Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (74 page)

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Ross, I mean. He’s mentally disorganized. He wouldn’t make the connection on his own that harming you would agitate Claude.”

Agitate. Such a mild verb. She narrowed her eyes at Gulielmus, and he finally cracked a grin that wasn’t completely smarmy. He found her amusing, apparently.

“So, it’s a messy coincidence. Whoever he’s working with is interested in her,” Clarissa said.

He nodded slowly. “That would be my best guess. It’s likely another witch. Have you made any enemies, Gail?”

Enemies? Other than during her divorce? Nope. She’d always been a good girl. God forbid she offended anyone. Her grandmother would probably hear about it.

She shook her head.

“Well, be careful, witch. He didn’t get his chance to catch you, but perhaps you’re substitutable. Mind your sister, because whoever it is may decide that she’ll do in a pinch.”

She reached into her pocket and snatched out her phone. Still no response from Ellery.

He grabbed Jason by the collar and they both started to fade at the edges.

“Wait!” she called out, dashing around Clarissa. “Don’t go. My sister!”

“If we see her, we’ll let you know,” Jason said. His voice held a note of true empathy as they disappeared, but that wasn’t good enough.

If we see her
could be too late, and Gail refused to stand idle when she could act.

“Fuck.” She tossed the spatula into the corner where the demons had been standing and threw open the shutters.

“I’ll call the boys and let them know what’s happening,” Clarissa said. “It’s a long damn drive back to the coast.”

Gail called the bartender. “Hey! Tell Barrett I can’t do my two weeks. I’m sorry, but I gotta get out of here.”

She hoped that feeling in her gut was wrong and that Ellery was fine.

Claude stubbed out his cigarette when the headlights of Clarissa’s pick-up truck angled toward the long driveway. Barefoot, he walked down the porch stairs and across the grass to greet them the moment they parked.

He pulled on the front passenger door’s handle and mashed his thumb against the square red button on Gail’s seatbelt release before she could refuse his aid.

He pulled her out, wrapped her tightly in his arms, and pressed his face against the bend of her neck.

“Claude, let go of me,” she said flatly.

He didn’t take it personally, considering what must have been circulating through her mind at the moment. She wanted to spring to action, probably, but he needed his magic back. He was going damn near manic, as evidenced by the two full packs of cigarettes he’d smoked in the half day she’d been gone.

He just hadn’t wanted to strip it from her too fast. It’d be far worse than ripping a Band-Aid off. If he used too much force, he would potentially take what wasn’t his.

“Just give me a moment,” he whispered.

“Claude …”

Vaguely, he registered Clarissa and Sweetie passing them and their footsteps echoing up the wood stairs, but he didn’t greet them.

He burrowed his fingers into the back of Gail’s hair and brought her face to his, claiming her reluctant lips and teasing their seam with the tip of his tongue until she opened up.

Sighing, she tilted up her chin and parted her lips, melting into his embrace.

There you are.

When kissing her, it was so easy to forget what he’d set out to do. The longer their lips mingled and her hands found purchase inside the back of his waistband, the more he wanted to take off his clothes and let her feel all of him. But then that nagging, spiraling darkness rose up in him. It was the power he couldn’t get rid of, but that he’d been in masterful control of for two hundred years. He’d learned that balance between witch and incubus as a young man of eighteen. He’d never had to live with one part without the other.

He didn’t like this feeling, being
just
incubus. The power was there—that destructive, soul-tainting power that seduced so many of his weaker siblings. He could wield it and have her at her feet, at his mercy. He could drain her life force and get a temporary fix, more power. More energy.

But those were fleeting things, just like his caffeine and nicotine hits.

Permanency was more important, and this warm, responsive woman in his arms wasn’t meant to be a fix. She was his balm.

“I need it back,” he whispered.

“What?” She moaned dreamily, slipping her hands farther into his boxers and setting her short nails against his flesh.

He loosed his fingers from her hair and grabbed her wrists, stilling her hands just for the moment. He couldn’t concentrate when she was stoking him ever closer to that dark place. He wanted to ravish her and make her scream out his name, but what he wanted wasn’t what either of them needed at the moment.

