by Lyn Gala
Her mouth was dry, but she had to look at this logically. “Actually, we have two choices, Brady, but only one makes any sense. Either you get out of this alive or neither of us gets out of this alive”
“If those are the only two choices, I’ll take door number two. However, I’m still holding out for a third option.” Brady shifted up on the bed so he could brace his back against the stone wall. His gasp suggested he felt more pain that he wanted to admit.
“Like?”
“Maybe Hunter can stage a rescue.” Brady couldn’t even pretend to believe that, not convincingly anyway.
“So, Hunter the demon hunter is going to rescue the demon from the other demons?” Paige shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Not even a little, Brady. If Hunter showed up, he might save me, but he’d blow a hole through your head.”
“So you admit that he might come for you.” Reaching out, Brady caught her hand and held it. Paige wanted to pull away. She wanted to make this easier on Brady by maintaining some sort of emotional distance. Instead, she curled her fingers around Brady’s hand and held on.
“No he won’t. Trust me. Hunter is going to take care of Hunter and that means he’s not going to walk into a house full of demons. I might like to fantasize about a last-minute rescue, but fantasies rarely turn into reality. So do you have another bright idea?”
“She might….” He stopped and frowned.
“If the ‘she’ in question is Little Miss Fruitcake upstairs, rescue will not be coming from that direction,” Paige said sadly. “You’re ignoring the obvious solution here, Brady.”
“No, I’m ignoring the really bad solution. I’m ignoring the solution that doesn’t make any sense. I’m ignoring the solution that she’s trying to force me to make.” Brady looked angry now. Ah, so he did understand her plan. He wasn’t stupid, but with the injuries, Paige wasn’t sure he could think clearly enough to understand how bitch-lady set them up for this.
“It’s her fault, not yours,” Paige said softly. She didn’t want Brady to blame himself for taking the only solution.
Brady held her hand tighter. “I will not turn on you. I don’t give a shit what she thinks about me or my humanity. You’re the one I turned to for help and you’re the one who has stood by me. She can go to hell or send me to hell or do whatever she’s going to do, but I won’t turn on you.” He had a fierceness to his voice that Paige hadn’t expected, but reality was going to force a choice sooner rather than later.
“Thank you for that, but realistically this is not going to save me. If anything, you’re offering to die and then leave me for Little Miss Psycho-bitch to torture to death. If I’m really lucky, she might turn me into a demon,” Paige pointed out.
“No, she wouldn’t.” Brady said that like he knew it for fact.
For a second, Paige felt the flash of irrational offense. “What? You think I’m not good enough to be a demon?” Paige rubbed her hand over her face. “God, my life has gotten weird when I actually have cause to ask that question.”
Brady pulled her other hand closer and studied the fingers for a long time before he kissed them gently. “I think that if she invited a demon into you, your personality would pretty much override the demon. Then she’d be left with a superstrong, really cranky, demonic version of you. She’s not suicidal, so that’s not going to happen.” Admiration filled Brady’s smile.
“Are you so sure that I wouldn’t turn into one of those mindless guard dogs outside?”
He gave a little huff. “Yeah, I’m sure. I have no idea why I’m sure, but I’m sure. Put a demon in Paige Silver and you’re just going to get a demonic Paige Silver.”
“Do you mean the way you’re really just a demonic Brady Ross?” she asked. Instead of protesting the idea, Brady seemed to think about it for a while.
“Maybe.” Brady still held her hand and she sat on the edge of the bed and tried to ignore desire running up and down her arm on little spider feet.
“So according to your theory, I have a choice between dying in order to save my partner or getting tortured to death by Little Miss Psychotic. And given those two choices, I’m picking door number one,” she said as firmly as she could.
Her stomach still lurched a little at the idea of dying at all, but she wouldn’t pull Brady down with her—not if she had a choice. Besides, the idea of lying down next to Brady and letting him absorb her life was a whole lot better than getting tortured by the woman upstairs. After they’d had sex, Brady had been a lot more coherent, so if he took all her life force, that should power-charge him. If not, she wouldn’t be around to know that she’d failed.
