Demon Bound

by Meljean Brook

  And with his knees outside hers, he thrust back in.

  Her eyes widened, and she choked out his name. Jake froze. Hot damn and holy hell, he hadn’t been prepared for that. His body shook with the need to come. Tighter, not because he was stretching her too much but because she was squeezing his length, and so wet and hot that his blood was boiling.

  Alice twisted beneath him, her fingers clenching on his ass. Urging him deeper.

  He couldn’t go as deep as he wanted. But her thighs were together, which was apparently what she needed to come. And they were slick and caressing the base of his shaft with every deliberate stroke; he was rubbing past her clit and still sinking most of the way inside her.

  And oh Jesus, Alice writhed. Made strange, incoherent chittering noises in her throat that drove him insane. Pain streaked across his back as her nails raked him, breaking his control. He planted his hands next to her shoulders and plunged, fucking her off the pillow, fucking her across smooth blue silk.

  He fisted his hands in her hair to anchor her in place, then used his tongue to fuck her mouth, deep strokes that matched the rapid thrust of his cock, that weren’t deep enough until she tensed and trembled, screamed into his mouth, her body jerking and twisting.

  It still wasn’t enough. Jake slowed, and Alice wrapped her arms and legs around him. He pushed in to the hilt, watched her eyes close in almost sleepy pleasure.

  She moved with him, held him when he came. Kissed him until his shakes eased.

  It had to be some kind of miracle that he was still alive when they did.

  He didn’t roll off her, but braced himself on his elbows. His hand wasn’t steady when he pushed a tangled curl from her forehead. Her stockinged feet slid up and down his thighs.

  He couldn’t remember when he’d vanished his jeans.

  He watched her face. Her soft smile didn’t fade as his fingers found the tiny buttons that ran from her shoulder up the side of her neck. Her eyes remained closed, but he could detect a faint glow through her lids.

  There were twenty-four, like tiny black pearls. His heart beat a thousand times for each one. He started at her jaw, and waited until he’d unfastened every button before peeling back the triangle of silk.

  He pressed his lips to her shoulder. Her collarbone. Her throat. The upper swell of her breast, where the fold of black silk barred him from her nipple.

  He didn’t care. God, how he loved her. He could die now, and not have a single regret.

  He lifted his head. Her eyes were open, watching him.

  The feeling swelled, threatened to pop. He was going to kiss her, and probably never stop.

  “Jacob,” she said softly.

  It exploded inside his chest.

  And he jumped.

  Alice blinked up at the ceiling for several minutes. After several more, she could finally begin to think.

  Very possibly, his teleporting was for the best. Soon, he would have had to get up, and what would he have seen? She was in complete disarray. His fault, for stealing her hair ribbon and then tupping her within an inch of her life.

  But perhaps her appearance wasn’t so terrible. She vanished her dress and stood, dragging one of the sheets up with her. Her full-sized mirror was in her cache; she called it in at the end of the mattress.

  Her mouth dropped open when she saw her reflection.

  Oh, dear. She did not like using a mirror in Caelum, unless it was in a chamber full of her own things—it was too disconcerting to stand in a marble room and have nothing in the background but the blue sky.

  But now, standing on the mattress, draped in sapphire silk, her hair in a wild tangle over her shoulders, she did not look as if she were floating into nothingness.

  She looked like a goddess. Aphrodite, rising from the sea.

  With a cackle, she vanished the mirror. How very silly she was—her smile was not serene enough for a goddess. Perhaps, though, it was just wickedly pleased enough for a witch.

  And she would not have minded at all if Jake had seen her that way. No, her only worry was what he’d have heard if he had stayed.

  As it was, she might have already said too much.

  CHAPTER 19

  His dick was freezing when Jake realized that he’d lied. If he’d died, he would have had one regret.

  But it was too bad that when he met his daughter, she was taking out the trash, and he’d just landed naked and facedown in the snow. Snow was better than prickly grass, though—and night had fallen, so maybe she hadn’t gotten an eyeful of ass.

