She reached behind her and pulled a thick manila folder out of thin air. Campbell seized it the second it was within reach and flipped it open.
A pair of haunted green eyes stared up at him, framed in the soft red hair he’d had his face buried in just hours earlier.
“Varina,” he murmured. The name suited her. Unique, fiery, and beautiful. “We know for sure it’s her?” Not that it seemed likely that another victim of demonic possession would be in the area, but he had to ask.
“She’s the only one left,” Pixley replied. “The others died either during or after their possessions. Why? Do you know her?”
Gula whistled.
Campbell jerked his head again. “No.” And that much was the truth. “I… No.”
“Well, you’re about to.” She swallowed. “But a word of caution—getting close to her isn’t going to be easy.”
At that, Gula snickered. Campbell didn’t blame him—he nearly laughed too. He would have, were he not stunned stupid. It had been easy enough earlier. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“For starters, she hates all things not-human, and she’s developed a knack for killing them over the years.”
“She’s a demon hunter?” She’d alluded to as much in their brief but oh-so-memorable conversation.
“Yes and no. As with many possession survivors, she often finds herself the unwitting target of demon attention, so she doesn’t stay in one place for long, as they follow her. She has established contacts throughout the South and along the West Coast with individuals who have sought her particular services in the past.”
For a nomad, Varina seemed intent on claiming rights to Rat Trap.
“What’s Magnolia Cross to her, then?” Campbell asked.
“Her hometown,” Pixley answered. “Really, the town her family founded, and the site of the possession. According to the file, she hasn’t been to her ancestral home in years—some falling out with her family.”
“But she’s back now.”
“The family is out of the picture.” The curator paused. “As I said, she will not make this an easy task for you, but all signs indicate Legion will be making a move soon. Do what you must to get close to her. Just remember—if she discovers what you are, she is likely to be less cooperative. The area has a signature of its own, but you would be best to come up with an explanation as to yours, should she be able to sense it.”
Campbell nodded, his mind dragging him back to the bathroom. To the sensation of her pussy wrapped tight around him, her scent in his nostrils, that lost look in her eyes. He also remembered the way she’d drawn up the second she’d realized he was more than human, and the relief she’d exuded at finding someone else who shared her tragic past.
The lie had been convenient in the moment. Now he’d have to live it.
“I’ll make it work.”
Pixley blinked. “I know. I will be in contact when the collection box is ready.”
Campbell nodded again to show he’d heard, but his thoughts had already moved on. He had no idea how this woman would react to finding him on her doorstep. But at least he had a story he could work.
If he were honest with himself, the thought of seeing her again was not unpleasant. Quite the opposite. And if his job description included staying close to her, he could think of worse fates.
4
The air came to life the second before the first knock sounded. Varina’s heart somersaulted as she looked toward the front door, though she couldn’t see it from the impromptu camp she’d set up in the parlor. But she didn’t need to see it—she knew what was out there.
Her first fucking night back at Mount Zion and she had a demon on her doorstep. She might have it in her to be terrified if the thought didn’t piss her off so much—and that was good. Anger was always preferable to fear.
A second knock echoed through the entry hall. Varina inhaled and jerked to her feet, doing her best to ignore her racing pulse or the icy heat dancing across her skin.
Okay. Maybe there was some fear.
If she were any other place in the world, she’d have already seized the nearest weapon and greeted her visitor with a blunt smack across the face. Or stab to the gut. Something about Mount Zion made her backslide, even after only a handful of hours.
A third knock came, this one harder than the others. Varina swallowed, forcing herself forward. She seized a weighty candlestick off the petticoat table, twisted the candle out, and stepped into the main hall.
Which was dark as fuck. Of course. Because why in the world would she turn on lights while staying in her ancestral, demon-tainted home?
Obviously, she’d been asking to be jinxed.
