Demon Hunt (23 page)

“
I
liked
that shirt.”

“
I’ll get you a new one.”

Rhi’s heart jumped into her throat when she saw his face, inches away in the darkness, almost demonic himself, his lips parted, the tips of his demon blood teeth visible.

The irises of his eyes flamed to blue and the light spread over the pair as their lips met again.

Rhi shivered. It was so easy to forget what he was when he held her like this until he lost control. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck to bury her fingers in the softness of his hair.

Nuzzling her neck and breasts until every hair on her body stood on end, he pulled her to the floor with him to cradle her smaller body in his big arms.

Something cut loose inside of her. Outside of the cabin streaks of blue light marked the sky, flashing past the windows at increasing speeds. They lay quietly for a moment in each others arms before he raised his head to examine her face. “Rhi, do you truly want this? Here and now?”

“
I
need
this, Jack.” Her voice was muffled, her face hidden behind a curtain of black hair.

“
So do I, baby, so do I.”

He got to his feet, leaned down to scoop her up into his arms, and easily carried her to the loft bedroom.

In the darkness of her room, he looked frightening again, his lips slightly parted, the tips of his demon blood teeth showing over the edge. He did not bother to conceal his true self from her.

He carefully lowered her to the bed and stood back to remove what remained of his clothes.

“
Not to ruin the moment but do 800 year old ‘changelings’ need to use condoms?”

She could see his teeth flash in the darkness as he gave her one of her rare smiles.

“
We’re not susceptible to human disease, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied as he pulled his jeans off and threw them in a corner.

“
So if I want to have condom free sex, all I have to do is go hunt down one of you guys?”

His glowing outline stalked towards the bed, as predatory as a mountain lion and probably at least twice as dangerous. The darned-near-close-to-immortal knight lowered himself to the bed, moving close, placing his lips against her ear.

“
I’m not giving you
time
to hunt one of us ‘guys’ down,” he hissed, sending a thrill of fear down her spine. His mouth traveled to her breasts, his teeth raking the throbbing skin, sending another flicker of fire through her body to pool between her legs. Then he closed his mouth over an aching nipple, drawing deeply as his battered hands slid into her hair to grab double handfuls of silk.

She ran her hands over the strangely familiar planes and contours of his body. There were many scars, some she somehow remembered and many that were obviously new. The puckered scars showed a decided lack of association with the neater skills of the present day providers of medicine.

When a big hand finally slid down to her thigh, she was afraid that she would cry out with relief. He yanked at the wet scrap of silk panties, which ripped apart as easily as her t-shirt earlier. When he ran a finger over her sex, she flinched. “You’ve waited a hundred years and now you’re gonna tease me?” she gasped, straining against him. She could feel his cock brush her thigh, thick and hard.

“
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m
gonna
do,” he whispered and glided his finger into her wet entrance.

After a few moments of making her writhe in his hands, he slowly moved down her body, his mouth nuzzling every curve. Rhi experienced a brief moment of panic. “What are you doing?”

“
Eating you alive,” he replied as he settled between her thighs.

A strangled gasp was all she could work up for a moment when he lowered his head for the first lick. She made an effort to wriggle free without thinking but an iron grip pinned her arms to the mattress.

“
Blackthorne … I don’t think I can take this.” She strained against him, shuddering with anticipation of the next onslaught of sensation.

He growled and lowered his head again, taking another taste. Then his tongue plunged deeply into the sweet heat of her sex, delving and devouring.

“
Please … Jack,” she pleaded.

He raised his head, the outline of his body glowing in the darkness. “You’ll more than beg, Rhi.” Then his mouth closed over her, suckling hard and after several minutes of exquisite agony, Rhi detonated with a hoarse scream.

Blackthorne released her arms and rolled to her side as she lay sprawled in a pile of pillows and comforters, every pore quivering. He rested his head on one arm, staring down at her.

“
Been practicing since 1896?”

“
Once or twice.”

She sat up and turned to shove him down against the pillows. She could make out a lazy grin on his face in the darkness as she moved to straddle his waist, scooting her backside downwards.

“
What are you doing?”

“
Something my past self was probably a bit too repressed to do to you.” Rising to her knees, she reached down to guide him into her body, sinking onto him slowly, impaling herself with him inch by inch.

* * * *

He groaned the moment he entered her body and her silken heat gripped his cock. He threw back his head when she moved, at first in a slow, agonizing movements, then faster, corkscrewing into smaller, quicker spirals. He rose to meet her, his hands encircling her tiny waist, her long black hair whipping his thighs.

“
Rhi …”

Control was lost. He sat up and pulled her legs around his waist as she continued to grind against him. Rhi wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him blind, wrapping her tongue around his as he pushed her down to thrust into her. He braced himself on his forearms as they both coiled together. As her climax drew her body into a bow, she hoarsely called his name as he came with a roar.

* * * *

Rhi felt like she had run a marathon or at least was on the down side of drinking a six pack of cola. They lay in each others arms, silent and still, recovering from a shocking passion. Her heart close to bursting, only one thought ran through her head. One night would never be enough.

“
Rhi, I …” He started to speak but stopped as she placed a finger on his lips.

“
I am snuggling here, pretending you are some normal guy I met in a very normal way. Can we just go with that for tonight? Please?”

He tightened his arms around her. “Where did we meet?”

