Embraced (Eternal Balance)

by Jus Accardo

  “An angel attacked you? Doesn’t that go against the whole good versus evil thing?”

  Was attacked the right word? She hadn’t hurt me, though I was fairly sure she would have if that what it would have taken to snap me up. “Heckle said both sides will stop at nothing to keep the other from getting their hands on me. That means we have heaven, hell, your demon-infused brother, and Azi’s demonic-woman-scorned on our asses. Did anyone ever tell you that you come with a shit load of baggage?”

  His lip twitched. “Tired of me already?” At the other end of the alley, something clattered. Jax cursed. “We need to go.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jax

  Five minutes. I’d been gone five fucking minutes. If I hadn’t returned when I did—shit. No reason to go there. She was safe. Other than being shaken, Sam was fine. And the whole angel thing? Yeah. I had no fucking clue what to think about that. “You doing okay?”

  The murky swirl of emotion surrounding her filled the car, infused with the distinct hint of gray, making it hard for me to concentrate on the road. Azi nibbled at it, taking small bites, but all it did was make the thing more unsettled. It was hungry and we were approaching the danger line. I’d need to feed it something more substantial soon or control was going to become an issue.

  “I’m good,” she said quietly.

  “Are you?” The hazy mist surged. It coiled around her like tiny snakes, tendrils circling chunks of her hair and neck, with stragglers entwining her arms. I’d never seen emotion so thick. “Because you don’t seem okay.”

  She stared down at her hand, running her thumb along the black metal band. “I’m just a little thrown by all this.”

  “Thrown?” If things weren’t headed up Shit Creek I might have smiled at the understatement.

  “A few months ago everything was normal. I was a normal girl—damaged, but normal—trying to make it in the world. School, minimum wage jobs, a pile of bills… It all comes back to that damn party. The one at Huntington where I was attacked. Everything changed that night, even if I didn’t know it at the time. If I’d never gone—”

  “I used to think like that. What if. What if I’d had the balls to off myself instead of leaving home? What if I’d stayed away instead of keeping tabs on you, watching from the shadows? Would Chase have even targeted you? What if I’d never left to begin with… Would things have turned out differently if I’d just come clean?” The gray smoke started to ribbon with blue. “The answer is, who gives a shit?”

  She turned toward me, mouth agape.

  “Seriously, Sammy. Why ask questions that are irrelevant? We can’t go back. We can only go forward. The past can’t be changed, but the future can be adapted to. And we will,” I said with ferocity. “We will adapt. It’s who we are, you and me. Fighters. Always have been. Always will be.”

  She sighed and looked up. It was hard to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, knowing she was so conflicted. “Maybe it’s the cuff,” she said. “It all feels so hopeless.”

  “I know it feels that way, but it’s not. We’ve been through a lot together. We’ll get through this, too.”

  She didn’t answer, but the gray waves of fear, swirling and reaching for everything, seemed to diminish just a little. A moment later, her hand, so small and soft, slipped beneath mine on the console between us.

  I drove until just after midnight before pulling off the highway and into the parking lot of the first motel I found. The Star Rise Inn was a dive, but it was cheap and out of the way. I should have gotten us two rooms, but letting Sam out of my sight was a bad idea. Plus, we didn’t have the cash. The Viking paid out once every two weeks, and I was new to the whole budgeting thing.

  “You want the shower first?” she asked, sitting on the bed to pull off her sneakers. She faced me, and as she bent down, the neckline of her T-shirt fell forward to reveal…

  Shit.

  I picked my eyes, and my jaw, off the floor and cleared my throat. “Nah. You go first. I’ll check to make sure everything is sealed tight and secure.”

  When I looked again, she was grinning. She shrugged and stood, turning slowly to face the wall. “Have it your way.”

  I waited for her to head into the bathroom, but she stayed where she was, back to me and head bent low. A moment later, she peeked over her shoulder, through a curtain of satiny hair, and undid the buttons of her jeans. Slowly, deliberately, she inched them down. Over her hips. Down her thighs. When she couldn’t reach any more, she bent at the waist, much farther than she needed to, and proceeded to slide the denim to her ankles.

