Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (65 page)

It’d be the best damn thirty seconds she’d had since the skinny jeans trend started.

She scratched at the sheets, grinding her teeth as her legs shook and all her limbs went tingly and numb. It was as if nothing attached to her body mattered. The only area of consequence was situated where her flesh joined with his.

He dug his fingers into the meat of her thighs and that pain combined with all the pleasure building in her core came to a head. She toppled over the edge, feeling halfway to oblivion and not even caring. Eyes closed, she sighed contentedly, feeling as though she were floating atop her bed and not being pounded mercilessly toward the headboard.

Lazily, she adjusted her legs and tightened her thighs against his ribs. She should probably pitch in a bit. She’d never been the kind of girl to just lie there, but now she definitely saw the appeal of doing so when her partner was well equipped and knew how to use it. Maybe she’d never break a sweat again.

Nah.

She gave both of his nipples a hard tweak, and he growled and leaned in, pressing his chest to hers and positioning his parted lips against her ear.

“
Putain!
”

“Not into pain?” He chuckled and did that hip-swiveling thing that had her squealing like a slowly deflating balloon. “Oh,
God
, that spot.”

“I like pain,” he said, increasing the speed of his thrusts. “When the mood is right. But, right now …”

He pumped faster, harder, sending her careering around that precipice again, and she wanted to fall headfirst into it. He made her feel so good, so
high
. She didn’t know if the euphoria was due to the thrill of having sex with a stranger, their magic mingling, or some other thing she hadn’t considered, and she really didn’t care, either.

“Right now, I don’t want distractions.” He propped himself up a bit, and grabbed her wrists and pulled them over her head. He pressed them against the pillow and crushed his mouth to hers.

She battled with his tongue, pulling hers away, giving his chase, and sucking his full bottom lip until he bit down onto hers and groaned, shuddering.

He gave her one more deep thrust that had her screaming out the names of saints she thought she’d forgotten years ago, and he rolled off, panting.

They lay there in silence for a while, staring at the ceiling and breathing heavily.

The air conditioner clicked on.

He reached for her hand, and she took his as if it were a life preserver, holding it tight and twining her fingers between his.

She wanted to thank him for that small act of affection following their sinful deed—to let him know that him doing so made her feel wanted—but the
scritch-scratch
of cat nails against the bathroom door tamped down her sentimentalism.

“Maybe if you ignore her, she’ll stop.” He rolled onto his right side and used his free hand to push her hair back from her face.

Shit. If she didn’t get a comb through it tonight, in the morning she’d be picking out the start of several unwanted dreadlocks.

She didn’t want to comb her hair, though. She wanted to just lie there and be messy and wanton.

Scritch-scritch-scritch
.

She sighed. “She’s going to fuck up the molding and I won’t get my security deposit back. This was the only place I could find that would take cats as it was. Be right back.”

She’d started sitting up, but he nudged her back down.

“I’ll let her out. I need to clean up, anyway.”

“Oh.” Duh.

He tipped himself off the bedside and she watched his perfect posterior flex as he traversed the room.

Damn, he was almost too good to be true. He seemed to have been made to order for her, and she’d always imagined her future dreamboat would have features like his. Those cheekbones, those lips. The just-got-fucked curly hair. She liked that he towered over her a bit. He had to be six-one, six-two. He was trim, but strong. He obviously wasn’t the kind of guy that spent too many hours sitting on his ass.

Nope. She giggled as Candy Corn leapt onto the bed. The cat turned a circle at the foot, plopped down, and promptly began licking her paws.

“You could have just stayed in the bathroom,” Gail said to the cat.

Candy Corn tipped her head back and to the side and blinked at Gail.

“Don’t give me that dumb-as-rocks look. You’re a familiar. You may not know how to work a can opener, but you can understand English.”

Supposedly.

Ellery’s cat seemed to understand her owner perfectly fine, but then again, Pumpkin Pie was a bit of a goody two-shoes as far as domestic pets went. It was as if the two cats weren’t from the same litter.

