Clever. The demon had taken refuge in a public place, and had apparently complained about the crazy barbarian woman staring at her from the next table. Taylor assumed that it wouldn’t be long until she asked for an escort out of the diner and to safety.
The demon did. She threw in a cane for effect and wobbled to the cruiser, clinging to the younger trooper’s arm. Gently, the trooper helped her into the back and closed the door before sliding into the driver’s seat.
Michael teleported next to the demon. Taylor heard the frail “fuck” before they both vanished.
The trooper glanced over his shoulder. In another second, he was out of the car, his expression pure puzzlement as he looked around.
He took off his hat, scratched his head. His gaze landed on Taylor. “Did you see a lady come out the back?”
“I didn’t, Trooper.” Taylor gave him her best flat stare. “And I hope I never see a lady come out the back.”
Poor kid didn’t know what to say to that, finally settled for “Thank you, ma’am.”
Taylor entered the diner, where Alejandro had joined Irena at her table. The sergeant tucked away his notebook, gave Taylor a nod as he passed. She watched him join the other officer, knew the kid was in for an earful.
Irena looked up at her face and sighed. “You soft cow.”
“I can’t help it. I was there once.”
“Then I will help him,” Alejandro said. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up shortly.”
Exiting the diner, Taylor had just long enough to see Alejandro shift into the old woman’s form before Irena scooped her up and leapt into the sky, her wings a torrent through the air.
No question where they were going. The acrid touch of Michael’s Gift scorched Taylor’s shields—not the shattering pain as with the first demon in the cavern, but a sharp burn. It had been the same with the previous two demons. Either he’d learned to control his Gift or the rage and fear after his encounter with Lucifer had stolen his control the first time.
Probably the latter . . . and probably not because of the rage. She’d seen that in him before. He’d always controlled himself despite his anger. But maybe Michael wasn’t as accustomed to fear.
Which meant Lucifer’s power must be more terrifying than she’d imagined.
The desert passed below, dotted with sage and yucca. Rocky outcroppings marked the edge of a canyon. Spreading her wings, Irena slowed and glided along the cliff. Below, Michael had the demon pinned against a Joshua tree with a spike through his forehead. Already done, then.
Irena dove to meet him. Landing, she spit Taylor’s hair out of her mouth. “We must soon teach you to fly.”
“I’m up for it.” Taylor didn’t exactly love being carried around, either. She met Michael’s gaze. “Anything?”
“No. He knew nothing of the sentinels.”
Nothing. Taylor fought the despair, looked to the east. The sky had begun to lighten. They’d spent the entire night chasing down and digging nothing out of these demons.
But at least that meant Savi would soon be asleep again. The sunrise would offer some escape for her. It wouldn’t for Colin.
How long could they hold out? And should she even hope that they would hold out until the Guardians found them, knowing that every minute was torture? Maybe she should hope that they gave in, instead. Make a bargain that would keep them alive and open the fucking portal.
“Nothing at all?” No despair from Irena. Only anger, frustration. She looked to the demon, then to Taylor, her eyes developing a venomous glow. “Do you wish to use your Gift? We can discover what happens when you yank.”
Taylor would need to, eventually. But she shook her head. “I don’t want to feel that right now. That joy . . . and back to this.” Worry. Despair. “I don’t know if I can take it.”
“I feel joy every time I slay them.” Irena called in her knife. “Though I’ll not likely enjoy it so much now that I know I send them to Heaven.”
Her blade slashed through the demon’s neck. The body dropped to the desert floor, blood splattering across her leather longstockings. Irena tugged the spike from its head and glanced over her shoulder with a grin.
“I am wrong,” she said. “It is just as enjoyable.”
Taylor couldn’t manage more than a faint smile. She looked to Michael, whose gaze had lifted to the sky. Alejandro had found them.
So they didn’t need to wait here. “Can you anchor to Khavi yet?”
His gaze lowered to hers. “No.”
