But as the sword swung down, Azazel’s hand swung up, and the hilt of the sword slapped into his palm.
Nick was tall, but her father had not been a short man, either. He’d had strength, too. If Azazel was leveraging that strength now, then Nick, even with his vampire strength, would be hard put to finish swinging the sword.
Azazel whispered a word. It sounded like gibberish.
Nicholas’ eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed on the floor like a stringless puppet.
Talley screamed.
Azazel threw the sword away from him. It clattered against the far wall and came to a stop, far out of her reach. He pointed at Damian and repeated the same word. Damian fell in the same tired, ugly heap on the rug as Nicholas.
He turned to face them where Carson and Tally stood by the window. Carson stepped in front of her and for a moment she was willing to let him stand there as her shield because she was truly afraid. She had never seen Nicholas and Damian so easily defeated before. A single word…
But…she was a demon hunter and this was her work as well as Carson’s. She could no more allow him to shield her than she could allow him to protect her from the rougher side of this life. It was what it was and she was born to it.
She stepped around him and to his side.
Azazel grinned. “First you, meatsack, then your bitch. I’ll do her, and make her beg for more, then I’ll waste her.”
Coming from her father’s mouth, the words were truly shocking. She tried to remind herself that this was not her father. Not anymore.
She looked around the room, feeling the onset of tears. This stuffy, old-fashioned room with its heraldic designs and throwback details—
Tally moved before she barely processed the thought. There was no time to think it through anyway and if she had, she would have frightened herself out of the idea. She turned, rested her hand on Carson’s shoulder for leverage and lifted herself up onto the table.
Azazel was two steps from Carson, his hands lifting. It would be close.
She reached up, ripped the curtain rod from its mountings, bringing the curtain with it.
Azazel was just starting to look up at her now, his mouth opening in surprise. Good.
She flipped the curtain up into the vertical, the decorative and sharp spindled filial end pointing end-down, and hoisted it up.
Azazel was starting to back up, alarm just starting to show in his face.
“Die, mother-fucker!” she told him. She jammed the curtain rod into his mouth and kept driving in down deeper and deeper into his gullet. The iron curtain rod and filial, designed to match the medieval four-poster bed and other feudal details in the room, had been picked for quality.
The curtain rod drove through the demon’s gullet like a knife through butter. With a wretched scream, the creature fell to his knees—again—and then onto his side, wrenching the curtain rod from Tally’s fingers. Then he lay very still.
“Hurry!” Carson called, lifting her down from the table, his hands around her waist.
“Why?”
“The gargoyles! Listen!”
Then she heard it. The same low whoosh she’d heard this morning. Fright tore through her. They hadn’t moved fast enough.
“There’s still time,” Carson told her. “Gargoyles are terrible trackers. We just need to run.”
Nicholas and Damian were sitting up, and Carson strode over to them. “Move it,” he ordered. “Gargoyles are about to land. We’re bugging out.” He thrust out his hand.
Nicholas considered the hand for a moment, then took it.
“My father!” Tally cried.
Carson shook his head. “We can’t, Tally. There’s no time, and his body will slow us down.”
Damian got groggily to his feet. “If we take him with us, it may give Azazel another way to reach us.”
She shuddered and nodded. “Alright,” she said tiredly, defeated. “Okay.”
Carson picked up her hand. “Come on,” he told her.
As they hurried down the stairs, they heard the first of the gargoyles smashing in the walls and window of the room they’d just left. It gave them a speed they didn’t think they had in them.
* * * * *
Tally carefully balanced her father’s katana on the edge of her hand. It was perfectly balanced…and still far too long for her tastes. She put it back on her father’s desk and looked around the small, cozy living room she’d grown up in. They’d made it back here by about ten p.m. After carefully circling the block several times, looking for lurking strangers, and looking in the air above the building for hovering shadows, they had scrambled for her apartment and thankfully slipped insides.
Now, in the cool of the evening, they were relaxing.
Carson was the only stranger in the room, but he looked oddly at home there. Nicholas was sprawled on the sofa, thinking. Damian was in the kitchen, cooking—a practice he found therapeutic on occasions, as he’d had to cook meals for her, growing up.
She found herself reaching for the katana again.
“You should go to Japan and get one made for you,” Nicholas said. “Your dimensions, but short, for stabbing. That one slowed you down.”
“Why does she need to do that?” Carson said sharply, from his corner by the library case, making them both look at him.
“Katanas are highly engineered instruments—” Nicholas began.
“Yes, yes, but why does Tally need one?” Carson insisted. “It’s not like she’s going into the business.”
Tally sucked in a short, hard, hot breath as she stared at Carson. Nicholas didn’t move an inch, but she felt his wariness slip over him like a glove.
