Demon Marked

by Anna J. Evans

  “Don’t you think Francis is going to want some kind of proof of what you can do?” he asked. “Don’t you think he’ll have the same doubts that I have? Wouldn’t it be easier to go in there with me on your side, able to confirm your story?”

  “It’s not a story,” she said, his condescending tone finally pushing her to say things she’d hoped could be avoided. “When I touched you this morning, I saw inside your mind. I looked into your memories. I saw Katie. She was a redhead with—”

  “You didn’t see anything.” He stepped back, cutting the physical connection between them.

  “Then how did I know? How would I be able to describe—”

  “Jace told you,” he said, pacing back and forth in front of the table, his anger clear in his pinched features. “Or Jace told your sister, and she—”

  “Jace and Sam have nothing to do with this. I saw her. In your mind. I saw the way she was crying the last time you saw her before she died,” Emma said, hating every word she spoke, but knowing she couldn’t stop now. She had to finish this, to make sure this was the last time Andre ever questioned her about her mark. “She was crouched in a corner near a bed with a ...” Emma closed her eyes, searching her mind for the specifics she needed. “A blue comforter, with some sort of white pattern on it. She was reaching out to you, begging you not to leave, but you—”

  “Stop it.” Andre’s sharp tone made her eyes fly open. He’d stopped his pacing and stood frozen in front of her, one accusing finger pointed at her chest. “However you found out about Katie, it’s none of your—”

  “I know it’s none of my business, but that’s the question you have to answer, Andre. How did I find out?” Emma asked in her softest voice, the pain on Andre’s face making her wish he’d left well enough alone. “Did you ever tell anyone about those last few moments? Did you ever tell anyone that Katie was crawling across the floor to you when you slammed the door in her face?” Emma tensed, half expecting Andre to strike her. The violence simmering in his eyes was making his hands shake—it was terrifying.

  But not nearly as terrifying as what happened next.

  Instead of lashing out, Andre crumpled. He dropped his face into his trembling hands, his back hunched, and seconds later, those broad shoulders began to shake. He didn’t make a noise, not so much as a gasp for breath, but there was no doubt about it—Andre was crying, weeping like his heart was breaking all over again.

  And it was all her fault. She’d known how much he’d loved Katie, how it had killed him to lose her, but she’d ripped the scab away from the wound anyway, hurting him in the name of proving her stupid fucking point. Her worries about the dark craving faded to background noise as a more powerful need surged inside her. She needed to comfort this man, needed to help take away some of the pain that she had caused.

  She went to him, wrapping her arms around him, holding him as best she could, the act of offering herself to someone in such an intimate way making her awkward and unsure. Andre must have felt her doubt. For a moment, his body stiffened and she was certain he was going to pull away. Instead, his arms parted and he engulfed her, hugging her so tight, she could barely breathe. He buried his face in her neck and continued to sob in absolute silence while she smoothed his hair, stroked his strong neck, ran her hands in comforting circles on his back.

  Emma had no idea how long they stood there, holding each other, before Andre finally lifted his face, but she knew for certain that the darkness was as dormant as it ever was. Touching Andre with empathy and compassion hadn’t summoned the beast from its rest. It gave her some small hope.

  Maybe ... if Andre didn’t hate her for the things she’d said...

  “You made me cry. I can’t remember the last time I cried,” he said, wetness still shining on his cheeks, though he forced a small smile. “What a jerk you are.”

  “I know,” she whispered, threading her fingers through his hair, marveling at how soft it was. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the jerk. I should have believed you.” He brought one hand to cup her face, smoothing away a tear she hadn’t realized she’d shed. “I’m just ... not very good with faith. Or trust.”

  “Me, either.” Emma’s chest tightened with an emotion as foreign as the desire Andre inspired. “But for what it’s worth, I’d like to get better. I would ... I’d try to get better.”

  He curled his fingers at the back of her neck, making her shiver. “Me, too.” The expression on his face the second before he kissed her was enough to make Emma forget how to breathe.