“I won’t—”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Paige pulled her hand away from his. “This is my death, I get to pick it.” Strangely, she felt almost cheerful about it. Of course, that might be the hysteria setting in.
Brady shook his head. “I won’t eat you.”
Paige stared at him, her stomach turning at the thought. “Eat as in…eat? What the hell makes you think I was voting for cannibalism?”
“Because you said—” Brady frowned. “Explain this in small words, because I’m missing something. Maybe it’s the life-threatening wounds, but you’re making less sense than usual.”
“Can’t you feed from touch?” She laid her palm against his chest. Brady’s eyes fell closed and a deep furrow formed between his brows. “Anything?” she asked.
Brady shook his head. “No, nothing.”
Paige didn’t know if he was a different kind of demon or if he had lied out of some pathetic attempt to protect her or if he didn’t know how to feed that way. While eating seemed like something you should be born knowing how to do, Brady hadn’t gotten all the instruction manuals.
“Well then we go with plan two.”
Brady looked at her warily. “I’m still not eating you.”
“I will never ask you eat me. Ever. Never ever. Not that kind of eat.” Both Brady’s eyebrows went up and Paige could feel herself blush all the way up to her hair. Clearly sitting too close to Brady was making her sex-obsessed. “Look, if it ever crosses your mind that you think I want you to eat me like a Thanksgiving turkey, assume that you’ve misunderstood me,” she finished.
Brady gave her a half smile that looked lopsided with his bruised face. “I can do that.”
“Good, because you’re starting to freak me out with the cannibalism comments.”
“So what is plan number two?”
Paige ran a hand up and down Brady’s arm and immediately she could feel the heat gathering between them. If Brady was some sort of incubus who could make any woman feel this way, he’d survive psycho-bitch. He’d survive and escape and Paige’s death would be worth it. “Well, I seem to remember that there was a time you fed from me and I did not mind at all.”
Brady’s mouth fell open. The man had just gotten the snot beat out of him and he still managed to look adorably clueless. “You can’t mean—”
“Sex.”
“Yeah that’s pretty much what I thought you didn’t mean.” Brady looked caught between disturbed and excited. “Do we have to go over the part where I’m pretty sure that I’m not actually Brady? You know, the part where I’m not human and you probably don’t want to have sex with me?”
“No. I get that. But then, I never did sleep with the actual Brady. The lust pretty much started when it was you.”
“Because I’m an incubus?” Brady didn’t look happy about that.
Paige shrugged. “That and I’m a sucker for the underdog. I always have been. That might explain why I have so many questionable ex-lovers. Not that I’m promiscuous, but the underdog has pretty much done it for me every time.” She remembered when she’d first met her newest trainee, a man all smiles and charm. He’d chatted Veronica up and conned Alex out of an invitation to the poker game within four hours of starting. “Now Brady…human Brady, kind of had it all going for him. Cute, charming, smart. He might not have known he
had so much going for him, but he did. He would’ve been a great cop and he would’ve found a beautiful wife and had beautiful children. And I never would’ve looked at him twice.” It was true. “No offense, you have the underdog vibe going for you.”
“No offense taken.” Brady reached up and touched the corner of his mouth where his lip was split. “I think you’re probably right.”
Paige sat on the edge of the bed and reached out to stroke him over his swollen lower lip. “So, door number two is actually rather pleasant. Hopefully. You are a little bruised.” She frowned as she wondered how to do this without breaking him more.
“I’ll be fine,” Brady insisted. “But are you sure you want to do this? Having sex to transfer energy to me is feeling a little…or a lot…disturbing. Even if you do normally go for the underdog, I just don’t think I’m the kind of underdog you normally go for.” He made a face. If he wanted to convince her of his evil, he should probably start by spending less time worrying about her. She leaned closer and cupped his face with her hands.