  She was still openmouthed with a trash can lid in one hand and a sack of garbage in the other when he formed jeans and a shirt. He didn’t know if getting up would freak her out, so he moved his arms up and down, as if were perfectly normal for a dead man to be making a snow angel in his daughter’s backyard.

  The bag dropped into the can, and the lid clattered over the top. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her puffy coat, took a step toward him.

  God, she was beautiful.

  She had her mother’s hair. Thick and red, with only a few strands of gray at her temples, and she wore it in a loose ponytail at her nape. Her rounded face was his grandma’s, and her eyes were his. Laugh lines had settled around the corners, but hadn’t touched her mouth yet.

  He frowned and stopped moving his arms when he saw her feet, her pink-painted toenails. She’d come out here in a coat, flannel pajama pants, and flip-flops. Jesus Christ.

  But he held his tongue.

  She didn’t. “Are you nuts? Lindsey’s going to see you and think she can come out here in her swimsuit.”

  Okay, that was fair. He stood, vanished the snow off his chest and legs. “Sorry. I didn’t think about that.”

  “Well, maybe you should have—” She cut herself off, pressed her fingers to her eyelids. “Oh, Lord. I’m sorry. I go into Overprotective Mommy mode when I’m in shock.”

  She was? Maybe his own shock was preventing him from feeling it. He pushed his hands into his pockets. “It’s fine. I’m actually surprised you aren’t thinking that you’ve gone crazy.”

  “I might have if I hadn’t sat on the fifty-thousand-dollar chair you left in Lindsey’s bedroom. After that, I was ready to believe her when she said you scared away the monsters under her bed. And there are . . . other reasons.” She pushed her coat closed, shivered. Her chin jerked toward the back door. “Do you want to come in? I could use a drink.”

  Snow crunched beneath his toes as he followed her to the stairs. He vanished the ice from the steps so she wouldn’t slip, then felt like a dick when her surprise made her trip.

  He caught her arm, then immediately let her go. “You know, it’s probably not a good idea to invite strangers into your house.”

  Her snort of laughter was just like Barbara’s. He grinned, but it faded with nervousness when she turned, her expression apologetic.

  “Look, I should be up front about something. I’m not looking for another dad.”

  That hurt—but he was mostly just glad that she had a dad. “If we’re being up front, I don’t think I’d make a good one.”

  Not right now. If Khavi’s prediction didn’t come true, maybe someday—someday far in the future—he’d be ready.

  She smiled and unlatched the screen door. “That’s not what Mom said.”

  Her name was Grace. She sat him down at the same table he and Billy Hopewell used to eat cookies and milk on—and when she gave him hot chocolate with marshmallows, he wondered if he should have appeared his age instead of looking like himself.

  But she made the same for her own drink, left the room, and came back with a flat box. Several picture frames were piled on top. “Lindsey and Sarah—my daughter-in-law—are already in bed. This is Brandon.” She passed him one of the frames, and Jake looked down at a replica of himself the year before he’d died. The uniform was different, though—Marine Corps. “He was deployed just after Lindsey was born.”

  There was a note in her voice that he couldn
’t ignore. “All right. I can jump over there now and then, see how he’s doing.” Probably would anyway, even if he didn’t introduce himself. “But I can’t . . .” He gritted his teeth, forced himself to say it. “But if it’s something people are doing to each other, I can’t interfere.”

  She bit her lip before nodding.

  Fuck it. That was the Guardian line. But he had a personal line, too. “But if I was there and something did happen that I thought I could stop, I wouldn’t just stand by.” Even if it meant he had to Fall for it.

  This time, there was a shimmer in her eyes when she nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Okay, but listen. The chances of being there at exactly the right time—”

  “I know.” Grace pressed her fingers over her eyelids again. “Drink your cocoa while I pretend I’m not crying.”

  Oh, man. “Is it good crying or bad crying?”