  Was that what love looked like? Was that the way a man stared at the lips of a woman who meant more to him than a way to scratch the most ancient of itches?

  She’d seen into Andre’s mind and knew better than anyone that women were his fix. He might need his fix, but he didn’t love it. Sometimes he even hated it, hated the weakness his compulsion shoved in his face every night of his life.

  She should have known better than to think there was anything but lust and addiction in his eyes. But when he kissed her, she could feel the emotion there. There was hope in the way his lips moved against hers, tenderness in the way his tongue swept into her mouth, tasting her with an intensity he hadn’t before. He wanted to believe she was different. He wanted to believe that he could be different.

  More than anything in the world, Emma wanted to believe those things, too.

  She didn’t hold back when Andre moaned and kissed her harder, his hands roaming over her body, opening buttons and un-snapping snaps as he went. Instead, she shoved his suit jacket off his shoulders and down to the floor, then went to work on his buttons, stopping only when he leaned down to catch her behind the knees and hoist her up around his waist.

  Emma tensed her arms and held tight to his shoulders as she spread her legs and wrapped them around his hips, pulling him closer, sighing as Andre’s hard-on pressed against where she ached.

  “I want you.” She kissed his neck, his jaw, his lips, any part of him that came close enough for her to taste.

  “I want you. Way too much,” he gasped against her lips, spinning around, setting her ass down on the wooden table behind him.

  His hands were on her boots a second later, pulling them off and throwing them to the side, knocking over a stack of wicker baskets without pausing to assess the damage. He was too busy at her blouse, ripping open the last two buttons, sliding it off her shoulders before coming back for another kiss.

  This time the meeting of their mouths was frenzied, wild, making it impossible to concentrate on the small buttons on Andre’s shirt. But she needed her hands on his bare skin. Now. Ten minutes ago. Emma grabbed two handfuls of fabric and pulled. Buttons flew, and Andre let out a rough sound of approval that made her smile against his lips.

  “I’ve got protection covered. Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll put a condom on.”

  “The sooner the better.” Electricity shot across her skin as the true impact of their words hit and spun through her addled mind. She was going to sleep with him; he was going to be inside her within minutes, and her virginity would be a thing of the past. The thought should have been a little frightening, but it wasn’t. It was thrilling, perfect, and made her sex ache until she squirmed against Andre, desperate to dispense with the rest of her clothes.

  She reached for the waist of her unbuttoned jeans, but Andre beat her to it. “Let me,” he said, fisting the thick fabric in his hands and whipping her jeans down her long legs. Her socks went next with two little flicks of his wrist, and then he was kissing his way up her thigh, making her gasp when he paused between her legs, inhaling the smell of her through her black cotton panties.

  “You smell ...” He inhaled again, and his hands came to rest on her thighs, shoving her legs a little farther apart.

  “Um ... good, I hope?” Emma tried to joke, but the words came out breathless. It was a miracle she could even form words. Andre’s lips teasing against the fabric of her panties were causing
a full-body meltdown of epic proportions.

  Her nipples puckered tight, aching for his touch, while her pussy... well ... the poor thing might never be the same. She’d never been so plump and swollen and wet. Every inch of her cried out for his touch—his tongue, his fingers, his cock—anything would do. If only he would touch her and ease the need that made her innermost walls pulse and her clit stand up and beg for the attention it had never been given by anything except Emma’s own hand.

  It didn’t want her hand now. It wanted Andre, any part of Andre. Her hips arched of their own accord, pressing her crotch shamelessly into his face.

  Andre’s fingers tightened, digging into the flesh of her thighs. “You smell like ... everything. So perfect.” He opened his mouth and bit down lightly, dragging his teeth over the cotton covering her, making her cry out. She made a sound like she was in pain, but she wasn’t, though the aching need was so intense, it was almost more than she could take.

