Prey (The Hunt Book 2)

by Liz Meldon

  He had to have her.

  Now.

  Now or he’d die. He’d combust into starlight or ash or coal or whatever the fuck demons were really made of.

  “Oh my god,” she groaned, chest heaving. “Oh…my god.”

  “I can assure you that he nothing to do with it,” Severus muttered, his words clawing their way up his tight throat. The demon wanted to mount her—take her right then and there. Hard. Relentless. Pound her into the bed until the legs gave way, until the whole damn building collapsed around them. He had never felt so close to truly losing control, and he knew that if he didn’t give an inch, the beast inside would take ten miles.

  Eyes fixed to her, Severus climbed off the bed and strode to the head of it, undoing the knot around her wrists with a simple flick of his hand. Her arms sagged down as she panted, trembled, her cheeks permanently pink and her eyes closed.

  They snapped open, however, when Severus scooped her up and carried her as a groom carries a bride over the threshold, not stopping until he had her back pinned against the empty wall across from his bed. Moira stood up on her tiptoes, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and as soon as Severus went for his trousers, her nimble fingers were there too, undoing the zipper as he popped open the button. He shoved the too-tight material down, face pinched in annoyance, then kicked it all off as her hands closed around his cock.

  His eyes fluttered closed, a hand planted against the wall to steady himself as she stroked him. Up and down. Curl around the head. Down and up. He let her touch him until he couldn’t stand it, until it physically pained him to be so still. Then, batting her hands away, Severus hoisted her up, fingertips digging into her thighs, and unceremoniously pushed into her tight channel. Her flighty hands went from his chest to his shoulders, then up to his face, grasping hard as he filled her, a strangled moan tumbling through her parted lips.

  He buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in, barely feeling the tentative kisses she peppered along his throat, his shoulder. The inner beast roared to life, a surge of desire coursing through every inch of him until he could hardly think straight. Nothing else existed but his cock inside her. Nothing else mattered. And at the feel of her crossing her ankles against his lower back, Severus finally surrendered.

  The surrender of an incubus wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t all soft moans and lingering kisses and eye contact. It was raw, savage, unbridled—and he gave her nothing else. He pounded into her, moving so suddenly, so harshly, that she cried out against his skin, one hand buried in his hair while her other arm snapped around his neck. Moira clung to him for dear life, because what else could she do? Severus gave her no options, no alternatives—weather the storm or be claimed by it.

  And from the way she tried to buck her hips, from the way she clenched her fist in his hair, Moira had opted to weather the storm; he’d never been prouder of her than in that very moment.

  He let the demon take the reins, fucking her as he’d wanted to from that very first night—brutally, until the stone wall behind them cracked and splintered. She must have felt it, the coarse backdrop to his surrender, but she only held tighter to him.

  “Faster,” she whimpered, digging her heels into his back. Severus obliged with a snarl, snatching her hand from his hair and pinning it to the wall. He gave over completely, raking his teeth along her neck, rolling his hips as her body started to tighten around him.

  “Moira, you—”

  “Fuck,” she cried, her body convulsing against him—and her teeth sinking into his shoulder. He hissed again, pain blooming through the intense fog of pleasure collecting in his brain, and released her trapped hand in favor of clutching her neck instead. Severus wrenched her away from his shoulder and held her against the wall, her body still rippling through her second orgasm in the most fucking amazing version of come hither he had ever experienced.

  But it was her mouth that was his undoing. He could leisurely fuck for hours, but the sight of her heady smile, her heavy-lidded gaze—and his bright red blood smeared across her teeth—was his downfall. Cursing, Severus clamped his mouth down over hers and tasted metallic as he spilled himself into her. He thrust hard and stiffened, and she kissed him like it was the last time. An earth-shattering pleasure overwhelmed him, unlike anything he had ever experienced before—and Severus briefly wondered if he had died.

  But his shoulder throbbed. Ecstasy coursed through his veins. And the hybrid in his arms cradled his head in both her hands before nipping sharply at his lower lip.

