Something About Witches (37 page)

Sliding his hand underneath the loosened bra, he cupped her firm breast, her position making it a nice weight pressing into his hand, all that blessed gravity. Squeezing the generous curve, he flicked the nipple with his fingers, giving it a pinch. Her hips jolted up like electricity had struck, her internal muscles clutching on him. He set his teeth to her nape, nipping, teasing with his tongue as he withdrew his hips, then slammed them back in, hard enough to knock her elbows deeper into the bed.

“Oh Goddess….” Her plea drove him on. He kept it slow, small movements; then he’d surprise her with another series of those hard plows that had her body rocking, trembling on that cusp, so close….

“Derek…. please….”

“Beg some more,” he rasped in her ear, withdrawing so he was almost out of her, then slowly, slowly pushing back in. A long, guttural moan broke from her lips as he did it again. And again.

“Please…. let me come, Derek. I want to come for you.”

“Only me,” he said, biting the lobe of that perfect ear with sharp teeth, making her contract on him. “Now and always. You’re going to be my wife. Say it.”

“Now…. and always. Your…. wife. Yours.” A shudder went through her, and through the pleasure, he was aware of tears falling onto the pillow, tiny splotches. Pushing her hair out of the way, he pressed his mouth to her cheekbone now, making her eyes close, the lashes fanning his flesh. He was in her deep now, at all levels, and passion was subsumed in raw vulnerability. “I love you more than anything, baby. More than anything I’ve loved in my whole long life.”

He moved against her, slow, steady, built her up through tears and cries, and when he felt the perilous ripple of flesh against his cock, when she was about to go over, he whispered the command against her. “Come for me, girl. Come for me now.”

It started with a low series of cries that built into screams, into a hard clench on his cock as it plunged in and out of her slickness. He lifted up, his hand clamped on her shoulder, the other tangled in her hair, holding her steady as he slammed into her, over and over, that primal male desire to let her feel him, be marked by him, stretched to delicious soreness she’d feel in her thighs and sex for the next couple of days. And then the most primal marking of all, he released, spilling his seed inside her, driving her to another mini-climax with the sensation, goading him with her moans, the flush across her skin.

He’d never felt so content.

R
UBY SLIPPED OUT OF BED, WASHED HER FACE, PULLED
her hair in a ponytail. Sliding on Derek’s shirt and one of her ankle length Sacred Thread skirts, she found some cash. The Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner, with its cake doughnuts and strong black coffee, would be just the thing to wake Derek up. The man had a sweet tooth. Hell, he had a salt tooth as well. The man just loved food, and the starchier, the better. It could make a woman hate him, seeing it all packed in that lean, muscular form, but since she’d had the pleasure of her mouth on about every inch of it last night, several times, she was feeling particularly magnanimous about that.

He slept light as a cat, such that he snagged her wrist when she came back to the bed, though his eyes remained closed.

“I’m going to go get you breakfast,” she murmured in his ear. “You worked hard for it. I’m feeling nice.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to interfere with a miracle,” he grunted. He made a half chuckle, half protest as she pressed
a pillow over his face. Wrestling it off, he caught the back of her head for a morning kiss, taking her punches to his chest and shoulders, focusing on plundering her mouth instead. She smiled, feeling it all the way to her toes as he pulled her back into him, his arm around her waist, sprawling her half across his body.

It was hard to ignore the sizeable erection pressing against her thigh. God, they must have made love four, maybe five times, through the night, and she was still dampening for him, wanting that extra morning thickness to fill her once more.

Yeah, some of it might have been that needy edge that Mikhael had exploited, her body’s urges enhanced by Darkness. But this was all her, wanting him. Derek. She wanted to eat him alive, have him over and over again, and it was glorious, knowing that it was because she plain wanted him that much. While some of her needs and fantasies about him were dark and wicked, they weren’t of the Darkness. She was sure of it. She’d just missed the man and she’d been without him three damn years. She wanted him
now
.

He wasn’t waiting for her to change her mind. Whether or not he was half-asleep, Derek knew his way around her body. He’d already shoved the covers impatiently down to his thighs, using those long, strong arms to lift her into a straddle. She could only hang on as he found his way under her skirt. She’d pulled on a silky pair of panties, but he simply caught his forefinger in the crotch panel, moved it aside, and pushed that thick hardness inside her. She was sore from last night, and he knew just how gentle and rough to be, inexorable in his demand, but tender in his care of her.

“I love you,” she whispered, realizing how many aspects of their relationship had experienced that special, magical combination.

His eyes opened then, the blue color full of emotion and that morning languidness that was a pleasure all its own. Bringing her down for another kiss, he constricted his other
arm around her waist so she was full hilt on him. He allowed her very little movement, instead working his hips in and out so all her tissues were stroked and brought to combustible level in an astonishingly fast amount of time. When the kiss broke, he kept holding her that way, and so she pressed her face into his throat, gasped out her climax, her fingers clutching his shoulders wildly, toes curled tight where her legs were folded on the outside of his legs.

He released a few minutes after her, drawing out that unbearable yet wonderful sensitivity of her post-climactic tissues. The spurt of hot seed created an aftershock like a subtly intense second climax.

“Doughnuts,” he said against her ear after a very long few moments. “I saw a Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner, the first day I came to see you.”

“Really? You don’t seem the type to go for that crap. I was thinking the health-food store a couple blocks down. They have falafel sausage patties, kelp juice and tofu scrambled eggs.”

“Harpy.” The slap on her buttock made her yelp and other things tingle. His half-lidded eyes said he registered both reactions. His slow, easy grin said that he was willing to follow up on it…. as soon as she brought doughnuts.

She slid off him with a smile, and he held her hand to the full length of their arms, until she had to let go of his fingers. “I’ll be back soon,” she whispered.

