Demon Marked (27 page)

When Andre had shoved her pants down and taken her without the expected foreplay, without a kiss or a caress or any of those preliminaries she'd always heard were the best part of sex for a woman, she'd expected pain or at least discomfort. But there hadn't been any pain. Only bone-deep satisfaction. It had been even better than the first time. Hotter. Wilder. And unexpectedly ... sweeter, somehow.

Her jeans were bunched around her knees, and her ass presented like an animal in heat, but she'd never felt so treasured. This moment wasn't just about pleasure or affection. This was about a man risking his life. For her.

A part of her truly believed that this new method of feeding the darkness was what she'd been searching for—a way to sustain her own life without stealing from others. It was amazing, the miracle she'd prayed for before she'd grown too tired and angry to pray. The way Andre had glowed in the shop was so different from anything she'd ever seen before, as if he was as charged up by their encounter as she was. As if the sexual energy they created together nourished him instead of stealing his life away. It truly hadn't felt like she was hurting him.

But what if she was wrong? She could be. They both knew the danger, but he'd made this decision regardless.

It boggled her mind, made her thoughts race faster than her pounding heart as Andre collapsed on top of her, breathing hard. Seconds later, he rolled to his back beside her, severing their connection. The blue light vanished, but the feeling of goodness, of satisfaction and health, remained. The poison in her system was gone, burned away in the heat of the fire between them.

“You are ...” His words trailed away as he brushed her sweaty, sticky hair to one side and pressed a kiss to her neck, sighing as if her Hamma-tainted skin was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.

“I am?” she asked, voice husky.

“Yeah. You just ... are.” He sighed and rolled back onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “And I do.”

She sucked in a shaking breath and pressed her face into the blanket beneath her, his simple words affecting her even more deeply than his admission of love. Surely, he couldn't care that much. Maybe he had a death wish she hadn't seen in his memories. Maybe that wild streak in him was wilder than she'd assumed. Maybe he hadn't truly understood the risk he was—

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Better. Good.” She lifted her head, daring a glance at his face. He looked entirely healthy, happy, and relaxed in a way she'd never seen him before, even in the flower shop. It was amazing, especially considering he was half naked in the kind of establishment that would have usually kicked his clean-freak phobia into high gear.

“Good.” He smiled. “Me, too.”

“Good. Great. Thank god.” Emma swallowed and considered sliding off the bed and pulling up her jeans. But she didn't. She stayed there beside him on her stomach, the evidence of what they'd done sliding down her thigh. It made her want him again, that messy bit of real life that he'd left behind. “And you're sure you're okay? You're not dizzy or—”

“No. I'm ... perfect. I can't remember the last time I felt this good after sex.” His eyes stayed on the ceiling, though she could tell he was aware of her watching his emotions play out on his face. The fact that he allowed the intimacy without feeling the need to pin her with his usual assessing glare made her want to kiss him. And then kiss him again. “It's usually ... sad at the end. The second it's over ... it's like ...”

“It's like what?” she asked, wanting him to know that she cared, that she craved his confidence as much as his body. She'd seen inside his mind, but there were still so many things she wanted to know about Andre Conti. “Tell me.”

“It's like ... the emptiness comes back.” His tongue slipped out to wet his lips, making her fingers itch to trace the curves of his full mouth, to tease inside the sweet hollow beneath his nose. “I can't even enjoy the release. I'm too busy thinking about the next time.” He turned to face her, the vulnerability in his expression making Emma struggle to catch her breath. “It's not like that with you.”

“It's not?”

“No, it's not.”

Emma bit her lip, overwhelmed. The cynic in her screamed that he was feeding her a line, but her heart knew better. Andre wouldn't lie to her, not about this. He wasn't a liar. She'd known that on some gut level even before she'd searched his mind in the ruins.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said of his cousin.

Shit.
Now that the poison in her blood was gone, the full weight of the mess they were in hit hard. What if Little Francis already suspected that she and Andre knew too much? Ginger's behavior, her own flight from Conti headquarters, and the fact that she and Andre were still out and about and not firmly nestled in the family bosom would have all conspired to make him suspicious.

But how suspicious? Enough to take steps to cover his tracks? Or enough to make damn sure she and Andre didn't tell anyone that he was the man after her spell book? Did Little Francis have it in him to order the death of a member of his own family? Even in the name of acquiring supernatural power?

LF's face flickered on her mental screen, full of false confidence and suppressed anger that Jace was favored to take over the family business. He wasn't the smartest man, but he was clever, ambitious, and lacking that certain thread of moral fiber that kept the rest of the Contis from being the kind of criminals Father Paul would have urged her to add to her feeding list.

She had her answer.

Now she needed to know why Little Francis wanted her spell book, why he was getting in the drug business with the Death Ministry, and how the two were related.

“Emma? You still with me?”

“I ... I am,” she said, focusing in on Andre's face.

She
was
with him, more than he knew. Protecting the Conti family was something she wanted to do for him, because she cared, because she ... loved him. Emma blushed, even the
thought
of loving a man enough to make her cheeks heat. She wasn't ready for this, not by a long shot, but if she'd learned anything in her life, it was that life didn't wait for you to be ready. She was simply going to have to rise to the challenge. Because she wanted to love Andre, more than she could have imagined even a few hours ago.

“I just ... don't know what to say.”

“You don't have to say anything,” he said. “I know I'm amazing in bed.”

Emma smiled. It was past time to throw the man a bone. “You are. Completely amazing. I had no idea it could be like that.”

He grinned so hard his dimples popped. “It
wouldn't
be like that with anyone else. So if I die of a heart attack, don't even think about sleeping around.”