  She looked up, waving her hands in front of her eyes as if to dry them. “Both. I just . . . He’s my baby. He never met his dad, either. It was so stupid, a fling, the summer after I graduated, and I was feeling so old, ready for a little excitement before I hit college. And he was the type of guy . . . well, the type of older man who’d always speed up when he was changing lanes, even if no one was letting him in, instead of tapping the brakes and waiting until it was safe to merge. No surprise, he had an accident; I had Brandon. So it was just me and him for a long time, and I get weepy really fast when I realize he’s not a baby anymore.”

  “Ah,” Jake said. “Now I feel guilty for not being here. I think my granddad had a shotgun made especially for older men like that.”

  She snorted out another laugh, and pushed a new picture in front of him. “There’s Mom and Dad, on their wedding day. And Dad probably would have taken his shotgun out if he’d known.”

  Barbara in white, a young Grace in pink, and—“Billy?”

  “Yes. Bill, by then.”

  “Hot damn.” Jake grimaced, looked up. “Darn.”

  She shrugged, but he shook his head.

  “No, I knew I’d be running into you sooner or later, so I’ve been trying to watch my language. I haven’t been doing so well.”

  Her smile was soft and pretty. “Don’t worry about me. Lindsey, though, is another story. She picks up everything.”

  “Okay.” Still, he’d do better. And he hoped that meant he would be seeing Lindsey again. He looked down at the picture. “So, Billy Hopewell. He’s good people. How old were you, though—ten? He waited long enough.”

  “That’s your fault,” Grace said, still smiling as she took a sip from her mug. “He’d been coming around Great-Grandma’s since I was a baby, but Mom thought he only came out of obligation, because he’d been your friend—and Dad thought she was still hung up on you. So it took them a while to figure it out.”

  Jake could only shake his head and grin stupidly.

  “You aren’t hung up on her.” There might have been relief in her voice.

  “No.” He met her gaze. “I did love her. But not the way a man does when he wants to spend his life with a woman.”

  Her eyes sparkled with sudden interest. “There is someone.”

  “Yes.” And he’d happily spend a hundred lives with her. “Did Lindsey say anything about the Wicked Witch?”

  “She did. Then she said you both disappeared.”

  “We did.” Jake thought about giving a demonstration, decided it might be too much right now. “Why aren’t you freaking out? That chair isn’t really enough of a reason.”

  Grace opened the flat box, pulled out a yellowing envelope, and paused. “Do you want this stuff?”

  A folded flag and a medal lay inside. Jake shook his head. “Those are meant for family, not for me.”

  She dug beneath the flag, pulled out a small flint arrowhead. “What about this? Great-Granddad said it meant something to you.” She stopped. “He . . . I was about eight. Great-Grandma was the year after. Both went easy.”

  “Good.” Jake fought the stinging at the backs of his eyes, reached for the arrowhead. Yeah, it meant something. He’d come across it in one of their fields when he was ten, and within two years had read every book on archaeology that the local library owned. Then reread them, because there hadn’t been any other option.

  He closed his hand around it. “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad I had it.” She pushed the box aside. “So. When I was fifteen, this guy shows up here with a letter for me. Only, he didn’t have my name—just Mom’s maiden name—so it took a while for him to track us down. Because Mom had taken on your last name after you died. You know, to make it easier, even if it wasn’t really legal.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said quietly. In a town like this, at a time like that—it was better to be seen as a widow than an unwed mother.

  “And because she said when you told her you’d marry her, she considered that as good as a ring.”

  “As far as I’m concerned it was. I’m just sorry I couldn’t give her a real one.”

  “She knew that. And it wasn’t so bad. Hard, sometimes, but Dad was always there.” She took a deep breath. “So, this man comes, and he has this letter you wrote me.”

  “Pinter?” Jake laughed to himself, shaking his head. The fucking new guy had made it out.

  “Yes. And then he says he’s got this story about how you ended up writing it.”

