He moved down to kiss the backs of her ankles, on hands and knees now, but he was hardly submissive.
“I don’t know how to let it come naturally,” Samantha said.
“I’ll teach you.”
“You’re guarding me, not to mention you’re an enemy of demons. How is it going to look if I’m hooked on your life essence?” At the moment, Samantha didn’t much care.
“I don’t plan on letting anyone watch. I’m not a—what do you call it in these times?—an exhibitionist.”
“In these times? What was it called before?”
Tain’s kisses moved to her calves again. “In the old days we called it not enough rooms with doors.”
Samantha had to laugh, which came out breathy. “I suppose I’m lucky to have privacy,” she said as he continued to feather kisses up her legs. “I always need somewhere I can retreat and figure out how to get through another day.”
“We all need a place to lick our wounds.”
Right now Tain was licking the inside of her thighs. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and slid them down her legs.
“Do you?” she asked. “Need a place to lick your wounds?”
Tain kissed his way up her back as he rose to his feet then slid his strong hands around her waist from behind again. “Yes, but I don’t want to retreat anymore. I want it all back.”
“All what back?”
“My strength. My sanity.” Tain kissed the corner of her mouth, enfolding her in his body and his warmth. “My ability to love a woman without fear.”
Samantha caressed his strong hands where they lay on her abdomen. “Not an unreasonable thing to want.”
Tain’s voice was low, almost savage. “Everything I ever knew or loved was taken from me.”
“I know.” Samantha turned around in his arms, wishing she could give it all back to him. She undid buttons on his shirt. “Someone wanted me to think you’d killed the matriarch.”
Tain put a finger under her chin to turn her face up to his. “I didn’t. Do you believe me?”
Samantha nodded. “You asked me to trust you,” she said softly. “And I do.”
Tain looked at her for a long moment, his blue eyes unreadable. Then he leaned down to kiss her mouth. Samantha wanted to tell him she’d believed in him no matter what anyone tried to prove against him, but he kissed her until she couldn’t breathe, and lifted her into his arms.
Samantha licked the bare curve of his neck, his skin hot and salty, while he carried her across the room. She expected him to lay her on the wide bed, but Tain stood her up in front of the mirror instead.
The mirror reflected not a dignified, powerful clan matriarch, but Samantha, her hair disheveled, her body naked and pale with Tain’s strong brown arm across her abdomen. He looked delectable, his shirt parted and sliding off one shoulder, his kilt warm in the darkness.
She reached back to smooth her hand over his hip under the kilt, at the same time he slid his fingers to the space between her legs.
“Gods, you’re beautiful,” Tain murmured. She felt his teeth on the shell of her ear and his hand at her opening, which was hot and wet. “I used to dream only of darkness,” he said, lifting his head to watch her in the mirror. “Now I dream of you.”
Samantha’s mouth was too dry for speech. She dreamed about Tain as well, about him coming to her hard and naked, making love to her until she forgot the world.
Tain curled his hand around hers and lifted her palm to his cheek. “Take it,” he whispered. “Please. I won’t hurt you this time.”
Samantha hated how quickly her fingers moved to touch his face. She swallowed, nervous, fearing the bright hot pain that had seared her in his apartment.
“Don’t be afraid,” Tain said, his gaze on her in the mirror. “Trust me.”
It had been too long. Samantha’s heart thumped as she let him press her palm to his tattoo.
Tain’s life essence spilled quickly through her veins, finding and filling her. In the mirror she watched the tips of her breasts tighten and her eyes grow heavy.
“You need me,” Tain said, his lips in her hair. “Let it happen.”
With a groan, Samantha surrendered. Tain’s hand went to his waistband as she pressed herself to him, and he slid off the kilt, baring himself for her.
He slowly moved in front of her and knelt, Samantha’s hand still firmly on his cheek. With gentle fingers, Tain moved her legs apart, then he leaned forward and closed his mouth over her.
