BURN (27 page)

Harper’s back arched like a bow as he pounded into her, his fingers digging so hard into her breast and hip that she knew she’d have bruises. She caught his reflection in the glass. Eyes hooded, mouth set in a harsh line, there was savage need stamped into his features.

Hand bunched in her hair, Knox yanked her head back so he could suckle and bite her neck. Her taste and scent assaulted his senses, making his cock swell even further. Nothing felt better than her tight muscles greedily clamping around him, as if trying to hold him deep in her body. He growled low in her ear. “Do you know how hot it is to see the reflection of the brand on your pussy?” It stroked the possessive streak in him that came violently alive around Harper. “Every time you see it, do you remember how it felt when my demon put it there? Do you remember that it means I own you?”

She gasped as his fist tugged her hair hard, bringing her face to his. He didn’t kiss her mouth. He devastated it. Biting on it, licking at it, and softly sucking on her tongue. The kiss repeatedly alternated between hard and rough to teasing and sensual. She felt off balance, couldn’t think. She only knew she needed to come so bad it hurt.

Feeling her pussy begin to tighten around him, Knox knew her orgasm was close. “You know you can’t come until I tell you, baby.”

“I can’t help it,” she hissed.

“Yes, you can. You will.” Releasing her hair, he collared her throat as he hammered into her at a feverish pace that dared her to defy him. She didn’t, just like he knew she wouldn’t. “Beg me to let you come.”

Motherfucking asshole.
Knowing better than to curse him out loud and risk him stopping – he’d done it a few times before – she begrudgingly ground out, “Please.”

“Good girl.” He slid his other hand down to tug on her clit. “Come, Harper.” A scream tore from her throat as her pussy quaked and squeezed his cock. Biting out a harsh curse, he exploded in her, his hand tightening around her throat. Forcing himself to loosen the hold, he stroked her neck as she slowly came down from her high.

“How can you still be hard?”

Knox ever so slowly withdrew, causing her pussy to close around his cock and try to suck him back in. “Don’t worry, baby, I’m not done yet.” He drove deep with a grunt. “This time, scream my name for me.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

After a long, boring conference call, Knox left his office and sought out Harper. He found her in the living area, legs crossed yoga-style on the sofa…and doing something he never would have expected. She had a box at her side that contained a collection of gems, crystals, sequins, rhinestones, beads, lace, sash, and other appliques. And she was sowing and gluing some on her collection of jeans. Designer jeans.

“Hey.” She only spared him the briefest glance, preoccupied with sporadically attaching tiny, silver skeleton heads to a pair of black jeans.

Most of the other pairs that were folded on the sofa had already been ‘decorated.’ She’d even slashed at some with a razor, sown white flowery lace on the back pockets of others, and…“What happened to
them
?” One particular pair of blue jeans were now a whitish blue from mid-calf downwards.

“Oh, I dipped them in bleach,” she said, her tone absent.

“You dipped them in bleach? I buy designer clothes, and you—”

She did look up then. “I told you,
they’re from thrift shops
.”

He couldn’t stifle a smile. “Thrift shops. Right.” He poured himself a gin and tonic, and then settled beside her, admiring her steady hand. “Do you do this a lot?”

“I like personalizing things. When I lived with Lucian, I traveled pretty light. We couldn’t always afford to buy new clothes, so I’d revamp the ones I had.” She gave him an impish smile. “Whenever he pissed me off, I’d glue pink sequins to his pants.”

Knox tapped her bottom lip. “Cruel.”

“I thought so.” She sounded pleased by that.

“And here I thought Meg bought a new coat. You put rhinestones and crystals on it, didn’t you?”

“She made me muffins in exchange. I thought it was a good deal.”

As something occurred to him, he narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t sown or glued anything to any of my clothes, have you?”

Her smile widened – it was a taunt. “Not yet.”

Knox returned the smile. He couldn’t recall many people ever teasing him. People were generally wary of offending him. Harper didn’t hold back, and it was yet another thing that showed that she was comfortable around him. This back and forth they did…It was intimate. And he liked it.

He put his glass on the table. “Come here.” Knox slipped a hand around her throat and sipped at the mouth he was obsessed with. Then he kissed her hard, dancing his tongue along hers. The taste of her burst through his system, making him groan. He knew he’d always crave it, always crave her. “Later, I’m going to fuck this mouth.” A hint of defiance sparked in her presently ice-blue eyes. Knox flexed his grip on her throat. “I’ll have it, Harper. It’s mine. Mine to taste, mine to use any way I want.”