“I mean,” Carson said slowly, looking from one to the other of them, “She’s not going into the business with me.”
Nicholas relaxed, but Tally felt an even greater sense of betrayal. She realized in a vague way that sounds had ceased emerging from the kitchen, but didn’t care. Let Damian witness this. No problem.
She glared at Carson. “You won’t work with me?” she questioned.
Carson glanced at Nick. “Can we discuss this somewhere else, Tally?”
“No. Here is just fine,” she said. “You can’t insult me in front of them, then hurry me away to apologize elsewhere.”
He sat up. “Insult you?” He sounded amazed.
“Apparently you seem to feel I’m inadequate as a partner. Somehow insufficient.”
“For god’s sake, Tally, no!” He hissed through his teeth. “I can’t work with you because I’d die a thousand deaths each minute and be constantly watching over my shoulder for you. I wouldn’t be able to do my work, because I’d be constantly worried about you. I put you behind me tonight, and I nearly passed out when you stepped out next to me again. Every time you did something brave and wonderful and goddamn heroic I just about threw up. I can’t work if I’m constantly stopping to count your fingers and toes and making sure they’re all still there. I love you, Tally. Don’t you get that?”
She longed to touch him, to hug him, but not with Damian and Nick in the room. Especially Nick. Instead, she settled for nodding. She blinked to clear the tears from her eyes. “I guess I can work alone,” she said softly.
“I’ll work with you,” Nick said, riding over the top of Carson’s protest.
Carson protested all over again. “Why on earth would you?” he demanded. “You’ve already got a partner in the field. Damian.”
“Damian just keeps me company. He isn’t a demon hunter by trade. He’s a warrior by trade, but there’s little call for them these days.” Nicholas shrugged. “I’ve been without a formal partner for a couple of decades. It’s time.”
“Why?” Tally asked softly.
“Because you just killed the demon I was hunting, so I owe you. Because I sense your potential. Because it would please me. Because it would make your life easier and calm Carson.”
She blinked at this quick litany of reasons.
“That’s not all
, is it?” she said, testing.
He looked away. “I gave you reasons. Leave it alone.”
“He wants to hunt gargoyles now,” Damian said, “and he knows you’re going after the six.”
She glanced at Carson and saw that he was smiling. “Because of Damian,” he added.
Damian caught Carson’s eye. “I’d let him. Nick’s stronger than you and can protect Tally better. He’s been training her for years, just for this life. He knows precisely what she can and can’t handle.” He headed for the kitchen again and ducked his head to look through the pass-through at Carson again. “I’ll work with you until you find yourself a real partner. Someone has to teach you about demons.”
“How did you know I was going after demons?”
“You didn’t argue when we said that Tally was going after the six gargoyles. You already know she’s damned good, so you don’t have the arrogance to assume you’d get them before she does. Therefore you have to be going in the opposite direction. Demons.”
“But she’s already killed Azazel. Why would you think I’d still have any interest in demons whatsoever?”
“Because you’ve got an ego the same size as Nick’s and he told you he knows more than you do about demons.” Damian shrugged. “Ipso facto.” He turned back to his cooking.
“I hate you guys.”
“No, you don’t,” Damian said placidly. “You hate feeling stupid. You actually like knowing we’re around for Tally.”
“Just shut the hell up.”
“Stop handing me perfect openings then,” Damian suggested.
* * * * *
For a guy who hadn’t eaten in over twenty centuries, Damian sure knew a thing or two about cooking, Tally reflected as Carson led her up the stairs. It was quiet and still up under the roof here and warm from the day’s heat.
There was an attic bedroom that had been converted to a guest bedroom, years ago, and there was an old double bed there that they could use. She couldn’t use her father’s room. That would be too much, too soon, right now.
Carson turned her to face him as they reached the attic.
“Are you sure, Tally?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Me? Us?”
She linked her arms around his neck. “Do you promise never to lock me away in the kitchen or the suburbs? To never take up a day job yourself? To never grow old, boring, or—god forbid—normal?”
His breath caught. “You don’t want that?” There was hope in his voice, warring with caution.
“Carson, think about it. Who was in the kitchen cooking tonight, despite not having eaten for over two thousand years? What was I doing while he was cooking?”
His mouth curved up into that smile.
“There it is,” she breathed and kissed him. Her kiss quickly became his kiss, and his hands slid into her hair, and roamed down her back to tuck themselves around her ass, and pull her into him. His jeans were hiding a very hard erection.
“How much do you remember now?” she asked, suddenly shy.
