Demon's Caress: Demon Heat, Book 1 (5 page)

Something close to desperation shone in his blue eyes. “And you’re not willing to give it another chance?”
 

“No,” she said flatly.

“What happened?” He spread his hands and let them fall to his sides, the expression on his face making her chest tighten.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, her heart clenching. Telling them about her weakness and shame would help nothing. “That’s no one’s business but mine.”

 
“It would make it easier for us to understand why you don’t want us.” Those words from Raum stung. The rejection in his voice was like acid pouring over her skin.

Swallowing, she forced herself to meet his eyes. His expression made her flinch. His normal stoicism was gone, and his gaze reflected a deep pain that just made her want to sob. She hadn’t really cried in years, but it was all she could do to keep tears from welling in her eyes. It hurt her to hurt them, and she hated doing it. She wished she didn’t have to, wished her history had made her into a different person. Then again, when hadn’t she wished she could undo the damage Shax had done?

Maybe it would help them to understand why she could never give in. Maybe it would make them stop offering that sweet bond so openly. It was a punch to the gut to consider that the truth about her failures might turn them away from her entirely. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She shut down any protest from her soul. “He was my first partner—Shax.”
 

“What did he do to you?” Raum’s hand closed over the nape of her neck, the gesture one of support.

“Nothing. He didn’t do anything to me.” No, it was what he hadn’t done that made all the difference in the world. “I’d just come topside and Samael wanted to start me out with one partner at first, build me up to a Triad.”
 

She’d wanted to do the hunting rather than serving as a prison guard for the evil souls in hell. Active participation in shipping their sorry asses downstairs rather than just making sure they stayed locked there. She’d been determined to learn everything she could, but it had been harder than she’d ever imagined. Learning to blend in among humans was difficult, trying to stay in corporeal form was challenging, ripping a corrupted soul from its body was exhausting and had made her violently sick to her stomach the first few times. Shax had thought that meant she didn’t have what it took to be a hunter. He’d never said it, but they were bonded. She could sense his doubt in her, had felt that doubt coating her skin every time they’d gone out on assignment.
 

Her hand tightened on the elevator rail, a connection to the present when her mind was locked in the past. “Samael put me with one of his most experienced hunters, so he could show me the ropes. I think even Samael was surprised how deeply I bonded with Shax.”

Too deeply, it turned out, and Shax certainly hadn’t opened himself to the link as much as she had. But she’d never bonded before—there was no need for it below. They had all the power there. Not so much up here. She didn’t know how to keep any of herself back from the bond, hadn’t even known that she should.

“It was a rough transition to the hunter lifestyle, and he…didn’t think I had the chops to be a hunter.” Her own partner hadn’t thought she was good enough. How pathetic was that?

“Fool,” Raum growled. She could feel his anger as a palpable force in the elevator.

Kobal paced in the small space, and he made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. “Did you put a blade in the asshole?”

She snorted, her eyes stinging. “No, I didn’t do anything to him.”

Though when she’d finally dug herself out of the pit of loss and despair, she’d wanted to. Her ex-partner had been damn lucky that Samael had shipped his ass to a silo in the swampy armpit of Africa—somewhere Shax was sure to despise. The high demon had immediately given her a new female partner and put her back to work, driving her relentlessly until she was too busy to think of Shax. It was probably the kindest thing her boss could have done for her—he hadn’t babied her at all. Combined with her burning need to prove Shax had been wrong about her, she’d risen to become one of the most productive hunters in their silo.

She pinned her gaze to the floor. She didn’t want to see the expressions on Kobal and Raum’s faces when she finished the ugly story. “We were out on a hunt one night, and it was a really bad one. I’d never come across a soul this evil, not even in hell.” She swallowed, trying not to recall how her gorge rose the moment that rotting stench had hit her nose. “It was bad.”

She felt Raum twitch beside her, and Kobal paused in his relentless pacing. Clearing her throat, she pushed on. Just get the story over and be done with it. “We caught him in the vortex, and started breaking his soul out of his body, but we were struggling to raise enough power to get it done. I poured everything I had into it, knowing the bond with Shax would hold me back from getting sucked in along with that ugly soul.”