  An image of me rushing forward and grabbing her from behind rampaged through my mind. Right hand twisted around chunks of her long brown hair, I pulled back hard, tilting her head as far as it would go. My left hand kneaded her breast, sliding down to the waistband of her underwear. A moment of hesitation and then they slipped inside, fingers plunging into warm, heavenly folds.

  She pushed back against me, the most delectable moan coming from deep in her throat as I moved my fingers in a circular motion. Her breath quickened, and—

  The vision faded to black. In a way, the abrupt ending was worse than seeing it through. It left me raw and wanting, a single, twitching nerve in need of attention. “Sammy, don’t…”

  “What?” She tossed her hair and peered over her shoulder again. Her grin was wicked. She knew exactly what she did to me. The way she twisted things up and set fire to my veins. “You can’t touch, but no one said you couldn’t look.” She stepped out of the jeans and faced me again, hooking both her thumbs into the waist of her barely-there thong. “You do want to look, right? I can feel it.”

  Reason said turn around and walk out the door. Wait for things to cool off. She was jacked up on my emotions and desires, picking them up through the damn link. That’s the only reason she’d do this—purposefully try to drive me insane. It made spending any amount of time together as dangerous as a carload of Molotov Cocktails. There wasn’t any second of the day I didn’t think about her. No moment passed without fantasizing what it would be like to touch her. If it was true, and the link between us dumped even a fraction of my emotion into her, then we were a nuclear warhead waiting for detonation.

  Because the cold, hard truth was there really was no such thing as just looking when it came to her. I still felt the vision. The length of her pressed up against me. The sounds she made. The feel of her on my fingertips, warm and slick. I was suffocating and Sam was the air.

  I was on the other side of my bed, close to the door. Two steps. Maybe three. I could be out in the cool air in less than ten seconds.

  Or I could be on the other side of the room in three.

  I sailed over the bed. She fell forward onto her own mattress, and I was on her. “I need so much more than a look,” I whispered. As in the vision, I grabbed a handful of her long hair and pulled back so that I could whisper in her ear. “There is no way for me to simply look at you without touching. I want you. It wants you. Do you have any fucking idea what that feels like?”

  She shimmied, twisting her body to create a friction that made my eyes roll back. “I know what it feels like,” she said, her voice almost a growl. “And I know it’s against the rules, but I don’t care.”

  I let go of her hair and shifted my weight, then turned her so that we were eye to eye. Her colors swirled, a mix of orange and pink—lust and hope—blazing against the muddiness. The demon stirred, its desire to feed overridden only by the craving it had for Sam. It was a war. Between my body and my mind. Between my word and my need. The demon’s need. Sam was a magnet and the pull was uncompromising. Relentless. I was nothing more than an object caught in her orbit.

  I kissed her. Fierce. Savage. Our lips moved together, rough and bruising, and she was all there was. The demon inside shuddered with a wave of contentment at having gotten its way. Our way. But beneath that was the sting. The building pain that came from my happiness. It wasn’t something I could prevent—dem
ons couldn’t stomach human happiness—and in that moment neither Azi nor I cared. All that mattered was the sensation of Sam beneath my fingers.

  She moaned into my mouth and pushed up against me. The thin layers of fabric that separated us were too restricting. I needed to feel her. All of her. I grabbed the edge of my shirt and tugged it over my head, then yanked hers up. It snagged just below her chin. Sam reached for it, but as far as I was concerned, it was wasted time. I seized her wrists, dragging them above her head and pinning them there.

  “If we—what will happen if—”

  I reclaimed her lips, savoring the faint taste of cherries that lingered from her Chap Stick. The kiss left no room for argument. No allowance for questions. We were past that now. A boulder rolling downhill.

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I whispered, pulling away just enough to speak. I reached for the button of my jeans and yanked down the zipper. As soon as I did, everything went to hell.

