Claimed by the Demon (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  Underwear, gone. Gwen, coming down around him in damp, ready warmth, both of them crying out, clutching—gone mindless with what gathered between them. He grabbed her hip; she clung to his arm, bracing herself against his chest as they fell into one another, their cries building and mingling and panting through the air. They spiraled right through intensity and right past sanity. Gwen stiffened, head falling back; Mac strained, lifting her, every muscle corded tight and reaching—

  And she wailed and he cried out, and the whole of it went spilling through him—through all the open places she’d made for him, the purity of what it was to simply be. Giving him back himself...giving him her.

  And then they lay collapsed and panting together, boneless unto absurdity, sweat quickly chilling. Mac finally gathered enough wit and enough breath to say, hoarsely and somewhat pathetically, “Cuffs? Now?”

  And dammit, sprawled there on his chest, Gwen simply and helplessly began to laugh.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but then couldn’t help another giggle.

  “Convincing.” He looked as disgruntled as a man could look after mind-blowing sex, inspecting her first aid work. If anything, his expression grew more disgruntled yet—not that she didn’t expect it. “Pink,” he said. “Hot pink.”

  “You wear it well?” she offered. And then laughed.

  Because, yeah. Mind-blowing sex. Decision made, chances taken.

  Not physically. She’d seen the healing in action...believed the truth of that, and its effect throughout his body. Safe sex, if her body had been the only thing involved.

  Chances with her heart...of that she was less certain. This man and his blade, his history—his life spiraling toward what her father’s had been...and how it had ended. She hadn’t meant to give him quite so much of herself.

  But it was only what he had given her.

  So maybe she’d pay for it. But she wouldn’t regret it.

  She touched the bright pink bandaging, smoothing one of the self-sticking edges. “Honestly,” she said. “It was all they had. That time of night, driving that twitchy Jeep of yours on unfamiliar city streets...I was just glad to stumble onto a big box store that had something besides duct tape.”

  His glance was wistful; clearly the duct tape would have worked for him.

  “Confident men can wear pink,” she said firmly. She stroked a thumb along the inside of his elbow, there above where she’d secured the pendant—indeed, with duct tape—snugly against his skin. She purred inwardly when his breath caught.

  “Trying,” he said, “to think.”

  “I’m not sure why.” She ran her nails lightly up his arm to his shoulder; he exhaled in a gust and gave up, tipping his head back against the bed to absorb the touch.

  They still sat on the floor, up against the bed, using the bedspread for their picnic blanket. Gwen had folded a corner of the bedspread over her shoulder, not yet interested in searching for her clothes. Mac had divested himself of his shoes and pants, kicking away his briefs—not much of those to begin with, and she almost wished he’d don them just so she could take them off all over again. Now he leaned against the bed, one leg propped up.

  Okay, that worked for her. A body like this? Maybe it never needed to be covered.

  He touched his arm, frowned. Nothing to do with the pink. “How bad is it?”

  That took her mind from the briefs or lack thereof, all right, and she winced. “How bad does it feel?”

  He sent her a sharp glance, and she lifted a shoulder. “It’s probably about that bad. That blade has no care for you.”

  “No,” he murmured. “For a while...we worked together, as strange as it seems. But now it’s...broken through. I don’t know how much longer I can control it.”

  “That man at that warehouse seems to think not very much longer.” Gwen scowled, a look meant for that man. “He talked about the wild road.”

  “Right,” Mac said. “When I give over to the blade to become a monster among men.” He shook his head. “You know, I was just your average slacker guy, following work down the road and happy enough to do it. Figuring that one day I’d head back to the family business, but until then, just making my own way.”

  Right. The guy who’d stepped into the middle of a scuffle outside a bar because the other fellow looked like he needed help. The guy who’d spent this day following trouble around simply so he could stop it—doing his best to bend the blade’s hedonistic inclinations to good.

  “I doubt,” Gwen said, her voice suddenly tight around the world’s biggest lump in her throat, “that you were ever an average slacker guy.”

