Vowed in Shadows ms-3 Read online

  The cold seemed to press around her heart and close down her vision. “Do I have to give up an arm too?”

  The cruelty rocked him; she felt it through his body. But he did not let her go.

  Instead he kissed her back.

  Well, she couldn’t blame him. It was a great way to shut someone up and turn the tides. Plus, he had such a wonderful mouth. The hard, tight set of his mouth was just an illusion—no, a lie to distract from the curve of his full bottom lip, the delicious reddened peach tone.

  A wave of pleasure overpowered the chill, and she sagged against him. The scrape of denim and cotton, the brush of the metal hook and the rough wooden chair under her shins all tingled on her naked skin with distracting intensity. But mostly she felt his mouth. Softening, slanting under hers. This time, he parted his lips, but tentatively, as if the concept had just occurred to him. The tip of his tongue traced the front edge of her teeth and retreated.

  Good God, he was as shy as a virgin. How could that be, with his wedding ring?

  Maybe that was why he’d come.

  The warm glow centered in her chest vanquished the cold entirely. “Is this your first time?”

  His blue eyes glazed. “Yes.”

  How sweet. How sad. And she’d dragged him in here like a lamb to slaughter. Probably ruined him forever. “I’ll make it all right,” she murmured.

  When she eased off him, his desire-clouded eyes cleared. He clutched at her awkwardly, the hook skidding over her spine. He winced. “Don’t go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “The demon realm is all around us. I smell it.”

  What the hell with the demon thing? Damn, his wife had obviously done a number on him if he thought sex was demonic. How could that unknown woman have denied this sexy man? “You’re smelling the Power Slug we spilled. It’s probably eating through the carpet.” She touched her fingertip to the swollen center of his lower lip. “Sex isn’t always evil, you know.”

  Under her finger, his lips twitched in a reluctant smile. “Not always?”

  “Not this time.” Who would’ve guessed? She did have a merciful side after all. She wondered where she’d kept it hidden; certainly not under her clothes.

  Straddling his hips, she leaned back and let her hair down. The blunt ends of the dreads tickled her skin, and she shivered.

  “Stay with me,” he urged.

  “Keep me here.” She lifted his hand and laid it against her breast, palm centered. “Stroke me. Tease me.”

  “What happened to ‘no touching’?”

  “I lied.”

  His groan sent a lightning shaft of delight through her, which flared brighter when his fingers closed over her nipple.

  “Oh yes.” She drew out the word to a hiss. Sex might not be evil, but it didn’t have to be all good either.

  Still clutching his hand to her breast, she rucked up the hem of his T-shirt. He sucked in a breath that rippled down the ridged plane of his stomach. Oh, he had no reason to be shy. She danced her fingers down his fly.

  “Wait.” He lifted the hook and stopped. He stared at the gleaming metal, surprise loosening his tight-clenched jaw for a moment.

  She’d made him forget, she realized.

  Before the hurt could flood in—and she knew it would; oh, how well she knew—she unzipped him. A briefs man, of course. Why make her job easy? Well, she’d teased Mobi out of tighter hideaways.

  “Nim.” His hand slipped down between her breasts toward her navel, as if he might be going for the block again at his crotch. So she lifted her hips and let his knuckles bump her smoothly waxed mound.

  The breath exploded out of him.

  While he was distracted, she eased her fingers past his waistband. His erection surged, hot and ready, into her hand, the first bead of moisture damp on her skin.

  The rest of him was only a half beat behind. He clamped the hook behind her back and dragged her down so she sprawled across his chest. His mouth captured hers with a fury that bore no relation to the naïve, neglected man she’d imagined.

  When she tried to sit up, to keep some measure of control, he angled his hand between them to find her slick heat. She gasped. Not naïve at all. With his thumb on the white-hot point of her desire, he slid a finger into her, then two. She bucked her hips against him and cried out. He chuckled into her mouth, a dark sound that made her suddenly believe in devils.

