How perfectly they fit his grasp.
When his shirt hung open, the moment stretched taut. He could hear and feel her heart beating. His ab wall contracted when her cool hands finally ran across his chest, slipping the shirt from his shoulders. Freed, he grasped the hem of her sweater and eased it over her head, an achingly unhurried reveal—punctuated by kisses to the swell of her breasts peeking above her bra—that had them both breathing heavily by the time her sweater joined his shirt on the floor.
Chapter 16
All the air rushed from her body when Spencer stood, setting her on feet that weren’t quite steady. Why—
No time to protest as he unfastened her bra, warming her skin every place his lips lingered. The heels of his hands rested on the upper swell of her breasts as his thumbs traced the bones of her clavicle.
Strength. Courage. Selflessness.
His voice swirled in her mind impossibly. Was she only imagining it?
He wasn’t human.
But he had been. Wasn’t like he was an alien. Right?
Now he worked with angels. He couldn’t be all bad.
Her body shook as he held both of her hands behind her back and leaned down to kiss her breasts with equal intensity. His tongue laved her nipples, and she arched into him, wanting to slide to the floor, open her thighs and drive her fingernails into his spectacular ass as he seated himself fully inside.
He gasped and pulled away, his eyes burning as though there was a living flame in their depths. Like he’d heard. His lips red, face flushed, chest—my God, that beautiful chest—
He released her hands, pulled off her shoes, and eased her jeans off until she was down to her red polka dot thong.
She waited, quivering, desperate for him to remove the final barrier. Not like me. None of this was. She didn’t do casual sex. Sex when there was so much to be done, so much to fear.
“Remove them.” His voice low, imperious, clipped.
She didn’t follow orders either, but…
This man.
She hardly knew him, yet he made her feel things she never had. A heady rush of excitement, surely, but this was more complex.
With Spencer, she was free to embrace and explore contrasts.
Entrepreneur. Lady mechanic.
Goddess.
His gaze branded her, following the descent of her fingers as she yielded. Yielded to the this thing pulsing between them. Her nails skated against her flesh as she slid the scrap of red fabric down her thighs until it dropped at her feet.
He paced toward her, a sleek predator, eyes never leaving hers. Slowly their breaths merged, skin reaching to skin like a sixth sense blooming for the first time.
His fingertips were hot as they cupped her ass, spreading her legs while he lifted her, wrapping them around his hips. Oh, God….flush. Breast to chest. Her body completely open, pressed intimately against the rock hard length of him in his fine dress slacks. His shoulders, so strong. All of him muscular and lean and wonderfully masculine.
His mouth slanted across hers, flooding her with sensation all over, his arms and hips rocking her. All she could do was cling.
And feel.
“Spencer.” His name on her lips, so good. Everything about him, flawless.
He whispered her name back to her, ratcheting up her pleasure until she couldn’t get enough air. More whispered words against her neck, foreign. Sexy. Addicting.
One more aching slide against his heat. Waves of liquid pleasure. Too much. Never enough. She gasped his name again, pressed hard against his chest, leaned back against his sheltering arms, and flew apart.
Light. A knife’s edge of bright pleasure-pain that sliced off the last sliver of self-consciousness.
Darkness. A firestorm that ripped a scream from her throat and was answered, emphatically, by his red-blooded growls of approval.
Aftershocks raced and sparked through her body as he moved to the sofa, straddling her over his groin as he sat. She leaned away from him to unfasten his button, then his fly. Hurry. His fingers dug into her hips. So good.
She li
cked her lips and leaned into him. His head rested back against the sofa when she took him in her palms, his broad head slippery smooth, soft, hard, and everything she wanted right now. “I want to feel you in me.”
“Fuck, Sydney.” He lifted her, fingers digging into her hips. She drew up to her knees, belly and breasts against him as she sank slowly down. Open-mouthed kisses, on her mouth, on her neck. Groans and sighs. Open to him, feeling him at the apex, trembling before the moment of their connection, his heat almost more than she—
The room flooded with light.
“Holy shit!”
Sydney froze, disoriented, fighting her way out of the sexual haze.