  Knowing he was likely shoving her against cracked stone and jagged edges, he somehow managed to walk them both back to the bed. She giggled softly, the sound cutting through the high-pitched whine ringing in both his ears, and sat up with her hands on his chest after Severus flopped back on the bed.

  “Thank you,” Moira whispered. Her smile wobbled when he caught the tear sliding down one cheek, then the other, her eyes watery and his blood on her lips. He wiped that away too, licking his thumb clean as he stared up at her.

  “For what?”

  “You know what.”

  Ah, yes. That. It was a crime that she hadn’t experienced such pleasure before, and if he had it his way, she’d have an orgasm a day until she caught up with her peers. Severus merely smiled weakly, seeing no reason to point it out or talk about it.

  “I can assure you… It really was my pleasure.”

  She replied with another kiss, one that turned languid and slow. Unhurriedly, Severus tugged the hair tie off the tail of her braid, then freed her white locks from their constraints. When she pulled away, hovering over him with her hands planted on either side of his head, her hair fell around her face like a halo.

  And—angel and demon politics aside, a millennium of fear and disdain forgotten—she truly was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  “Moira?” Severus leaned against the closed bathroom door, listening to the shower run inside. When he heard no response, he rapped his knuckles against the wood, then pushed in. Steam plumed over the glass shower divider, the heat fogging it enough to obscure the naked figure on the other side, the entire room like a sauna. Even the enormous ceiling window had fogged over. “Moira?”

  Her head turned sharply in his direction, and he watched her shuffle to the end of his rather large shower area, then poke her head around the end of the glass wall. Much to his amusement, she had her arms crossed over her breasts. “Yes?”

  “I think the time for modesty has come and gone, darling,” he teased, arching an eyebrow and looking pointedly down at the offending area. She scowled back for a moment, then cleared her throat, lips threatening to lift into a smile.

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, just dropping off supplies,” Severus mused. “Fluffy towels to your liking? Are the scented shampoo bottles adequate? The water pressure doing it for you?”

  After he had forced himself to stop kissing her, Severus had suggested a bath in the claw-foot tub. His bathroom was nearly as big as his bedroom; Verrier had spared no expense in furnishing his son’s home, and that generosity had extended to his roommate too. Pricey grey tile lined the walls of the shower, the tall, slightly tinted glass barrier dividing it from the rest of the space.

  He would have preferred to climb into the tub with Moira, still mildly concerned that he had hurt her back in the throes of the best sex of his life. Much to his surprise, she had insisted she had a seminar to attend in a half hour—and if there was no imminent threat of angels hunting either of them down, she needed to get moving.

  A lesser man would have taken it as a snub, but he had seen the look of longing she cast the large bath when he’d given her a quick rundown of how the shower worked. While she seemed a bit shy around him now that they had both come down from their high, Moira didn’t appear to need the kind of coddling a hot bath might bring, the two of them wrapped in each other’s arms, processing what had just happened.

  She had been quite annoyed, however, that he’d
torn her skirt in half.

  “What the hell am I supposed to wear?” she had moaned after she’d finally climbed off him, the time for unhurried kissing over, and shoved the damn thing in his face as Severus tried to concentrate on her, still in a post-orgasm haze. He’d muttered some unintelligible nonsense, then showed her to the shower. And now he was back, more in control of his faculties, the demon satiated—for now.

  “I’ve got twenty minutes to get to campus,” Moira stated. “Do you have something for me to wear or not?”

  “My cousin Cordelia left a dress ages ago,” he told her, holding the garment by the shoulders and letting it unfurl. From the wide-eyed look on Moira’s face, it was not to her taste.

  “Is your cousin in a Tim Burton movie?”

  “Her tastes are rather eclectic for Earth,” Severus agreed with a glance down at the dress, “but quite on trend in Hell, I’m afraid.”

  Moira blanched, then offered a small nod. “Right. Okay. That’ll work. Thanks.”

