All the tension drains out of me. “It really is you.”
“Yes. And I just have to say—that was a stupid idea of your dad’s.”
“Where’s Jaecar now? Are you … sharing … his body with him now?”
“Oh, gods below, no.” Shaitan shudders slightly, and then waves one hand at the body he had, until recently, occupied. “I switched us out at pretty much the last possible moment. He was trapped in there from about the time the knife broke the skin.”
Before I can think about it, I’m scrambling toward him and all but climbing into his lap, throwing my arms around his neck and planting kisses all over his new—if weirdly familiar—face and lips.
A long time later, I ask the question that’s been bothering me ever since Shaitan woke up. “Was that the plan all along? To trade bodies with Jaecar?”
Shaitan shrugs, his eyes flickering toward his own shoulders as if surprised by how enormous they really are.
“Not always.”
“Since when, then?”
He flashes a grin. “Since I found out he was on your tail and I could lead him into the Complex.”
My mouth falls open and I hit him ineffectually. “And when you said you wanted to trade my body? You were … what? Using me as bait?”
This time, his shrug is more uncomfortable.
“I needed everyone to believe what I was selling.”
I close my eyes. “You absolute bastard.”
“So I’ve been told.”
But I hold on to him tightly anyway.
We sit like that for a while, until I finally pull myself away from him long enough to point at his old body. “What are we going to do about that?”
He shrugs. “Let’s get rid of it now.”
Shaitan and I stagger back into the apartment some time later. I’m so sleepy I’m yawning.
Though he has to be tired, too, his long, slow smile doesn’t show any of it. “Shower with me?”
The question snaps me out of my exhaustion. “Do you have an ulterior motive?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Do tell.”
“It was your deal that allowed me to switch bodies with Jaecar. Usually I’d need his permission, but your claim that you would agree to anything to get him off your trail gave me a magical out.”
“So?”
“Deals are sealed with a kiss. This one, though, needs to reaffirmation of the deal to keep working. It’ll take another kiss for the exchange to hold.”
I shake my head. “We can kiss right now.”
Shaitan’s grin flickers across Jaecar’s face. “But I want to do so much more than just kiss. And I don’t know when the last time Jaecar bathed was.”
Throwing my head back and laughing, I take his hand. “Sure.”
I pull him into my tiny WD, with its one-person shower stall.
Something about it feels clandestine, as if we are somehow on the run, determined to be together without getting caught.
This time, though, there will be no interruption.
The thought makes me smile, even as my heart catches in my chest with a deep pang of longing.
It’s going to take some time to get used to Shaitan’s new body.
I guess we’re both shapeshifters, in a way.
“You okay?” Shaitan lifts his lips away from where they’ve been kissing my neck and regards me steadily.
“Yes.” I run my fingers through his hair—shorter now than it was last time, shot through with a few strands of silver, but still soft to the touch. “Just thinking.”
Panic flashes through his dark eyes. I don’t bother to clarify what I’m thinking about, choosing instead to pull his lips back down to mine until I’m kissing him again. Even the taste of him is unfamiliar—but it’s good, anyway. He tastes hot and slightly spicy.
If he can get used to my new form, I can get used to his.
Pulling me closer to him, Shaitan deepens the kiss, his tongue tangling with mine in a way that is both brand new and achingly familiar.
The shape of his shoulders under my questing hands is different, too.
I remind myself that he’s still the same person, really.
And when I pull back to gaze at him, the wicked expression in his eyes is identifiably Shaitan, for all that he’s no longer the tall, elegant man I first met. I run my fingertips down the back of his arms, tracing the sharply defined triceps and sliding my palms down to his elbows.
With a strangled noise in the back of his throat, Shaitan slides his own hands down my back until they cup my ass, then pulls me up against him, the heat from the hard length of him burning through the clothes between us.
I wind my arms around his neck, taking a step backwards and tugging him toward the shower.
“Should we talk about this first?” Shaitan’s actions don’t match his words, as his fingers slip up under my shirt.
“Absolutely not. No talking.” I pull Shaitan’s off shirt over his shoulders, baring his broad chest and the hard planes of his stomach.
Making a deep noise of my own, I move my mouth to his chest, reaching up to flick my tongue delicately against one nipple, smiling at both the crisp feel of the hair on his chest and the way he shivers and pulls away from me.
“Don’t do that,” he says, but he smiles, clearly remembering that part of our previous time together. Reaching over my shoulder into the shower stall, he turns on the water.
“What about this?” I lightly nip the other one, until Shaitan takes the hem of my shirt and uses it to trap my arms when I lift them. Pushing me back toward the spray, he holds me still with one arm as he closes his mouth over one breast, using his tongue to play with the nipple.
Giving up any pretense at attempting to escape from the shirt, I revel in the feel of his mouth on me. As he pulls away long enough to push the fabric out of his way, cool air rushes in, stippling the skin of my breast with tiny chill bumps until he once again sucks my nipple into his mouth, the flick of his tongue echoing my earlier teasing motion.
Shaitan releases me long enough to toss the shirt onto the bathroom floor, and then turns his attention to the other breast, kneading it lightly even as he licks and sucks at it, sending hot sparks of lust shooting through my entire body.
By the time his mouth trails down my stomach to the top of my pants, I’m trembling. As he licks along the waistband, desire surges through me in a searing wave, rolling from my chest and moving down, as if it has been released directly from my heart. It settles in the deepest part of me as a hot throb of need.
With a deft motion, Shaitan slides my pants off my hips, catching my silken panties with his thumbs on the way down, dropping them atop the shirt.
I tug ineffectually at his pants. “Take these off, too.”
One corner of his mouth crooks up. “Is that an order?”
