Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (43 page)

He leaned his butt against the counter edge and she wedged herself between the commode and bathtub. She’d run out of places to squeeze into pretty soon. “No. We need to talk, and you’re being childish. I shouldn’t have to chase you for three weeks to have a conversation with you.”

She bobbed her shoulders. “I’m not childish. I’ve been busy. You should have come when I
asked
you to.”

He blinked at her.

“Leave. I’ve been waiting for the bathroom to free up all morning so I can shower, and I’d like to do that before my daily migraine settles in. All the banging from the construction aggravates it.”

“Don’t let me stop you.” He nodded, indicating the tub.

“All right. Suit yourself.” She opened the ratty terrycloth bathrobe, pushed it off her shoulders, and draped it over the toilet. Then she stepped out of her peppermint-striped pajama bottoms and left them in a wad on the floor. Her plain white camisole came next.

She met his gaze and crooked one eyebrow up in a
well?
fashion.

He crossed his legs at the ankles and settled in for a good show.

She grumbled something incoherent under her breath and leaned over the tub’s edge to turn on the water.

“It’s as if you’re trying to drive me insane,” he said.

“I think you’re doing that just fine on your own.”

“You said you wanted to talk, but every time I catch up with you, you
won’t
. You won’t even take my calls.”

“Maybe I get cold feet from thinking you’ll just feed me a lot of lies. Again.”

He raked his fingers through his loose hair and pulled. “I shouldn’t have to
accidentally
find out about your pregnancy. You know how I found out?”

The hand reaching for the water knobs stilled, and she shrugged.

“Claude let slip that he was trying to find a certain herb for nausea for you, and when I asked why and he didn’t respond, I put two and two together. He didn’t know you hadn’t told me. You would think I would have been the first person you told.”

She scoffed.

“At least the second!”

“Fuck, I tried to tell you. Remember? Days went by before I heard a peep from you. I’m not going to beg you to come around, and I’m not going to do things on
your
time.”

“I was busy! You’re acting like this is a game. We’re talking about a child.
My
child.”

She made a noncommittal sound that had him reaching for her shoulder, but drew back his hand at the last possible moment. Damn her. She had to be trying to goad him into some unsavory reaction, probably one she could file away for later and throw into his face.

He wouldn’t give it to her. She could have her anger. He wanted her to work it off, and that was why he’d tried to give her some space. He’d figured when she got down to even keel she could sit her down and explain things to her—that she was his and he was hers, and they’d always be, no matter how they’d come together.

After taking several steadying breaths, he asked softly, “You’re keeping it, aren’t you?”

She seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time testing the water temperature.

“Marion?” Every muscle in his body seemed to coil as he awaited her response and heat radiated out from his chest in painful waves. He thumped the heel of his palm against his sternum, willing his heart to take on its usual steady rate. “Answer me, please.”

She turned around in a flash, eyes narrowed. “Why? Know a witch doctor who could eliminate the situation for me? Or perhaps during your years of truck-stop philandering you’ve encountered a time travel chamber so I can go back in the past and not sleep with you?”

He opened his mouth, and forced it closed before the words on his tongue tumbled out. Fixing his gaze on the stamen of one of the shower curtain’s colorful orchids, he chose his words carefully. She expected anger from him, and he wasn’t going to give it. He always had a choice. That was what set him apart from many of his siblings—that he was willing to take the difficult route if the reward was worth it.

Marion was.

“I’d like you to have the baby.”

“Why? Do cambions collect offspring the way they collect conquests?”

He clamped his tongue in place with his teeth. Her words hurt. There was no one else on Earth equipped to tear him down the same way, and he had little choice but to endure her jabs. He deserved every one.

He considered not answering at all. What could he say that would cast him in a positive light? He didn’t know for sure how many children he had, and he certainly hadn’t approached their mothers with propagation on his mind. Finally, he hedged with, “No, I don’t collect offspring.”

“Super. Leave. I’m getting in the shower.”

