“I was actually about to go play some Chaos Dimensions. You want to come watch, maybe play?”
“What is this…Chaos Dimensions?”
“A game.”
His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to gauge whether I was sincere or not.
Okay, maybe another tact. “Have you tried cheesy puffs?”
“What are cheesy puffs?”
“Popcorn?”
He shook his head.
I grinned. “You may have killed a bunch of people, but honey, you haven’t lived until you’ve had sweet and salty popcorn mixed.” I turned and walked away. “Come on. Let me educate you.”
I’d find Mal later.
Chapter Twenty-Four
An hour later, Keon was sitting cross-legged on the floor by my feet, tail whipping back and forth excitedly. He shoved handfuls of popcorn into his mouth while simultaneously button bashing the shit out of the game controller. Okay, so he wasn’t great at the game, but he was having fun, and that was all that mattered.
My comm beeped with a message from Cora.
Vi says there might be a spell. We’re looking into it. I’ll check in as soon as I have more news.
Let me know if you want me to head over. Because guess what? I can do that now. I got flight skills.
WTF?
I’ll fill you in later.
You better. I’ll message if I need you.
I went back to kicking cryptid ass, and for several minutes, it was just me, Keon, the monsters on the screen, and the regular crunch of popcorn as he devoured it. Mal’s citrus scent signaled his arrival, and my stomach quivered.
“What’s this?” Mal joined me on the sofa.
I glanced across at him, cheeks heating as I quickly soaked up his profile. Fuck, he looked good—hair mussed from sleep, lips all pouty and kissable, and shirtless, just the way I loved him.
I had a question to ask, but now wasn’t the time.
Keon hissed at Mal, then went back to his button bashing.
Mal stared at him, then gave me a weird look. “You do realize that’s Lilith’s Blade sitting at your feet, right?”
“Uh-huh.” I sliced a cryptid’s head off and then leaped over its body to kick another in the face.
“The demon queen’s pet assassin is sitting at your feet,” Mal said.
“He’s not a pet, he’s a person, creature, whatever. And he was bored.”
“Fee?” Mal said. “A word.” He jerked his head toward the hallway and then left.
I popped my controller on the coffee table. “Hold the fort, I’ll be right back.”
Keon didn’t even blink, his attention on the screen.
I joined Mal in the hallway. “What is it?”
He pulled me out of the room and pushed me up against the wall, pinning me in with his body, palms on the brick either side of me.
“He’s a killer,” he said. “A cold-blooded killer. You can’t befriend him. You can’t save him. He has no empathy, Fee. He’s not built that way. He’s a daemon.” He was saying words, but his attention was on my mouth, intense and telling.
“You’re worried I’m humanizing him.”
“Yes.” He leaned closer.
“Like I humanized you?”
“Ouch.” His breath kissed my lips.
Fuck, I wanted to kiss him, but we were having a serious conversation, and I wasn’t about to be distracted.
I put my hand on his chest to keep him at bay and immediately regretted it. His velvet-smooth skin was a fucking addiction, and now all I wanted to do was lick him.
“Fee,” he said. “You need to keep Keon at a distance.”
I pulled my hand back. “Look, Mal, I know what Keon is, and I know that if Lilith asks him to slit my throat, he’ll do it in a blink, no questions asked. He’s loyal to her, and in his own way, he cares for her, maybe even loves her, so he may not have any empathy, but he does have feelings. He may not be human, but I am, and I can’t change that. This is me, Mal. He was bored. He looked lost, and so I thought I’d hang out with him. Where’s the harm in that?”
Mal sighed and shook his head. “You’re something else, you know that, Fee?”
“Something good?”
“Definitely.”
“He’s going to be with us for a while. He’s here to protect me. We don’t have to make this awkward. While he’s here and not trying to kill me, he’s part of the team. If that changes, then we’ll deal with it.”
“Okay, if that’s what you want.”
“It is.” I lifted my chin so that our mouths were a mere inch apart. “So… you want to join us?”
Mal smiled. “I’d rather do something else…”
“Later.”
“Promise?”
I kissed him softly, resisting the urge to deepen the kiss, and then slipped under his arm and back into the lounge. Keon was still alive in the game. Points for effort. I joined him, appearing beside him in the game to help get the cryptids off his back.
Mal grabbed a controller.
“Right, then,” he said. “How about we take this up a level and have some real fun.”
Hot water beat down on me as I stood, palms flat on the tiles, with Mal behind me. His mouth was on my neck, fangs deep as he fed. His chest was pressed to my back, one hand on my breast, the other low on my abdomen. His fingers slid back and forth between my folds, playing my clit like a fucking pro. I moved with him, hips rolling against his hand, urging him to go faster as the endorphins from his bite flooded me.
I opened my legs wider, pushing back with my ass, wanting more of his fingers inside me.
He retracted his fangs and laved the wound before turning me to face him. His hand wrapped around my throat and then slid up to pinch my jaw, forcing my mouth up to his for a deep kiss that was all wrestling tongues and nipping teeth. He sucked on my bottom lip and broke the kiss to fall to his knees as if in worship.