“You're not going to die,” she said, smile slipping at the sobering thought.

“I know I'm not. And you're not going to sleep around.”

“No. I'm not.” Even if sex was the answer to her problems, even if she could have been feeding on sexual energy instead of evil since she was old enough to have intercourse, it didn't matter. She didn't want anyone else. She wanted Andre. Fussy, vain, loyal, brave Andre. And he seemed to want her as well.

But would he still want her if her demon mark were responsible for turning him into a killer? If Little Francis had been up to the very bad things she suspected, and Andre was the one to out his plans, then Andre would have to take care of the problem. The Contis were a kinder, gentler breed of mobsters, but they were still organized crime. If LF had betrayed his family, put the lives of Conti women and children at risk, and tried to make a deal with gang members and demons behind his father's back, he'd have to be dealt with. And as the senior Conti in town, that would be Andre's job.

Emma had seen in his memories that he'd never killed anything before, not even the demons he'd helped hunt as a younger man. Taking a life—especially the life of one of his own—would destroy something inside him, that core of faith in his own goodness that made him the man he was.

She shivered, though the air-conditioning in the small room was hardly functioning at top capacity. She had to get to Little Francis and have a hands-on conversation. Now. Surely she and Andre would be safe if they went directly to the Conti family offices. Little Francis couldn't hurt Andre with half the family there to witness it.

And once she had confirmation, she'd find a way to take care of him herself.

“We should go.” She stood and reached for one of the white towels on the table near the bed, trying not to think about how many other people had used them to mop up various excretions. At least the rag smelled like bleach; surely it was clean enough.

Her thoughts made her laugh beneath her breath.

“What's funny?” Andre came to stand beside her as he adjusted his clothes.

“I was wondering how clean this was.” She held up the towel before tossing it in the linen basket near the table. “I think you're starting to get to me.”

“I know you're getting to me. I don't plunk down four thousand dollars for just any woman.” He stared at the tray filled with all the trappings of the antivenom. “I'm just glad we didn't ...” He paused, slowly reaching for the dish containing the silver powder, tilting it to the light before letting it fall back onto the tray with a curse. “Dr. Finch.”

“Dr. Finch?” Emma echoed as she buttoned her jeans.

“That's why you suspected I had something to do with all this, isn't it?” he asked, turning to pin her with one of his most piercing looks. “Because of Dr. Finch. Because I was the one who told Little Francis to call him.”

Emma's mouth opened and closed without a sound as she struggled to understand where Andre was going with this.

“Don't lie to me,” Andre warned. “No more lies.”

“I told you about Dr. Finch,” she said. “I saw him performing some kind of back-alley surgery ... something that made him a lot of money, but that's all I could see for sure. I was so out of it by the time I touched him that I couldn't—”

Andre cursed again. “I should have realized.”

“Realized what?”

“I'd never seen anyone suffer through the antivenom like you did this morning. I thought about how odd it was before I went to talk to Francis, but I didn't—Shit! He has to be in on it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that Dr. Finch is working with the Death Ministry and probably my fucking cousin,” Andre said, scooping his coat from the ground and shrugging it on. “The antivenom he gave you this morning was silver, but not like this. I'd forgotten the antivenom powder was so bright before it was mixed with water. Whatever Dr. Finch gave you was something else.”

So Finch was in on this, too. It made sense that Little Francis had recruited other members of Conti Bounty, but how many? Just how deep did this go? What if...

What if this went all the way to the top? What if the Contis weren't what she'd thought them to be? Maybe Uncle Francis had decided it was time for the family to get in on the lucrative drug trade and had given his son directions to get the ball rolling in his absence. She didn't know the exact nature of the business that had taken the elder Francis out of town, but she'd heard mention of “new revenue avenues.” What if one of those avenues was running demon drugs?

Still, that didn't explain the ransacking of her apartment or her attempted kidnapping.

“It was probably some sort of spasm-inducing drug,” Andre said, still thinking aloud. “If you'd gone into convulsions, you would have been transported to his clinic uptown. From there, it would have been easy for him to administer the antivenom and do what he wanted with you.”

“Or let me die. Some of the spells don't require the demon-marked person to be living,” Emma said, pushing away the anxiety that rose in her chest.

She couldn't believe that the Contis were crooked. Jace would never do anything to hurt Sam, and Andre had proven he would risk his life for hers. This had to be something Little Francis had cooked up on his own.

“I can't believe this,” Andre said, his expression darkening. “We trusted that man. He knows the Death Ministry has terrorized half the ...” Andre froze again, his attention focused inward before he turned back to where Emma still stood by the bed. “You said you saw Dr. Finch cutting someone open.”

“Yeah. A man.”

“And he wasn't wearing gloves?”

She paused a moment, searching her memory, wondering what Andre was getting at. “No, he wasn't. I'm positive he wasn't.”

“But if he were harvesting organs to sell on the black market, he'd be wearing latex gloves. He wouldn't want to risk contaminating the organs or himself.”

Emma nodded. “Riiight.”

“So why wasn't he wearing gloves?”

“I ... don't know.” For the first time in this conversation, she was the one who was out of the loop. Why would Dr. Finch put himself at risk like that? It didn't make sense.

“He wasn't wearing gloves because he didn't care about preserving the organs, and what he was pulling out of the man would be ruined if it made contact with latex.” Andre paused again, giving her the second she needed to catch up.

“Oh my god. Demon drug mules.” Plastics and demon drugs didn't mix. It was why everything on the table next to her was in a ceramic or metal container. It was also the reason the rate of blood-borne diseases had skyrocketed along with the popularity of demon highs, as addicts shared expensive all-glass needles.