  “I’ll leave it next to the sink.”

  “Thank you.” She disappeared back inside the shower, her lithe figure strolling to the water, the cascading stream altering its echo as it pummeled her body.

  He set the all-black garment down on the counter, wondering how Moira would pull off so much lace, never mind the corset ties at the back. Just as he was about to offer his assistance, he caught his reflection in the steamed mirror, and wiped the condensation away with a frown. His cheeks had a veritable flush to them, and while his demon eyes had retreated to something more realm-appropriate, the irises looked the same as they did after he’d taken energy from a human. Severus leaned closer, eyebrows furrowed. He didn’t feel stronger, yet his body showed all the signs of increased vitality.

  He swiped at the reflective surface when it started to fog over again, taking a better, longer look before glancing at the shower. Moira certainly was a puzzling creature, one he no longer wanted to keep at an arm’s length. The inner demon had proved he could have her without breaking her, and that felt more reassuring than Severus cared to admit.

  Curious, he tugged the neckline of his navy blue T-shirt to the side. There, plain as day, was the mark she had left on her shoulder. He swallowed hard, then winced when he traced a finger over it, pain twinging down his arm. She had looked so beautiful with his blood in her mouth, across her teeth, her features wild with pleasure, and her eyes—her eyes belonging to him.

  Severus realized in that moment that he wanted her. Not just her body. Not just her smart mouth. All of her.

  And he wasn’t just helping her because he thought it a pity to see her killed by an angel, but because he felt something stir in the pit of his lonely, black soul whenever he looked at her. Moira wasn’t a danger to him. She was a storm, the kind he couldn’t run from anymore, not after today; the kind of storm he needed to chase, to succumb to in all its brilliant, blinding glory. He needed her—and not because she had she bitten him.

  But because she could make him bleed. Because she could withstand the force of him, his raw nature, and then joke with him ten minutes later like they were any ordinary pair of lovers. Because after Severus’s lifetime of solitude, of drugging and tricking and stealing from the women in his bed, she’d come to him willingly. Eagerly.

  He stalked across the bathroom and stopped at the opening of the shower. Moira peered back from beneath the powerful spray of the showerhead, bubbles in her hair, trickling down her back, and tiptoed toward him when he beckoned her with a crooked finger. Once he could reach her, he caught her forearm and dragged her the rest of the way to him, smothering her protests with his lips. She tensed briefly, then melted, wrapping her wet little self around him, mouth opening like a flower in bloom.

  “I’ll call a car,” he rasped, clutching her arm between them, their mouths close enough that he could still taste her. “And I’ll drive with you to campus…just to be sure.”

  She nodded, gaze slowly lifting from his lips to his eyes. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Get out,” she whispered with a grin, “or I’m going to miss my class.”

  “Fuck class,” he growled, going in for another kiss that he knew would make her knees buckle and her toes curl—only to have his little hybrid shove him out of the shower, giggling. He let go begrudgingly, with the knowledge that he could have had her again if he really wanted—and again, and again, until class was the last thing to ever cross her mind.

  Instead, Severus readjusted his annoyingly firm erection, forced the rumbling demon back in its cage, and marched out into the bedroom to call for a town car.

  Chapter Four

  Severus only exhaled when the smoke had started to burn his lungs, his throat, the back of his tongue. It plumed in front of him, a great grey cloud, before dissipating into the night air—gone forever. He glanced down at the cigarette in hand, then flicked it with his thumb, ridding it of the smoldering ash at the tip. A burning red glow flickered back, and he brought it to his lips for another drag.

  Humans smoked for all kinds of reasons, but he knew many did it to calm their nerves. If only nicotine worked its magic on demons, too, then he would have a real excuse for smoking the damn things. It was a habit he’d picked up in the 1920s, one he hadn’t been able to shake. Not because it did anything for him. He just liked it. He wanted to smoke. Severus had come to accept that.