Varina wet her lips and took a few cautious steps forward, her eyes adjusting to the diminished light, her heart lodging somewhere between her collarbone and her tongue. The sudden outbreak of jittery nerves down her back and arms made her want to take the candlestick to herself. She’d spent too many years fighting and killed too many demons to be this nervous about confronting one. One that apparently didn’t have a sneaky bone in its body, because it was knocking for the fourth time.
She stopped when she reached the door, willing herself to calm. If she was too jumpy, she’d make a mistake. She’d swing too soon, aim too fast and lose control. And when control was lost in front of a demon, there was no gaining it back. That was the end. Goodnight and farewell.
Varina grasped the doorknob with her left hand, tightening her grip on the candlestick in the other. She released a steady breath. Counted to ten. Then jerked the heavy door open and reeled back her swinging arm.
The porch was blanketed in shadow, darker where the demon stood. She made out a scruffy, human-looking chin, which struck her with such familiarity Varina was shoved out of the fear zone. Her brain, though, was too slow or startled to relay the message to her arm. The candlestick raced down with perfect aim, and would have connected with her visitor’s skull had he not been in possession of some fierce ninja-like reflexes. The next thing she knew, her wrist was captured in a strong grip and she’d stumbled forward a few inches.
His hands were warm and firm, but they sizzled with energy she couldn’t ignore. Varina’s curiosity faded in favor of survival instinct. She grunted and pulled back, somewhat surprised at how easily he released her wrist, but not enough to stop and examine it. Instead, she took aim and swung again, this time earning a surprised grunt, but still not connecting. He stepped back and swayed out of the way.
“Well, hello to you too.”
The voice was familiar enough to warrant a pause, but Varina’s body was still in fight mode, and she was not stupid enough to give an enemy any sort of advantage. And he was an enemy, she knew this—the burning call of demonic presence tainted every inch of his skin.
She brought her leg up with aim that would have rendered him a soprano, but he anticipated it and met her knee with a forceful thrust of his palm. Then he was crowding her, pushing her back, and stepping over the threshold into her home.
No, not her home. Her prison. The fear returned, hot and intense, joined now by a sense of helplessness that made her want to twist and scream, except she couldn’t because her body was no longer her own. A man was in her home, a man who stank of demon, and she couldn’t even see the asshole’s face.
I am going to die.
The first time those five words had crossed her mind, she’d been on the floor above, staring into a mirror, unable to make out her own face for the tears sliding down her cheeks. She’d been less than human, just a white hot nerve of pure terror.
I am going to die.
And at that, Varina’s spine hardened, and she forced herself out of the fear spiral.
No. No, she definitely wasn’t going to die. That wasn’t what happened now.
Because the house didn’t get to win.
Varina jerked her arm back, the one with the candlestick, with enough force to reclaim it wholly. The man started, apparently having thought he’d cowed her into su
bmission, and wasn’t fast enough this time to escape the blow as it crashed onto his shoulder.
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
Varina seized advantage, rearing back her other arm before sending it flying into the intruder’s face. The blow reverberated up her wrist and to her elbow, but she barely felt it. Adrenaline was in control now. She watched as the demon stumbled back, muttering incoherently to itself, then launched herself at him in full force.
“Hey, wait—”
She took aim at his head as her foot connected with his shin. A yowl of pain tore through the air, fueling the rage behind her swings. She came at him again, harder this time, her brain disconnecting from her body, which immediately began working on instinct.
“Varina—”
That nearly made her trip. The demon knew her name.
Shit.
“Varina, stop.”
And this time she did trip. Varina’s feet betrayed her, and she lost hold on the candlestick. It crashed to the floor with a heavy thunk. Or perhaps that was her heart, which landed in her stomach when the demon seized advantage of her equilibrium loss and fought forward. Her arms became prisoners of his hands and her back met the hallway wall. He pressed his knee between her legs, wedging himself close.
Thick silence crowded her. The demon moved closer—it shouldn’t have been possible, but somehow he managed. And at last, the light, weak as it was, struck his face.
His perfectly exasperated, perfectly chiseled, perfectly familiar face.