“We’re not done talking.”

She sighed again, and this time rolled her eyes as she did it. “Your mistake.” She reached around her back and a second later, her bra unlatched and she let it fall to the floor, keeping her gaze on his. She seemed to be daring him to look, and he planned to, but not just yet.

Her upper body wriggled as she was likely easing her panties down, and still he didn’t look. He just stood there leaning against the counter with his arms crossed.

When she turned around to turn on the shower flow, he let his gaze track down to her ass, and he blew out a jagged exhale.

Given some of the scandalous shit he’d done in his life, he deserved this torture—having to look upon her feminine perfection and not be able to touch her. Make love to her. “God.”

“I don’t think he’s interested in your exploits,” she said. She stepped into the tub and drew the shower curtain closed.

Thank goodness she did, because now he remembered what it was he had wanted to talk to her about. He adjusted his crotch and cleared his throat.

“Marion, you understand that being pregnant doesn’t automatically make you safe, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re dealing with beings who would kill you over the slightest provocation, and they’re already provoked. They were pissed at you before you were even born, and the fact you’re carrying a cambion’s child won’t soften their hearts one bit. They would have killed your mother if they had caught her.”

“Well, good thing she had fleet feet and no nesting instinct, right? Must have been so easy to give me up. I bet she plopped me into a wicker basket and left me sitting outside a fire station or something. Oh, fuck, that’s not fair. I guess she did the best she could.” She sighed, and the curtain shifted with her movement. “Shit. No soap in here. Get me a bar from under the sink, will ya?”

He blew a breath through his pressed lips and turned to the cabinet. “Yes, I imagine she did what she had to. From the moment you were born, you had a shield that didn’t extend to her. You were safe. She wasn’t. The safest thing for both of you was her putting as much distance between you and your parents as possible so that one of you wouldn’t lure some demon to the other. Maybe it seems heartless to you now, but would you have preferred to die together?” He peeled the wrapper off a bar of moisturizing soap, pulled back the curtain, and extended the offering to her.

She stood there with dripping wet hair and an arm pressed over her breasts, staring at him a moment before she snatched it.

He didn’t go away. He nudged the curtain back a bit more and leaned his back against the wall. “Answer me.”

“It was a stupid question and you know it. Of course I would have preferred
not
to die.”

“And I’m sure you’ll do a lot of things in the name of keeping our baby safe that he or she may not agree with later.”

“You mean
my
baby.” She rubbed the soap over her shoulders and chest and narrowed her eyes at him.

He ground the heels of his palms against his tired eyes and groaned. “Let’s not do this. You’re angry? Fine, I get it, but don’t try to cut me out. I’m trying to be decent.”

“You should have given me a choice.”

“A choice? In what way, a choice? I seem to recall we were equally interested in taking our clothes off back in Idaho. What, precisely, would you have liked for me to tell you?”

She opened her mouth, but before she could get the words out, he said, “No. There isn’t a single sane-sounding explanation for what I am, and even if you had believed it, you might have still slept with me.”

“Then you should have left me alone. What you did was tantamount to taking advantage of a woman under the influence.”

“No. I’m sorry you see it that way, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I didn’t use magic on you besides what I needed to track you. You slept with me because you wanted to.”

She shrugged and worked the bar of soap lower, down to her chest and danced it in slow, tantalizing circles around her nipples.

He closed his eyes.

“Well. I guess we don’t need to worry about me wanting you again.”

“You. Are. Impossible.” He took several deep, cleansing breaths before he opened his eyes again. “I’m not the one pulling the strings behind the scenes. If I had a choice to pick a lover, she certainly wouldn’t have been from
your
family.”

“What the hell are you talking about, pulling strings? And you’re treading dangerously close to offending me, demon.” Her voice was flat and lacking emotion, but her hands were mischief-making, now working up a teasing, soapy lather over her lower belly.