He gripped my hips and lifted me, draping my thighs over his shoulders.
“Mal…”
His mouth claimed me, tongue whipping back and forth over the swollen nub until I was panting and clutching at his hair, and then he wrapped his lips around my clit and sucked. A primal sound tore up my throat as I came, hips jerking against his mouth. He lapped at me, sending me into a head-whipping frenzy.
“Fuck, Mal.”
But he wasn’t done with me.
He stood and hoisted me up so my legs were around his waist, and then he entered me hard and fast, over and over again, and the orgasm I thought was over sharpened and tightened to the point that it skated the line between pleasure and pain. I wrapped my arms around his head, holding him to me, cradling him as our hips kissed harder and faster. My sobs echoed around the room, pleading for him to stop and begging him not to, while my body milked his arousal until he finally came.
We lay tangled in sheets, hands touching skin, lips brushing against each other for a good half hour afterward.
“How’s Azazel?” Mal finally asked.
“Good.” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.
“Like that, huh?”
My pulse quickened. Here goes nothing. “He asked me to marry him.”
Mal tensed. “Oh. Right.” His tone was flat.
“I said no.”
Mal’s body relaxed, but then he made a sound of exasperation. “No, Fee. You can’t do that because of me.”
Mal and his acute perception. “I know. I want to marry him, Mal, but I also want to marry you.” I rolled to face him. “Malachi, will you marry me?” My voice trembled, and I pressed my lips together, studying the series of expressions that passed over his beautiful face, and a knot formed in my belly.
“Ever since you told me the truth about what happened to Gailan, I’ve felt different. The need to feed on sex has gone. I wasn’t sure at first, I wanted to wait a little longer before telling you just in case it was wishful thinking, but I think…I think you were right. I was driving the curse, and now…”
&n
He smiled wryly. “I want to live, Fee. I want to fucking live.” His emerald eyes darkened, drawing me in, and then he closed them and touched his forehead to mine. “And in answer to your question. Yes, Fee. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
This time there was no stopping the stupid tears.
And yes, there was a ton of other shit to worry about, and there was no way I was doing this until Conah was better and back on his feet—it would be too insensitive to flaunt my joy when he’d lost so much—but a girl could dream, and a girl could totally look at wedding catalogs.
I needed to tell Cora.
I needed to share this news with my best friend.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cora
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Vi says from her position crouched behind an old Renault car.
The sun’s not long set, and this side of Necro City is pretty quiet. The building across the street looks innocuous enough—a herbal remedy store—but it’s more than that. It’s the front to the Masterton Coven vault. This is where all the forbidden shit that’s supposed to be destroyed is kept. The books, the artifacts, and the ancient scrolls that could cause some pretty devastating consequences.
And I’m about to break into this vault and make a copy of a forbidden ancient spell to summon a celestial.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited. “I can’t believe your coven keeps all this dangerous stuff.”
Annoyance flashes across her face. “Yes, well, it’s lucky for you that we do.”
“Point.”
She sighs. “Look, there could come a time that one of these artifacts could be used to protect our world. We can’t be short-sighted.”
It could also be used to end the world, but hey, who was I to judge, I was asking her to help me steal one of said artifacts. Strong-arming would probably be the right word, but fuck it, when you have the ammunition, you use it, right? I might have Fee’s magic, share her blood and wicked sense of humor, but luckily for me, I don’t have her conscience. I have no problem making people feel guilty about shit they’ve done in the past to make them do shit for me in the future.
Vi is helping me under the weight of her humungous guilt, and I’m totally fine with that.
I need that spell for Fee and for Uriel.
I’d have jumped into the building from the Masterton Coven mansion, but the wards around the place mask the vault’s location to scrying, and Vi is certain that will mess with my jump ability, but this close up, with the building in my sights, I can totally get inside.
However, getting inside is the easy part. “Okay, run me through the layout again.”
“The vault is at basement level. You need to get downstairs. There’s a door in the storeroom. When you open it, it’ll look like a small storage closet, but that’s an illusion. You need to go inside and move the mop and bucket in the corner. A set of steps will appear in the floor, and that’s the route to the basement.”
“Got it. The vault is down there, and once I see it, I can jump inside.”
“Yes, but you’ll only have a few minutes before the wards recognize you as unauthorized. They’re supposed to go off if the vault door is tampered with. Because you’re jumping in, you’ll buy yourself a few minutes. But make no mistake, it’ll only be a handful of minutes before you’re detected. Nettie is totally anal about the vault, and she keeps an indexed binder with photos of everything. All you need to do is look up the Arcana celestia and snap a pic of it on your phone.”
“Got it.” A thought occurs to me. “How do you know all this stuff?”
She makes a sound of annoyance. “Nettie and I used to be close. She allowed me into the vault one time.”
Good enough for me.
I make to duck out from behind the car. I mean, I have no idea why we’re hiding, to be honest. There are no CCTV cameras on the store, and it’s dead out here; it just felt like the right thing to do at the time.