Laura. In the doorway. Eyes as big as dinner plates.
The world flooded in.
Oh, God.
Sydney batted at Spencer’s hands until she realized he was trying to cover her with the expensive dress shirt she’d shamelessly taken off him.
She scrambled off his lap, whipping her arms into his shirt sleeves. Oh damn. Ohdamnohdamnohdamn.
Her face burned like unholy fire. Any warmer and it’d melt right off. She was still wet with a mix of their body fluids for chrissakes.
“You guys ought to video that shit. Seriously. That’s fucking hot, so please carry on!”
“Laura!” she cried, but her best friend had already slammed out of the room. She shivered again, looking at Spencer. The man should be modeling he was so beautiful. Her belly tensed thinking of where his hands had been on her body.
All. Over.
Get dressed, get Spencer gone, and get on with life. Monsters and all. She’d almost had unprotected sex. Her. Who’d never—ever—had a one-night stand.
Spencer’s husky laugh wrapped around her like a drug. How could any man have such perfect musculature without spending hours in the gym?
He’s not a man.
Even better. She’d almost had unprotected sex with a non-human.
Wow. This was exactly why she didn’t drink to excess, use drugs, or engage in casual sex. Losing control was not cool. Not the way to achieve her dreams or support the people who depended on her.
Oh and don’t forget about dealing with rogue demons now, too.
Fucking reckless, Syd.
After she was dressed, she hurried downstairs where Laura was poking in the office file cabinet. Best friend notwithstanding, this was so unbelievably awkward. “What are you doing here, Laura?”
She raised her eyebrows at Sydney’s harsh tone. “No need to get your thong in a bunch. I was driving home from a booty call at Jake’s, and I saw the lights on in the hallway. I thought maybe one of us had accidentally left them on. Since I’m here, I thought I’d grab some files to get a jump on the quarterly financials at home.”
Sydney tried to get a hand through the tangles in her hair, then gave up. “Oh.” Add jackassery to the list for ragging on someone who was being responsible. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry for interrupting. You guys need to get back to Operation Defile the Office Sofa.” Laura’s smile was anything but innocent. “I may need to head back to Jake’s after seeing that. It was better than any porn I’ve seen in years.”
Can I just die now?
Spencer came downstairs and stalked—there was no other word for it—right up to her and French kissed her so soundly she had to grab on to his shoulders to ground herself.
Laura whistled and clapped.
Spencer drew back with a wink. “I’ll check on the security detail for your family. I want you in my car in ten minutes. You’re coming to Inferno with me until your house is impregnable.”
She tried not to take offense at the heavy-handed approach. He was trying to protect her, but she wouldn’t be in this position in the first place if not for his meddling. “You speak caveman so eloquently.”
“It’s the accent,” he replied, drolly. “If you try to leave on your own, I won’t be happy, Sydney. I’m not anywhere near finished with you.”
Then he turned and walked away, leaving Laura speechless (for once). And Sydney wondering two things: how soon he’d finish with her…
And how fast her heart would take to mend afterwards.
Chapter 17
Spencer found himself driving more carefully than he usually did. Didn’t do any good to delude himself about why. Sydney was the new drug in his blood. Touching her was instant nuclear fusion. They just fit.
But like all drugs, the high would end, and he’d crash.
He glanced at her sitting in the passenger seat as he maneuvered San Francisco’s nocturnal, downtown traffic. “You’re quiet.”
She looked out her side window, hands clasped primly in her lap. “You don’t know me well enough to know how much I talk.”
“I didn’t mean you waste words. I was merely trying—” to gauge your level of regret. “I apologize if you thought—”
“You still haven’t told me everything.” She glanced at him briefly.
“Everything?” he asked, to buy time that he knew was futile. She was too smart to keep diverting from the ugliness. “What do you want to know?”
“You said Baal is a demon. Are they all like him, or is he different?”