“My magic,
chéri
. I’m going to draw it back. Just relax, don’t fight it. It’ll only take a moment.”

Her deep, throaty chuckle made the front of her body shudder against his, jostling his cock into erection.

Hissing, he took a tiny half step away from her and freed her hands. “Why is that funny?”

“Mmm, everything you say sounds sexual.
Just relax, don’t fight it.
Oh, the things you could be doing to me while saying those words. I think we should go do them, actually.”

What the hell was wrong with her?

“Fuck.” Grinding his palms against his eyelids, he groaned and took another step back. Being a witch, she shouldn’t have been so susceptible to his demon allure. Most supernatural types, even mostly human ones like witches, had a bit of built-in defense against each other’s magic. Claude was powerful enough he could override most people’s natural defenses if he tried. Right now, he wasn’t trying and still, she was getting bulldozed.

He suspected it was because she was getting the full bore—not incubus magic tempered by witch magic, but all of his demonic allure at once.

“Pay attention,
chéri
,” he said, capturing the space between them. He pushed her arms behind her back and gripped both wrists in one hand while pressing his other hand against the bottom of her neck.

“Kinky.” She chuckled again. “Are you into bondage?”

“If you want it, you’ll get it and more. Later.” He pressed his lips to hers and closed his eyes. Mentally sifting through her essence, he compartmentalized what was hers and what belonged to him. What was his, he nudged free from her and drew back to himself. His magic soothed him, calmed his frayed demonic edges, and put the lid back on Pandora’s box. He rarely let his monster out to play, and felt a reassuring calm when he was contained again.

Releasing her wrists, he deepened his kiss, skimming his thumbs along her jaw as she pawed his ass, insinuating his erection against her belly, as if pleading for it.

With his control back as it should be and his power flooding back into his cells, both his rationality and forethought returned. But the lust didn’t go away.

She’d started it, and maybe he should deny her until after they’d taken care of business.

“
Fuck.
” He grabbed her wrists yet again when she’d sneakily worked her hands around to the front of his sweatpants and put a vise grip on his cock.

“You don’t know what you’re doing to me.” She pushed up onto tiptoes and nipped his bottom lip between her teeth. She drew it out and let it snap back in.

“What do you want?”

She needed to say it. She had to bring the part of her brain back online that governed rational thought. He needed her consent, because she wasn’t just some woman he needed to fill one of his father’s aggressive quotas. She was a treasure.

“I—” She loosened her hold on him and pulled her hands away, but not far. She held his waistband in her grip as her forehead furrowed and face scrunched with her confusion.

“I don’t know. I—” She swallowed, and turned her gaze up to him. “I feel crazed, Claude. Help me. Please.”

Was this a normal thing? He didn’t know. He’d never tried to free a woman from the effects of the seductive incubus magic before. He’d done what he had to, and left them. He’d never had to talk a woman out of it before, so he didn’t know what she was feeling. Aroused? Well, obviously. He could smell it. Her skin was hot with passion, and every thready breath she took was a little plaintive cry for release.

Maybe it’d be best if they stayed away from each other until he figured this out, but that’d have to start
after
she got her fix
.

“Are you sure?”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him, leading him to the path that wound past the side of the house and beyond the lit way to the barn Clarissa used to store tools and chicken feed.

It was so dark in there, he could barely see her clawing at the catch of her jeans and heeling off her sneakers.

He’d had sex in a lot of places in two hundred and fifteen years, but to the best of his memory, this was the first time he’d done it in a barn.

He suspected he’d be experiencing a lot of firsts with her.

As she pulled him closer, grabbing his waistband and nudging it down, he cleared his throat.

“No pockets,
chéri
. Even if I had them, I likely wouldn’t be carrying condoms.”

She pushed his pants down to his knees and squeezed his cock so hard he whimpered. “Don’t worry about it. Get on your knees and fuck me.”

Her brazen demand compelled him like no magic ever had.