“You better be.”

It was the first time in three years she’d felt happy.

K
EEP HER CLOSE, SORCERER.

Derek came out of his doze with Mikhael’s words replaying in his mind. He’d thought it an acid taunt. But the memory was caught in still frame. He woke with the picture front and center. The sneer had disappeared from Mikhael’s lips, the eager light for battle dropping from his eyes as if it had
never been there. He’d been delivering a serious message.
Keep her close.

Derek thought it through, looked for anything that didn’t feel right. He did a speed-read through everything that had happened since the Great Rite. Then he hit something that made the small hairs lift off his neck, cold fingers stabbing his gut.

The chamber where Rose was. Last night, when he was there with Ruby, there were so many things happening, he’d attributed the funny “off” feeling to the Dark energies she’d used to create that magic. However, he’d talked to her about the magic, mostly high-level discussion during lazy pillow talk, but now he recalled one point vividly.

“The Darkness part is like using wine in a recipe,” she’d explained. “It burns off as part of the process, evaporates. It affects me, goes inside of me. It’s not part of that chamber. Nothing but Light near Rose, ever.”

So why had he felt Darkness in that chamber? It hadn’t been from Ruby. No, it wasn’t in the chamber. It was
beneath
it.

Why had Asmodeus attacked the Florida fault line? Why had he given up so quickly? Because it had been bait, to get Ruby away from here.

“Holy fucking Goddess.” Derek bolted up out of the bed, grabbing for his jeans.

Not knowing the whole picture until last night, he hadn’t put it together. But now it all made terrible sense. Whether they realized it or not, terrorists learned their strategy of sleeper cells from the Underworld. No one was as good at waiting as a demon. Three years would be less than a moment to Asmodeus.

He couldn’t maintain corporeal form in the world unless he worked the right spells, which often attracted attention, since it meant a lot of dead bodies. However, he could drift in spirit wherever he wished, apparently harmless, but a spy
was never harmless. He watched and learned. Asmodeus was a lord of chaos in a variety of ways, but he was also known for taking lust, twisting it into darker realms. So Asmodeus had likely been watching her all along, goading her in some of the paths she’d chosen, taking what was a natural compulsion and turning it into the violent hunger that Mikhael had mitigated, but which had still clouded her radar.

The demon probably knew every damn thing about Derek and Ruby, down to how many pancakes they’d had the other morning.

He’d known the fault line would bring Derek. It was also geographically too close to Ruby not to use it as an excuse to see her, involve her. And the moment the name Asmodeus left Derek’s lips, Ruby would be on board.

Fuck it all, he’d been played by a demon. He’d drawn Ruby out, to Florida, giving Asmodeus time to craft a portal below the cave, the shortest escape route back to the Underworld. Blessing Raina, he reached out, looking for that tracking mark. Ruby was still a few blocks off. Maybe he could lock things down before she got back and into harm’s way.

If Asmodeus got his claws on that sphere, he’d have access to an extremely complex magic he could unravel and reverse engineer. On top of that, once he had it, the bastard knew he had Ruby, because she would do anything to protect its contents. Including finish the job, sell her soul to him and make the Underworld her new forwarding address.

With the magical abilities she had, they’d force her to serve them with all that knowledge. She’d be the first to figure out how to stabilize demons’ corporeal forms outside the Underworld. Giving them time to create all sorts of chaos and mayhem on the Earth, and still have time to shop at Walmart and hit up Hooters for a basket of wings.

Ruby’d had three years not only to hone her power, but
to tether it to Darkness, so hell, she’d put salt on his pizza for him. Asmodeus could just grab hold and reel her in.

S
INCE IT WAS BEFORE DAWN, THE STREETS DARK, SHE’D
been a prudent girl. She’d tucked her Sig in a belted holster beneath Derek’s roomy shirt. It was a lot of gun for carrying, but she still had a thing about walking the streets in darkness, a phobia she refused to let deter her from a morning coffee run. Besides, the shirt went to mid-thigh over the voluminous skirt, so she wouldn’t be scaring any early-morning dog walkers.

Logically, she knew she wasn’t going to have any problems. The sleepy coastal town wasn’t known for its plethora of predators, but a woman walking in a downtown area while the streets were still mostly deserted and it was dark didn’t take any chances— other than the walking in the dark in the first place. But she had a different arsenal of weapons, above and beyond the gun, so a mere mortal wasn’t much of a threat, really.

She was first in line for the fresh, hot doughnuts, and bought Derek a dozen, as well as his quart of black coffee. She chose two powdered sugar doughnuts for herself. Later today, once they checked in with Linda and told her when they’d come back to get Theo, maybe she and Derek could take a little time, stroll along the streets, and she could show him some of the shops here.

When she’d fled to this town, it had been an escape, not a planned destination, but over time she realized she liked the little coastal village, even the seedier elements that sometimes clustered near a military base. It was well integrated, a community of Light and Dark.

That thought sobered her some, thinking of the things Derek had said. He hadn’t talked much about it for the rest of the night, holding to his promise. Which of course left her room to start thinking about it in her own way.

He’d probably known that, like he knew most things, the
arrogant bastard. But as she took her time now, walking down the street, watching the dark sky become streaked with those smoky blues that heralded the dawn, she sifted through his words. She knew he was right. She’d probably always known it, but she hadn’t had the strength or inclination to face it, until now. Until he was back at her side.

She faced that truth, accepted it. Accepted that it wasn’t because she couldn’t stand on her own, but because there were things in this world too much for anyone to handle on their own. Having the person who loved you unconditionally stand at your back, be there to give strength, was vital. She’d needed Rose’s father to be there with her, to give her the strength to say her final good-bye to her little girl.