by Ashur Rose
He approached her.
“Miss?”
“Yeah?” the pixie-cut blonde replied. “What can I do for ya, babe?”
“I’m looking for Lilith.”
“She’ll be back in a bit. Anything I can help with?”
“I need to know where she lives.”
The blonde’s aura lost all of its helpful color. “Get lost, okay? Or I’ll call security.”
As she attempted to walk off, Iain grabbed her by the arm and pulled her near. He lowered his shades and sicced his gazed on her. “I need to know where Lilith lives.”
The words left the blonde’s mouth freely. “She lives on the eastside, off Tulridge. The only apartment building down the street from the cemetery.”
He released her. “Thank you.”
She blinked, as if coming back from a daze. “Get lost, okay? Or I’ll call security.”
With all the information he needed, he was more than happy to oblige.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LILITH
LILITH SHOOK AS SHE shoved the key inside her apartment door, damn near falling inside as she hurried to lock the deadbolt and the chain. She found a candle and match and headed to her bedroom. She knew when she lit the candle in front of her closet that she needed to pack in a hurry. There was no way he could have followed her. She was sure of that. But there was a sense of urgency she felt deep in her gut that she made her practice not to ignore.
She pulled a gym bag down from the top shelf and stuffed it full of whatever she could get her hands on: underwear, jeans, shirts, some tennis shoes. She hobbled to the bathroom and raked all the contents on top of her sink into the bag. She dragged it by the straps to the end of the bed, where she changed into the pair of sweatpants beside her.
She took a quick inventory and looked around the dimly-lit room. She couldn’t think of anything else she’d need. Hell, most everything in her apartment was secondhand. She could regroup and buy whatever else she needed later from thrift shops, which reminded her she needed money.
She got on her knees and pulled the shoebox full of this month’s tips from under the bed. She tallied it up. If she lived in a homeless shelter for a week or two, her tips should be enough to hold her over until she found another gig. She’d have to use a little of it for bus fare to get her out the city, but once she got wherever she was going, she’d learn all the locations of the cemeteries and sacred grounds. Finding the quickest routes around a new city and fading from them would save her a ton in cab fare.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured herself. She even nodded. She’d given herself those same assurances three months ago when she’d come to this city from New Haven by way of Seattle (which in her estimation seemed to be the mecca of all things demonic).
Maybe it was time she changed mantras.
She slung the gym bag over her shoulder and grabbed a hoodie as she walked toward the front door. She shone the candle once more around the small apartment and doubled back when she saw she was leaving her GED prep book on the table. She grabbed it and a picture fell from the pages. She stooped to pick it up and flipped it over.
Her parents’ faces stared back at her. She hadn’t seen her father in years. She’d departed in a hurry one night and left no hints of where he could find her. It was best if he didn’t know how to locate her. If he ever did, she doubted she would be able to part from him. Not again. And that would only put him in danger.
She held the picture tight. Her feelings were manageable as long as she kept moving, as long as she didn’t stop to let the quietness settle in.
Lightning flashed through her window, bright and sobering. Lilith choked the tears back and placed the picture inside her bag. She didn’t have time to be caught up in her feelings. She had to get her shit together and go.
She crossed the living room and reached for the door. She would have opened it had the knob not already been turning.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IAIN
IAIN HAD DISABLED THE keypad to her building with a simple yet effective technique: he’d punched a hole in it. He smelled his way to her apartment, her black currant scent leading him to door 17C. He poised his hand over the door, ready to give it a rap, when he withdrew. He’d scared her away twice already. He didn’t want to look like a fool a third time when she answered and found him standing there. He grabbed the knob instead and gave it a turn. Locked.
He stood there for a second in complete silence, his face flushed and mere centimeters away from the door as he listened. He could hear everything throughout the entire building: the baby crying on the level beneath him, the man quarreling with his son, the Latino couple praying. But no sound was greater than the breaths on the other side of 17C.
His core began to hum with his spectra. Her pull nearly brought him to his knees. He held onto the doorframe, his body tauter than piano wires, as he tried to regain control.
“I can hear you breathing,” he managed in a low, gravelly voice. He thought of those breaths, her lips. How he wanted nothing more than to possess both.
His body spasmed at the thought and the doorframe splintered under his grip.
Her feet shuffled across the floor. His pulse quickened. He couldn’t handle another one of her disappearing acts.
“Don’t go,” he said, realizing the desperateness of his tone. “I only mean to talk to you.”
A long pause. He took her hesitation as a good sign. She was considering him.
“You didn’t come all this way to talk,” she finally said.
Iain smiled through the strain. The woman was smart.
“Leave and things won’t get bad for you. You saw what I did to those demons. Don’t make me hurt you.”
Iain rolled his shoulders against the building tension. He could barely move his neck against the pressure. It took effort to keep his voice level. “I can’t do that, Lilith.”
“Don’t use my name. You don’t know me.”
Her kiss had said otherwise. She might not have known the extent of their connection, but Iain was sure she felt something. “Does your chest burn?”