And he
had
used it any way he wanted. He knew he was dominant and rough in the bedroom, that she wasn’t used to being led or pushed to her limits. She probably had no idea what a turn on it was to teach her what he liked, to show her how it could be between demons. She was used to humans, so she’d had no idea just how intense and satisfying sex was with her own kind. “So let’s try this again. Later, I’m going to fuck this mouth.”

As the hand collaring her throat slid into her hair and gripped just hard enough to make her scalp prickle, Harper hissed. He did that sometimes, let her feel the bite of pain to warn her not to resist. But he never hurt her, never did anything he thought she wouldn’t like or couldn’t take. In doing that, he’d earned her trust in the bedroom. However, that didn’t mean she’d ever be totally compliant. “You can fuck it,” she began, shrugging, “if you can catch it.” His sensual mouth curved into his panty-dropping smile.

“So defiant.”

“But you like that, because having everyone obey you 24/7 has gotten old, hasn’t it? And…you like to punish me.” Those punishments usually went in the form of sensual assaults, prolonging foreplay, making her wait what felt like hours to come, or simply shackling her with psychic hands so she couldn’t touch him.

He spoke against her lips. “I do like to punish you. I especially like seeing you shaking with the need to come…and cursing me in several languages for not allowing you to.”

Harper laughed. “Well that’s—” She stopped at the sound of footsteps approaching. All four sentinels then strolled into the room, and all looked grim; Keenan more so than the others.

Larkin’s expression brightened a little when she saw Harper’s handiwork. Blinking, she said, “Wow. You did all this?”

As Knox released her hair, Harper nodded at the female sentinel, who then sat opposite her. “Revamping stuff is always fun. And I’ll tell you all about it after Keenan explains why he seems ready to burn shit down.”

Keenan hesitated, glancing at Knox. The incubus wasn’t yet used to including anyone other than Knox or the other sentinels in conversations concerning their lair.

“You can always speak freely in front of Harper,” Knox told him. “So unless this is something very personal to you or someone else that can’t be shared, explain now.”

“It relates to me,” Harper said with total surety. She could tell by the odd look that Keenan kept shooting her. Still, he hesitated. And that just pissed her off. “Keenan, do you like your clothes? Because I have a needle, thread, glue, and sequins – and I ain’t afraid to use them. Tell me what’s going on.”

Keenan sighed. “You’re right, it relates to you. It’s just weird discussing lair business with outsiders.”

“She’s my mate, which makes it her business,” Knox stated. “It also makes her part of this lair as well as her own.”

Inclining his head, the incubus sat next to Larkin. “I called the other sentinels here, because I thought we all needed to discuss this.”

Levi, who was leaning against the wall, asked, “Discuss what?”

“It’s about Kendra,” said Keenan.

Harper put aside the jeans she was working on. “Yeah, what about her?”

Keenan pulled a flask out of his jacket. “I got a call from the demons we’ve had watching her – she’s missing. She slipped her guard again.”

Knox twined a lock of Harper’s hair around his finger absentmindedly. “It’s possible that she’s gone searching for Lucian using the information she was given by the imp she met with.”

“I thought it was likely after what I heard in the boathouse,” said Keenan. “So I went to Kendra’s apartment to see if any of her stuff was missing – that would have told me if she’d taken a little trip. Nothing seems to have gone, and I couldn’t help but notice there was nothing personal there at all. Not a damn thing. It bugged me. I can’t explain why, it just did. Anyway, I went looking for her, and I asked people if they’ve seen her. No one has. I wondered if she’d gone to visit the mother she cares so much for that she feels obliged to avenge, so I paid her a visit.” Keenan took a long swig from the flask. “Imagine my surprise when the young woman who invited me inside introduced herself as Kendra.”

“Kendra?” echoed Tanner, who was lounging on Harper’s left.

Keenan nodded. “Yep. I spoke to her, I spoke to the mother – Beatrice – and I can tell you that Kendra never left Alabama to come here. I don’t know who the she-demon is who’s been staying in our lair, but she’s not Kendra Watson.” He dropped the news like a bomb.

A short silence reigned before people began to curse.

“You’re certain of this?” Levi asked Keenan.

“Absofuckinglutely certain. What I don’t understand is why that bitch has been posing as Kendra.”

Knox didn’t have the answer to that, but he’d find it. “Did you tell Beatrice and Kendra that someone had been passing herself off as her?”

“No,” responded Keenan. “That’s lair business. I made up some bullshit reason for turning up and then I left.”

“Did the real Kendra look anything like the fake one?” asked Tanner.