“A request.” I match his smile, but the expression fades at the sight of his new body as he steps back to remove the rest of his clothes, then stands in front of me.
I’d found his other body deeply attractive.
But now?
He’s absolutely magnificent in this new shape.
My mouth dries and I meet his heated gaze with one of my own.
In the shower, I use my hands to lather soap all over him—a less-than-subtle means of letting myself explore every inch of him.
When I run my soap-slickened hands up his rock-hard length, the muscles of his thighs tense.
He returns the favor, paying careful attention to my breasts and clit. I’m shaking with need by the time he stops.
Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I turn off the water and pull Shaitan out of the shower. Without even waiting for the drying blast of air the WD provides, I tug him toward the bed until he lifts me in his arms and carries me the final few feet, his mouth claiming mine on the way.
Oh, yes. This new shape has several advantages.
When he leans down and deposits me against the pillows, I tighten my hold around his neck.
He smiles against my lips and slides one knee onto the mattress between my legs. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Just making sure.” I punctuate my words with tiny kisses.
Gently, he pushes me back, his palms spreading my knees apart, kneeling down until he can taste me. With long, sure strokes, he laves me with his tongue until I writhe beneath him. His mouth against me leaves me wet and panting, aching for more.
“Please.” I speak in the barest whisper.
He moves up, and then pauses, hovering over me, holding my gaze.
“Call me Shaitan,” he demands. His own voice rasps with need. “You haven’t said my name since I transferred. I am still myself. Tell me you know that.”
I pause, torn between the ache at the center of my being that demands he come into me now, and my need to reassure him.
But there is a part of me that still resists assigning Shaitan’s name to this man.
Who is Shaitan?
Images of him from Pinao and from the last few days kaleidoscope through my mind. All of them, I realize, center on his eyes. Serious as he pointed out the route I need to take to get to the jetter and down to the Complex. Smiling as he saw me enter his new domain, once again in need of his help. Determined as he stood up against Jaecar, terrified as he threw that last curse.
Then blank, as they stared out at nothing, the spark of him gone.
Until those same eyes stared out at me from behind Jaecar’s face.
And always, always, watching me, caring for me, keeping me safe.
Like ice cracking, everything I thought I knew about Shaitan breaks apart, tumbling away and letting loose a torrent of emotion walled up behind it.
This man is not the one who had chased me across a planetary system.
He isn’t the bounty hunter, isn’t capable of that kind of cruelty—not against me.
He has always wanted what is best for me. He treats me with kindness.
And his eyes shine now with that kindness.
With that love.
“Shaitan,” I breathe.
At the word, Shaitan slides into me with a groan, and I meet him, pushing until he touches that innermost part of me, the part that has been aching for him my entire life, even before I knew he existed.
Epilogue
A few weeks later, Shaitan and I are seated at a table in the kitsunes’ noodle restaurant, chatting with Serena, the eldest daughter and my usual waitress. I’d like to think she and I are becoming friends—but I’m still not sure what that entails.
I’m planning to find out, though, now that I’m free to build a life without looking over my shoulder all the time.
“Uh, Sissy?” One of the children tugs on Serena’s shirt, and she turns away from us to look down at her little sister.
“What is it, Mitsy?” she asks, her voice irritable. “I’m helping Drina.”
“It’s fine, Serena.” I wave her off, smiling, and Shaitan—Jaecar, I remind myself—grins widely.
Life is beginning to settle into something more normal.
Officially, the demon Shaitan was never processed into the Complex—so there’s no record of his death.
We took the body of Shaitan’s last host and dumped it down into a recycler.
With any luck, he’ll be scattered on the next crop of tomatoes. If he hasn’t been already.
Shaitan found enough information in the bounty hunter’s apartment to be able to send a message through to his employers that Drina Movo had been eliminated. As proof, he sent some seriously altered vid of me playing dead. We don’t know if they’ll buy it, but we have almost seventeen months left before we have to deal with it.
I glance over at Serena and her new boyfriend—a vampire, apparently, though I have no idea how that could possibly work.
Then again…
“How long can you stay … as you are?” I ask Shaitan, nodding to indicate his new body.
He shrugs, but lowers his voice. “Longer than the average Human lifespan. At least as long as a leopard shifter.”
A frown creases my forehead, and I catch a glimpse of a partial reflection off a polished metal dispenser on the counter. The circular spots along the side of my face looks right—my half-shifted form finally seems normal to me. I’ve even begun accepting my transformed scent as belonging to me.
The lifespan of a shifter.
My lifespan.
“And then what? When I’m dead and gone—”
“Absolutely not,” Shaitan interrupts.
I tilt my head, waiting for an explanation.
He leans in until our foreheads are almost touching. “We have options,” he murmurs, putting his hand up between us and waving his fingers. Tiny sparks of his magic—of that cursing ability that gave me my new shape and put him into Jaecar’s body—flicker in the shadow of our bodies. “I’m not letting you get away from me.”
With a half-grin, I lean back in my seat. “You remember what happened to the last man who said that, right?”
“Yeah, well, I’m not him.” Shaitan’s smirk—the same one he’s always had, not matter what body he’s in—flashes across his face. “Not exactly.”
I laugh aloud and as Serena heads back toward us to finish taking our order, I reach up to brush a kiss across his lips. “Then I guess I’ll stick around.”
“Forever?” he asks.
“Forever.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my novella from THE COMPLEX!
All reviews are appreciated.
If you would like to read more from THE COMPLEX series, please click on the link below:
The Complex Website
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About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between “hanged” and “hung,” turned to writing romance novels instead. (Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, too.)
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Demon's Bounty (The Complex Book 0) Page 6