Another long pause.
“Back off.”
The muscles flexed in his jaw. There he was gritting his teeth again. The second time tonight he’d let his frustrations get the better of him. He took a step away and paced back and forth, assessing the situation as much as his spectra tensing all his muscles would allow.
A door.
A door was all that stood between he and his pure. Three inches of wood and chipped paint, and not to mention, the most willful woman this side of Empyrean he’d ever met. He’d laugh if his body weren’t so tight with need.
“You’ve been warned. Leave!”
Iain looked at the door as if his stare could burn it down.
He didn’t want to do it, but what choice had she left him? If she wasn’t going to open the door for him, he’d go with the alternative.
So he reared back and kicked the damned thing in.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LILITH
“HOLY SH—” LILITH DEFLECTED the deadbolt and wood chips hurling past her body with her arm.
He kicked down the door, she thought. Hinges and all. It was the only imagery that looped through her head as she scrambled toward the back of her apartment.
She needed to fade out. Quick. But she couldn’t. There were too many people in the apartment building. Some she knew, some she didn’t. This guy had already forced her to fade one time tonight. Despite her growing disgust for her slumlord, she couldn’t allow the building to be overrun with demons by fading again. She crossed it off her list, which left one thing: her speak.
The man stepped inside and without having to glance around the room, he found her. It was as if his eyes didn’t have to adjust to the darkness and that they’d been trained to find only her.
He stared at her beyond the streaky hair spilling down his shades. His silence and stillness were brutal. She almost wished he’d do something. Ma
ke his move. Uneasiness seeped deep inside her core. She tried to shake off that feeling and focus on the dilemma settling between them: what he was about to do versus what she was going to do to stop him.
She held up her hands, palms outward. “Please, don’t make me.”
The man didn’t waver. He wasn’t like any creature she’d fought before. They normally had the good sense to think twice about attacking her once she held up her hands. That he didn’t let her know she had her work cut out for her.
He stepped slowly over the broken door and into her living room. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from him. The room may have been dark, but she didn’t need much light to see that he was as massive as she remembered. She couldn’t miss his broad shoulders tapering down like a V to his narrow waist. When he moved, his jacket swung open, exposing his bare chest and ripped abs. He wore dark boots and though his athletic build didn’t seem heavy enough, his weight made the floorboards groan.
Lilith’s hands drifted the more she took him in. If lust had two legs, she was watching all six-feet-something of it cross the room with unwavering strides.
She tried to shake off the thought and readjusted her aim at his chest. She’d battled some hellish things over the years, but none of them had looked so damned good. She didn’t know whether to strike him or stroke him.
“You deaf?” She knew good and goddamn well he wasn’t. He’d heard her breathing from the other side of the door for Christ’s sake.
Lightning flashed outside her window and lit his face. Was that a smirk?
“There’s no need to be afraid of me.”
She looked around him to the floor. “Tell that to my door,” she said, adjusting her aim as he rounded her couch. He wasn’t stopping despite the threat of her hands. He moved with a deliberate sleekness, his eyes locked on her. Big cat, she thought. And she was his prey.
“My intent is not to harm you, Lilith.”
“Keep my name out of your mouth.” Funny how her gaze kept dropping there, to his full lips set against a chiseled jaw. All manner of shadows played across his angular face. She knew his eyes drilled into her beneath those shades but what she didn’t know was how deep.
Her breath caught as he made a sudden move to place his hand on his chest. Lilith saw him wince, but she ignored the quirk and kept her hands aimed. She wouldn’t be distracted. So why was it the nearer he came, the more useless her aim felt? She had the vague sense that she didn’t want to harm him—that she shouldn’t.
She blinked. Why was she making concessions with her life for a stranger?
“I’ve been looking for you a long time,” he said.
She looked at him, confused. “Well, you’ve found me. Now go.”
Streaks of lightening raced across the room, followed by a loud boom. Lilith glanced away at the sound for a second to see the sparks of a transformer flying wildly in the distance through the window. One by one, the lights of that entire block went out. When she faced the room again, she was staring at well-muscled pecs.
Damn.
She summoned her speak to her hands, not realizing he held her by the wrists. She tilted her chin up to find the man looking down at her. Everywhere his gaze fell felt like the sweetest burn. She couldn’t help but gawk. She found him absurdly hot despite potentially being a murderer.
She thought she might fight to break free. His touch, secure yet surprisingly gentle, was laced with dangerous undertones. She remembered all too well what his hands could do. Somehow, she’d have to regain control.
“Let me go,” she said. But she knew he wouldn’t. The man hadn’t come all this way to just let her go.
She called her speak to her hands once more and waited for the surge of power that didn’t come. He must have been negating them in some way. Shit, what had she gotten herself into?
That’s when she saw the man for the second time touch his chest. He let out a sound so deep it rumbled her ribcage. He forced her backward against the wall and freed up his left hand by holding both of hers with his right. She yanked them down when he held them over her head, but his hold was strong. When she pushed against him, he didn’t budge. He was a wall, a painfully sexy wall who stepped closer until the space between them disappeared.