  He’d played her, one-handed, the bastard. He knew exactly what to do, and he did it pitilessly. He stroked, he teased, just as she’d asked. He kissed his way down her neck. She had a split second to think about standing up, slapping his face, and screaming for a bouncer, but then his lips fastened on her nipple.

  As if he’d completed some previously unwired circuit in her body, every nerve came alive, lit her up like a damned Christmas tree in August. She let her head tip back, let the rush of sensation fill her and overflow.

  She clenched her thighs around him, the yearning threatening to break her apart unless she gave him what he wanted, what he was taking from her with each caress of his strong fingers. She didn’t want to give it to him—he was practically stealing. But her will was weak, and her body betrayed her; it wanted and would not be denied.

  What had he said about her soul?

  “Come now,” he whispered. His words blew soft and cool across a tight-budded nipple.

  She convulsed against his hand and what was left of her vision went black.

  Sweat beaded at his temple, and Jonah closed his eyes as Nim’s pleasure throbbed around his fingers, the pulse doubled and redoubled by the demon’s energies.

  When the leader of the Chicago talyan had explained, haltingly, how sex would ensure the human body stayed balanced in this realm, he’d actually blushed. To see the tall, rangy Irishman blush while the blade-bearing beauty at his side snickered had been unnerving.

  Liam Niall had spent almost two centuries bashing monsters to bits with his huge war hammer, but the appearance of little Jilly Chan had changed everything. And Jilly had been only the second female to take on a teshuva demon. The first, Sera Littlejohn, had broken all the rules they’d known. It was she who had initially noticed Jonah’s restlessness and identified it.

  He’d been pacing the rooftop of their warehouse sanctuary, driven by an agitation he couldn’t pinpoint, hoping the noon sun bouncing off the flat tar would fry him into oblivion. Sera had cornered him, her mate, Archer, behind her. “When’s the last time you slept?”

  Jonah deflected the cool assessment of her hazel gaze with a one-shouldered shrug. “We’ve been busy.”

  “Right,” Sera drawled. “Unusually intense demonic activity, weird nightly light shows, plus PMS-ing male talya. What could it possibly mean?”

  Jonah stiffened. “Excuse me.”

  “Pre-mating shakes. I just made it up.” Sera waved her hand toward the skyline. “We know how this works now. Sort of. She’s out there somewhere. Go find her.”

  “Who?” Jonah had asked.

  Archer—a big, brooding man with whom Jonah had tangled in the past—looked at him with something disturbingly like compassion in his bronze eyes. “The woman of your nightmares.”

  Sera just laughed, but Jonah’s heart shrank.

  He’d given up his life, his soul, his peace to the mistake that had made him a pawn of the devil. He’d given his pain, his suffering, his hand. He’d kept one small piece of who he’d been, one tiny, untouched sliver of his past that no one had thought to ask for, no one had wanted.

  And now he had been very much touched.

  Nim took a deep, shuddering breath that lifted her from him. She looked into his eyes and he caught a glimpse of the fading violet fire. “I guess now I’ll have to pay you.”

  “The price has already been paid.” He trailed his hand down her thigh where the demon’s mark had risen. The dark traceries emphasized the smooth skin over toned muscle. His body screamed for release. He ignored it.

  She stumbled off his lap
. “What the fuck?” Under the sparse lighting, the old burn scars across her inner thigh showed only as a faded pearl sheen when she tilted her leg. She swiped at the black lines that eddied around the faint remnants of her penance trigger. “Did you Sharpie me when I wasn’t looking?”

  “While I have a certain dexterity with the hook, I could not have drawn those marks with it,” he said. “And my other hand was occupied.”

  She shot him a furious glare. “I don’t do tattoos.”

  He’d noticed. No tattoos or piercings, along with the no body hair. As if she’d been wiped clean. Not anymore. “It’s called a reven. It marks the demon’s presence in your soul, and acts as a tether between it and you, between you and the demon realm.”

  “What are you on?” Unease—and anger at being uneasy—tightened her mouth.