Thinking of Ellery reminded Gail that she should probably give the paranoid nurse a call and let her know her big sister hadn’t yet met an untimely demise. But, damn, she didn’t want to move. She found just enough motivation to roll off the bed, and then a bit more, when she caught a glimpse of Claude’s naked backside through the sliver of the bathroom door.

She shuffled past, nudging the door gently on her way, and taking in the sight of him in all his glory, washing his hands.

Her left hand was halfway to her own back, which she’d planned on patting in a self-congratulatory fashion, but she stopped it mid-arc at the sight of a sparkling green rock on her hand that hadn’t been there before.

“What the fuck?” She paused in front of the laundry closet and examined the emerald ring on her left fourth finger. It had to be at least a carat, had some age on it, and it fit perfectly.

But it wasn’t
hers
.

She pulled it back toward the knuckle, calling, “Claude?” but the ring wouldn’t budge. She
should
have been able to rock it side to side and get it over her joint as there seemed to be enough of a gap to manage it, but she couldn’t. It was as if there were some teeny, tiny force field keeping it there. Some bit of—

“Goddammit.” She growled and spun on her heel.
Magic
. She stormed to the bathroom where Claude stood in the dark doorway, arms crossed, casting her a blasé look.

She held her left hand in front of his face, but he didn’t bother looking. Why would he? He’d certainly seen the ring enough before.

“Wanna explain that? I don’t know how you managed to get it on me, but I want to know why I can’t get it off, and what it’s supposed to do.”

He raised his shoulders in the barest shrug. “Maybe it’s just a gift.”

“Bullshit. You don’t give one-night stands gifts like this unless they’re doing you a hell of a lot more favors than what we just did in my bed. Is that why you’ve been stalking me all this time? You wanted to get this ring on me, and I bet you won’t even tell you what it’s meant to do.” She snapped her fingers. “A-ha. That’s right. It’s some incubus thing, right? It’s going to slowly suck my life force away over time while you’re off doing other things. I didn’t know incubi were so concerned with time management.”

He leaned against the door frame.

“Aren’t you going to defend yourself?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Why? It’s so much fun listening to your wild-ass speculations. It really is entertaining. Do go on. What else do you have?” He had the audacity to grin.

She pointed to the front door. “Get out.”

“You don’t want that.”

Truth? She didn’t. She wanted him to stay and play, but he needed to leave the crazy outside on the welcome mat. She had enough ridiculous shenanigans in her life as it was without adding any new ones to the mix.

“Tell me what the deal is with the ring, or I will give you the most annoying static shock I can work up, so help me.”

She rubbed her hands together to punctuate her threat, and literally shocked herself with the result.

Blue sparks leapt from her palms and fizzled in the air for lack of grounding, and she yipped, jumping back.

He laughed and pushed away from the door frame.

“What the hell? You did that, didn’t you?”

“Nope.” He sauntered toward the sleeping area, and she followed, staring at her plain old hands. She’d never felt that sort of power before, even when she used it for self-defense. She could usually put out enough juice to knock a guy out, but never before had she felt it coursing through her, battering against her insides as it were searching for a way out through her hands, skin—anywhere. She had to be good and angry. Right now, she wasn’t angry so much as confused.

She bumped into his rear when he stopped as she was still staring at her palms.

He turned, took her hands in his, and kissed the backs of both.

“It’s your power,
chéri
. I just gave you a little help calling it.”

“How?”

He let her hands fall down gently and picked up his wadded boxer shorts. “It’s the ring.”

“Explain.”

“It’s …” He stepped into his shorts and gave her patronizing peck on the forehead. “It’s complicated. Suffice it to say I’ve been holding onto it for a very long time, hoping to once again encounter the woman who it was meant for.”

Meant for?

No—
once again
? “Do what, now?”

She was so distracted by the damned ring, she didn’t notice Claude had stepped away. He was in the living area, and when she joined him, he was extricating her lacy panties from their pile of discarded clothing.

He held them out to her, grinning, and she snatched them. “What do you mean, once again?”