  She wanted him now. Right now, before this wild desire inside her spun any higher, before the dark craving took notice of what she was doing and surged toward the surface. So far, Andre was safe, but she could feel the foreign, demonic part of her beginning to awaken, seething through her veins, curious at this new fire burning in her blood. No matter how perfect it felt to burn, she couldn’t let this go on much longer.

  “Now, please.” She fisted her hands in his hair, pulling his mouth back to her lips. She kissed him hard, making him groan as she worked his pants open and tried to pull down the tight waist of his boxer briefs.

  No, not boxer briefs. Tighty whiteys.

  As Andre stepped back, dispensing with the last of his clothes, Emma was treated to a sight that she’d always assumed would make her laugh—a man wearing nothing but a pair of tighty whiteys. Surely, they had to be the least sexy article of clothing in the world ... or so she’d assumed.

  But Andre made them work. Hell, he could probably make a fluorescent orange man thong work, she thought, watching the tighty whiteys slide down his thighs to join the other clothes on the floor. And then, Andre stood bare before her, taking her breath away. His body was Roman-statue perfect, with dark, olive skin that dipped and swelled in all the right places. Emma understood why no woman could resist him. He was beautiful, every single part of him.

  She reached out, taking his cock in her hand before she could second-guess the urge. It was heavy and hard but covered with skin that was surprisingly soft. It sprung from closely trimmed black hair, its shaft full and thick, with a fleshy, dark-rose-colored head that, strangely, made Emma want to kiss him there. She’d never put her mouth on a man like that, but suddenly she wanted to. She wanted to lick and suck and taste. She wanted to feel that soft skin hot against her lips, taste that bit of liquid that had formed at the tip of his arousal. What would it taste like? Would it be sweet or sour? Salty or—

  “The way you’re looking at me right now”—Andre grabbed a foil packet he’d dropped onto the table beside her—“it’s almost enough to make me come, you know that?”

  “No, I don’t.” Emma watched with undisguised fascination as he rolled the condom onto his cock, a part of her wishing they didn’t need it, wondering whether it would feel different with the thin rubber between them. “We wouldn’t want that.”

  “No, we wouldn’t.” Andre reached out, flipping the clasp that held her bra closed in the front open with one practiced motion. Emma shivered as he eased the straps down her shoulders. “So maybe you should close your eyes for a while.”

  Emma gasped as his lips touched the bare skin just beneath her breast, and her already aching nipples pulled even tighter, until they stung and burned. But then Andre came to kiss the sting away. And lick and suck and bite and ... god.

  Desire surged through her body, cutting away her mistaken expectations, forging new pathways that had never been explored before, awakening every part of her—from her lips to her toes to those desperate inches between her legs—to a new kind of sensory overload. She’d always thought feeding the dark craving was the most intense, visceral experience in the world.

  She’d been wrong. So very, very wrong.

  This was the ultimate high, a pure, erotic thrill with none of the guilt or shame. Andre’s skin on hers, Andre’s hot mouth on her breasts, Andre’s hands pulling her panties down to her ankles and flicking them onto the floor—were completely natural, things a man should do to a woman.

  As natural as it was for Andre to push the blunt head of his cock against where she ached, as natural as it was for her to arch her hips, welcoming him inside. Emma gasped at the slight flash of pain that came as he drove to the end of her, but any discomfort faded as he moved in and out of her slick heat, each slow, controlled drive making the electricity sizzling inside her surge higher.

  “Andre,” she gasped his name against his lips as his thumb found her clit and circled, keeping time with his thrusts, building the tension inside her until her back arched and a wild sound leapt from her throat.

  She looked up, flowers filling her vision, all those wild oranges and purples flooding in through her eyes, making her feel shot through with beauty and pleasure. And then Andre kissed lower, capturing her nipple in his mouth once more, pushing her over the edge.