God. Where was she? Maybe Khavi couldn’t see Michael’s future, but hadn’t she seen Colin and Savi’s? Or even Irena’s future, or any other Guardian. Hadn’t she seen that they would soon be desperately searching for their friends?
She wanted to scream. Somehow she held it in, the lacquered eggshell forming around her again but already on the verge of cracking.
Irena studied her face until Alejandro landed beside her. She looked to Michael. “Will you take us back to San Francisco? We will report to Lilith so that you can return and finish here.”
There was nothing to finish. But they were gone an instant later, and only a moment passed before Michael returned. Taylor didn’t move as his hands rose to cup her face, gently tilting her head back to meet his gaze.
Concern filled his voice. “What do you need, Andromeda?”
Just this. Looking up at him, his eyes locked on hers, and the world quiet except for the beat of their hearts.
“I want to clear my head a little. For a few seconds, I just want to forget everything. I don’t know how to do it.” Her throat felt rough. “How do you?”
“I stand still for as long as I can.”
She wanted to do that now. Stand here, with him. But if she did, it wouldn’t be long before she was in his arms. She wanted to bring his mouth to hers. Wanted to lose herself in him, to stop feeling anything else but his warmth and strength. To let him hold her. Just long enough to get her head together again.
Except he was part of the reason she was so messed up.
“Anything else?”
“A few things.” His thumb traced her bottom lip. “Will you trust me?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“But you can.”
She wanted to believe it.
She wanted to stand here. She wanted his kiss. She wanted to believe. It was so stupid to want all of this.
But she still wanted to forget. For just a second.
“This one time,” she said. One time. A promise to herself.
Taylor didn’t know if she could keep it.
And then she was in his arms anyway. Vanishing the EMT uniform, Michael lifted her against him before she could get a look at his linens and tucked her face against his neck. She gripped his bare shoulders, hanging on. His hand wrapped around her hair, twisting until he made a rope of it, then kept hold.
“Don’t form your wings,” he said against the top of her head. “It’s important. You could be hurt.”
She nodded against his throat, then spun into cold, utter cold. The air felt thin, her inhalation shallow even when she breathed deep. The wind was a frigid burn the length of her back, Michael’s arm a steel band around her waist. Her collar and sleeves fluttered and snapped.
Opening her eyes, she looked down. Brilliant stars shone beneath their feet. She tilted her face up, into the wind.
Puffy white clouds against dark blue, but it wasn’t the sky. The ocean lay beyond the clouds. And they were falling.
“Oh, my God.” The wind tore the whisper from her lips.
She clung tighter. Michael’s arm constricted around her, stealing what was left of her breath. They spun. Not teleporting. Spinning and spinning through the sky. So fast, so dizzy. The shoulder seam in her shirt ripped. She fought the urge to form her wings, to slow down. Thank God that Michael had warned her. Spreading her wings at this speed would tear more than her shirt.
The wind rose to a roar, battering her cheeks. She could barely see, barely lift her lids, but th
e passing mist and the white were the clouds and the ocean was just blue, blue and coming closer.
They’d have pulled a parachute cord by now. Wings would be good. Something.
She hid her face in his neck. “Michael?”
“We’re all right.” The words were a reassuring rumble from his throat. “Trust me.”
It would be crazy to. But this was crazy, too. She lifted her head and watched the water come closer, whitecaps rolling, and maybe this was how she’d clear her mind, just smash into the ocean and let her brain leak out her ears for a while.
The ocean was a roar now, too, the wind howling and holy shit he wasn’t going to form his wings, he wasn’t going to stop until she screamed—
Then she spun into the sun and warm sand at her back, laughing and laughing because he was utterly fucking insane.
And his heavy weight was wedged between her legs, hard and thick behind a few wraps of linen.
Taylor stopped laughing. Somewhere nearby, waves crashed into the shore. A salty breeze whispered across loose sand. She didn’t look at any of it, because Michael was above her, the width of his shoulders blocking out the sky. His heart pounded as he stared down at her, eyes pure obsidian.