“You want to have this talk with clothes on or off?” His blue gaze tracked down her torso and lingered at the juncture of her thighs. “Maybe off would be better. We could spoon.”

Or maybe fork.

She clapped her hand to her eyes, groaned, and headed to the bed. Suddenly, she’d acquired a one-track mind. She teased her male cousins mercilessly about their perverse infatuation with sex, but maybe she understood why they were that way now.

“I don’t want to spoon,” she said over the half-wall as she stepped into her panties. She pulled open her topmost dresser drawer and plucked out a baggy, oversized Carolina Panthers T-shirt. Very unsexy. If that didn’t deter Claude’s incendiary gazes, nothing would. She bumped the drawer closed and pulled the shirt over her head. “Just tell me what’s going on in the least twisty-turny way possible. No lies, no cheap tricks.”

“You sure you don’t want to cuddle?”

“I’m pretty damn positive.” Positive that she
did
want to cuddle. She wanted to cuddle the hell out of that incubus. Sounded about right.

“All right, then.” He stepped around the partition, ambled slowly to the bed, and sat on its corner. “The truth is, this isn’t your first time walking the earth. You were reincarnated. Numerous times probably, but I’m only personally familiar with the last one and this one. About a hundred and fifty years ago, we were together.”

Yeah, right. She sucked her teeth. “I believe reincarnation exists, but I don’t believe you would know we were together then. You wouldn’t be able to find me in this life. It’s not an easy thing.”

“Oh, it’s easy enough for me because I’m still on the same life I was born into in 1800. I saw you die.”

That crackling static danced over her hands again. “You’re more than two centuries old?”

He shrugged. “I’m a cambion. I’m more or less immortal.”

“Okay …”
Immortal. All right. Sure. Cool. Shit
. She balled her hands into fists and crammed them against the bedspread as she sat. “How’d I die, then?”

She didn’t think he was going to answer, he was quiet for so long. Candy Corn nudged her nose between the two of them and bopped her head against his hand.

He rubbed her, sighed, and said, “My father killed you.”

“What?” She asked it before she could even process the words, but on a base level, she knew something wasn’t right.

“Because you’re mine, there are plenty of people who would want to harm you to spite me. I believe someone was here earlier looking for you, but you’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her brain seemed to be running its processes in an extraordinarily slow fashion and it took a few moments for her to break down his outlandish statements.

She swallowed. “Kill me? Kill me why?”

“Because incubi aren’t supposed to fall in love. It means we’re spoiled. Defective. I loved you. So, he took you. And now you have to come with me to a place where no one can touch you.” He took her left hand and squeezed it. “I’m not going to let anyone take you from me again.”

She snatched her hand back. “Game over. No prize. Get out. I’m not going anywhere with you. Take this thing off before you go.” She held the ring under his nose.

He blinked a couple of times and said, “You’re going to have to get over it,
chéri
.”

“Get over what?”

He blew a quick breath into her face, and suddenly, things went dark.

Gail was going to be spitting mad when she woke up, but that bit of magic he’d tossed at her should keep her out for at least the next eight hours.

She slept, lips parted and slumped against the passenger-side window of his Jeep, barely held upright by her seatbelt, and Candy Corn mewled pitifully in her carrier in the back.

He’d considered leaving the cat at the apartment, thinking perhaps Gail’s sister could tend to the animal the next day, but he knew the familiar wouldn’t fare well without her master. She’d pine away, and probably run off in search of her. If anything happened to the annoying critter, it’d be all his fault, and Gail already had enough reasons to be pissed at him.

He’d driven the entire distance between Robbins and Clarissa’s house at well over eighty miles per hour, barely slowing for traffic lights. It was late—or early, depending on perspective—and few cars were on the road. Even if he did get pulled over by Highway Patrol, he had the distinct advantage of being able to enchant the hapless officer. He or she would forget why they’d pulled him over in the first place and send him on his way with a warning to drive safe.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been burning rubber, but it was a hard habit to break. He was practically indestructible outside of beheading. No one could survive
that
. Gail, though—if he crashed, she’d be vulnerable. Witch or not, she was still more or less human.