Claimed by the Demon

themselves on running a safe establishment, that they’d do what they could to assist.

Her first thought came with odd relief. It hadn’t been just her; it hadn’t been just Michael MacKenzie.

The second came with sick certainty—that the mugging hadn’t been the last of it for her, and she just hadn’t known it.

She dropped her half-full coffee cup into the trash and the croissant along with it, and she didn’t pretend she wasn’t rushing when she dashed out the door and down the row of parking spaces, looking for her dark little VW Bug.

The door stood slightly ajar.

She stopped, not quite within reach. Not wanting to be within reach. Really, really not wanting to look. Because truly, who would want a battered old soft-sided suitcase with zippers that had cable ties instead of pulls and a fair amount of duct tape holding it together? Who would want her travel-worn shirts and bras and undies and aurgh, her sanitary supplies?

“Hair sticks,” she moaned out loud. “Conditioner.”

Another few hours without either, and she’d have to make do with a paper bag.

But there was no point in guessing, so she looked.

Gone.

The suitcase, the little netbook case, the phone charger. The glove box contents were strewn over the passenger seat and foot well, and—was that a condom draped over the steering wheel? Limp and used? In her Volkswagen? Good God, had someone been on a dare?

With a quiet, firm nudge she pushed the door closed. No point in locking it. The open door had run down the battery; the interior lights were out.

Besides, she didn’t exactly have the keys anymore, did she?

She turned and left the car, ravaged as it was. She kept her steps firm and regular and her chin firm, too, if perhaps held a little too high. Convincing even herself. Through the lobby, past the elevator and to the stairs and up to the third-floor room she’d shared with a stranger.

A sick, raving stranger who had accidentally clocked her one during the night.

But there at the third-floor landing, she couldn’t quite continue. She lowered herself to the top step, propped her elbows on her knees, and hid her face in her hands. She tried to think logically—what she’d do now, how she’d replace her cash and her credit cards and her keys and her toothbrush; how she’d get the Bug to a garage. And there was identity theft to consider, the credit running up on her thankfully minimalistic cards—

And what had she been doing here anyway? If she’d wanted to lose everything, couldn’t she have gone to Vegas and had fun doing it? How the hell had she ended up in the stairwell outside the room of a guy she didn’t even know but had nursed through the night, maybe making all the wrong decisions after all?

The hell with logical.

Gwen dropped her forehead to her knees and started to cry. Good, hard, earnest sobs. The pain of disturbed memories, the violation of not one but two robberies, the loss of her things, the suddenly surrealistic sensation that she didn’t even know who she was any longer, never mind where she was.

The door slammed open behind her; she startled wildly, flattening up against the wall and smacking her head on the metal handrail. Michael MacKenzie stood in the doorway, looking both disoriented and fierce—until he saw her, at which point his expression flickered to the kind of man panic that meant, Oh, God, she’s crying. What do I do?

She flapped her hand in a useless gesture, hunting for explanation—and instead burst into a sad wail: “Hair sticks!”

She wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d turned and run in the opposite direction. But instead—barefoot, shirtless, tattooed, and sporting only half the injuries he’d displayed the evening before, he sat down beside her, tucked her in under his arm and pulled her close. And then he kissed the top of her head, and that was the end of that; she burst into tears all over again.

“You—you—you,” she said, never getting further than that word.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

So she cried a little more, and then she sniffled mightily, and she muttered, “I’d go get a tissue, but they’ve probably been stolen.”

Wisely, he said nothing; just stroked her hair—her horrible hair—and squeezed her shoulder.

But she must have been thinking again, because she narrowed eyes that felt distinctly puffy, pulling back to aim that stare at him. “How did you find me? I was quiet.”

Surprise crossed his face. “I—” He shook his head. “I must have heard you.”

But she was sure she’d seen a flinch. Some truth he didn’t want to face any more than she wanted hers. “No,” she said. “You didn’t.” And eased away from him.

Gotta give it to him. He wasn’t slow to turn the tables. “What about your father?”

She blinked. “I— What?”

“Last night. You said—”

Offense. Best defense. Now. “You mean, when you were thrashing?” She pointed at her face. “Thrashing.”

He did his own double take, absorbing the implication of her new bruise. When he spoke, his voice sounded forced. “So it would seem. You said—”

No. That had been a mistake. A long day, a dark night, and words that had slipped out. “I don’t want to talk about my father.”

“Funny,” he said. “Because I really do.”

“Really? I want to talk about how everything was going just fine until I met you, and now suddenly I’m out my purse, everything that was in my car, and apparently every bit of good sense I ever possessed!”

He drew breath as though he’d come right back at her, but at the last moment he didn’t—instead, frowning...trying to work out the meaning behind her words.

It maybe wasn’t fair to use shorthand against a man who’d been so very sick so very recently and who, for all his absurd recovery, still looked very much battered.

In a heroic sort of—

Oh, my God. Stop that.

Coming to conclusions—and the right conclusions at that—he said, “Hair sticks?”

She nodded. “From my car. Which was broken into. Along with a whole lot of other people’s, it seems, not to mention various muggings and a lot of disgruntlement overheard in the lobby over the free breakfast. You should get down there, by the way. It won’t last forever.”

He stood, on his feet faster than she’d ever expected of him—pacing away and back again on the limited landing area, moments during which she paid too much attention to the way his jeans settled over his hips.

Note to self: ogling does not count as “stopping that.”

Shock. It was the emotional shock. Surely. Her hand closed over the pendant, as if she would possibly, after all these years, receive some sort of divine guidance from it. Some voice from her father’s past, before he became what he became.

Michael MacKenzie held his hand out. “We can’t talk about this here.”

Right. Because it was so much safer in the room.

But she took his hand, and she stood and brushed herself off, and she dabbed the last bit of moisture from beneath her eyes, and then she followed him back to the room.

Where he stopped, a vulnerable chagrin coloring his expression—mingled with that same wry self- awareness. Barefooted, bare-chested, and staring at the door lock. “This,” he said, “could be a bad moment.”

Gwen’s laugh was a little watery, but held a smile nonetheless. She held the key between two fingers, turning it back and forth in the hall light. His relief made her smile bigger, and he stood aside so she could unlock the door and lead the way.

But she didn’t fail to notice the truth of it all. He’d heard her, he said.

He’d heard her, as impossible as it was, and he’d come to her—without regard to shoes, shirt, or even the