Samantha gasped and rocked her head back. Tain began to lick, then suckle, and Samantha moved against him, wanting more. His mouth was talented, her skin burning under it.
She’d never talked dirty to a man before, but she heard all kinds of wicked things come out of her mouth—what Tain made her feel like, what she wanted him to do to her. The half-smile on his face told her he heard her and liked it.
All the while he pleasured her, Tain’s life essence roared into her. He filled her with what Samantha had denied herself, as though she’d been dying of thirst and was at last drinking cool spring water.
Just as ecstasy spiked through her, Tain wrenched his mouth away and got to his feet. Samantha whimpered, cold at the loss of his heat.
Tain lifted her in his strong arms and wrapped her legs around his hips, his mouth finding hers. She was slick and ready for him, so that when he positioned his tip against her, he slid easily inside.
Samantha arched back in his arms, dragging in a breath as he filled her, his strong embrace around her. His life essence flowed into her in a smooth stream, soothing Samantha’s hurts as her psyche absorbed it.
She gave in to the feeling of him stretching her, and to the hot beating of her heart. Tain’s fingers bit into her buttocks as he slid in further, filling her with every inch of him.
“I can’t,” she moaned.
“Yes, you can.” Tain opened his eyes, which were nearly black, lights flickering inside them. “You can take all of me. You’re so strong, my Samantha.”
She ached where they joined, so full and hot that Tain moved easily, his arousal slick and stiff. She moved against him, feeling him drive deeper, and wanted it to go on forever.
Tain moved them to the bed, and Samantha cried out when he slowly lifted her off him, not wanting to lose him. Tain gently turned her over and deposited her on her hands and knees on the blankets.
Samantha lost contact with his life essence, but it didn’t matter, because her skin was sparkling with it. Life essence tingled through her and only got better when Tain knelt behind her and thrust himself back inside her.
She dimly hoped the room was soundproof because she began to scream, long, glorious cries of ecstasy. Tain’s hands were heavy on her back as he drove into her, his thrusts hard. Samantha came in an exquisite orgasm that went on and on, and still he rode her, building her up into another.
Samantha wasn’t clear how long it went on, because she lost all sense of time and place. Sometime later, she found herself breathless and hoarse-voiced on the bed, Tain’s large hot body on top of hers. She wanted to cry because it was all over, but Tain wrapped his strong arms around her and held her close.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The next day Samantha resigned her position with the paranormal police. Lieutenant McKay tried to convince her to stay on as a consultant, but Samantha declined, explaining that the rival demon clans wouldn’t take well to having the Lamiah matriarch hand-in-glove with the police.
Logan better understood, werewolf packs sharing similarities with demon clans.
“You’re one of the good ones, Samantha,” Logan said to her regretfully as he walked her out to her truck. “I never thought I’d give a demon the time of day, but you proved me wrong. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I need to,” Samantha said.
Logan turned her to face him and rested his warm hands on her shoulders. “I hope you make time for the occasional werewolf visit.”
“Always.”<
br />
Samantha hugged him, tears trickling from her eyes. Logan held her hard. “Take care of yourself,” he growled, and then he let her go.
Samantha rode back to the Beverly Hills mansion in the matriarch’s limousine. The house was still being repaired from the Djowlan attack, workers fixing the security equipment and parts of the house that had been smashed before Tain had raised his protective shield.
While Samantha had gone downtown to talk to McKay, Tain had returned to the Malibu house to pack his things and hers and fetch Pickles. Samantha had been surprised Tain had let her go to the police department alone, but he’d heavily warded the matriarch’s limousine until there were more protective spells on it than any other place in Los Angeles, vehicle or otherwise. Tain was at the mansion to greet Samantha on her return, Pickles grooming himself happily on the windowsill in Samantha’s new first-floor office.