“We’ve done that before. It can be effective,” Kobal interjected, but still she couldn’t look at him.

Because that kind of risk meant relying wholly on the bond, which she had. A mistake. “Shax didn’t think I had the power to finish it…and he thought if he kept the bond with me open, he’d be pulled in with me.”

The strangled sound Raum made had her flinching. Yeah. It was really that awful. She sometimes managed to convince herself that she’d made it worse in her mind, but no. The complete, utter selfish betrayal was as bad as she remembered.
 

“So, he cut our bond. Right there, in the middle of our soul retrieval. He walked away and didn’t look back.” Her stomach heaved as she said it.

“How did you manage to stop from getting sucked in?” Kobal’s voice was strained, a painful sound to hear.

She shook her head, never once looking up. “I don’t know. The best Samael can guess is that when the bond broke, I went into shock and slammed down all barriers on power, which cut the vortex too.”
 

“I didn’t know that was possible.” His feet began to thud against the floor again as he resumed walking around the car. “Once you commit to it that far…”

“I don’t know. It was days before I woke up in my apartment, and I wasn’t even in physical form. Samael had found me and brought me back. The soul escaped, and other hunters had to bring him in, but I was lucky I’d gone spirit form because he could have done anything he’d wanted to me. I was totally out of it. Comatose. I was that far gone without my bond to Shax.”

Hot shame poured through her, the humiliation still fresh after all these years. She’d given so much to that bond, trusted in it so much, that she’d lost herself. She’d been a fool, and had almost paid for it by being consumed by her own vortex and tangled up with that festering soul for eternity. There would have been no undoing it, no saving her. For everyone’s sake, she’d have been locked in hell along with all the other evil souls. The end.

Her mouth worked for a moment, moisture burning the back of her eyes. “So, yeah. No more male partners. No more sexual bonds. No more relationships. I’m sorry. I just can’t go there again. It’s not worth the risk to try to be the best.” Which was what she would tell Samael when she turned down this Triad he wanted her to join. She wasn’t strong enough to let go of herself again. She might not recover this time, especially if it was with two men instead of one.

She was so steeped in her misery, she didn’t even see Raum move, but the next thing she knew, he had her in his arms. Kobal came up behind her, the heat of both their bodies enveloping her. The blond demon ran his hand down her hair. “I’d like to toss his ass into a vortex for you. See how he likes it.”

“Coward.” The emotion behind the word wrenched up from deep inside Raum. He buried his face in her neck, his grip on her tightening painfully.

She stroked her hands up his back. “It was a long time ago. I healed.”

“Did you?” Kobal snapped, barely leashed fury in his voice. “You run from bonds, so that tells me you haven’t healed—that the son of a bitch scarred you so bad, you might never heal.”

He had a point. She refused to cringe from it. She was always going to be a little bit broken. Shax had taken something from her that she didn’t think was possible to get back. Trust. Hope. The ability to love. He’d taken everything, and she’d spent a hundred years trying to fill the emptiness he’d left behind. Maybe that was an impossible task, but what else could she do? Give up and go back to that pathetic creature she’d been? She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“You’re right.” She sighed. “I’m scarred, and that’s never going to get better. But now you know why I can’t give you what you want.”

Raum’s lips moved against her skin when he spoke. “I refuse to believe that. Do you know how strong you are to have survived what he did? And to have come so far since then?” He pulled back to meet her gaze, his green eyes almost electric in their intensity. “I want you more now than I ever did before, Maron.”

It was the longest speech she’d ever heard from him, and it left her speechless. What could she say to that? Her heart skipped a beat and she felt herself wavering on the edge of something she was too terrified to identify, let alone give in to. She shoved at his chest, tearing herself from his arms, but Kobal caught her wrist and hauled her toward them.

She struggled against his hold. “I don’t—”

He slammed his mouth over hers, smothering any protest she might have made. She bit his tongue when he thrust it between her lips, fighting him, fighting herself and everything she wanted but couldn’t have. Damn them, and damn herself even more.
 