“What I mean is we’re supposed to be together. We’re a fated pair. If we weren’t, I wouldn’t engage in a courtship that’s currently tantamount to self-flagellation.”

Her bell-like laughter should have lifted his spirits, but instead the sound had the exact opposite effect.

“Oh, fated pair? That’s a new one. I swear, you guys will never run out of ways to shock and appall me.”

“Appall?” For fuck’s sake.

He knew she wouldn’t believe it, and he wasn’t going to press the point. He’d thought giving her some space over the past few weeks would help her work through her anger toward him, but apparently the opposite had occurred. She was even
more
distrusting.

He really didn’t understand women. That was becoming painfully clear.

He pressed his index finger down the towel rack’s sharp edge and pulled it back, contemplating. “Marion, the fact I can offend you at all means I can’t bewitch you, and fuck I wish I could, so you’d hold your sharp tongue for longer than five seconds when I’m trying to make amends.”

“But you can’t really make amends, can you? You can’t make all the things that have happened
not
have happened. You can’t go back in time and talk my great-aunt out of getting into the car of that demon who killed her, you can’t take back my parents killing that demon, and you can’t take back what we did …” Now her hands worked lower, skimming past her abdomen, and she dropped the soap as she found her pleasure zone. She sighed, and grinned. “Back in Idaho.”

Tease.

Of course the Fates would drop this temperamental shrew into his lap and make him
deal
. He hadn’t expected she’d be like Ariel: generally mild-mannered and easygoing. But Marion had a hell of a lot of her grandmother in her and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one yet. It didn’t matter anyway, because they were stuck with each other. He hoped he’d eventually find her evil streak downright charming.

“Why are you so intent on punishing me?” he asked as she drew her bottom lip between her lip and her eyes rolled back in her sockets.

Panting, she said, “You … you don’t have … to watch.”

Of course he had to watch. He felt this torture was probably just one more part of the penance he had to do to make up for all the mistakes he’d made in life. She wasn’t going to make him run off that easy. If she thought such a thing was possible, then maybe he should have Claude educate her on some of the shit they’d seen in their many years of life.

Her shoulders dropped and her head fell back and her fingers worked faster at her sex, and Charles felt that demon part of him bubbling up, searching for an outlet. His cock was hard enough to cut glass, and his nuts were so tight, he feared he’d have a release in his pants for the first time in a hundred years.

He really should have walked away, but he couldn’t.

Clenching his fists at his sides, he closed his eyes and gathered that sexual energy into an imaginary ball, and he bound it and tamped it down. She wanted to drive him crazy—use his very nature against him. Well, he may not have been able to touch her, but they didn’t need to be horizontal in his bed for him to be able to teach her a lesson.

All he needed to do was toy with her lust a little.

He dug into his memory, rifling through thoughts of them in messy sheets, each scrambling to find their own purchase, and remembered being inside her. He’d made her
crazed
.

He opened his eyes and moved closer, as near as he dared without touching her, and he pulled the shower curtain back more as he moved. He directed her own lust right back at her and his, too, along with a few reminders of what he’d done to her body before.

Her mouth opened wider, but she could make no noise. Her almond eyes went round, and Charles stepped back and leaned against the wall again, crossing his arms over his chest.

With a dismissive flick of his hand, he brought her to a peak—and kept her there.

Her eyes watered from the onslaught of unresolved build-up, and she took her hands off her sex and splayed her fingers at her side. Shower water streamed down her face and over her tense body, and the sight was so sinfully sensual that he had one mind to unzip his pants and ease his painful erection right there in front of her. It’d serve her right.

But no. He needed to be a gentleman, so he’d have to get his jollies off later in private.

She made a tiny, mewling noise and pleaded to him with her eyes.

So pretty. He really was lucky. If he was going to have a partner he couldn’t touch, at the very least she could be nice to look at.

He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Marion, sweetheart, I’ve never liked being teased, especially not when I’m trying to have a civil conversation.”

“He-help,” she whimpered, and looked down at her shaking legs.