  The keening sound was like a bomb going off inside my head, but it stirred a feeling deep inside. A primal instinct that drowned out all good sense. The flash came next—a darkened female form writhing beneath me. It whispered strange words I didn’t understand, yet the sound of them ignited something feral and raw. Azi surged beneath my skin, pushing for dominance. Demanding it. I gave in, unable to pull myself from the intensity of Sam’s touch, and surrendered wholly to the demon. My movements became its own. My hands, Azirak’s tools. It hooked my fingers around the waistband of Sam’s underwear and tugged an inch. Then, another. She faded in and out, oscillating between herself and the faceless female demon.

  Malphi. The female was Malphi.

  Knowing this, I should have pulled away, but the need grew stronger. Undeniable.

  Azirak lowered my lips to Sam’s stomach, planting a trail of hungry kisses southward. She gasped and arched off the bed. The sound was like fire, consuming everything and mingling with the darkest parts of me, the parts that lay hidden in the deepest corners of my soul.

  The parts that belonged to the demon.

  My vision swam. The impassioned sounds she made were carnal in the rawest sense—and wrong. One moment it was Sam, the next, Malphi. Azirak reveled in it, the semblance of complete freedom overtaking me. I’d never felt anything like it. Powerful and limitless, in that moment I could do anything without consequence. Control the world and take the things I desired. And there was only one thing I wanted.

  Sam…

  Malphi.

  Sammy…

  Malphi.

  The need grew until it exploded, like a bomb going off in a confined space. It jolted me, and I knew this was wrong. Dangerous in so many ways. I struggled for control, and Azi fought like it never had before.

  Strange words echoed inside my head, threatening to break my skull in half. I didn’t understand them, but Azirak did.

  We can be whole again… Feast on the human as my essence looms, lay claim to her power then come to me, my lord…

  I jerked away, stumbling over the edge of the bed and falling back against my own. My heart pounded, a thunderous beat drowning out everything else in the room. The thoughts in my mind tore me apart, then put me back together only to do it again. The darkness. The violence. The willingness to submit…

  Sam knelt in front of me, taking my face in her hands. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her voice. I gripped the edge of the bed until my fingers went numb. Azi had settled, but I still felt it—how it had wanted to do as Malphi asked, was overcome by the need to possess.

  “Jax, please. Tell me what happened.”

  “Pain,” I lied. “I guess that’s why Heckle told us not to test the limits.”

  “Jesus.” Her expression was all concern, and I felt guilty for lying.

  I climbed to my feet as she did the same. “It was like someone set off an atomic bomb inside my head.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “I don’t recommend it,” I responded, keeping my eyes down. The T-shirt she had on came just below her waist, leaving a thin scrap of lacy black peeking out. One look and I was in an entirely new world of hell. If we started again, I knew there’d be no stopping it.

  “Why didn’t it happen right away, though?” I heard her sigh. “We, um, got kind of far…”

  “I guess there’s a limit.” I turned away, unable to look her in the eyes. “Heckle said a kiss wouldn’t do it, but much more than that would cross the line. I guess we found our trigger.”

  Sam was in front of me, tipping my face up to meet hers. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, shaking her head slowly. “He’s right, Jax. I mean, obviously I want to be with you on my own, but Heckle is right. I can feel how much you want me, and it’s making me careless. Right now, I can feel the urge you have to—”

  A million X-rated images unfolded before my eyes. “Do not finish that sentence, Sammy. Please.”

  “You’ve never been good with impulse control,” she said, voice dropping. “And if I really was riding your…bad vibes…I might suggest that, since we now know our limit, we should—”

  I covered her mouth with my hand. If she kept going, I would cave. If I caved, who knew what would happen? “Go. Take a shower.”

