The Others 03: The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  Missy's easy forgiveness almost made Abby feel worse.

  Noah spent time with her every day, but when he had chastised her, she didn't enjoy it so much.

  "You didn't tell me the whole story, Ab," he'd said over a hand of rummy. "If I'd known about the fiends rebelling and the spell they're trying to get their hands on, I'd have told you to stay put. You're safer here than just about anywhere else I can think of, except maybe Faerie.”

  And that was another thing. Here she was with her universe rocking back on its heels, and she finds out her brother is practically an authority on all things Other. He seemed perfectly comfortable with magic and the supernatural power, and judging by the glances she occasionally caught him shooting at Samantha, he didn't appear to have any problem with inter-species relations either.

  She knew the rest of the world was like her, still struggling to adjust. She watched the news occasionally on the big-screen TV in the club's second-floor media room, so she knew the protests hadn't died down. In fact, there had been rioting in St. Louis and Houston over the past few days. Other people were having an even harder time with this than she was, so why did she feel like such a jerk about it?

  By day five, Abby was ready to surrender her mind and body to Louamides just so she wouldn't have to deal with the waiting and the confinement anymore. The times when he'd taken over had left her blissfully unaware and with no memory of anything that had happened. Just then that sounded like heaven.

  She knew she was reaching a boiling point, but she never expected to blow her top quite as soon or quite as spectacularly as she managed. In the end, she blamed it on her brother.

  The door to Rafe's office slammed open hard enough to send the knob bouncing off the wall behind it, and Abby stood in the center of the opening, hands braced on her hips like one of the nuns who had so terrified her all during her school years. Fortunately, none of the rest of the Council was present.

  "What exactly did you mean by telling my brother that it could be weeks before you manage to find Uzkiel?”

  Rule and Rafe looked up from Rafe's desk, and two sets of eyebrows headed toward the ceiling. Rafe's remained in that position, but it only took a second for Rule's to descend into a glower.

  "I do not have time to listen to your temper tantrum, Abigail," the demon dismissed. "You will have to wait for another time.”

  Through the red haze of her anger, Abby just barely heard Rafe's hiss of indrawn breath. "I would advise you to choose your words more carefully, friend," the Felix said quietly. "You speak as if you've never been faced with a warrior's woman in all her glory.”

  Rule glared at him. "She is not my woman.”

  "At the moment, my goal is to be your worst nightmare," Abby bit out. Her jaw felt so tight, she was amazed she managed to get it out at all. "There is no way on earth or in heaven I am going to stay cooped up in here for that long! Why aren't you out there right now looking for him? Are you expecting him to knock on the front door and climb right into your lap?”

  She didn't even bother to glance at Rafe, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him purse his lips and ease himself out from behind his desk.

  "I think perhaps I had better leave the two of you to sort this out yourselves," he murmured, and began to inch toward the exit.

  Abby cleared his path by blazing ahead on her own straight toward the object of her fury. "What have you got to say for yourself?”

  Rule leveled a stare at her. His expression remained cold and distant, something she was beginning to recognize was his "on duty" mask, but his eyes blazed with dark fire. "I was not aware you required a response. You seem to have drawn your own conclusions about the matter at hand without any assistance from me. Or from logic or good sense.”

  "You arrogant bastard!”

  In the back of her head, Abby had a vague moment of wondering if her shout had managed to register on the Richter scale. It wouldn't have surprised her.

  She sucked in a deep breath, but before she could let it out, a headful of blond curls poked in from the hallway.

  "Did someone commit a murder in here, or have I gotten here in time?”

  Rafe strode to the door and put his hands on his wife's shoulders. "I doubt anything could halt the violence at this point, sweetheart, and for the sake of our son, I would rather you did not make the attempt.”

  "Oh, I don't want to stop it," Tess laughed. "I just wondered if I'd have time to make popcorn before the good parts.”