  To his surprise, Jonah decided he preferred that faintly mocking smile, wide and easy on her generous mouth, instead of this fear. Not that he blamed her. And not that he had any choice about frightening her.

  He could have chosen to ignore the fleeting thought that he liked her lips under his best of all. His immoral handling of her had been vital, according to the new rules the league was fumbling through with its unforeseen female colleagues. He’d done what was necessary, and no one could ask for more. “I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to explain. Not in this day and age, not in this country.”

  She planted one hand on her hip. “Oh? Since when is crazy talk ever okay?” Then she glanced down at the reven that curled up toward her hip bone, and her hand sprang away.

  Despite the vulnerability she must be feeling, her hands never fluttered forward to shield her feminine curves. Once, he would have always worn a jacket in public, something he could have offered a woman in a moment like this.

  Well, never a moment quite like this. He thought it best to bite back his smile. And he’d be wise not to take off his T-shirt for her. What might start as a feeble attempt at old-fashioned gallantry could quickly become a more ancient ritual if the unabated strain in his jeans was any warning.

  “I wish you had something to cover yourself,” he said. “Besides the snake. It’s difficult to talk to you when you are unclothed.”

  A flush rose under her dusky skin. “You guys aren’t usually here to talk.”

  He wondered how mere conversation could bother her more than her nakedness. Perhaps he could use her body to make her understand.

  “You fear I’m an enemy,” he started.

  “I’m no idiot,” she retorted. “If I was afraid of you, I’d scream. But I’m not, so I didn’t.”

  “Oh, you’re afraid. Feel how you face me. On the balls of your feet, your body angled to present the narrowest target. Instinctively, you would fight me. That is the demon, rising to take on its opponent. Feel how your right hand flexes. What weapon do you imagine there?”

  He stepped toward her and, since she had no clothes, was treated to the sight of every muscle tightening down her limbs, across her belly. When he brought his gaze to hers, the violet flickers made him nod. “Do you feel it rising in you when you call on it, even unwittingly?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her voice wavered.

  “You’re uncomfortable around men, which is why you seek to control us on this most primitive level.” He took in her state of undress with a sweep of his hand. “And yet now, you’re afraid, but you don’t call out. You believe, deep inside, that you could take me.” He tilted his head, studying the waves of violet in her irises. “The demon inside you may have repented, but it retains some bad traits: violence, cunning, arrogance.”

  “Worst of all, a delight in confusing people,” she snapped.

  He nodded. “Always that.”

  She stalked around him in a tight circle, and he held himself still, though his skin prickled with awareness. She stopped in his peripheral vision to retrieve the snake from behind the chair and wrap it around her shoulders, letting the loops of its coils drape over her breasts. From the way she shifted from foot to foot, he knew she sensed the changes wrought in her. He’d succeeded in making her doubt her doubts.

  When he didn’t turn to face her, she held her position, gaze intent on him. The sweep of her focus was like a breath on his skin and passed over him from wallet to hook and back to his face.

  “Where is your reven?” She stumbled over the word.

  Still not looking at her, he reached over his shoulder to grab the back of his T-shirt and wrenched it over his head. Hadn’t he told himself that wasn’t a good idea? He left the T-shirt binding his biceps in front of his chest. Better the constriction than fumbling to get the hook through the armhole again.

  She gasped and leaned forward. “Oh, my God. I can see through your skin.”

  She reached out, hesitated a moment; then her fingers slid over his skin, cool and slow, from the knob at the back of his neck down his spine and around his ribs. “But it’s not muscle and bone in there. It’s . . .”

  A tremor sprang up in the wake of her hand. “It’s nothing. The void. A glimpse into the demon realm.”

  “It’s just a trick,” she said. Then her voice softened. “But it is kind of beautiful.”

  He turned his head sharply to stare at her, but she was entranced by the black lines of the reven that spilled like wild swirls of india ink down his neck and over his shoulder, shot with threads of violet and the eerie translucence where his flesh thinned with demonic emanations. Other-realm energies glimmered in the mark, not evident to human vision without a lurking demon presence.

