Claimed by the Demon

ever an average slacker guy.”

His grin was slow and maybe just a little bit delicious. He curved one hand around the back of her head and pulled her over for a kiss that sent a great big wave of heat and longing straight from her toes to her mouth. Her hands crept around his chest, sliding down tight skin, quite greedy. She could have done that possibly forever had he not tipped his head away. For that moment, his eyes had gone serious again. “You know...I can’t wear this thing forever.”

I am twenty-nine years old, and I have been wearing this pendant forever.

“You could,” she said. “Whatever it is. It’s yours. Maybe this is what it’s been waiting for.”

The smile was bittersweet this time. “It would take only a slip. When we weren’t expecting it. When we weren’t ready for the consequences. No, I think this blade is something I have to face. One way or the other.”

“Not yet,” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.” And just like that, he rolled up to his knees, tucked his arms beneath her, and lifted her onto the bed, coming right down on top of her. She thought to reach for him—to play her hands over all the favorite places she’d already found in him, the ones she already knew would make him forget how to think.

She thought wrong. He slid his hands up her arms, clasping fingers through hers, pressing them back into the pillow. Where, she suddenly realized, she was as good as cuffed. Turnabout. And where she both giggled and squirmed as he traced the line of her throat with his tongue—hesitating only long enough to both nip and soothe and murmur, “Okay?”

“Shut up,” she said. “I’m busy.” And not completely without recourse, because he hadn’t quite pinned her legs, had he? And she was perfectly capable of wrapping them around him, shifting around until she found what she wanted.

Definitely one of the favorite places.

“We’re not—” he reminded her, and the ragged nature of his voice was nearly as gratifying as the sweet, fiery insanity that had apparently replaced all the blood in her body.

“We’re not—” He tried again, and the concern came through this time.

Oh. That. “I am,” she said, arching her neck to offer him better access. “On the Pill. Which I knew the first time. And you said you were safe—”

“Healthy,” he corrected her, fingers tightening through hers as she dug her heels into the back of his thighs and shifted her hips. “I haven’t been safe for a very long time now. And oh, please, do that again.”

She did.

And for a moment she thought she had him. No brains, all body—oh, glorious body—all groan and fierce hazy need into the night.

Right up until the moment he slipped both her hands into the grip of his one and turned his other hand loose on her body.

It turned out that he was a fast learner, too.

* * *

Gwen woke an hour later and eased from the bed to leave him there. Sleeping—the normal way. Healing— the normal way. Exhausted and worshipped and sated.

And then she dressed and went out to the hotel’s back lot to cry while sitting on a curb beside desultory bushes that a thousand dogs had no doubt used for a toilet and pretending it was private.

“Do you cry for him or for yourself?”

So much for privacy.

But no sense of intent. No warning. Just the hard-to-define trickle that she often felt around Mac, when it came to that—a thing independent of the pendant. So, no panic, either.

Gwen lifted her head to look through tears at the new intruder, not much helped by the glaring streetlight. “Having a moment, here,” she said, squinting at a tidy and petite woman with a wash of natural blond highlights and a face of striking if not beautiful features, angled Slavic cheeks on a narrow face and eyes to match. “Having a freaking day.”

“I can see that.”

Gwen squinted harder, bringing that tidiness into focus. All of it—clothes, hair, even posture. Slender and curvy and tastefully dressed to show it. And Gwen—too moderate in all ways to be lush and curvy or beguilingly petite, dressed again in horrible wrinkled sports shorts and a bloody T-shirt—scowled. “Go to hell.”

The woman smiled. “Trying really hard to avoid that.”

She experienced that hard-to-define trickle that she often felt around Mac. Gwen’s head came up all the way. Fear washed down her spine. “You have a blade.”

And so had that man.

The woman opened her hand, displaying a small knife with a stunted, curved blade, just big enough to fill her palm. No mistaking the eerie play of light on metal, no matter how subtle. “Baitlia,” she said. “Just showing off now. So very eclectic.” She tipped it to the light. “Yes, Baitlia, we see. Spanish skinning blade. Very nice. Now behave.” At Gwen’s trepidation, she added, “We’re in a truce.”

Yeah, right. She had the feeling that man would have said he had a truce with his blade, too. A truce of evil, that’s what.

“They’re not very subtle,” Gwen said. “Glowing like that. Are we supposed to not notice?”

That, of all things, took the woman back some; she closed her hand over the blade, extinguishing its faint gleam, and didn’t exactly answer. She tipped her head at the hotel. “He’s on the edge, isn’t he?”

Gwen only frowned, her gaze darting to where the van had been and not at all surprised to find it missing. That man knew where to find them if he really wanted them—he’d made that perfectly clear. That he’d give Mac some time to turn on his own...that, too, had been clear.

But she knew nothing about this woman. “What are you doing here? Were you following us? Did you—”

Did you know we were kidnapped this afternoon? Were you part of that? Or did you see it and not help?

But the woman shook her head. “My name is Natalie,” she said. “And I’ve been waiting. We figured you were staying here. Hoped it, anyway.” She hesitated, taking a step closer and then holding off when Gwen raised her chin in warning. “He is, isn’t he? On the edge. You need to know...we can help.”

She should have caught it the first time. “We? You and that very friendly man who threatened us last night?”

Natalie whoever-she-was bit her lip. “Warned, not threatened. And not you. Your friend.”

Gwen was startled at her own scowl—at her instant reaction. Same thing.

It must have told Natalie something; understanding crossed her face. “That’s why you’re out here. You’re crying for him.”

“For both of us,” Gwen snapped, but it sounded more ragged than she wanted.

“We can help.”

Gwen just stared at her. So self-possessed, so neatly self-contained. Unlike Gwen and her fast-moving mouth, her ability to skim the surface of life without really living it.

Until, she realized, this past day. In which she’d laughed more, lived more, loved more...

“You shouldn’t be going through this on your own,” Natalie said, trying again. “You have no idea what’s going on—”

“And you do?” Gwen tipped her head. “I’m guessing not. Because if you had, you’d have been going after the right man last night. And today. You know, the one who tortures and kills people and likes it? Unless, of course, you’re on his side. So you see? You’re either no good at this, or you’re on the wrong side.”

This time Natalie did come closer, and Gwen scrambled to her feet, putting the distance back between them. Knives could be thrown, and she couldn’t do anything about that. But she wasn’t putting herself within sword-length of anyone who held a blade that glowed.

Natalie got the message. She threw her hands up in brief frustration. “Ah, Devin. I