Slowly, he unwound his hand from her hair, slipped his palm behind her nape. His gaze fell to her mouth.
“Trust me again,” he said. “I’ll help you forget everything for a while.”
Idiot that she was, Taylor wanted to let him. “And why would I trust you with this?”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“But you did. You did.”
It boiled up from deep inside her, but it didn’t carry the anger she needed—only pain. So stupid. She wanted him so much. And she’d already forgotten what she most needed to remember. She should have been pushing him away, not clinging tighter.
She just needed to get her head in the right place.
“I know I did,” he said roughly. “I have no excuse.”
“But you’re sorry?”
“Yes.”
“Then make it up to me. Do what you did to me there. Take my . . . my need for you, and project it back to me. Make me want you more than anything.”
His gaze searched her face. “Why?”
Because he was already what she wanted. Because he couldn’t have hurt her so badly if she hadn’t cared.
And she didn’t want to care about him anymore. “Do it. Then I’ll fuck you. You can fuck me.”
“If you want to be fucked, I’ll do it without that and please you just as well. We don’t need to fake it.”
“I do.” A laugh rasped from her chest, painful and harsh. “This is what I want from you. Project that into me as hard as you can. Until I can’t think of anything but having you.”
With a shake of his head, he said, “You would hate me for taking over your mind that way.”
“I know.”
Michael froze. Icy rage stabbed against her shields. “You can’t hold on to your anger, so you want me to remind you of your reasons.”
“Bingo.”
“No.” His weight lifted, as if he meant to rise.
She dug her fingers into his forearms, held him in place. “You wanted to please me? This is the only thing that would give me pleasure now. And you’re as hard as a fucking rock, so don’t say you don’t want me, too.”
“Always. But I won’t take you like that, Andromeda.”
“This is the only thing you can give me that I want.” And she needed it. “You said the only thing I’d accept would be sex, but it’s this. And come on. You wanted to know everything about me. Don’t you want to see how I respond?”
His big body stilled. He stared down at her for an endless moment, then suddenly leaned in, fingers tight in her hair. Hips flexing, he ground his thick arousal against her sex, pushed her thighs open wide.
“Lower your shields.” Raw pain deepened the harmony of his voice, made her chest ache. “I’ll give you everything you want.”
Taylor wanted him. But not after this. Vanishing her clothes, she lay beneath him, naked and shaking. Her eyes closed against the burning, against the stupid tears.
She dropped her shields.
Need slammed into her like a sharp drumbeat. She stiffened, her back arching. The turgid points of her nipples grazed his hard flesh and a guttural moan ripped from her throat, then shuddered into a gasping sob when the need slammed into her again, a throbbing empty ache that made her beg him to fuck her, to fuck her now. Another beat, and she cried out as his thick length shoved inside her, pounding into her, pounding, her fingers clenching on his shoulders and his hot mouth at her breasts, his tongue lashing her clit, his cock so deep.
The orgasm tore through her on the same beat, left her sobbing and screaming for another, for harder, for more. She came again with Michael surging into her over and over, never stopping, and underneath her now, too, his hard chest against her back, relentlessly driving into her from above but slowly pushing into her from behind, and he was too big, taking him this way should have hurt but it was only good, so good, making her writhe back against him as the ecstasy built and crashed in devastating waves, the tempo rising, faster and faster, his hands on her hips and his fingers in her hair, his enormous length thrusting between her thighs and rocking up beneath her. Each heavy beat filled her deeper and deeper, her body straining to take more.
But she couldn’t take more. “Michael—”
She broke off with a scream when the release raged through her, yet it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough, and when the scream ended little sobs of need still tore at her chest.
“I can’t.” Mindlessly, her hips lifted and fell on each word, each stroke. “Any more. Stop.”
He did, leaving her empty.