  “Oh, no.” Nosferatu, a slaughtered village, and tortured soldiers. “He did not tell that to a fifteen-year-old girl.”

  “He did.” Her face paled a little, and she licked her lips. “And, yes, Mom thought he was crazy. So many who came back were. You didn’t hear much about it here, but in the cities . . . and that was where he’d come from. So she tried to get him to leave, but he stayed until he told it all. Until he told us about the white light, and the man with wings who took you with him.”

  Jake rubbed the bridge of his nose. So Pinter had seen his transformation. He remembered that light, how it had surrounded him, blazed through him.

  “They never sent your body home. And it’s always been in the back of my mind, so when Lindsey tells me that you’ve slain the monsters under her bed, and suddenly she knows who made her blue quilt, and an antique chair appears in her room that she says is from France, even though she has no idea what France is ... I start thinking, ‘Maybe.’ ” Her eyes were direct. “Now I’m wondering if our family should be afraid of those things Pinter talked about.”

  “Nosferatu? Probably not.” He called in a card with SI’s phone number, and then wrote his own cell and e-mail address on the back. “But you can always contact me if there’s something you’re unsure of, or if something threatens you. And demons . . . well, you probably won’t know what they are. Mostly, you just don’t let them tell you you’re less than what you are, or that you aren’t worth anything, or make you believe something that you feel in your gut isn’t true.”

  He pushed the card across the table, then sat stock-still when she pressed her fingers to her eyes. They were callused, he saw. A few tiny scars lined her fingers. She wasn’t a stranger to working with her hands. “What’d I say?”

  She did that waving thing in front of her eyes again, flapping the envelope like a fan. “Just . . . You told me exactly the same thing in this letter. About never letting anyone put me down. So I never have.”

  “Good.” His throat was thick as hell. “Listen, do you need anything? I can’t be your dad, but—”

  “Yes.” She was already nodding. “Yes. There is one thing.”

  There was no reason to delay her flight to the Archives. Jake could find her anywhere; it didn’t matter if she was in her quarters. But Alice waited for several hours, finding tasks to occupy her, reading an erotic manual and picturing herself and Jake in every sketch, until she simply had to accept the obvious.

  He wasn’t returning.

  And didn’t that sound so very dire? She amended her conclusion as she strode into the Archives and toward the rear corner that
she liked to think of as her own.

  It wasn’t that he wouldn’t return. Something was keeping him away.

  Or perhaps not. Alice drew to a halt, her lungs feeling very tight.

  Jake was here. He sat at her worktable, sifting through photographs.

  She couldn’t return the smile he sent over his shoulder. She wondered why he attempted that welcoming expression at all; it was too false, strained.

  And why had he not come to find her? “Have you been here long?”

  “A little while.”

  “I see.” She did not look at him as she picked up an unfamiliar aerial photograph. She couldn’t focus, but she recalled that they intended to look for Anaria. “The Dardanelles?”

  “Yep. I’m hoping these and the topographical data will give us a head start, a few possible locations. I’ll have satellite images by tomorrow.”

  “Then shall we begin?” Dear God, let them begin. She needed desperately to leave this place, to fill her mind with something other than: he hadn’t returned.

  “Nope. The sun doesn’t set for another six hours. We’ll need to be flying around as we’re looking.”

  And they couldn’t risk humans glancing up to see them. Or, she supposed, teleporting in and out to specific sites. Stiffly, she moved around the table. “Very well.”

  “You’ll have to carry me tonight. My wings won’t be ready.”

  She gave a short nod, but he wasn’t looking at her.

  It was very odd, but he was still examining the same photograph he’d had when she’d come in. When had he become so slow?

  And his breathing, she thought, was too steady. His face too still, his voice too even.

  She had asked the wrong question. This was not about how long he had been here, but why he hadn’t returned to her quarters.

  It only now occurred to her that she wasn’t the reason.

  “Jake,” she said softly. “Where did you go?”