  His grin was slow and maybe just a little bit delicious. He curved one hand around the back of her head and pulled her over for a kiss that sent a great big wave of heat and longing straight from her toes to her mouth. Her hands crept around his chest, sliding down tight skin, quite greedy. She could have done that possibly forever had he not tipped his head away. For that moment, his eyes had gone serious again. “You know...I can’t wear this thing forever.”

  I am twenty-nine years old, and I have been wearing this pendant forever.

  “You could,” she said. “Whatever it is. It’s yours. Maybe this is what it’s been waiting for.”

  The smile was bittersweet this time. “It would take only a slip. When we weren’t expecting it. When we weren’t ready for the consequences. No, I think this blade is something I have to face. One way or the other.”

  “Not yet,” she whispered.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.” And just like that, he rolled up to his knees, tucked his arms beneath her, and lifted her onto the bed, coming right down on top of her. She thought to reach for him—to play her hands over all the favorite places she’d already found in him, the ones she already knew would make him forget how to think.

  She thought wrong. He slid his hands up her arms, clasping fingers through hers, pressing them back into the pillow. Where, she suddenly realized, she was as good as cuffed. Turnabout. And where she both giggled and squirmed as he traced the line of her throat with his tongue—hesitating only long enough to both nip and soothe and murmur, “Okay?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I’m busy.” And not completely without recourse, because he hadn’t quite pinned her legs, had he? And she was perfectly capable of wrapping them around him, shifting around until she found what she wanted.

  Definitely one of the favorite places.

  “We’re not—” he reminded her, and the ragged nature of his voice was nearly as gratifying as the sweet, fiery insanity that had apparently replaced all the blood in her body.

  “We’re not—” He tried again, and the concern came through this time.

  Oh. That. “I am,” she said, arching her neck to offer him better access. “On the Pill. Which I knew the first time. And you said you were safe—”

  “Healthy,” he corrected her, fingers tightening through hers as she dug her heels into the back of his thighs and shifted her hips. “I haven’t been safe for a very long time now. And oh, please, do that again.”

  She did.

  And for a moment she thought she had him. No brains, all body—oh, glorious body—all groan and fierce hazy need into the night.

  Right up until the moment he slipped both her hands into the grip of his one and turned his other hand loose on her body.

  It turned out that he was a fast learner, too.

  * * *

  Gwen woke an hour later and eased from the bed to leave him there. Sleeping—the normal way. Healing—the normal way. Exhausted and worshipped and sated.

  And then she dressed and went out to the hotel’s back lot to cry while sitting on a curb beside desultory bushes that a thousand dogs had no doubt used for a toilet and pretending it was private.

  “Do you cry for him or for yourself?”

  So much for privacy.

  But no sense of intent. No warning. Just the hard-to-define trickle that she often felt around Mac, when it
came to that—a thing independent of the pendant. So, no panic, either.

  Gwen lifted her head to look through tears at the new intruder, not much helped by the glaring streetlight. “Having a moment, here,” she said, squinting at a tidy and petite woman with a wash of natural blond highlights and a face of striking if not beautiful features, angled Slavic cheeks on a narrow face and eyes to match. “Having a freaking day.”

  “I can see that.”

  Gwen squinted harder, bringing that tidiness into focus. All of it—clothes, hair, even posture. Slender and curvy and tastefully dressed to show it. And Gwen—too moderate in all ways to be lush and curvy or beguilingly petite, dressed again in horrible wrinkled sports shorts and a bloody T-shirt—scowled. “Go to hell.”

  The woman smiled. “Trying really hard to avoid that.”

  She experienced that hard-to-define trickle that she often felt around Mac. Gwen’s head came up all the way. Fear washed down her spine. “You have a blade.”

  And so had that man.