  Moira was his latest cigarette. She didn’t provide him with anything when they touched—no essence, no strength, no power. Yet he had come to accept that he wanted her, desired her, longed for her because of all she offered besides her life force. Her charm. Her intelligence. Her smart mouth and delicious cunt.

  And her reliability. While Severus was always exceedingly early, another habit he’d developed since living in the human world, Moira tended to be five minutes ahead of schedule—always.

  Standing in the alley between the Inferno and Rose’s Corner, Severus checked his wristwatch. Ten minutes to go until their designated meet-up time; five minutes until Moira strolled around the corner, bypassing the already large line of humans waiting to get into the building’s more palatable street entrance, drawn like moths to a flame. She and he had business in the much darker core, the demons-only bar and nightclub where Alaric would be bartending in about an hour. Severus found that the Inferno, owned by his roommate’s father, was one of the few places where demons congregated en masse that he wasn’t blatantly hassled for being an incubus.

  No, the discrimination was subtler here, with snide looks and muttered insults, but being Alaric’s friend and roommate offered him some pull. Tonight, however, he would need to prove his worth to the main man himself: Verrier, Alaric’s father and a former prince of Hell. Severus seldom ever spoke to the creature face-to-face, and he couldn’t remember a time when it had been just the two of them, alone in Verrier’s office. He’d also never brought a date to the Inferno; it was going to be a night of firsts.

  He puffed the smoke out in rings this time, leaning against the warm red brickwork of Rose’s Corner, another of Verrier’s establishments, while he waited. The restaurant was just as full as the nightclub next door, humans drawn to the high prices and lush liquor without understanding why. It was booked up months ahead of time, and Verrier made a pretty penny off both his Farrow’s Hollow businesses. Not that he needed the money, per se; as a prince of Hell, retired or not, he commanded respect everywhere he went. While the demon gangs and mafia families ran the city’s underbelly with an iron fist, Verrier outranked all of them—period.

  It was Verrier’s knowledge and expertise that Severus would rely on tonight. Clutched under one arm was his sketchbook, filled with detailed drawings of the ten angels he and Moira had seen around Seraphim Securities over the last two and a half weeks. Severus had asked Alaric to arrange a meet-up with his father so he could show him the sketches. Hopefully, the most powerful demon in town could put names to the faces—and offer whatever other information he saw fit to provide in
the moment.

  Because they needed all the intel they could get, and Severus had hoped to bypass the tedious task of sneaking around and buying information from demons who would grossly overcharge him. Their run-in with the angel the other day made the matter time sensitive, and while Severus hadn’t heard the flutter of angel wings around every corner, he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain they would let him and Moira slip away unquestioned. He had even taken to following her around campus these the last three days, just to ensure no one else had decided to do the same.

  This time, however, he was quite obvious about his stalking. He made sure she noticed each and every time, and Moira played right into the little game with a sly smile. Hands in her pockets, a wool cap on her head, she would brush by him, bump into him, graze him in passing. The little minx usually had him so riled up by the end of the day that he needed to take a handful of cold showers afterward just to think straight. He would have loved to have dragged her into a discreet alley somewhere at any given time and fucked her raw—as punishment, of course, for being such a tease—but she had asked him to keep his distance so she could get this week’s coursework out of the way.

  “If we’re going to be surrounded by demons at the Inferno, I don’t want to be thinking about essays and seminar prep,” she’d insisted Monday evening, lips swollen, a firm hand on his chest as he bore down on her. “So, keep it in your pants until Wednesday.”

  And he had, respectfully. But now that Wednesday night was here, and she was two minutes out, Severus found he wasn’t as in the mood as he could have been. This was dangerous—all of it. Tangling with angels. Getting Verrier involved. Bringing Moira to the den of sin and vice in Farrow’s Hollow—the it place to be if you were a hellion in the mood for revelry. Usually the weekends were busier; he hoped that hump day would produce its usual crowd of loners, stragglers, and grumpy assholes who just wanted to drink in peace.