The expanse of his chest pressed against her. She felt the warmth of his body radiating over hers. She took in a few startled breaths, reluctantly savoring the scent that came with them.
He smelled like the nighttime after a long, long rain. Sweet and damp. Delicious. The muskiness of his leather jacket made her mouth water. She stretched her neck up to look at his face and noticed him wetting his lips and dropping his gaze to her breast.
She couldn’t control the wild impulses shooting through her. It was the same way she’d felt in the alley when she’d kissed him. She thought of all the things she might let him do to her. All the uncharted territories on her body she was willing to let his tongue explore. She could think of a couple of place she wanted her tongue to explore too.
Never had she wanted anyone so badly and everything about him made her body scream with need. She wriggled against his grasp. If he’d just let go of her wrists, she could guide his hands to more useful places…
She paused. What the hell was she thinking?
This was a complete stranger. One who’d stalked her home. Who, mere moments ago, had kicked in her apartment door. Nothing good could come of this.
She parted her lips to let out a protest, but his finger was there to silence her.
“Quiet,” he demanded.
The man traced that finger down her neck, leaving chills in its wake. It continued down her side and dipped into the waistband of her sweatpants.
Lilith struggled to stand as he slowly ran his hand along her hips. A rush of pleasure surged to her clit and in spite of herself, she moaned.
His touch was pure heat, making her the hottest she’d ever been. She wanted his mouth to devour her, wanted the soft flesh of his tongue to lap her up like the puddle she was melting into. Her legs trembled as she squeezed her thighs tighter against the hot wetness flooding between them.
“Can you not feel what is between us, Lilith?”
She wanted to agree, to give him some indication that she understood. But damn, the man’s touch left her speechless.
He moved his large hand up the skin of her stomach, stopping at her breastbone. His fingers trembled as he splayed his palm against her. Her body jerked with the sensation of her speak, the strongest it had ever been. She didn’t know how, but he tapped her power, releasing a valve of feral desire.
His chest rumbled as he let out a word she didn’t recognize in an accent she couldn’t place. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need to know what he was saying. When she peered up to the tight expression covering his face, she knew that he was struggling with the same hunger raking over her body.
She wanted to touch him, to run her hands and tongue all over him, but he held her firmly in place. Her mouth opened in pure frustration and fear. “What are you going to do to me?”
He slid his hand between the valley of her breasts and up through the collar of her shirt. Her breath caught when his fingers encompassed her delicate throat. If the threat of what his large hand could do to her slender neck didn’t chill her blood, the answer he growled out did.
“So many things.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IAIN
IAIN CARESSED THE WOMAN’S neck, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin over her pulse. Her body undulated beneath his touch, her essence rising to greet him. Damn. Never had another being called to his spectra so strongly. He couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t control his heart hammering in his chest. It was as if he’d just done battle. The blood pumping throughout him pushed his erection painfully against his metal zipper.
“Sweet Phyrss,” Iain breathed against her ear. “Enni nuun, enni nuun,” he said, taking her lobe between his teeth and nipping. The woman’s nails dug into the back of his hand, and he held her wrists ti
ghter, tracing his lips along her cheek to the corner of her mouth. He stole the breath of her gasp as he meshed their mouths together as one.
Her scent teased his senses, gripped him so tightly that his body shook and his fangs descended. He struggled to will them back, and just when he thought he could, the woman flicked her tongue against their sensitive tips, suckling them between her lips. Iain’s knees buckled. He drew back a bit, removed his shades, and took in the face of the woman who was torturing him. Her eyes met his and there were no words.
Iain let out a hoarse sound through clenched teeth and took her into his mouth again, letting his fingers drift down her neck. She was open to him now, her essence rising to meet him. He parted her thighs with his knee. She arched into him, her nipples pressing tight against him. His hand descended into the damp fabric of her panties and cupped her sex, letting the warmth of her settle over his fingers. She moaned. Iain felt all her weight shift downward when her knees gave way. He lowered with her, deepening his kiss, and plunged his fingers into her tight pussy. She moved against his hand, thrusting her pelvis into him as soft moans rose out of her. When he thought she might come, he withdrew his fingers and brought them to his face. He ran her scent under his nose before sucking each finger clean of her wetness.
He lapped his tongue across his lips. “You’re so sweet, Lilith.” He needed more. So much more.
He shifted his body, releasing her wrists and lifting her legs around his waist. Her fingers anchored into his hair as he placed her back against the rug.
“But the door,” she gasped.
He ran his lips down her neck, thinking briefly of the splintered wood littering the floor. Her apartment was open, accessible. Phyrss forbid anyone saw what he was about to do to her. He smiled against her throat. “Fuck the door.”
He peeled off her shift. The bra went next. He drew back, her features vanishing as he lost contact, and took in her unmistakable aura. His eyes roved over the body that would soon be his when they covenanted with each other. The thought tugged at his core and he palmed his cock, wanting so badly not to wait and to bury himself inside her right then.