“I do want this,” she promised. “I know that. In case you haven’t noticed, Brady, I have issues. I had a long history of choosing questionable sexual partners before you ever showed up. So the fact that I seem to have fallen for you isn’t even out of the norm.”
Brady gave an amused little snort. “Issues?”
“Issues. Huge issues. I have issues that breed new issues like rabbits.”
Brady frowned as if he didn’t believe her.
“Brady, I was eight years old when my mother was killed by a drunk driver, and for the next ten years, I blamed myself. She was trying to push me off the road when the idiot hit her. After years of therapy, I can now blame the driver. But I’m telling you I have issues. My father lives at the bottom of a bottle, my first partner killed himself after getting shot in a conflict I walked away from without a scratch and my longest interpersonal relationships have been with my chickens.”
A look of horror crossed Brady’s face. “The chickens you told me I could eat?” He sounded utterly scandalized.
Paige laughed. “That’s my point. You do see where I’m going here, right? So if one of us is going to question the sanity of sleeping with the other, quite frankly maybe you should be considering the sanity of sleeping with me. Trust me, I’ve sent men running and screaming out of relationships. I think a couple of them turned gay after me. And sadly, I’m only forty percent joking.”
Reaching out, he caught her hand and intertwined his fingers with hers. For a long time, he stared at their joined hands. “I don’t know. I seem to have a few issues of my own. I’m looking at going back to hell because the bitch who created me and adores me beyond reason makes my stomach turn.” Brady made a face. “There is just something wrong with her.”
“I’m not going to disagree with you about that. She’s a freak. However, can we skip the part where you go back to hell? Actually, let’s skip the whole discussion because I think you’ll find most women don’t want to talk about hell during foreplay.” She inched closer so that her hip touched his and the desire started to build in her stomach.
“I can try to control it, take just enough to heal,” Brady offered.
“No.” Paige barked the word out and Brady jumped. “No,” she said again, this time in a softer voice. “You need your strength, so you take as much as you need. She’s not letting me out of this room either way, so it’d be better if you took it all.”
“You want me to take your life force?” Brady looked up at her.
Paige’s right hand drifted down to rest against his shoulder. Paige studied his strong chest. The bruising and the scratches were visible, but the odd angle made by broken ribs looked better. If she didn’t get this right, he was going to try to protect her.
In the field, a cop had to secure the area and protect his own position before seeing to victims. It was a rule. If you saw someone down, then you checked for perps first and you did first aid second. Otherwise you put yourself at risk and the first goal was to avoid creating more victims. Paige had taught a half dozen trainees that rule, including Brady. It didn’t mean they all followed it.
“I’d rather die knowing I did the right thing by choosing you.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she reached up to place a finger against his lips. “It’s not your call, Brady. This is my call—my life. You don’t get to make this decision for me. Besides, I’ve spent the last day or so trying to come up with reasons why I shouldn’t sleep with you again and I can’t come up with any.”
Brady looked up at her with concern. “There’s always the fact that I’m a demon.”
Taking a deep breath, Paige thought about that. If he were an alien life form who’d shown up with his own body, maybe this would be easier. But he wasn’t. He also wasn’t the person who killed Brady. The bitch upstairs would pay if Brady survived. Paige knew that. “You’re something not human, Brady. I’m not ready to call that evil. You certainly don’t have enough evil in you to qualify for any particularly demonic jobs.”
He gave her a crooked grin. “I’m kinda good at eating chickens.”
“And like I told you before, that doesn’t qualify as evil. It qualifies as having poor table manners, that’s another issue.”
Paige let her hand slide down his face and over his neck. She rested her fingers against the side of his neck, almost afraid to touch too much. She didn’t want to hurt him.
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” Brady whispered. She looked into his eyes.
