Demonic Temptation (2 page)

Her hand fell away and she licked dried lips, the aftershocks of her sudden and too-short orgasm flickering under her skin. She fought to breathe, but Idaeus hadn’t finished with her as rough, clawed hands pushed their way up her thighs, to let the sharp prick of talons chase across her mons.

“Ours.”
The strange voice—as if a multitude of voices spoke at once—reverberated across her mind.
“To love and to fuck.”

“Why?”

A squeak escaped her as unseen hands unfastened her skirt and let it pool at her feet. And she stared—fascinated—as the buttons of her shirt slipped through unaided. More unseen fingers—too many to count—gave sly strokes over her skin, forcing her to bite her lip as they tugged her jacket and shirt from her back. She ached to cover herself, but sure hands pinned her own behind her back.

“We are energy. Unity.”
The rough pads of numerous fingers traced over her bare skin, finding her, knowing her. The rush of it rioted in her blood, increasing her need to twist and turn against their relentless exploration. But they allowed no movement and the tightness to her flesh ramped.
“We are the race known as the Yalene. We seek pleasure and must tie our strength, our love to particular flesh.”
The brush of a body, hot and bitter-spiced pushed against her nakedness, lips ghosting over hers in the tease of a kiss and pulling a moan from her.
“For us that is you.”

“You’re alien.”
But there was no such thing. The Academy of Sciences had declared it. They were alone in the universe…

“Perhaps that is true. But then we are not from your universe.”

Adela spluttered a laugh.
“Is any of this real?”

Hands gripped her ass and she gasped, jerking forward against the hardness of a male body. Impossibly, hands cupped her breasts, sharp thumbs flicking her nipples and forcing sweet pain to chase deep into her flesh. A growl skittered across her thoughts, animalistic and…possessive. Her skin pricked. Wherever they came from, she didn’t care. Fuck, they wanted her. And they
would
have her.

“In every way you can possibly imagine.”
A tongue teased along the cleft of her ass and Adela shivered.
“And more.”

She closed her eyes, the sensations of so many hands, of tongues, of strange flesh pressed to her own flooded her senses. Heat and the bitter hints of spice and coal wrapped around her and her heart drummed.
“Yes.
Every
way.”

Her feet lifted from the floor and she flailed, her released hands grabbing for strong shoulders. She couldn’t open her eyes. If she did, the impossibility of what was happening to her would overwhelm her. And not in a good way.

Idaeus’ laughter wrapped her thoughts as easily as the muscled arms that held her.
“Trust us.”
The warm whisper slipped under her flesh and she pressed her face to the hot column of a male throat. Her heart tightened as smooth lips brushed her forehead.
“Our pleasure will be shared. And beautiful.”

“How are you doing this?”

“We become whatever you need. Whatever
we
need. And the more we touch you, love you, fuck you, the more those needs…mesh.”
A tongue tasted her, a slow slide across her clit to her pussy, the shock of it jerking her against the hard flesh that held her. Want ignited in her body. A desire for Idaeus to fulfill every dark promise…
“And you will crave us as much as we hunger for you.”

Adela drew in a hot breath, the scent of skin burning against her tongue. She didn’t fight her urge to lick, to taste, to graze her teeth against hard muscle. Idaeus’ swift hiss deepened her bite.
“But the…others. Those men.”
She tried to keep Marcus from her thoughts, dwelling on the two other men who had shared her morning ride in the lift. Swain and an officer called Nevin the day before.
“Why them?”
But still the thought leaked.
Why him?

“The strength of each of the Yalene is different. We needed them.”

“Why?”

“So we could do this.”

Idaeus filled her. Her ass, her pussy, the pained pleasure of it rocketing through her flesh, blistering heat and light and a state of joy that ripped a scream from her. And they stroked deep again, chasing ripples of her release and building more.

Adela clung to the hard body that held her, lost in the wild pleasure of Idaeus’ fucking. Of having mouths, fingers and tongues seeking every sensitive place on her body, licking and stroking and sucking, pushing her beyond her control—

“Yes…”
The word was a low growl that whipped the frenzy in her flesh.
“Lose yourself in us.
Belong
to us.”

