Demon Marked

and kill her.

Frustration bit, sharp and deep. Though she was strong, she couldn’t move her hands. Though she was strong, she couldn’t lift him off her. Though she was strong, she was trapped here, because she couldn’t throw him off and she couldn’t touch him even though he could do any damn thing he pleased . . . even not touch her when she so desperately, desperately wanted it.

Fuck this. And she knew exactly how to make him let go.

She opened her eyes, and crimson light shined through the blond hairs curtained over her face, a glow against the wooden floor. “I want to have sex now.”

Nicholas stiffened above her. His grip on her wrists tightened.

“I don’t have sex with demons.”

She knew. But suddenly, she also realized why she couldn’t feel him everywhere. He’d shifted his weight, adjusted his legs, braced his knees. Why had he lifted part of his weight off her? She didn’t need to breathe. But he liked to conceal information.

“But you want to. Your cock’s as hard as steel right now, because you were up against me, and you liked it. And you started thinking about fucking me.”

Only a guess, but the right one. He released her hands, let her up. Before she’d even gotten her feet under her, he’d stalked across the room. Putting distance between them.

And it had worked. Her breath came out as a sudden laugh.

He turned at the sound—and God yes, she’d been right about his erection, too. Confined behind denim, his penis might not have been monstrous, but that thick bulge looked exactly the right size to her.

She glanced up. Nicholas was staring at her in surprise, but also a reluctant admiration.

“So that was—”

“A plot, yes.”

And now there was something else sweeping across his expression. Disappointment?

“But I do want to have sex,” she added.

“Demon,” he said, before joining her in the middle of the room again. “That wouldn’t have worked against one. They wouldn’t have felt anything.”

“I think you’re wrong about that.” Because she sure as hell felt something. Her nipples hadn’t just spontaneously hardened and she wasn’t wet through to her core for no reason at all.

“Try it on a demon,” he offered. “We’ll see who’s right, and who is dead. Demons can make their dicks hard, too, you understand? But they don’t want it. And teasing them won’t scare them off.”

Ash didn’t want a demon, anyway. “All right. Accepted. It won’t work against anyone but you.”

His lips thinned, but at least he didn’t lie and say it wouldn’t work on him, either. He turned and walked away. To put space between them again? But no, just to shake off the frustration. By the time he circled the room, he had his serious face back on.

“All right,” he said. “You weren’t ready for me to drop. So we’ll do the sweeps again, and this time you avoid having your feet knocked out from under you.”

Avoid it? Maybe not if he got on top of her again. “And the Rules?”

“Same as before. No injuries.”

Well. She could just turn it around, then.

Ash dropped, sweeping her leg around just as she’d seen him do. He went down, hard—but no injuries, because she caught him, cushioned his fall with a hand behind the back of his head.

Before he could react, before his heart pumped another beat, she pinned his wrists, straddled his stomach. She lowered her face to his, and was looking into his eyes when she saw him realize what she’d done.

“Goddammit. That was . . .” His gaze fell, fixed on her lips. His throat worked as he swallowed. “Nicely executed. Good job.”

“Thank you.” Ash grinned, sliding her fingers down to grip his hands. She easily hauled him to his feet again. “Do you want to practice avoiding the superfast demon again?”

She did. This had become her only way of gaining permission to touch him. If he wanted to, she’d practice this all night and day.

Nicholas’s jaw clenched, and she watched the struggle that played through him. He did want to. He didn’t want to. But she knew which would eventually win, because only one would leave him better prepared to face Madelyn.

Finally, he nodded. “Yes.”

But his answer didn’t please her quite as much as Ash thought it would have. Maybe because Yes wasn’t enough. Because although it was what she wanted him to say . . . she wanted him to say it because he enjoyed her touching him, too.

So maybe she was beginning to feel a little frustration, after all.

CHAPTER 12

Lying on his side, Nicholas half opened his eyes to a dark room. Sleep still heavy on him, he almost fell into it again before the noise that must have woken him came again: the opening of the stove, the low thud of wood being tossed in.

A familiar sound, and for a moment he was sixteen again, listening to his grandfather stir up the morning fire. Maybe Ash, then, starting early. She always had it roaring by the time he awoke, and the kettle on to boil. In the past week, she’d gotten into the habit of taking coffee when he did, sitting at the table and reading while he ate breakfast.

He’d gotten into the habit of looking forward to her company. Maybe too much.

But hell, who was he kidding? Now that he’d woken, he’d be out of the room within minutes, just so that she’d look up and smile at him a little earlier.

He rolled over, switched off the alarm on the windup clock. No need to have it now. And—hell, it was really fucking early.

The blanket slid to his lap when he sat up. Though his chest was bare, he didn’t feel the nip of cold. A toasty warm room. He was used to that upon waking, because she always started up the fire well before the alarm got him out of bed. In the past week he’d come to appreciate that. Unlike when he’d stayed with his grandfather, his toes didn’t freeze into ice pops before he could drag a pair of wool socks on.

He didn’t need socks now. The floorboards weren’t cold at all. And it was two in the fucking morning. God.

Scrubbing the remainder of sleep from his face, he opened the door. It took him a second to see her through the dark—sitting in the rocking chair near the window. Pale moonlight gleamed on the pages of the book she held, her blond hair, the barrel of the shotgun tucked beside her.

Then, as if she’d struck a light, her own crimson glow began shining from her eyes, washing her features in red. “Did the wolves wake you?”

That glow lit his way across the room. He struck a match to the table lamp, faced her again.

“What wolves?”

She tilted her head, eyes still glowing. “I can hear them. You can’t?”

“No.”

“Sometimes it’s almost as loud as the city here. It’s just loud in a different way. Not as many people noises.”

“I heard people noises. And now I understand why the woodpile has been disappearing faster than it should have been.” His grandfather would have skinned him. “You don’t have to keep it hot in here at night. That’s what the blankets are for.”