Tain’s greeting kiss held a hint of the heat they’d shared last night, then said he wanted to poke around the basement where he’d found the shrine to the Old One and the portal to a death realm. Samantha was happy to let him. Portals leading to pissed-off demons or an Old One were not what she needed to deal with right now.
Flavia brought Samantha a cup of rich coffee, and Samantha sipped it as she continued going through mountain of files the last matriarch had left. Not much of the information was computerized, so if Samantha wanted to learn about her clan and its dealings with the outside world, she had to wade through the written files.
Samantha reflected darkly that she’d thought being a police detective required a lot of paperwork, but it was nothing compared to the accumulation of knowledge in the matriarch’s offices. Ariadne, the majordomo, was a surprising help for sifting through the information, though she worked with tight lips and an expression of one hoping to get something painful over with soon.
Much of the information in the files concerned other members of the clan—their backgrounds and expertise and when and if they could be called on to help in times of need. The information went back more than seven hundred years, and Samantha realized that some of the demons mentioned were still around.
There were also files on other clans—bios of their matriarchs, the locations of demon clans throughout the world and their activities. Samantha found information about Los Angeles since Los Angeles had first existed—who was in power in human society as well as vampire, werewolf, and other shifters—Chameleons, and the shamans and skinwalkers native to California.
There was enough information to pinpoint exactly who was doing what to whom at any given time, which, Samantha realized, was the point. The matriarch’s power was not so much demon strength but knowledge and negotiation—much like being a good detective.
Samantha didn’t find anything about Mindglow, which was suspicious. Merrick had had nothing to lose telling Logan that the matriarch had supplied it, and Samantha believed him. If the majordomo had known about the drug trafficking, she’d likely destroyed the records the night the matriarch died. Samantha said nothing to her now, but she wasn’t going to let Ariadne quit before the woman answered some hard questions.
Samantha sipped coffee that Flavia had topped off and read the fat file on Septimus, which offered few surprises. As an Old One, the vampire could afford to be open about his activities, but he was also very diplomatic. He’d be a good ally to have, but Samantha knew that if he ever turned against her, she’d be in trouble.
She yawned as the majordomo set another stack of files on her desk. If Samantha insisted on staying awake all night to have sex with Tain, she mused with an inward smile, she should expect to be tired. Pulling all-night stakeouts with Logan had never wiped her out as much as a night full of sex with Tain. Not to mention how greedily she’d lapped up his life essence.
The life essence should have given her energy this morning. It had jolted through her last night, filling the emptiness inside her. Samantha had awakened alone, Tain already up and out warding the car, but she’d felt refreshed.
Now her limbs were heavy and tired, her thoughts straying too often to Tain kissing her as he made love to her. She’d had the best sex of her life last night. Maybe she and Tain could try to top it tonight.
Samantha found herself leaning back in her chair, her body glowing warm with need. “Has Tain come back upstairs yet?” she asked the majordomo, who picked up a file off her desk.
“No,” Ariadne said with crisp disapproval. “I have made an appointment for you with the Djowlan matriarch for three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. She will come here. Tea in fine china, I think, in the front reception room.”
“Yes, sounds terrific.” Samantha stretched, running her fingers through her hair. She loved how her hair felt against her hands, silken soft, almost erotic. She let it fall against her neck, making a humming noise as tendrils tickled her skin.
“Matriarch?” the majordomo asked, mouth flattening. “Are you all right?”
Samantha blinked and sat up. “What is the matter with me? I was fine when I woke up.” Worry worked its way through her strange happiness, and she shot a glance at the cup of coffee she’d just drained. “Oh, gods.”
“What?” The majordomo leaned over the desk, her sharp face uglier than ever. “What has happened?”
“Mindglow,” Samantha said. Then she laughed loudly. “There was Mindglow in the coffee. Merrick is right—this is wonderful stuff.”
Ariadne snatched up the coffee cup and sniffed it. “I don’t smell anything.”
“You can’t smell it. But it makes you . . . oh, so compliant.”