She would have this. Always.
Always.
And the thought of it coiled pleasure hard in her belly, driving out all other thought. She couldn’t fight the utter pleasure spiraling through every inch of her flesh and bone and blood, taking her mind, binding her soul to Idaeus. She didn’t want to. Not as they thrust into her again and again. She arched, a cry breaking from her, her flesh not her own as her body snapped at the white-hot joy that consumed her.

Idaeus joined her in her release, echoing cries mixing, swirling with her own… Their touch faded, the addictive hints of spice and coal ebbing away and she staggered back against the cool wall.

Adela pressed her hands to her face and fought to breathe, a wild smile fierce on her mouth. Fuck.
Fuck.
That had been
good
.

Her bliss broke under the sharp rap of knuckles on the door. Adela caught her trembling fingers in her hair and tried to think. Dressed. She had to get dressed and look halfway presentable.

“Ms. Tilman. It’s Palov Nevin, Senior Compliance Officer to Mr. Yeats’ office.”

Nevin?
Shit. His calm voice filled the small washroom and Adela swore under her breath. Her face burned. He’d had his fingers in her ass yesterday morning. And Compliance Officer was the pleasing term for building security. A senior officer was in all likelihood a former trooper, versed in too many ways to kill.

Marcus Yeats had found her DNA on his fingers. That had to be the only explanation. Her stomach hollowed. It was amazing he hadn’t put the pieces together sooner.

Adela swallowed and found her voice. “Give me a minute.” She scrambled to pull up her crumpled skirt, the fasteners defying her fingers. Shit. The best sex of her life…and now, because of it, she’d find herself on some barren rock of a penal colony—

“You’re taking too long, Ms. Tilman.”

The door shot open and a meaty hand grabbed her bare arm, pulling her out into her cramped office.

Chapter Two

Heat and panic shot through her and she dragged what she could of her skirt to cover her breasts, all too aware that it then only just covered the tops of her thighs. “I spilled…tea on myself. I was changing.” The hand holding the skirt pointed back to the washroom. The action pushed against Nevin’s firm hold, Adela biting her lip as it caused her to yank the material farther up her body, exposing her. Words fled. “I—”

“Enough, Ms. Tilman.” Marcus Yeats sat in one of the thickly padded client chairs set near the door. Another Compliance Officer stood beside him, tall, muscled and bleak-faced. Her gaze flicked across his name tag. Boyd Swain.
Swain.
He’d had his hand up her shirt in the grav-lift.
Fuck.

Marcus steepled his fingers under his chin, the stark ceiling lights picking out the ice in his blue eyes. “You’ve been on my fingers three days in a row.”

Adela pressed her lips together, her face burning. How could she deny it? But how could she explain about Idaeus?
Sorry, my invisible alien lover forced you to slide your hands between my legs for
his
benefit?
Not exactly a cogent argument. “If it’s any consolation it was nice while it lasted…?” She gave him a half-smile but met only a narrowed gaze.

Her smile dropped away completely as he uncoiled from the chair. He smoothed the front of his expensive, tailored jacket. Adela swallowed, fighting not to twist in the tight grip of Nevin’s hands. “I can explain—”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Can you?”

His smooth, dark voice, so measured and calm, pricked her skin. It was pure sin.
He
was pure sin. Adela wet her lips. Prison, or a psychiatric ward or an experiment for an overeager xenobiologist. Those were her options, no matter what she said. And she didn’t want to give Idaeus up. Whatever her new reality was, she didn’t want to lose them. “No. No, I can’t. The past three days I’ve stood beside you in the lift and you…” She wiggled the fingers not holding her skirt.

“Though today,” his gaze slid down her body and the hot flush to her skin deepened, “you came prepared.”

“You seemed to want to make it a regular thing.”

His mouth thinned and he stepped back. The fingers gripping her arms flexed and something involuntary skittered across her skin. It was as if the air…changed. A familiar pooling of need fluttered in her belly and she couldn’t help but rub her sticky thighs together. This was
not
the time for her new addiction to rise. Shit.

“You mistake me, Ms. Tilman.” Marcus’ gaze pinned her. “What I, what
we
want is to properly fuck you.”

Adela sucked in a sharp breath. “You?” Her gaze darted to Swain, already unclipping the ornate front of his black uniform. “
They
…?”

Marcus’ smile was dark. Wicked. And that did not turn her on. Not one bit. “A gift to them.”