“No, you aren’t,” Paige said. Leaning down, she placed a kiss just under his left nipple in one of the few completely unmarred patches of skin. Brady released her left hand and he traced a finger up and down the back of her arm. Sitting up, she pulled her shirt off and Brady sucked in a breath. It felt good having that effect on someone. It felt good knowing she was doing something. If she couldn’t get out of this, Brady would just have to get some justice for her after he regained his strength.
Chapter Twenty
Paige pulled her shirt off. Brady didn’t seem to be getting the ball rolling without a little encouragement and she could provide that. Watching her, Brady’s tongue slipped out to slide along his lower lip. She twitched her body and pressed closer. Only then did Brady’s fingers brush across her bare waist. A shiver caught Paige off-guard and he rested his hand against her hip.
When Paige reached for him, she touched a deep bruise where his skin felt swollen and smooth and she hesitated. “I really am okay,” he said softly.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“The demon upgrade came with a pretty strong body. I’m okay, Paige.” Reaching out, he caught her hand and brought it up to his shoulder where a purpling bruise stained his skin. His shredded shirt gaped open, allowing her fingers access to the injury. “It actually feels good,” Brady said.
Paige opened her mouth to make some smart-ass remark about him being a bit of a masochist, but the words stuck in her throat as she looked at his face. He bit his lip and he was clearly concentrating hard. Given the bulge in his pants, Paige could guess what he wanted to do. However, he held himself still as Paige traced a meandering path through the rips and slits in his shirt. She followed the damage across his chest and stomach. He had so much strength in his body, and still, it hadn’t been enough against that woman. A tendril of fear drifted through Paige’s awareness.
“Shhh. Don’t worry about it,” Brady said. He ran his hand up the center of her stomach until his fingers slipped just under the band of her bra. He held his hand there for a long time, his breathing ragged. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this.”
“The alternative is you up in Psycho’s bed,” Paige pointed out. The look of disgust on his face made her laugh. She leaned down to kiss him playfully on the nose, but he tilted his head up at the last second.
Their lips touched and she brushed a chaste kiss across his lips and then sat up. He watched her with hungry eyes. He didn’t even try to hide his desire and that
was about the sexiest thing in the world. Age and average genes meant that not many men looked at her the way Brady did. It made her even more concerned about not hurting him.
Paige rested her hand against his chest, right over a long scratch. He smiled up at her. “It’s fine,” he vowed. “Stop worrying about me, Silver.” He had a gruff tone, but he reached up and stroked the back of a finger across her cheek. “As a man, I like to think I’m invincible.”
“You’re not,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, yeah. Leave me one or two fantasies here, okay?” His smile sent another shiver through her. He traced the lines on the back of her hand, his eyes following the path his finger took as he stroked her.
“Brady only liked you.” It was an odd thing to say. For a moment, Paige could only look at him in confusion. He looked up and gave her a small smile and again stroked her cheek. “I love you. I love that you came for me even though I was an idiot. I love that you’ve put up with all this weirdness. I love your strength and your issues and the way you look about ready to murder someone when you get really mad.” For a moment he was silent. When she didn’t have a reply, he pulled his hand back.
Catching his hand in hers, Paige took a deep breath and struggled to control a rising tide of lust. Well, maybe not control as much as just slow down. She’d wanted him and he was here and willing. And maybe he was feeding from her lust, stealing years from the end of her life. She figured she wasn’t going to be using them. However, she didn’t want to focus on that right now.
She wanted to focus on other things. More pleasant things. Sliding her hand up Brady’s thigh, she paused, her fingertips pressing against the growing bulge in his pants. She could hear his breath growing heavy and uneven as she moved to massage the soft skin of his inner thigh.
“I love that you’re willing to trust me despite my issues,” she confessed. It wasn’t a word she used very often, at least not once she’d left her teen years behind. Brady’s hand stroked her arm before reaching out to finger the strap of her bra. His silence asked permission and Paige arched her back and leaned closer. That was all the invitation he needed. Wrapping strong arms around her, he unhooked her bra. For a moment, he paused with his hand against her lower back.