He pulled her down with him to the hard-packed dirt floor and pressed her chest to the ground. She let out a little contented sigh, likely already drifting into a euphoric headspace he wouldn’t allow her to indulge in just yet. Easing behind her, he grabbed her by the waist and gave her one hard yank toward him, jostling her back to the here and now.

“You asked for it, so pay attention.”

“Don’t phone it in, then.”

“You’ll get it for that.” He pushed himself into her in one slow, but continuous thrust, gritting his teeth against the agonizing friction and kneading his fingertips into the flesh of her hips.

In to the hilt, he’d barely gotten himself settled when she clenched around him and tried to pull away. Fuck, it’d been so long since he’d foregone condom use. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have skin against skin. She felt amazing, and he didn’t think he was going to last.

That couldn’t keep happening. He was a goddamned incubus. He’d endured all-night orgies in the past, so outlasting her imminent orgasm should have been a piece of cake. It wouldn’t be, and unfortunately, there was no magic for that.

He pulled her back hard, and grabbed the base of her ponytail. Yanking it, he said, “You dropped the reins. You left them for me to pick up, and I get to crack the whip.”

She sighed, but stopped her squirming.

He released her ponytail and slid his hand down her back, letting it rest at the base of her spine as he resumed his thrusts.

He tried to think vanilla thoughts as her breathing sped. He thought of holding hands and chaste picnics and watching PG-13 movies in theaters.

“Claude …” she said on a labored exhale.

And he thought of blindfolds and gags and paddles. God, he wanted to play. When was the last time he’d gotten to play? Back when he lived in Austin, maybe. There’d been a club—“Fuck.”

“Please do. Don’t hold back.”

Right. Don’t hold back
. They were in a fucking barn where the hard floor tortured his knees and he couldn’t see a damned thing beyond her curvy outlines. This was so wrong. They were fucking like desperate teenagers afraid of getting caught, and the truth was, even if they had gotten caught, neither of them would care, probably. Maybe that would add to the exhilaration.

As if they needed more of
that
.

He renewed his grip on her hips and increased the length of his strokes, the force of his thrust, until she called out each time the fronts of his thighs hit the backs of hers.

And suddenly, he was back in New Orleans in Laurette’s bed, and she had her legs wrapped around his waist and clawed at his back. That was the roughest she’d get with him. She was so sweet, afraid to hurt him because she didn’t know what he was.

“No,” he ground out, shaking his head heart and reorienting himself in the present. No, not the same. Laurette and Gail may have been the same soul, but Gail didn’t have Laurette’s memories, nor did he want her to because having the good ones meant having all the bad ones, too. She was a different woman, shaped by the modern era and molded to be his true mate.

She was so much better for him than she
had
been.

And that was why everything was harder. He couldn’t love one without letting go of the other.

“Claude!”

“Go ahead,” he said through gritted teeth.
Fuck, go ahead.

As she shuddered and moaned, he barely managed to pull out of her before he came. He hadn’t pulled out since 1963—the last time he’d gone bareback. The last thing he needed was to spawn an outstanding disappointment of Ross’s caliber.

Dammit. Ross
. Claude scrambled to his feet and pulled up his sweatpants. He knocked the dirt off his hands and reached down for Gail. He helped her up, smoothing hands over her blindly in the dark as she straightened her clothes and stepped into her sneakers.

They said nothing for a seemingly endless moment, and then they both spoke at once.

“Let’s not talk about what just happened,” she said as he said, “We need to talk about this.”

Another long silence.

He let her have the stage, should she want it.

Finally, she found his left hand and squeezed it. “I don’t know what came over me. It just seemed necessary we … do that. It’s been bubbling inside me since we met, but then back in the bar, it really came to a head. I was staring at your father and—”

“He came on to you?” As if Claude needed another reason to kill him.

“No. Proximity seemed to be enough.”

“Do you feel the same way around my brothers?”

When she didn’t answer immediately, he pulled her toward the sliver of light afforded by the slightly open barn door and pulled her outside.