  The woman opened her hand, displaying a small knife with a stunted, curved blade, just big enough to fill her palm. No mistaking the eerie play of light on metal, no matter how subtle. “Baitlia,” she said. “Just showing off now. So very eclectic.” She tipped it to the light. “Yes, Baitlia, we see. Spanish skinning blade. Very nice. Now behave.” At Gwen’s trepidation, she added, “We’re in a truce.”

  Yeah, right. She had the feeling that man would have said he had a truce with his blade, too. A truce of evil, that’s what.

  “They’re not very subtle,” Gwen said. “Glowing like that. Are we supposed to not notice?”

  That, of all things, took the woman back some; she closed her hand over the blade, extinguishing its faint gleam, and didn’t exactly answer. She tipped her head at the hotel. “He’s on the edge, isn’t he?”

  Gwen only frowned, her gaze darting to where the van had been and not at all surprised to find it missing. That man knew where to find them if he really wanted them—he’d made that perfectly clear. That he’d give Mac some time to turn on his own...that, too, had been clear.

  But she knew nothing about this woman. “What are you doing here? Were you following us? Did you—”

  Did you know we were kidnapped this afternoon? Were you part of that? Or did you see it and not help?

  But the woman shook her head. “My name is Natalie,” she said. “And I’ve been waiting. We figured you were staying here. Hoped it, anyway.” She hesitated, taking a step closer and then holding off when Gwen raised her chin in warning. “He is, isn’t he? On the edge. You need to know...we can help.”

  She should have caught it the first time. “We? You and that very friendly man who threatened us last night?”

  Natalie whoever-she-was bit her lip. “Warned, not threatened. And not you. Your friend.”

  Gwen was startled at her own scowl—at her instant reaction. Same thing.

  It must have told Natalie something; understanding crossed her face. “That’s why you’re out here. You’re crying for him.”

  “For both of us,” Gwen snapped, but it sounded more ragged than she wanted.

  “We can help.”

  Gwen just stared at her. So self-possessed, so neatly self-contained. Unlike Gwen and her fast-moving mouth, her ability to skim the surface of life without really living it.

  Until, she realized, this past day. In which she’d laughed more, lived more, loved more...

  “You shouldn’t be going through this on your own,” Natalie said, trying again. “You have no idea what’s going on—”

  “And you do?” Gwen tipped her head. “I’m guessing not. Because if you had, you’d have been going after the right man last night. And today. You know, the one who tortures and kills people and likes it? Unless, of course, you’re on his side. So you see? You’re either no good at this, or you’re on the wrong side.”

  This time Natalie did come closer, and Gwen scrambled to her feet, putting the distance back between them. Knives could be thrown, and she couldn’t do anything about that. But she wasn’t putting herself within sword-length of anyone who held a blade that glowed.

  Natalie got the message. She threw her hands up in brief frustration. “Ah, Devin. I told you—” And then stopped herself. “I’m going to leave a card on the curb. Phone, address, the usual. In case you change your mind. But you need to know—there’s a way for him to fight this. Devin has been there. He’s done it.”

  Gwen thought of the pendant taped to Mac’s arm. Of the relief it gave him, the price the knife exacted when it returned. The fierce freedom in his lovemaking, in his care for her—and the knowledge of exactly how much they’d lose when the pendant gave way, or lost its contact, or Mac just plain took it off, ready to face a battle he was already so clearly losing. She said with bitter certainty, “You don’t know anything.”

  Another woman might have backed away, faced with such emotion from a stranger. This one stood her ground. “I know that Baitlia and I will never reach that point. I make my own decisions, keep my own control.”

  Baitlia. The name Natalie had used before. It has a name.

  Did Mac’s blade have a name? Did he know it?

  Natalie didn’t give her any room to think about it. “You should know—your friend should know—that it works. That it can work. The blades yearn for redemption...and they can’t help but sabotage it in any way possible. Read about the scorpion and the frog.”

  She didn’t have to. Orphaned daughter of an insane blade wielder, she might be. Foster daughter of an aunt who had cared for her without nurturing her, she might be...an indifferent scholar, she might be.