  “Mine doesn’t do that,” she noted.

  “It will when your demon is sufficiently aroused.”

  She peered up at him. “And your demon is aroused.” Her touch skimmed lower, toward the waist of his jeans, and the glint in her eye wasn’t purple at all.

  “It responds to any threat,” he said.

  Her lips quirked. “How am I a threat?”

  “You’re not. I am.”

  “Ah. What are you fighting in yourself?”

  “I’m not the one who strips myself bare for strangers.” His voice was harsh.

  She withdrew her hand—but slowly, showing him she wasn’t fazed by his flare of temper. “You’ve been coming all week. Obviously, you wanted—still want—something from me. But why waste time on this elaborate setup? You could just pay me, you know.” Her fingers curled tight. “Unless you want something kinky. I don’t do kinky. And no sex. No more sex.”

  “I’m not vice,” he said as he yanked the shirt over his head. He tucked the hem savagely into his jeans and almost groaned when his fingertips skimmed the upward-straining tip of his penis. Vice, indeed.

  “Sure.” She didn’t sound convinced. “If you want me to do some private dance where you pretend I’m damned with a demon and you try to save me—”

  “I can’t save you. I’m damned too, possessed just like you.”

  “Right, whatever. Then we’ll save each other and—”

  “No, we’ll fight together. That’s the only way we’ll be redeemed.”

  She huffed out a sigh. “Okay, fine. It’s your scenario, your three hundreds bucks, so—”

  He echoed the sigh. She’d stopped believing him and was falling into her old patterns. It was easy to do—in the beginning, at least. She needed more convincing than even her own body could give her, certainly more than his words offered. “You have to come with me.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t do outcall.”

  “Tack on a convenience charge.”

  She scowled at him. “You make it sound so mercenary.”

  He laughed.

  Her scowl deepened. “I prefer the term ‘entrepreneur’ to ‘mercenary.’”

  “If that helps you sleep at night.”

  The way she bit her lip made him think it didn’t help at all. He wished he hadn’t teased her. What she did, what she was, had made her a fitting vessel for the demon. And her demon would give him what he needed to offset hi
s lost arm, to let him slay a monster and patch the holes in his tattered soul. He wouldn’t presume to think he could do anything for her soul.

  Which made him more of a mercenary than her greedy heart could ever imagine.

  CHAPTER 3

  Nim dressed quicker than she’d ever undressed, ignored Amber’s rude questions, flipped off the deejay who wanted his tip for one measly song, and wondered what the hell she was doing as she stepped out of the club, into the sweltering darkness where the large, taciturn Captain Hook waited for her.

  “If I can’t call you Captain, what’s your name?”

  He began walking down the sidewalk as if he had no doubt she would follow, which she did, damn him, because she was curious and she’d already let him do . . . Well, he couldn’t do much more to her.

  “Jonah.”

  “Another whale name. That’s why you and Mobi get along so great.”

  He turned his head to stare at her. “We do?”

  “Usually when I wrap Mobi around somebody’s chair, he climbs up and starts getting personal. That’s because I don’t feed him before I dance, to keep him from puking onstage. It’s nice because he’s pretty good at keeping guys in the chair. But he left you alone.”

  “I haven’t been so blessed in a long time.” Jonah paused. “If he really feels that way, let me take him.”

  He reached for the rifle case. When Nim hesitated to release her grasp, Jonah lifted one eyebrow. “Despite my newly discovered affinity for your snake, you can be assured I won’t run off with him.”

  After a moment, she passed the case and adjusted the strap of her camisole. “He’s heavy,” she warned.

  “I think I can handle it.”

  The edge to his tone stropped her temper. “I didn’t mean because of your arm. I meant because he’s heavy, even for me.”

  “So you’re questioning my manliness, not my maiming.”

  She held out her hand. “Give him back if you’re going to be like that.”

  “I said I’ve got it.”

  “See, you are stealing my snake. You have no idea how much trouble it was to steal him in the first place.”