Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (64 page)

It had to be a real place. It was too detailed to be imaginary, and he knew it wasn’t New Orleans.

“It’s the beach near Manteo. That’s where I grew up.”

Manteo. He’d been there a couple of times trying to shake his father off his trail. It was a few hours north of where John and Charles lived on the coast.

“Why’d you pick clouds instead of sun?” He stepped out of his jeans, and she sat up, and sucked in some air when her gaze fell to his shorts. He nudged his Y-front shut and put his hands over his junk. “Don’t get distracted.”

“How could I not?”

It was the same size it’d always been, and he didn’t remember Laurette being so astounded by it.

“Try,
chéri
.”

She closed her eyes and for added measure, covered them with her hands. “It’s a thing that all the kids in my generation do in my family. My sister has one and all my cousins on one side. The tats are all different, because all of our gifts are a little different. We all have an affinity to air, but my quirk is electricity. That’s what I tried to throw at you back at the bar.”

“I guessed that. There’s a lot of static in your aura.” It made the hair on his arms stand up when he touched her, and it wasn’t a bad feeling in the slightest bit.

“Oh.” She chafed her arms as if cold. “I can pull static from the air and direct it. That’s what my grandmother would call wild magic. She wouldn’t approve.”

“Ah.” He padded to the end of the sofa and pulled the first of her jeans legs over her heel.

“Just
ah
?” She uncovered her eyes and lifted her ass so she could wriggle her pants past it. “You’re not going to tease me for being so much weaker than you?”

He shrugged, and pulled her pants. Pagan witches were vastly outnumbered by protestant witches in these parts, but he hadn’t known the extent of their differences until now. Her family was doing her a disservice. She could be so much more.

“I’m going to guess your affinity is with everydamnthing,” she said.

“You’re the more typical one of the two of us. That’s a good thing.”

Her panties were perfect mates to her bra. Black lace and a hint of see-through. He wriggled them slowly past her hips, pausing to kiss the top of her mound before working them down her thighs.

She gasped, and reached for his hair again.

This time, he didn’t let her grab it. He couldn’t let her distracted, or they’d end up talking themselves breathless. He preferred to expend his energy in other manners. Namely, inside
her
.

Candy Corn wound around his ankles, and Claude tossed Gail’s panties onto the floor and scooped up the cat.

“Don’t need witnesses, kitty,” he said, carrying the writhing ball of fur toward a door he imagined was the bathroom.

He tossed the cat in, turned on the light—not that Candy Corn needed it—and shut the door.

When he returned to the sofa, Gail had her feet on the floor and her arms behind her back. She leaned down, her shoulders wriggled, and he realized what she was doing. It would take some exertion for her to peel off a shirt as snug as hers.

He hurried back to her and grabbed her wrists. “Please allow me, but let’s move to the bed. If I were going to use incubus tricks on you, I wouldn’t care so much about the sofa’s inadequacy. Neither of us would care.”

He helped her to her feet and pulled her body against his, savoring the warmth of her belly, her smooth thighs, marveling at how Gail was so different than his Laurette in so many ways, but she fit against his body as if she’d been made for him.

Overcome with sentiment and arousal, he let his hands memorize the contours of her back, and then rest at the swell of her ass as he took her mouth yet again.

She chuckled against his lips, and pulled back slightly, grinning. “I don’t think you really
want
to make it to the bed. How strong are you? At the rate we’re going, we’re going to do it right here.”

Damn, she was right. No other woman had such an effect on him. He was generally the one holding the reins, but now he realized he must have dropped them. She’d picked them up and was trying to work out how to control him.

He liked that idea a lot, actually. He wanted nothing more than to cede control to someone he trusted and let her make all the decisions. For far too long, he’d been burdened by responsibility. He didn’t want to be a leader. At least, not for a while.

He stole one more kiss, and let go of her, turning her by the shoulders and giving her a little swat on the ass.

She yipped, then giggled.

“Go ahead. I’ll be right there.”