Varina’s skin went numb. Her ears started to ring.
It was him.
“You,” she whispered.
A grin tugged at his lips. Lips that had been on hers hours earlier. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since the tryst in the bathroom. She’d been too focused, too preoccupied to worry with briefly losing her mind and fucking a stranger. It might as well have taken place in a different world.
But here he was. The man from Rat Trap. Pressing her against the wall of her childhood home, looking at her like…
What?
But she knew what. She felt what. What was currently digging into her stomach—his erection hadn’t been there a moment ago, but it was now, and boy, did she ever feel it.
Just like she’d felt it hours earlier. Against her. Inside her.
Varina had never swooned in her life, but with her blood still racing, her body still revved for a fight, she felt dangerously close to doing something reckless.
The man searched her face for what seemed like a long time, his own expression conflicted—as though it was just as much a surprise for him, winding up on the doorstep of the woman he’d fucked into oblivion.
His gaze flickered between her eyes and her mouth. Varina found herself shaking again, for entirely different reasons. Her legs widened in welcome, and she gasped when she felt his thick ridge collide with her clothed sex.
He growled, then his mouth came crashing down on hers, and the heat in her veins nearly set her body on fire. There was nothing soft in his kiss—like their fight, it was brutal and hard, grating and oh so good. Her energy balled and redirected, switching from pain to pleasure. A moan tickled her throat, and the wall at her back disappeared. He had whirled her around, his mouth ripping at hers with hot intensity, his tongue plundering and the rest of him following suit.
The tank top she wore was gone in an instant, bearing her heated skin to open air. Her bra was next, unclasped and forgotten. Then her breasts were in his palms, her nipples between his fingers as hungry, urgent grunts echoed against her lips. Varina sucked in a deep moan, her hands fighting to drag his T-shirt upward. Their mouths broke just long enough for her to yank the fabric over his head, and he was on her again before she could miss his taste.
His whiskers ground against her skin, his scent filling her nostrils. Warm. Comforting. Wholly male.
Varina clasped his waist in a bid for control, and to her surprise, he didn’t fight her. She turned and walked him backward until his legs hit the antique settee against the wall, then she fell with him and onto his lap, her mouth never breaking from his.
This was insane. On some level—buried under the intense burning between her legs and the white-hot excitement coursing through her veins—Varina knew something was off. About her. Him. About what the hell had happened. Fucking a stranger had not been on her bucket list, yet something had claimed her at Rat Trap—something in this man’s eyes, his words, the way he touched her. How he felt against her, inside her. It had been hasty and probably a mistake, but she hadn’t cared at the moment, and she’d been too preoccupied to think much on it since she’d come home. But now, straddling a man who had showed up on her doorstep, grinding her cunt against his cock as her lips mauled his… Yes, she knew she should stop. Ask questions. Get answers. Determine who he was and how he’d found her. She should.
But then his mouth broke from hers and fastened around one of her nipples, and the part of her that was rational enough to give a damn was defeated by the part of her that wanted to feel him inside her again.
“Oh,” she whimpered, clutching the back of his head to her as his lips and teeth teased her breast. Her sex fisted in a demand to be filled, and she thrust herself against his erection, rubbing with frantic need.
He released her nipple with a wet plop before kissing his way over to her neglected breast. He worked a hand between them, pressing against the apex of her thighs, the heel of his palm grinding pleasantly against her clit.
Varina’s head rolled back and she squeezed her eyes shut. Then her hands remembered themselves and skimmed down the line of his chest until her fingers rested at the button of his jeans. He grunted his approval, bucking when she popped him free. In easy seconds, she had his cock, hot and hard, in her hand, and she started to stroke. She loved the surprised little gasp he betrayed, how the air teased the wet skin of her breast when he released her. Even more, she loved the needful look he gave her as he fisted the material of her shorts and, with one tug, rendered them scraps of fabric.