She blinked. That wording was too familiar. Her pulse jumped and she tried and failed to ignore the sudden rush of want in her flesh. He wasn’t simply offering a bonus to the two officers. No, this was something else. She hoped. “Idaeus?”

Marcus glanced behind her, but she couldn’t follow his gaze, her craned neck and chance to view blocked by the solid bulk of Nevin. The smooth material of his uniform rubbed against her chin and the rising scent of skin and clean cloth mixed with another odor. One that tightened a fist in her belly. Was the “we” Marcus mentioned in fact Idaeus…wearing the flesh of all the men in her cramped office?

Adela bit at her lip to deny the sudden and sharp jolt of pleasure that thought brought her. This wasn’t her. But then letting almost-strangers grope her in a grav-lift or an invisible life-form fuck her six ways ’til Sunday wasn’t exactly her either. Idaeus had said she was theirs. Chosen. Special. Perfect flesh. Was fully possessing these men also possible?

“Idaeus has them.” Marcus reached behind Nevin and plucked something from her desk. It was a metal pyramid, inscribed with a design she’d never seen before. Silver light spilled from it in delicious, mesmeric waves. “But Idaeus does not have me.” His lips twitched as he stroked a long finger over one face of the pyramid and Adela shivered, the feel of his light touch stroking down between her breasts. “Not yet.”

Her stomach hollowed. He knew about the Yalene. “You…?”

“The simple answer is that Idaeus will bind us.” He teased another line of strange, tight script and his fingertip was a ghost over her mouth. “Perfect flesh.”

The echo of Idaeus’ phrase caught her breath. He was offering more than the delicious but still intangible touch of her lover. This was the promise, of skin and sweat, of lips and teeth and tongues. A hot ache pulsed low in her belly. “I’ll have…”

“Me.” He placed the pyramid back on the desk. “Us.”

“But…” He was
Marcus Yeats
. She didn’t get a man like him handed to her on a plate…with two side orders of alien-possessed Compliance muscle. “What do you get?”

“Power, longevity.” His gaze speared her and she forgot how to breathe. “
You.
”

“Why would you want me?”

Yes, he’d signed off on her starting work at his family’s firm. She’d traced his distinctive signature through the light-screen with her finger as the confirmation came in that she indeed had a job at his prestigious company. But that had been normal…hadn’t it? He put his name to everyone who worked there. He didn’t remember a moment’s indiscretion in a dark lecture hall.

He cupped her jaw, his skin warm and dry, his thumb tracing a real line across her bottom lip. The ice-blue of his eyes darkened and Adela couldn’t resist. She darted her tongue to lick his tempting skin. He hissed and drew closer.

“I searched for you.” His mouth dipped to hers, so close his breath heated her lips. His smooth voice licked her senses and her eyes closed, wanting the darkness of it to swallow her. Whole. “For your…perfection. One that complemented my own.”

His lips touched hers—brief, sweet, tantalizing—and Adela chased after his retreating mouth. Nevin’s fingers tightened, restraining her and Marcus’ smile was wicked. “Not yet. Idaeus wants you and through you—through his taking of you—he has the strength now to hold these men.” He glanced to Swain—now bare-chested—who worked loose his fly, a ribbon of silver light chasing over his knuckles. “For a while, at least.”

The aliens—and that word tasted rough, didn’t fit who they were becoming to her all too quickly—infused their flesh. Somehow. “Idaeus?”

“Do you want this man?” Swain’s voice was raw, synthetic, but there was a current to it, something that held the power, the surety of her invisible lovers. He stroked a heavy hand across the flatness of his exposed stomach, the push of callused fingers over taut, satin skin making her mouth dry. Her sex throbbed and she closed her eyes, hot and embarrassed. “Ah,” the sound was almost a growl, “you do.”

She did. Which wasn’t her. Involving herself with two—her gaze darted to Marcus’ unreadable face—possibly three men and simply aching for it. It was only something that happened in her darkest fantasies. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“We told you, the more we have you,” Nevin’s lighter voice burned against her temple and she shivered, “the more you will crave this, us. Our energy surges in you.” His large hands loosened from her arms and drew teasing patterns to her fingers, flickering trails of silver light coating his skin. He traced a line along the knuckles of the hand that held her skirt. His voice was little above a whisper. “Let Marcus see you.”