Vi grabs my arm. “If you’re caught, then I didn’t have anything to do with this. I’ll deny it, Cora. I want to help you guys, I owe Fee big-time, but I can’t risk being exiled from my coven.”
“I know.”
She nods, her expression shrouded with doubt. But me, I’m feeling lucky.
I drop her a wink and then make the jump into the building.
It smells of disinfectant and pine furniture polish inside. I don’t stop to check out the surroundings but head straight to the back and into the storeroom. I locate the door to the fake storage closet, find the mop and the stairs, and then I’m standing outside the vault door.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s not this old, ratty-looking wooden door with a latch handle. I’m almost tempted to try it but hold back. Touching it could set off the ward alarms. I need to jump into the room beyond.
I make the shift and materialize in a small room painted magnolia and lined with neat box shelving.
The clock is ticking, but there’s no need to scan the shelves to find the ring binder. It’s stationed on a pedestal like an offering. It takes less than ten seconds to find the page I want and another five to take a ton of pictures with my cheap phone. A symbol catches my eye as I’m about to close the binder. A muting ward to quell all magic. Interesting. I snap a picture of the page, then slam the folder closed.
Done.
I make the jump out of the vault.
And…
What the fuck?
I’m still in the vault.
Shit.
I try and jump again. Nothing. And one more time. Nothing.
Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. Obviously, Nettie forgot to mention this nifty feature to her vault. Maybe the old-fashioned way, then? I grab the door handle and tug, but nothing happens.
Alarms are probably blaring somewhere, and any minute now, magiguard will be swarming to this location, and I’ll be caught.
Urgh. I know what to do, and I hate that I’m about to do it.
“Jasper, I need you.”
He appears in front of me immediately, arms crossed over his chest, a smirk on his lips. “Yes?”
I know that smug look, anticipated it. Our last conversation had ended with me telling him to go fuck himself. He’d fucked me instead, and then I’d told him he was a waste of ether and needed by no one, least of all me, and now…
I grit my teeth. “I need you to get me out of here.”
“You do?” He walks around me, mouth turned down slightly. “I thought you didn’t need me for anything.” He taps his chin. “In fact, I distinctly remember you telling me that no one anywhere in the whole universe would need me for anything, that I was a…How did you put it—waste of ether.”
I want to tell him where to shove his attitude, but I do need the bastard. “I was wrong.”
“Wrong. I like that. Say it again.” He stops right in front of me, so close that I can smell the mint on his breath. “Tell me you need me, Cora.”
Fucking weirdo and his games. “Fine. I need you. Please get me out of here.” I wait for him to offer me the deal, to ask for more time in my bed. He’s already in my bed two nights a week, his hands all over me, his mouth all over me. I can’t help but crave him, and I hate it.
I hate him.
I wait for him to ask, but he doesn’t. Instead, he grabs my upper arms and pulls me into icy darkness.
We emerge outside under the awning of a bookstore. I can see the Renault, and Vi is gone.
Jasper pulls me back into the shadows, his chest pressed to my back, his lips caressing my ear. “You need me, Cora. Whether you like it or not. You’re mine, whether you want me or not. Stop fighting me.”
My heart thunders like a herd of mustangs as I watch magiguard enter the herbal shop. I wouldn’t have made it out without him. I do need him, and I hate that fact.
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, the grip of his fingers melts away, and he’s gone.
I clutch my phone tight and make the jump to the Masterton mansion. I have a spell to deliver.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Fee
I found Cora in the kitchen shoveling cereal into her mouth. She looked up as I entered and gave me a thumbs up before draining her bowl of milk and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“I was worried about you.” I grabbed a bowl and filled it with cereal. “When did you get back?”
“Dunno. I came to your room, and you were asleep.” She smirked up at me. “Did you know you drool?”
“I do not.”
“Yep, you do, but don’t worry, I bet the guys think it’s cute.”
I made a meh face. “It’s probably why Azazel asked me to marry him last night.”
“What?” Cora scanned my face, looking for signs that I was joking, and when she found none, she sat back in her seat. “You better fill me in right now.”
“Not much to tell. He asked, I said no—”
“What? Are you insane?”
I held up my hand. “I said no at first. I was worried about Mal.” I filled her in on the conversation and then the subsequent conversation with Mal and my proposal to him and his admission that he believed the curse was over.
“And I thought I had an eventful night. Babe, I am so happy for you.”
“It feels like a dream, and I don’t want to wake up.” I sighed. “But there’s no pause button for a Dominus’s life. How did it go with Vi? Any luck?”
“Of course. Have I ever let you down?”
“I wish you’d let me come with you.”
She gave me a doh look. “Lucky I didn’t. You might have missed your proposal window otherwise.”
“Point taken.”
“Besides, I had it handled. I got the spell, and Vi’s working on preparing it. Apparently, it’ll take a few days to get everything set up to try the spell, and with Christmas around the corner, Vi says she has shit loads to do for the Masterton Christmas ball.”
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