She made a face. “In the produce aisle at the grocery store. You were buying tomatoes and I was buying pineapple when I got a good look at your butt.”

“
And we’re
already
sleeping together?”

“
It’s a really good butt.”

Later, she lay wide-awake beside her sleeping knight. She placed a hand on his chest to feel his steady heartbeat and listened to the soft intake of his breath. He was alive.

She sighed and drew away from him to curl into a ball on the other side of the bed. Why couldn’t the love of her life have been some average guy her mother wouldn’t have approved of? That kind was so easy to let go in the end,
she decided as she examined the dusty dresser. Her mother would have loved this guy, though. Even if he was a few hundred years old.

* * * *

Across town, Pearl observed the raging sky from her second story bedroom window, her figure framed in the heavy velvet drapes. When the bizarre storms of light subsided and a decidedly golden glow arose in the night from the general area of Horse Thief Gulch, Pearl pulled the velvet drapes together and turned from the window with a sly smile.

The huge storm-gray cat sitting on the bed sat up at the sound of her voice.

“
I’m glad
somebody
around here is getting laid, Gandalf,” she told the cat. “Maybe I should give Houston a call? No, he’s been traumatized enough.” On cue, the phone rang. Pearl picked up the receiver and for a few minutes listened to the rants of the lawman on the other end. After a short conversation, she hung up pulled on her boots.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Melon Evans awoke with sunlight on his face, the suffocating scent of straw in his nostrils and a ginger cat the size of a small dog sitting on his chest. Startled, he jolted up to examine his surroundings. The cat leapt backwards to balance perfectly on Melon’s blanket-covered legs.

He managed to make it to Pam Douglas’
barn on his snowmobile a few hours earlier after taking a torturously long route through the back woods and snowy fields of the Pike’s Peak region. Besides several frantic pauses to cut through barbed wire fences, he’d also stopped at a friend’s house to steal a can of gas from the shed he’d pay for later. If he managed to live that long.

For the entire trip, Melon could feel the yellow and red eyes watching him from the woods. Why the monsters hadn’t come for him was anyone’s guess. Maybe they had gotten their fill at the bonfire feast. The sensation of being hunted by a creeping terror departed the moment his snowmobile blazed past the fencepost marking the beginning of Pam Douglas’ property.

Melon had figured Pam was the most logical person to run to, mainly because she wouldn’t blink an eye when he recounted his story. The woman would give sanctuary to a murderer if she knew the killing was just. Also - between Pam and Bobby Wayne Beaufort - there was enough firepower on the hill above Horse Thief Gulch to force feed peace to the Middle East with the Balkans thrown in for good measure.

“
Get off of me, Captain. This is my bed,” he told the huge cat, pushing the animal aside.

“
You know, Melon, you could’ve knocked on the door and slept inside,” a familiar voice noted. “I know Captain Hook and the Lost Boys are nice to snuggle with but between the cats and the hay, this barn is one big asthma attack. Houston was on the couch but you could’ve made a pallet for yourself on the floor.”

The owner of the barn stood framed in the smaller entrance cut into the larger double doors of the barn. Pam’s arms were crossed and one eyebrow rose as she examined the makeshift bed Melon created for himself in a pile of hay. “By the way, you look like crap.”

“
I
feel
like crap.”

“
Wanna talk about it?” Pam asked as she pulled the plastic garbage can lid off of the makeshift kitty food bin near the door to scoop out a few scoops.

“
Not yet,” he replied. He sat up and rubbed at his gummy eyes. It was early and he wasn’t sure at the moment whether the happenings the night before were real or some kind of residual effect of the peyote he’d tried the week before. He needed to get his head on straight before trying to tell his story. “Did Houston leave anything to eat in your house?”

Pam busily petted the dozen cats that had emerged to wind around her legs. Melon managed a weak grin as he watched the cats swarm her. Pam Douglas was the patron saint of felines for the Cripple Creek Township. Strays were foisted off on her constantly since the nearest no-kill shelter was down in Colorado Springs. She got the animals spayed and received discount rates on their shots from the local vet, who was thankful to not have more animals waiting in the pound to be euthanized. Pam managed to adopt a few of the cats out but Captain Hook and the Lost Boys simply traveled back to the barn when sent away to new homes. There were always plenty of warm bodies to snuggle with in the sweet smelling hay of the old barn.

“
Biscuits, gravy and fruit on the table inside. You sure you don’t want to talk?”

“
When you get back tonight, if it’s okay for me to hang out and wait. I’ll talk to Houston, if he’s still around. But give my regrets at the funeral today, my stomach’s kinda upset.”

The woman nodded to him and turned to leave the barn.

“
Pam?” Melon stood up to brush the snow off. “You didn’t make sausage this morning, did you?”

“
No, why?”

“
I just don’t think I’ll be eating sausage for a while. And be careful, especially on the road when you come home tonight.”

* * * *

Pam turned to examine Melon closely. “You know, kid, I think I’ll make the time for us to talk. I’ve got the strong feeling you’ve had the same kind of night I did. Let’s go talk to Houston.”

The snow crunched underneath her boots as she made her way towards the chalet-style house that resembled like a triangular bump in the snow on the side of the hill.

“
It looks like we’ve got another recruit,” she mused as she patted the holster under her jacket.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“
Manius is watching the town,” Blackthorne told her as he sat on the edge of Rhi’s bed, offering her a mug of coffee.