She would have been annoyed were she not so turned on. Varina leaned forward, bracing a hand on his shoulder. The wet folds of her cunt danced along his length, then parted as she maneuvered him where she wanted them.
Varina paused half a second, met his eyes. The blue burn blazed into her—familiar yet not.
What was it about this guy?
She didn’t care. She just needed him. The why didn’t matter at the moment. All that mattered was this.
When she impaled herself on his cock, the noise in her head fell away. Everything did. The ghosts that had whispered around her all day, the terror-filled memories that lurked behind every corner. Everything was gone. All she felt was him.
Varina released a trembling breath and lifted herself off him. The hot drag of his skin against hers sent a fresh wave of shivers through her body. And when she welcomed him back in, warmth chased the cold away. The hairs at his groin abraded her clit on the downward plunge, a soft tickle not quite enough to do more than tease. She worried her lip between her teeth and rocked again. And again. And again. He felt so good, so damn good.
He could make her forget.
His mouth found one of her breasts again, his hands clenching her hips as she bounced in his lap. Sweat danced down her spine, her pussy clenching every time she dragged herself up his cock, her hair clinging to her skin, her body on fire.
Then she was falling backward, him above her. Her back hit the floor, the old hallway-long rug digging into her shoulders. Varina whimpered and wrapped her legs around his waist, holding him to her as he groaned and pumped, thrusting in and out of her with increasing need. Their breaths mingled, growing faster, harder together, colored with occasional moans that echoed endlessly through the large hallway.
Varina met his eyes again, or perhaps she had never looked away. But the intensity with which he gazed at her nearly made her bones rattle. She lifted her head and met his lips, kissing him softly at first, then with growing force as their
bodies warred. He gave back as well as he got, nipping, scraping, all tongue and teeth.
Oh yes. She could get addicted to this. The wet sounds of their bodies slapping together only served to fuel her fervor. She tightened her legs around him, then flipped him over with strength she could tell surprised him. Her hands found his chest again, and she held him there as she dragged her pussy up the length of his dick again, again, swirling her hips so he hit her just right every time he plunged home.
She was so close. So close to coming apart. She just needed…
He pulled her down so her breasts were pressed against his chest, the change in angle making her moan. He thrust up and into her and took her mouth again. Then his fingers were between their bodies.
“Right here,” he murmured between kisses, tapping her clit. “This is what you need.”
Varina’s throat tightened, her cells seemingly ready to detonate. She pumped harder, faster, and every time he slid home, his fingers were there to greet her. Rub her. Hit her. Massage her.
Then it spread. The bundle of sensation in her belly exploded outward, sending hard tremors through her body, her pussy hugging his cock as she spiraled out of control. She felt him follow, felt the way he tightened and spilled, felt him hot and wild, pumping into her endlessly. It was like before, that perfect moment right before reality had hit home back at the bar. How everything that had been and everything that was to come blipped out of existence, leaving her to do nothing but feel.
It was the most peace she’d ever known, and that terrified her.
Because when the world returned, the things that hadn’t mattered in the middle of it would suddenly matter the most.
And she still didn’t know the man’s name.
5
Well, that hadn’t gone according to plan. The real plan, at least. Not the one he’d been playing over and over in his head since Varina had become his assignment.
Campbell wasn’t sure he could move, less sure he wanted to. The entry hall of the mansion—and yeah, it was a mansion in every sense of the word—had grown eerily quiet since their moans and flesh-slaps had abated. Varina had rolled onto her back beside him, her luscious tits rising and falling as she, like him, tried to catch her breath. He wasn’t sure what came next, since he hadn’t stuck around long enough to do the post-coital chitchat earlier today. He knew what he wanted, which began with rolling over and ended with him biting some juicy part of her as he lost himself into another orgasm. Apparently, his body was done with its sexual fast, though only where she was concerned. The second he looked at her, all sense went out the window. Which would freak him out a bit more if it didn’t feel so damn good.
Deliverance from Sin: A Demonic Paranormal Romance (Sinners & Saints Book 5) Page 5