Raum closed in behind her, the heat of him swamping her. He pushed her hair out of the way and bit the nape of her neck, sliding his hands down her back. She could feel his erection prodding her ass, while Kobal’s seared into her lower belly. Moisture gushed in her sex, the despair of moments before swept up in the passion of the moment.
 

Everything about them made her burn.
 

Kobal jerked her shirt over her head, and Raum removed her boots. They stripped away her jeans and panties in seconds, and pulled her down until they knelt on the floor of the elevator.
 

The blond demon bent to her breast, sucking her nipple through her bra. The rasp of lace stimulated her responsive flesh, and her head fell back, lust pouring through her system. She moaned when Raum caught her mouth, and she pushed her tongue between his lips. It was intoxicating, being surrounded by them. She slid her fingers into Kobal’s hair, holding him close as he sucked and bit at her nipples. Reaching back with the other hand, she grabbed a fistful of Raum’s dark locks. He groaned, his hips surging against her backside.
 

It made the experience that much more excruciating that she was naked and they still had their clothes on. Their jeans felt rough against her sensitized skin, but that only sharpened her pleasure. Raum released her lips, stringing open-mouthed kisses down her throat until he could scrape his teeth over the tendon that joined neck to shoulder. Wetness drenched her pussy, and her channel contracted on emptiness. Tingles skipped down her skin, that fiery connection that came when demons coupled expanding. Fire and lightning. It was too strong, and they weren’t even inside her yet. That was dangerous, and she should push them away. Instead, she held them closer. For a little while, she got to keep them. Just for a little while longer, they were hers.

The thought was heady, the most erotic aphrodisiac she’d ever known.
 

Her skin felt too hot, too tight. Each drag of Kobal’s lips on her nipple sent ecstasy shooting straight to her sex. Raum bit her neck, hard, and she twisted in their embrace, gripping their hair tight enough to make them both wince. “I want you inside me now.”

She reached for Kobal’s fly to unfasten it and heard the heavy rasp of Raum’s zipper. His cock brushed against her ass, and she leaned forward to give him all the access he could want. He stroked her back, her ass, parting the globes so he could fit himself between them. The head of his dick rubbed her slick lips, teased her clit. Anticipation shot through her, and she pulled Kobal’s cock from his pants, pumping the hard shaft in her fingers and waiting for Raum to penetrate her pussy.
 

The blond demon pushed his hips forward, thrusting his cock into the ring of her fingers. His eyes slid closed, a muscle in his jaw ticked and a look that was close to agony contorted his face. “Please, Maron. More.”

Power exploded through her, that she could make one of her big, strong men beg. She all but purred as she bent farther forward and licked his cock from base to crown. He sucked in a breath, his hand splaying on the back of her head to urge her forward.

“Yes. More. Suck me, please.” His normally smooth voice was guttural with lust and only served to excite her more.

Raum probed her entrance with his cock, his hand sliding under her to toy with her clitoris. Dampness soaked her channel, and she could feel beads of moisture slipping down the insides of her thighs. Her muscles trembled, her reaction flaming out of control and red fire dancing at the corners of her eyes. She’d never felt her self-restraint slip so far, so fast, and she’d never have imagined that she’d like it so much. She took the tip of Kobal’s cock into her mouth just as Raum pushed deep inside her. The sudden forward jolt forced Kobal’s dick between her lips, all the way to the back of her throat. The musky, salty flavor of his skin filled her mouth, and she rolled her tongue along the underside of his shaft.

The way Raum’s cock stretched her was perfection. He was thicker than Kobal, but Kobal was longer—she had to work to take all of him into her mouth. Clenching her internal muscles around the cock thrusting in and out of her pussy, she made what was already a mind-blowing experience an even more erotic one. When Raum groaned and buzzed her clit with a shock of lightning, her back bowed, her channel contracting once, twice. She moaned, and a shudder passed through Kobal as the vibrations hit his shaft. He fisted his fingers in her hair, and it stung her scalp, but that just snowballed into the avalanche of sensation that rolled over her.