So empty. Taylor gasped for breath and turned over. Shudders wracked her limbs, starting at her core and trembling outward to muscles wrung out and weak. Above her, Michael didn’t move. Her fingers clung to his biceps. His elbows were braced beside her shoulders, his hips between her thighs—still wearing that wrap of linen.
The cloth stretched over his erection was soaked by her arousal. Still covered. Michael hadn’t been inside her body.
He’d been inside her head.
She looked up as he slipped out of her mind. He watched her, his expression bleak. Waiting for her explosion, her hate.
It would be a long wait.
With a tremulous sigh, she reached up, his jaw like stone against her palm. His brows pushed together in a frown. This wasn’t what he’d expected.
It wasn’t what she’d expected, either. This should have done it. Right in front of her, a flashing arrow. Remember? He used you like a puppet. But that wasn’t what had hurt the most. That had never been what hurt the most. Neither was breaking his promise and betraying her trust.
He just hadn’t been who she’d thought he was. He’d destroyed the image she’d created of him. That had been the worst. But that hadn’t been his fault. He’d never lied to her. She’d assumed he was something that he wasn’t.
Now she knew what he really was. A dragon with the heart of a man—or a man with the heart of a dragon. Yet despite knowing that, she wanted him more now than when she’d believed he was that perfect, inherently good being.
Taylor didn’t know where that left her. He had hurt her in Hell. Deliberately cruel, and that part of Michael still lived inside him. She would be stupid to trust him. To want him. To care.
She didn’t know what to do now. So she’d have to figure it out. Look from another angle.
But for now, start with the basics.
The truth.
“It didn’t work,” she said softly. “I don’t hate you. I’m not even pissed.”
Relief seemed to lift through him, melting the frozen tension of his body. His mouth curved under her fingers. “I prefer this reaction.”
“Me, too. And I do feel emptied out. Mind clear. I guess brain-fucking is cathartic.” Taylor paused, uncertain. But truth was truth. Hol
ding his gaze, she admitted, “I want you. And I know I shouldn’t. I’m so messed up.”
“As I want you, and only you,” he said, and the sweetness of his response swept through her, made the truth less terrifying, easier to hold. “Though it’s not complicated, on my part. I am yours. That’s all there is to it.”
No mess. Why couldn’t it ever be that way for her? “It should be simple for me, too—where ‘simple’ equals ‘running away.’ Instead, it’s all so stupid. If a friend came to me and said, ‘Hey, this guy threatened to eat me and then he took over my head and used me like a puppet, and now I’m going to lie on a beach and let him screw me with his superpowers,’ I’d slap sense into her.”
His smile broke into a short laugh. “You’d be a good friend.”
“I know it.” Her hands slid from his jaw, flattened against the bare expanse of his bronze chest. She lightly traced the ridges of his pectorals, loving how his muscles hardened further beneath her fingers, the subtle shift of his body against hers, as if seeking a firmer touch. “That would make me a great friend. A smart friend. But instead I’m naked in the sand.”
“Naked, beneath me.” The roughness of his voice made her shiver. “I haven’t forgotten.”
He hadn’t softened, either. Still rock hard, a heavy weight against her bare flesh, wet and swollen with arousal.
Holding her gaze, he gently rocked forward. Oh, God. She’d been spent. But the ache was already starting again, the need sharp.
And maybe just as stupid. She needed to slow down and figure that out, too.
“Wait,” she said—and loved that he immediately stopped. He waited, watching her. “This is going to sound dumb after you sexed me up and down in my head. But I don’t want to rush that now. Not while I’m still working through everything else.”
“All right.”
Jesus. No arguments? “You know, that’s not human. You should be all ‘But, baby, my balls hurt. How about just the tip?’ Or at least asking me for a blow job, so we both come and we’re even.”
Of course, if he did want that, she would go down in a second. Michael, at the mercy of her mouth and tongue. She’d probably come again just watching him. Then they wouldn’t be even, so she’d have to start all over.
Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) Page 28