  But in spite of it all—because of it all—she knew that cautionary tale about the scorpion and the frog.

  Natalie crossed her arms. “There’s something big and bad going on in this city. We know it, and we know your friend is involved. You can help him, or you can watch while events overtake him. Events, by the way, will include us.”

  Scorpion, riding across the river on frog’s back. Killing them both halfway across, unable to stop himself from stinging frog. True to his nature in spite of himself.

  Natalie asked, “What’s your name?”

  Am I scorpion, too? So deeply, so suddenly tangled with a man who carried death in his pocket and clung to his own persistently heroic nature with nothing more than thinning tenacity? She’d seen it coming. She’d seen what there was to fear. And she’d given herself to him anyway. “Gwen,” she said, seeing little harm in it against all that.

  “And your friend?”

  But Gwen shook her head, offering only a knowing smile. “Not my name to give you.”

  Natalie smiled back—a genuine one at that. “I didn’t think so. I’ll leave the card. We’re at Compton Sawyer’s old estate when you’re ready.” She made a face. “Devin is going to be really mad I told you that.”

  And then, as quiet as Mac—full of that same confidence of movement and yet something else again, something more contained and balanced—she left.

  Gwen picked up the card.

  * * *

  Gwen let herself back into the hotel room, latching and chaining the door as quietly as possible.

  Not that it made a difference. When that man wanted them again, he’d come for them. And after him, nothing else really seemed frightening enough to chain the door against.

  Still, she did it, and turned to the mess they’d made of the room. The air conditioner blasted out cold air as best it could, still working against the retained heat of the day.

  Mac slept like a boy. Not in body—not with those shoulders, that lean, strapping form, those long legs. But in the vulnerable intensity of it, the sheet pulled up just barely high enough to cover his hips and one leg sticking out. One arm hung over the edge of the bed; the other over his eyes. The habitual tension on his face had smoothed, leaving his mouth fascinating for the curve of it in repose.

  Gwen put the business card on the bedside table, st
ripped off her clothes and crawled into bed with him. She pressed a kiss to that mouth, watched it stir in the faintest of sleeping smiles, and snuggled up close, pulling the sheet up to cover them both.

  She watched him sleep.

  * * *

  On this night, Devin James found the view from the estate’s immense office window to be not nearly immense enough.

  He paced the grounds instead.

  Not that she’d be pleased to find him fretting at her solo foray into the city. How fair is that? she’d point out. It wasn’t as though he didn’t go out on his own more often than not, following Anheriel’s call—finding trouble and stopping it.

  It wasn’t as though he hadn’t done as much this very night, and now bore the elusive scars to prove it.

  Nasty out there tonight.

  Really nasty.

  She’d point out that she had a blade, too, and that it had a vested interest in keeping her alive. It was too young, too new with her to even start playing games—and with the grounding and balancing techniques she was now also teaching him, it would likely never get that foothold.

  All true.

  But, dammit, you only just started! She was toned and fit; she ran and did tai chi. But she didn’t know the subtleties of living with the blade. And unlike Devin, she hadn’t spent the first years of her life in a tough neighborhood, slipping into a kickboxing routine at Enrique’s gym. She hadn’t watched her brother absorb the blade into his life, or stuck by his side during the learning phase...during the changes as they’d happened.

  He’d seen what she hadn’t—a man without understanding, on the verge of taking the wild road. He could well recognize it again.

  So he had no intention of cutting their intruder any slack, and he damned well didn’t want her anywhere near him.

  And he damned well suspected that’s exactly where she was.

  The faint burn of healing washed through his blood; he ignored it. Nothing but bruises, maybe something going on with his forearm. It wouldn’t get bad. He could sleep it off later.

  He didn’t hear the Prius slip into the secluded driveway. Never did. But even an electric motor couldn’t change the distinctive sound of a quietly closed car door; by the time she reached the long covered front porch of the blocky old Southwest mansion, he was waiting for her.