His hands squeezed the steering wheel. She was intelligent and reasonable and didn’t seem prone to fits of hysteria. All good prerequisites for a conversation of this nature. “Baal is the offspring of Lucifer and what’s known as an Incubus, another class of fallen angel. As the product of Lucifer, Baal is an archdemon. More powerful than those whose souls went to Hell for being wicked human beings. Whatever you do, don’t try to bargain with him.”
A pregnant pause. Too much information? He glanced over again, his gut tightening when he saw a black-eyed demon staring at Sydney from the sidewalk beside her window.
He swallowed a vicious curse and put down the accelerator even though the light was still red.
She braced her hand against the dash, her lips pulled down at the corners. “What are you doing?”
No reason to tell her about the demon that had been five feet away. “The sooner I get you safely inside the club, the better.”
“Not if you get pulled over.”
“I won’t.”
Four blocks passed in silence.
He was handling this poorly, but he didn’t know how to get his innards untwisted enough to not react like a domineering asshole.
“I don’t want to part of this. Don’t want to believe this.”
“I know. I’m sorry you’re caught in the middle of it. But you need to be prepared. Demons are as real as they were in your mother’s Bible. I don’t know why people resist the idea. Hollywood has certainly bought into it.”
She rubbed her throat with her long fingers. “Pull over. I need some air.”
“I can’t do that, Sydney.”
“Dammit! Can’t or won’t? I’ve ignored all my instincts around you, and look where it’s gotten me. Who’s to say I’m not in more danger from you?”
“I would never hurt you. You need to trust me to keep you and your family safe. Demons have one purpose, Sydney. They want souls, and they will do anything—anything—to consume them. Lie, cheat, manipulate, rape, murder, and even worse. Never forget that.”
At the next stoplight, she turned toward the door. His fire element stoked so high her hair lifted, electrified, as he slammed the door locks. “Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
She swung to face him, eyes shimmering with tears she was blinking back. “I’m sorry. I just feel so trapped. Like I have no choice in any of this.”
He wanted to pull over and take her in his arms, but even stronger was the need to get her to safety. There was a strong taint of demons all through the district. His fire element settled when she let him take her hand. “Just hold on for a little while longer, okay? We’ll get through this together.”
“What does Baal want from you?”
His jaw clenched. “I can’t tell you.”
She jerked her ha
nd from his. “Oh, that’s great.” She pulled her phone from her purse. “My family is in danger because of you, but you don’t have the decency to be honest about everything?”
He grabbed her phone before she hit the last ‘1’ in 9-1-1 and threw it out his window. Then before she could pull his own phone from his suit coat which was lying across the console between them, he grabbed it and chucked it in the same fashion.
The alarm on her face was troubling.
“P-please let me go. I won’t go home or to the shop. I’ll find a place to hide with my f-family.”
Now she was afraid of him.
God. Damn.
His fire element was on the verge of exploding out his fingertips.
He telepathically reached out to Pepper at Inferno, ignored the No Parking sign, pulled into the fire lane in front of the nightclub, opened his door, and ran around to her side of the car. He passed his hand over the door to unlock it, then pulled her out, covering her mouth when she attempted to scream. “I’m sorry, Sydney. I’ll try to explain more once I have you safe and secure inside.”
She was surprisingly strong, twisting this way and that to break out of his hold, but no match for his Guardian strength as he pressed her back against his chest, his hand firmly over her mouth.
Pepper opened the club door before he reached it. She took stock of the situation, seeing two bystanders reach for their phones, their faces incredulous at the scene unfolding in front of them.
“Raj arrived a couple hours ago. I’ll have him take care of this.”
Meaning, wipe the humans’ minds—and their cell phones—of this little pseudo-abduction.
He nodded at Pepper, then ushered Sydney forcefully over the threshold into Inferno. Once the door closed, he breathed a sigh of relief, removed his hand from her mouth, and set her down.
She spun to face him and brought her knee up.
HolyChristPain.
He bent over, a million stars exploding in his eyes, a blast of cold zinging to his groin, shattering like a spiked shard. He groaned, felt her lunge, and he reached out, his fingers snagging on her pant leg. He jerked, and she barreled backwards into him. They rolled—her, kicking, yelling, biting.