“All of it,” he told her. “All of what happened in the warehouse, including your father’s death. He was alive when the demon took me, Tally. He knew what they intended to do with me, including your death. He died with that knowledge.” He kissed her temple. “I would do anything to be able to tell him it turned out alright.” His fingers slid the button of her dress undone, making it sag to one side. With expert knowledge he pulled the tie undone to let the dress fall open altogether, and slid it from her shoulders. He bent and unbuckled her shoes and drew her feet from them, then picked her up and carried her to the bed and laid her on it.
His own undressing was rather more hurried and inelegant. He pulled his garments off and tossed them without regard. Once more Tally found herself sighing over his sheer perfection. He really was a magnificent-looking man. Even in this poor light his skin gleamed.
Carson lay next to her, and for long minutes just looked at her face and touched it.
“You really are so incredibly beautiful,” he told her.
“You aren’t so bad yourself.”
He lifted her thigh over his hip, and his cock nudged her entrance. She was wet and ready for him. Just seeing him naked had made her so. He lifted her hips and slid into her. She felt him throb inside her, but he didn’t thrust. He held still, even though she could feel his pulse racing. “Now that you will be a hunter,” he said softly, “You will have a big stick to beat men off with.”
She jumped. “You knew,” she said.
“I guessed. You are so very, very beautiful, there must be hundreds of men out there for whom beauty is a trophy to collect, regardless of what the lady thinks about it.” He kissed her nose. “You forget. I have been in some dark corners of this world. Are you sure you want to go there?”
“For the freedom it will give me? Yes, I will pay that price.”
Carson still hadn’t moved his cock inside her, and she could feel the tension, the need to wriggle, to clench, to somehow encourage him to do so.
But he caught her face in his hands and made her look at him again. “Marry me,” he said.
Her breath caught. “Why?” she breathed. “I thought we wouldn’t do normal?” She wanted him to move!
“We won’t. We can’t. For us, normal will be impossible. But that is one human ritual that will give us a legal bonding in the eyes of the world and I’m selfish enough to want that. I want to give you my name. Say yes, Tally.”
“Fuck me, Carson and I will,” she said breathlessly.
“Ah…!” He slid his cock inside her a few times and she sighed, feeling relief as familiar sensations began to build in her. Bu then Carson stopped moving. He looked at her, his brow lifted. “Say yes, now!”
She shook her head. “Now quite yet,” she breathed, clutching at his shoulder desperately. “Just a little bit more.”
He gripped her hip and began to thrust into her in earnest, and his head bowed her so that he could suck in the tip of her breast.
Sizzling sensation burst through her. Tally knew she would not last very long at all. She pummeled at Carson’s shoulder as he slid his hand beneath her hip, and began a slow, heavy thrusting.
Her orgasm bloomed, tearing through her from her toes to her fingertips.
“Say yes, Tally,” Carson whispered in her ear.
“Yes!” she breathed.
“You’ll marry me?” he asked, startled.
“For better or worse,” she promised.
More erotic paranormal romance by Tracy Cooper-Posey
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Beauty’s Beasts – Book 2 of The Stonebrood Saga
Family history can be fatal.
Riley Carson Connors is yanked out of Pittsburgh and coaxed to New York by two tall, sexy strangers. Nicholas Sherwood and Damian are the only people in the world who know anything about her parents, and what they know is terrifying. She must face a powerful enemy who killed both her parents, who were the best demon hunters of their era.
But while the truth about Riley’s family history is a powerful magnet, Damian and Nicholas prove to be even more compelling. Former lovers and brought together only because they gave their word to her mother to protect Riley, the two powerful vampires play erotic mind games with her. Each has a hidden sexual agenda that Riley can’t begin to guess, but seems to involve driving her out of her mind with the sort of pleasure only a centuries-old lover would know how to give.
___
Night Owl Reviews Reviewer’s Top Pick
It’s an outstanding book but be prepared to have your hanky ready. It has everything a good old fashioned adventure story should have: an evil villain, the unknowing stooge, creatures of the night and heroic men/vampires who will do everything to keep their woman safe. Once this reviewer started this book, she couldn’t stop until the last page was read! Blackraven’s Reviews
Beauty’s Beasts is a erotic page turner full of heart. Certainly one You Gotta Read. You Gotta Read Reviews
Delightfully wicked and erotic. I loved every minute of it. Don’t miss out on this was a wonderful read. Night Owl Reviews
Vividly captivating paranormal thriller that is infused with edgy suspense, dark passion and an extreme emotional depth that immediately grabs the reader and never lets go! The Romance Studio
A paranormal lover’s wicked delight. Literary Nymphs
Beauty’s Beasts will be released on November 29, 2013
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About the Author
Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes erotic vampire romances, hot romantic suspense, paranormal and urban fantasy romances. She has published over 60 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.
She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and Byzantine Heartbreak was a 2012 winner. She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.
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