She sauntered toward the partition between the living area and bedroom, looking over her shoulder once. When she disappeared from his sight, he scooped his pants off the floor and snaked his hand into the back pocket. Wallet procured, he let his jeans fall back to the pile and rifled through the contents of the old billfold. He plucked out a condom and palmed it in his left hand, but kept digging. The item he sought now had been a holdover from her last life, but changed—just like her.

The end of his middle finger found it before his eyes did. “Ah.”

He slipped the antique ring out of its hiding place and tossed the wallet toward his clothes.

He’d wanted Laurette back, and Gail was so far from his beloved that the women were practically antithetical. But The Fates saw fit to pair them. They’d reminded him with her socks.

He had to trust that he’d not only be insanely attracted to her, but love her someday, and her him—that they’d find a way to be happy after this.

Once, he’d meant to propose with that ring. Now, it’d bind her to him in a different way—and he didn’t need her permission for it.

“I was going to ask you what the holdup was,” Gail said as she patted the space on the bed beside her. She nudged a couple of striped throw pillows onto the floor to make room for him.

Claude held up a small square packet between two fingers and approached the bed from the end. “Cambions are impervious to disease, but we have to take precautions regarding family planning.”

“I appreciate the forethought.” She hadn’t had to give it any. She’d had an IUD implanted back when she was on Shaun’s insurance and her risk of pregnancy was small, but stranger things had happened. There was an entire television series about women who gave birth without even knowing they were pregnant.

Wouldn’t that be Gail’s fucking luck?

“Shall I get the lights?”

There was no overhead light in the sleeping area of the apartment, but the bright lamps in the living room combined with the kitchen fluorescents cast everything in the back of the unit in a dim glow.

“Is one of your gifts being able to see in the dark?” She crooked a finger at him, and he mounted the bed.

“No,
chéri
.” He chuckled. “There’s something to be said for sensory deprivation, though.” He crawled toward her and nudged her legs apart. “Deprive your eyes, and your ears, nose, and skin compensate.”

“I’m aware of how it works. I just want to be able to see you.”

“Fair.” He leaned down and took her mouth in a kiss that started gentle and quickly escalated to desperate, on both their parts.

Bright room or not, every inch of her skin prickled for want of touch, and he held his body back from her so the only things touching were their lips.

She reached up and twined her fingers through his hair, pulling him down. “You’re still wearing too many clothes,” she whispered against his lips, and grunted as she eased back.

“As are you. Sit up.” It wasn’t a polite request, but an authoritative demand.

“How about
please
?”

He sighed and nipped gently at her right earlobe before rasping, “Gail,
se lever
,
s’il vous plaît
.”

“Do you always speak in French when you want to get your way?” She sat up and reached for her bra clasp.

He grabbed her wrists and nudged her hands gently down to her sides. “No, usually I’m more partial to patois. But, really, I don’t need to speak at all to get my way.”

Well, damn.

Feather-light fingertips skimmed up her spine, lending an arousing tickle that had her nipples hardening into peaks and her breath hitching.

Her bra loosened with one deft flick of his fingers, making her breasts fall lower and cheeks burn with unexpected self-consciousness.

What must he be thinking? She hadn’t been perky for ten years, and as worldly as he was, he’d probably seen bodies that bordered on perfection.

If she had time to go to the gym, she could tone and hone, but lifting weights and pounding a treadmill wouldn’t do much to disguise her bodacious curves. She wished it would. She’d pay a fortune to be leaner like Ellery, to not have to buy her jeans a size larger to accommodate her hips, ass, and thighs and then have the waist taken in.

He splayed his fingers under her breasts and sucked in some air. “Yes, lights on is much better.” He made reverent swirls around her nipples with the pads of his thumbs, and leaned down to pull one aching peak into his mouth.

Gasping at the sharp sting of his teeth on tender flesh, she leaned back onto the pillows and spread her legs for him.

He settled lower, pushing her breasts together and laving one nipple, then the next as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

She hooked her big toes into the waistband of his boxer shorts and nudged them past his hips. He pushed up onto his arms, just a bit, so she could work his shorts down farther, and she startled when his heavy cock fell onto her leg.