“A little. Same hairstyle. Same height. Same weight. Same eye color. But I don’t think they’re related. More like someone’s been using Kendra’s identity because they conveniently look alike.”

Larkin folded her arms across her chest. “Why would someone join our lair, posing as someone they’re not?”

“She could be a plant,” said Knox, anger beginning to thrum through him. “There are plenty of demons who’d like to know our lair’s personal business.”

“That’s true,” agreed Levi, moving away from the wall. “She made an effort to get to you. She could have been sent here to seduce you, to find out your secrets.” Levi snorted at the ridiculousness of it.

Keenan took another drink from his flask. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Isla sent her.”

“Why would…whoever she really is…be looking for Lucian if her job was to spy on you?” Larkin asked Knox.

“You have a point,” conceded Knox. “‘Kendra’ went to the meeting in North Las Vegas. Jolene confirmed she met with an imp there, asking about Lucian.”

Levi shrugged. “It could have been a cover, a story to give you in case someone saw her near Harper’s apartment that night.”

“You know,” interrupted Harper, “it’s possible she’s not hiring dark practitioners at all; that
they
are hiring
her
.” When no one spoke, she added, “There are plenty of demons for hire out there – they’ll work for the enemy for a price.”

Tanner frowned, pensive. “You could be right. Practitioners probably see you as a way to get to Knox, to weaken him.”

“She really does hate me, though,” insisted Harper. “I felt it in the restrooms.”

“Maybe she just has an issue with your family or with imps in general,” suggested Keenan. “And bear in mind that she’s a real good actress, Harper. In the boathouse, she had me completely fooled about her hatred for Lucian and her distress over her mother.”

“So we can agree that ‘Kendra’ is a plant,” said Knox. “We’re just not so sure who sent her.”

“I’d say it’s Isla,” declared Keenan. “She always seems to know too much about what’s going on. She could have put a plant in every lair, not just ours.”

“It could just as easily be one of the other Primes doing a little spying,” said Larkin. “Knowledge is power.”

“Maybe,” said Levi, “but I think Harper’s right. I think dark practitioners hired her. It really would explain a lot.”

“If that’s true, she’s a lot more dangerous than we thought.” Larkin crossed one leg over the other. “She’ll have many connections to many of our enemies.”

“The way I see it, we have two options.” Tanner leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs. “We can put a bounty on her head or we can act like she’s still fooling us.”

Knox thought about it for a few moments. “We’ll try the latter, see if it brings her home. If she doesn’t appear in a couple of days, we resort to the first option. In the meantime, find out who the goddamn bitch really is.”

Once the sentinels left, Knox turned to Harper, twisting fully in his seat to face her. “You okay?”

She exhaled heavily. “It’s a relief to know that I haven’t been warring with my half-sister. But I don’t exactly like the alternative – dealing with dark practitioners isn’t fun, and they seem to want me dead.”

Knox tugged her closer. “They’re trying to get to me…which means Kendra – or whoever the hell she is – is actually right; you’re being targeted because of me.”

“I’m being targeted because they’re thick as pig shit and probably have a crazy idea that if they can weaken you enough, they can contain you and then use you to fuel their spells,” she corrected.

Maybe. They wouldn’t be the first to assume they could capture and use Knox for something.

“You didn’t start shit with them.
They
came at
you
.”

“And they’re using you to come at me, which isn’t at all acceptable to me.” They thought that hurting her would hurt him. It would. He wasn’t sure when she’d become so important to him, but she was so deep under his skin there was no getting her out. When a demon fell, it was quick and hard and intense. He’d never thought to experience it. Hadn’t imagined it was possible for another person to be so vital to him. He didn’t fear it, though. He welcomed it. Knew he’d forever want this little sphinx with him.

He’d always thought that to need someone would make him vulnerable. Now Knox knew differently. Yes, Harper had power over him, but he knew she’d never abuse that power. He could trust her with it, just as she trusted him with the same power he had over her. He’d tried to lure her to him using various manipulation tactics, and all the while he’d been unknowingly falling for this she-demon. “Levi’s right; you’re my weakness.”

Harper frowned, confused but knowing one thing: “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Control is essential to me, Harper. Essential for many reasons. If anything happened to you, if you were taken from me, that control would be gone. What I did to Riordan and his followers…that would be nothing compared to what I’d do if someone took your life.”

If he thought he was scaring her, he was wrong. “You think I wouldn’t seek vengeance if anything happened to you?” Harper fisted her hand in his shirt. “I’d make sure the bastards got whatever they deserved.”

He cocked his head. “You would, wouldn’t you?”