  Emma squeezed her eyes closed and fisted her hands by her head—keeping Andre safe from the chance of blue light her last rational thought—and came so hard and long, she feared her soul would be wrung from her body by the time she came down. Or maybe she’d never come down. The thought was frightening, but surely there were worse ways to spend eternity than riding this high with the man she loved.

  Oh god. Love. It had crept in on little demon claws.

  The realization dulled the edge of her pleasure. Her eyes opened and she looked up at the man laboring above her, the man whose skin glowed from within with a pale blue light.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By the time Emma screamed, it was too late. Andre couldn’t stop. All he could do was dig his fingers into the soft flesh of her hips and drive harder, faster, until the tight knot of pressure at the base of his spine exploded and pleasure rocketed through his every cell.

  “Emma!” He called her name as he came, his cock jerking inside of her, his arms holding her close even as she pushed at his chest, trying to force him away.

  But he didn’t want to be away from her, outside of her. He wanted to keep his dick in this woman for the rest of his life. They would arrange for some kind of old-fashioned slave-drawn litter to carry them around the city. He’d go to court and conduct his Conti family business from their traveling bed so that he’d never have to stop fucking her. Never stop driving in and out of that sweet heat that had connected his soul to his body for the first time in years.

  Fucking Emma wasn’t just good sex or even great sex; it was something more, something he’d never dreamed he’d have again. He wasn’t going to let her run away from that without a fight. He’d seen her face when she came, felt her pussy clutch at his cock as her pleasure gripped her tighter and tighter.

  She’d enjoyed what they’d done as much as he had. Hell, she’d more than enjoyed it. There was no reason for her to act like he was some kind of rapist to be shoved away at the first opportunity.

  “Get back,” she said, her voice nearing hysteria. “Please! Stop!”

  “Emma, relax, I—”

  “Look at yourself.” She pointed to the wall behind her. “You’re glowing.”

  Andre lifted his head. Emma had left the door to the bathroom open, enabling him to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the sink. He watched the shock creep across his features as he realized he was, in fact, glowing. And not some metaphoric postcoital glow, but full-on shining bright blue like he’d swallowed a stick of neon.

  “What the hell ...” He pulled away, struggling to catch his breath. As soon as the contact between them was broken, the glow faded. But there was no denying that he’d seen it or that—if Emma’s story was to be believe
d—he knew exactly what it meant. “So were you ... eating from me?”

  Emma sniffed. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m pretty sure ... I’ve never seen the blue light when I wasn’t.”

  He looked down to see tears sitting in her eyes, making the caramel depths shimmer with pain. He reached out to her, but she backed away across the table, nearly crashing into one of the flower arrangements in her haste to get away from him. “No, don’t touch me!”

  “Emma, sweetheart, I don’t care. It’s not a big deal.” He laughed, a tight sound that held no real humor. He wanted to hold her so badly, wanted to show her that everything was going to be all right. “I don’t care.”

  “Well you should care. If I’d taken too much, you could have died. And now you will die sooner than you would have.” She sobbed and covered her face, clearly devastated by what she thought she’d done. “I don’t even know how much I took. I didn’t realize I was pulling on your energy. I didn’t see the glow until after I ... after the—”

  “After you came?” he asked, easing closer, reaching tentative fingers out to brush against her toes. Even her feet were beautiful. He wanted to kiss every part of her, from her big toe to her small, sloping breasts to the tip of her slightly crooked nose. “I loved feeling you come,” he said, encouraged by the fact that she was allowing him to smooth his hand up to grip her ankle.

  She mumbled something into her hands that he couldn’t understand, but he decided to take it as a sign of encouragement.

  He squeezed her leg, letting his thumb play back and forth across her skin. “So, are you going to tell me that was the best fucking of your life now, or make me wait until I remind you how hot it was?” he asked, his recently spent cock growing the slightest bit thicker as he spoke.

  “Stop making jokes.” She lifted her face from her hands and brushed his hand away before pulling her knees into her chest, hiding her nudity except for lightly bruised shins and long, bare arms.