He carried that thing around in his pants all the time, apparently.

Sweet Jesus
.

Sometimes, when she Ellery went out to clubs or bars, her sister would lean in and whisper, “Check out that guy’s big-dick walk.” Gail would shush her, but never could resist looking. The guys Ellery pointed out walked with a wide stance and purposeful gait, as if they had to mind certain appendages as they moved.

Claude did
not
have that walk, so maybe Ellery had been wrong all those years. Maybe those guys had rashes or something. Claude, well, he’d shocked the shit out of Gail.

He pulled his shorts off the rest of the way, and she moved her hands to his back, digging her fingers into the flesh and hinting that he should move up—to dispense with the foreplay.

It wasn’t that she minded it at all. No, it was quite nice, actually, but she’d been burned too many times in the past by men who got their jollies off during heavy petting, and then rolled over to
recover
for a while before finishing the job. Usually, they fell asleep and she’d get pissed and push them off her bed at four a.m.

Nope, not this time. She wanted the whole enchilada up front, and if there were side dishes and dessert to go along with it, she’d take them at the end.

She wanted to see what this so-called incubus could do without his magic.

“Now, Claude,” she said, wrapping her legs around his waist again and tightening her thighs against his ribs.

He inched up and raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you not having a good time?” He slipped a finger between her legs and probed brazenly at her slit.

She gasped and ground her teeth as he added another finger to his test.

“I’d say you are.”

He pressed his thumb against her clit and scissored his fingers inside her.

She dropped her legs from his waist and bowed up from the bed, gasping. “God, I didn’t say you weren’t qualified. I’d just prefer to have a big bang instead of a bunch of tiny explosions.”

“A big bang, huh? You know what that means for an incubus?”

Maybe she didn’t want to know, but since he’d brought it up, she might as well find out. “No. What does it mean?”

He chuckled, withdrew his slick fingers, and plucked the condom packet from the bedspread near his right knee. He tore it open and sheathed up slowly, watching her.

“A big bang is when an incubus takes everything. Uses sex to bring a woman to the brink, and when she’s at her most vulnerable, he drinks her mojo and leaves her a shell of her former self.”

He wrapped her legs around his waist yet again, and this time gave her a hard yank so her body cleared the pillows and her head was flat against the mattress—and far from the headboard.

“You’ll get no big bang from me.”

Grabbing his cock, he positioned himself at the juncture of her thighs and pushed himself into her in one forceful thrust.

She cried out and pulled the back of his hair hard, tipping his head back. He filled her in a way that made her question the wisdom of further engagement. Was it possible for him to break her?

He chuckled and danced his lips across her sweating brow.

“No, you’ll get no big bang, but I’ll make you see stars,
chéri
.”

Ballsy motherfucker. “Try it. I think you’re all talk and no swagger.”

He worked his hips in a figure eight that had her whimpering like a cold, wet dog.

“Oh, God.” She was so full, already stretched as far as she thought she could go, and he’d dare to
move
?

Well, she’d asked for it. What the hell was wrong with her? She wasn’t generally this sort of tease.

“What were you saying,
chéri
?”

She gritted her teeth and shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Mm-hmm.” He nipped at her earlobe and began a slow, but stimulating rhythm—shallow thrusts that were more of a massage than proper screwing, but still managed to have her eyes watering and toes curling.

If he were to—

He propped her legs atop his shoulders and kissed the insides of her ankles before pressing his chest against hers, changing the angle of penetration.

“Oh,
God
.” Her voice came out in a strained keel that she was certain she’d be ashamed of later. She was cooler than this, dammit. A few pumps, and here she was, shaking like a leaf and hoping she outlasted the incubus.

Well, that was dumb. Of course she couldn’t endure a being whose trade and currency was lust. He could probably go all night. She had another minute—no, thirty seconds,
tops
—and she’d be singing “Glory, Alleluia.” Oh well.