  “Are you sure?” She tugged at the collar of her shirt. “I could—”

  I gripped the edge of the bed harder and squeezed my eyes closed. “Please, Sammy. Get the hell away from me.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sam

  The water had been hot and the pressure just right. Still, it hadn’t alleviated the tension in my muscles. I’d been standing right next to Jax when Heckle gave his warning. We didn’t know if it pertained to me or him, but it’d been clear. Break the rules and pay the price. We both knew…and neither one of us had cared. Even now, after knowing it had hurt him, I wanted to slide from the bed and make him kiss me again.

  That was the drawback to Jax and me. It’d been that way for as far back as I could remember. We ignored everything and lived to keep each other sane and safe. Then when things between us changed, nothing else mattered. It was all about us. Screw the world.

  I rolled over and pulled the covers with me, burrowing deep. They smelled of cigarettes and stale beer, but I didn’t care. I was too tired, both mentally and physically exhausted. Thoughts of Jax, of the pain he was in, and the danger that hung over our heads, played on repeat inside my head. The lingering memory of what we’d almost done, coupled with the fact that he was laying a few feet away, made my pulse quicken and my skin warm.

  The cuff was heavy and growing tighter with each moment that passed. When I’d slid into bed, it was just past three in the morning. I’d been wearing this thing for almost twenty-four hours now. One day down. Only two left.

  I looked down at the cuff and it contracted as if responding to my scrutiny. I’d actually forgotten about it for a while. Jax had that effect on me. Even when we were kids, he had a way of making my problems and fears fade until they were nothing more than harmless shadows on the wall. I wanted to be that for him, too. To be the thing that grounded him. But instead I’d instigated an act that had caused him pain. The skin beneath the black metal band twitched and I fought a shiver. An act that, despite what had happened as a result, I wanted to instigate again.

  I shifted, this time rolling onto my back. The clock cast a faint glow on the ceiling. It was reflected on the television, the light playing off the bare bulb in the ceiling overhead. But there was something else. A faint rustling sound coming from just beyond the door.

  I threw off the covers and, sliding out of bed as quietly as possible, crept across the carpet and put my ear to the door. The sound was almost like an animal scratching against the wood.

  “What the hell?” Jax groaned from underneath the covers. The light beside his bed flickered to life. He shifted around, peering at me through the dim light with groggy annoyance.

  “I dunno,” I said, pushing away from the door. “I thought I heard something.”

  He shoved o
ff the covers with a grunt and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The floorboards groaned as he padded barefoot across the room and stopped beside me. “Like what?”

  I put my ear to the door again. Everything was quiet. Maybe I was losing my mind. “Nothing. I was probably dreaming.”

  Without a word, he started back across the room. But he only got halfway to the bed when a knock stopped him. Quirking a brow, he turned and tilted his head. “Expecting someone?”

  “Yeah.” I dove for my jeans and tugged them on. “I ordered a stripper.”

  With a roll of his eyes and a finger to his lips, he backed toward the door. There was no peep hole, so he moved the curtains aside a fraction of an inch. “Looks human,” he said with a snort. “Then again, who the hell knows?”

  “So, harmless?”

  He turned to me, a spark of mischief in his eyes. A rush of warmth rippled through me. “You’re human and you’re far from harmless.”

  I flipped him off and nodded to the door. “Safe to answer—”

  The guy on the other side of the door began to pound.

  I crept a little closer. The door rattled and shook. “Someone wants in real bad.”

  Jax moved between me and the door, holding his hand high in an attempt keep me back. “What the hell does he want? It’s after three a.m.”

  “Open the door and find out. He’s human, right? The manager maybe? What could he possibly do?”

  The man decided to answer my question personally. The door blew open in a hail of wooden splinters and the guy walked in, eyes glowing a fiery orange and an axe in his hand.

  Jax looked from him to me and shrugged. “Depends on how you feel about the axe.”

  Our new guest let out a hair-curling sound—a cross between a howl and a yell—and swung his weapon. The blade imbedded itself in the dresser by the door. It was deep, wedged solidly in the wood. There should have been no way for him to pull it free so easily. But he did. Like pulling a loose thread on the end of a shirt, he lifted the axe from the wood and swung it again. This time, it passed so close to Jax that his hair fluttered.