  Abby never took her eyes off Rule. "There aren't going to be any good parts, but if Mr. High-and-Mighty over here doesn't come up with some really good answers to my questions really fast, there just might be some NC-17-rated gratuitous violence.”

  Rule shoved back his chair and stretched to his feet, his gaze just as steady on Abby. "I have no intention of coming up with anything until you can behave with reason, maturity, and self-control.”

  Behind them, Abby heard Tess make a tsking sound.

  "Yikes. Isn't he supposed to be like a bunch of centuries old?" she asked her husband. "You'd think he'd never done this before.”

  "Perhaps if he survives this round, I can give him a few pointers," Rafe answered.

  Rule looked up, focusing over Abby's head at the couple in the doorway. "I think perhaps it would be better if the two of you left us for a moment.”

  "They're fine," Abby growled. "I have no problem with ripping you a new one in front of witnesses.”

  Tess whistled. "Wow. For a nice Catholic schoolgirl she's got a mean streak, doesn't she?”

  "Come, love. I think Rule is right. Let's give them a bit of privacy.”

  Abby was too busy struggling with the unfamiliar urge to commit an actual act of violence to watch them leave, but she heard the door shut behind them with an ominous click.

  "If you have a problem with me," Rule said, his voice low and dangerously smooth as he prowled toward her in the suddenly quiet room, "I would appreciate your bringing it up with me, rather than airing it in front of an audience. No matter how appreciative they might be.”

  "And I would appreciate it if you would stop making decisions about my life and my captivity with my brother and letting me find out secondhand," she hissed. By the time Rule stopped, he was looming over her like a golden-haired, black-eyed mountain, but Abby was too angry to be intimidated. "This is my life! Or it used to be. I'm sick and tired of being treated like some kind of inanimate object that can just be put up on a shelf or locked up in a closet without so much as a by-your-leave. I want my life back!”

  "You can't have it.”

  "That is exactly what I'm talking about!" Abby threw her hands up, surprised one didn't land knuckles-first smack dab in the middle of his infuriating mouth. "You make these decrees on high and expect me to meekly go along with them! Well, it's not going to happen.”

  "The last thing I expect from you is meekness, Abigail," he said. "But I do expect obedience. And I'll have it.”

  She almost choked on a laugh. Not that she was amused, it was just either laugh or scream, and she knew she'd need her vocal cords to be in tip-top shape if she was going to get through that mile-thick demonic skull. "Do you even hear yourself? You sound like some sort of feudal lord. This is not the Middle Ages, my unholy friend, and I am not some serf to be ordered about on a whim.”

  Rule's dark eyes narrowed, and she saw a flicker of anger beneath the impassive mask. "You have no right to call me that.”

  "What? My friend? I realize we're not all that close, but since you're one of only about ten people I'm allowed to talk to these days, I'm not ready to shortchange myself on possible companions.”

  "Unholy." He took a step closer until she had to crane her neck to look up at him. A flicker of unease shivered through her. "You are no more entitled to sit in judgment on me than you believe I am to hold you prisoner.”

  A devilish voice inside her prodded Abby to take another step, never mind the chasm she sensed stretching before her. "Oh, am I hitting a littl
e too close for comfort? It's not my fault you're a demon, Rule. It's not my fault you've been forsaken by God and condemned to a life outcast from heaven.”

  She could almost hear his self-control snap. One minute he loomed before her, a wall of icy control, and the next he had her by the shoulders, hauling her up against a body she could now vouch for as being a long, long way from cold.

  "If you would condemn me as a monster, then at least I will give you a reason.”

  And his mouth came crashing down on hers like a landslide.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Inside Abby's head, voices sang suspiciously like choirs of angels, and the explosion behind her eyes banished any thoughts of darkness more quickly than sunrise. If this was a sin, Abby would hang up her rosary and surrender herself to eternal damnation without a twinge of regret. It would be worth it, to feel this man's hands on her forever.