Ariadne glared at the cup, glared at the closed office door, and then her eyes widened. “This is the coffee Flavia brought. I drank it, too.”
Samantha laughed again, her eyes drifting closed as a pleasant heaviness took over her body. “Well, crap, then we’re both screwed.” Another wave of contentment swamped her, and through her blurred vision she saw the majordomo put her hand to her head and sit down hard on her office chair. Pickles broke off his grooming and eyed Samantha in concern.
“Find Tain,” Samantha whispered to him, and then her lips wouldn’t work anymore.
Tain went through the hidden door in the mansion’s basement he’d discovered on previous explorations and descended the narrow, spiraling stone staircase beyond.
The first time he’d come down this set of stairs, he’d found a shrine at the bottom, set up to pay tribute to an ancient demon called Bahkat. Tain had never met this Bahkat, though Kehksut had talked of him. Bahkat was another Old One of great power, though he rarely ventured out of his hell realm.
Tain had destroyed the shrine, smashing the offering bowl and breaking the altar. The portal to the death realm beyond it had opened, the demons who guarded Bahkat pouring out to attack Tain. Tain had quickly killed the few demons who’d made it out before he’d sealed the portal, then he’d gone downtown to the No More Nightmares building to the destroy the portals he’d sensed through this one.
Now, the altar was back, bearing half-burned candles, a bowl with demon runes on it, and garlands of dried herbs snaking around the candles. The bowl held a heart, black, shriveled, and stinking. Tain covered his mouth against the stench and burned the heart away with a short burst of magic.
He’d thought the matriarch had set up the shrine, she offering Bahkat hearts of demons she didn’t like in return for favors from the Old One. But then the matriarch had died by the same method as the demon prostitutes, and someone in the house had clearly re-erected the shrine a week or so after the matriarch’s death. Someone was asking an Old One for power, and that spelled grave danger for Samantha.
Tain studied the map that had been pinned above the shrine. To anyone unfamiliar with demons, the map would look like concentric rings radiating from a central point with cryptic runes around each. Tain, on the other hand, knew the map pointed out portals to the death realm that opened around the city and region. Demon script noted that the portals at the No More Nightmares building had been des
troyed “by the Enemy.” Tain smiled. He liked that they’d capitalized Enemy, even in demon.
He stopped smiling when he saw the most distant portal that had been marked on it. That one came out in the canyon in the Nevada desert, high up in the cliff dwellings. His blood went cold. Tain had known there was something very wrong out there, but he hadn’t been able to decide what.
It made sense now. Because of the magic drain of the vortex, the portal would be difficult to detect from the desert side and be plenty protected. It also explained the waft of death magic he’d sensed that propelled Ms. Townsend of No More Nightmares across the cliffs—likely someone had opened the portal, and it had pulled her to it, just as the portal above the building downtown had sucked in the last of the attacking demons.
Tain drew one of his swords. It took death magic to open the way into the death realms, and Tain hummed with life magic. But Tain had also spent seven hundred years in thrall to the most ferocious demon Old One of all, and he’d learned to draw on death magic and channel it when he needed to.
He didn’t like how easy it was for him to tap the dark magic from both the shrine and the mansion full of demons above him, how painlessly it flowed through him and down the sword.
The sword sliced open the portal to the death realm with ease, and Tain stepped inside.
Logan piled what he’d found on a long table in front of McKay. “It’s all here,” he said. “Tons of clippings of newspaper headlines, paper, glue, scissors, lists of demons all over Los Angeles—names, addresses, family connections, where they work, what they do on their days off—the FBI couldn’t put info like this together.”
“And you arrested this Tristan?”
“He’s in the cells,” Logan said. “He wasn’t hard to find, and he seemed plenty proud that he sent the threatening letters—or at least got his human groupies to send them where he directed. That’s why we didn’t detect any death magic on the letters themselves—his human addicts did the grunt work.”
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