  He swept inside her mouth like a conquering army, bulldozing past any tentative explorations and plundering her heated response. Abby whimpered and sucked on his tongue, pressing herself closer against him. He went to her head like a shot of whiskey but tasted a whole lot better. He sent the same fire curling into the pit of her belly with none of the bitter acid on her tongue. Instead, he was smooth and rich and sweet like fine chocolate, and for once in her life, Abby didn't worry about the treat going straight to her thighs. She rather hoped he would.

  Rule, though, seemed determined to take the long road. His hands glided over her shoulders and down her arms, raising goose bumps in their wake. Everywhere they touched, she tingled, her nerves on high alert. Her breasts pressed against his chest, molding to his hardness, and when she shifted restlessly, her denim-clad thighs rubbed against his, pushing a moan through her swollen lips.

  A growl rumbled in his chest, a low, thrumming response. She felt his hands slide beneath her arms to close around her ribs, tightening as if to warn her against trying to escape. As if the thought had even crossed her mind. She wanted to put less distance between them, not more. She wanted to be skin to skin. Closer if she could manage it.

  The intensity of her need surprised her, but she didn't stop to think about it. She didn't want to waste that kind of time. For the first time in her life, she burned with desire. She'd always assumed, especially after her disastrous first and only sexual experience, that when people wrote about lust in terms of aches and fevers and trembling needs, that was why they called it fiction. People didn't really feel that way. She didn't. She'd lived without sex for almost a decade, and she was none the worse for the wear. Or the lack thereof.

  Oh, how naive she'd been.

  Rule had kick-started her sex drive, and the power of it now drove her on with a vengeance. She felt it like the sting of a whip driving her on, driving her closer, driving her to tempt him into a frenzy she had no idea if she could handle.

  She had a feeling she was about to find out.

  In the back of her mind, her conscience whispered at her. She had known this would happen. When she'd come storming down here driven by her frustration and the anger that had welled when Noah told her it might be weeks before she could go back to her old life, she'd known the spark of her fury would light this inferno. Yet she'd done it anyway.

  It was the coward's way, her conscience chided her. It wouldn't let her get away with putting the responsibility for this on Rule's broad shoulders. She had known she didn't have the guts to follow through with Tess and Samantha's suggestion that she seduce the demon, so her subconscious had decided to shift the burden onto him. If she prodded him in just the right way, at just the right time, she'd get her seduction, and probably her vindication of her anger, and she'd never have to make a move for it to happen.

  Cowardly.

  But Abby's hormones didn't care. They were too busy glorying in the feel of his thick golden hair beneath her fingers, the heavy weight of his muscular body pressed against hers. They were too busy urging her to spread her legs, to wrap them around his waist and push him past the next barrier, to care about why she had made this move. They just celebrated that she had.

  Abby moaned into his mouth, moaned again when those lips shifted off hers to blaze a trail along her jaw and down the side of her throat. He nibbled his way along, all but consuming her, tongue and teeth tasting every square inch of pale, heated skin. Her body quaked in his arms, and as she hooked her ankles together in the small of his back she realized her hormones had won that particular battle. She held his hips cradled against hers, the heat of his erection pressed snugly against her center.

  Her eyes flew open and their gazes locked. She saw the fire of passion in his and something else, something simultaneously fierce and protective, greedy and giving. And beneath it, a question. One more step and neither would be able to turn back. He may have led her this far, but as she drowned in the black depths of his gaze she knew she would have to cross that last distance on her own.

  Breath frozen, heart pounding, she slid her hands to his shoulders and braced herself against him. She felt his hands gripping her hips, felt his fingers flex as if to force her into the place he wanted her, then they eased, and he began to lift her away from him.

  No way was she going to let that happen.

  Fingertips digging into his flesh, Abby caught his gaze again and held it while she tightened the grip of her thighs and rocked her hips suggestively against his.

  The dam broke and swept away the last of her doubts in a torrent of rushing need.

  Large hands slid from her hips to her butt, gripping and shifting her, pressing her heat more firmly against him. Abby felt a moment's astonishment that the two layers of denim between them didn't spontaneously combust and dissolve in a cloud of ash. No such luck. The heavy cloth separated them, but even through the barrier her center ached, empty and wanting.

  Her entire being felt empty and wanting. With any luck, he wasn't planning to let that continue.

  Abby felt the earth move. It took a minute to realize it was actually Rule, walking backward across the room to a large leather chair in front of the fireplace. She tightened her thighs around his hips to steady herself and heard him growl in response. Curious, she repeated the motion and got the same response along with a light smack on the ass.

  "Don't tease," he rumbled, his gaze burning into her. "I don't want to hurt you.”

  "Would you?" she asked, leaning forward to drag her tongue over the pulse beating visibly at the base of his throat. She felt as if some other Abby had taken control of her body, but it was too pleasurable for her to care.

  "You tell me.”

  He shifted her weight into one hand and used the other to grasp one of hers. Dragging it between them, he slid it down and down and down until he wrapped her shaking fingers around the insistent ridge of his erection, pressing eagerly against the fabric of her jeans.

  Abby trembled, not with fear but with the force of her desire. He felt enormous, hot and hard and heavy through the dulling veil of the material. Dragging her gaze back to his, she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and managed a little shrug. "Won't know till we try.”

  Her husky taunt seemed to have roughly the effect on him as a waving red cape had on a bull. Rule cursed in a language she didn't recognize, something low and harsh and guttural, and took two more giant steps back until the backs of his legs bumped up against the edge of the chair. Carefully he eased himself down, keeping Abby's hips pressed tight against him, guiding her knees to the cushion beside his legs.

  She felt her breath speed up, saw her field of vision narrow until all she could see was his face, harsh and set in the light of the fire. His features might have been carved roughly out of granite, all sharp planes and angles, weathered by time and experience. Now, lust had made them even more jagged, even more heavily shadowed, and Abby lifted one hand to his cheek to reassure herself of his living warmth.

  Only to feel his teeth close around the plump flesh at the base of her thumb.

  A shiver of need wracked her, and
he pulled her more snugly against him. His hands slid down her thighs, pulling her knees forward until they pressed up against the back of the chair and his cock pressed up against the very heart of her. Her eyes closed for a moment as the need threatened to overwhelm her, and she had to fight to force them open again.

  "What now?" she asked, her voice so rough and throaty, she almost didn't recognize it.

  "Impatient?" His hands slid back up her thighs and around to cup her ass, kneading with heated intent.

  A moan tumbled unbidden from her lips. "Empty.”

  "Not for long.”

  If she had been capable of thought, or voluntary muscle control, she might have tried to move, to lift herself off his lap and fight free of the clothes that had suddenly become her greatest enemy. She needn't have worried. He leaned forward, a dark, overwhelming presence that blocked off the light, and his lips settled once more on hers. This time, his mouth devoured, hungrier, more demanding. If such a thing were possible. She went under as if grasped by a riptide, barely registering the movement of his hands on the waistband of her jeans. But she couldn't mistake the sudden wrenching pressure or the loud hiss of protesting fabric as he ripped the thick denim into shreds and tossed the remnants of her jeans onto the floor behind her.

  Gasping, Abby pulled back and stared into his eyes, seeing nothing there but a need that mirrored her own.

  She swallowed hard and shifted, gasping at the feel of him pressing the thin cotton of her panties against her achingly wet core. "I, uh, I guess that superstrength comes in handy, from time to time.”

  "From time to time," he agreed.

  He slid one finger over the bare skin of her hip, curling it around the narrow strip of cloth that covered her. One tug and the panties went the way of her jeans, leaving her hot and bare and spread open across his lap like a banquet.

  He looked very, very hungry.

  She didn't even have time to catch her breath. Rule wouldn't let her. His hand on her bottom held her firmly in place while the other slid relentlessly over the soft mound of her belly and down through the tidy nest of curls between her legs. His fingers parted them, slid lower, discovered the slick moisture that waited for him, and sank deep.