Demon Forged (40 page)

But not from the fire. His Gift still kept her safe. She came, not with a violent twist, but on an endless cresting wave that lifted her against him, her fingers clutching his hair—not in demand, but as an anchor.

He lifted her out of the hearth and found his legs would not stand. With Irena’s thighs circling his waist, he sank to his knees. Her lips found his in a slow melting kiss.

He settled her over his erection, felt the heat of her sex through his trousers. That would be all for now. And it would be enough. For although the need in his body still raged, hers was satiated. She would welcome him in, meet his every thrust, and find another release with that liquid ease. But her anticipation, her urgency would not match his, and he needed her wound as tightly as he was more than he needed to bury himself inside her.

She must have noted the change in his touch. Her lips left his, and she leaned back to study his face.

“You do not fulfill your second vow?”

To his relief, Alejandro couldn’t sense any disappointment in her, only curiosity. “Not this night.”

Her mouth curved. “You have finished me well. It would be difficult to follow that.”

For an instant, his pride demanded that he prove her wrong. Then he admitted, “Yes.”

She laughed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, rocking forward against his shaft. He tensed; she stopped.

When she looked at him again, her eyes flashed with green fire. “You
did
come. I felt you.”

“Yes.” Only a man of iron could have tasted her, could have watched and sensed her pleasure for that long and not found his release. But his erection hadn’t softened. For a Guardian, the spirit only needed to be willing, and the flesh was capable. “I am finished, Irena.”

“But not satisfied.” She pushed her hand between his legs, pressing her palm to his heated shaft. “And
not
finished.”

“I do not need—”

Irena threw herself at his chest. Unbalanced, he fell over, his back smashing into the hard earthen floor. Irena rode over with him, straddling his stomach. Her mouth fastened to his.

This time, it was no slow, melting kiss. She licked past his lips to duel with his tongue. Alejandro’s body ratcheted tight, as if she’d already wrapped her mouth around his shaft and drew on him. Her hand stroked beneath his trousers. Almost deranged by pleasure of it, he fought for sanity.

“Irena—” He could barely speak. He would explode at any moment. “I don’t need repayment,” he forced out.

Her hand froze. Her gaze clashed with his. Heat filled it, followed by determination—but no anger. Softly, she said, “You stupid
man
.”

He couldn’t remember her using
man
as an insult before. Briefly, he wondered if he should pride himself in being the first who drove her to it, and tried to appear as if he had a modicum of sense left. “You will enlighten me, I hope.”

“You think women do not take pleasure in it.
Repayment
.” She repeated the word like a curse.

He struggled against his pride. “Many do not.” And sensing emotions was not always an advantage in bed. “Not for themselves.”

And he could not enjoy the act if his partner didn’t.

“Because they could not own you. Because you did not open to them.” Her fingers unfastened two of the buttons on his shirt before ripping away the rest. “I would not bother to suck you, either, if you gave me nothing in return.”

Just as she’d said they’d been right to leave. She watched him with a steady gaze and he fought not to throw his psychic shields up.

Her hands moved to his trouser fastening. “And so you give pleasure with your mouth, and you take your own when you fuck. But that is not how it will be with me. You will be taken, Olek. And I will enjoy it all.”

Taken.
A part of him rebelled, though he realized this was what she had demanded from the beginning.

He hissed in a breath as her fingers circled his erection, aroused to the point of pain. She raised his straining length toward her mouth. His anticipation was a physical ache in his shaft, through every muscle in his body. Her tongue wet her bottom lip. His hands fisted.

She met his gaze and opened her shields.

Her desire jolted through him like an electric shock, more powerful than any physical sensation. She hungered to please him, to taste him—hungered for
him,
as fiercely as he had for her.

She lowered her head, and wet heat engulfed him in a steady, deep slide. Alejandro clenched his teeth, trying to hold onto sanity, onto control.
God!
Is this what she had felt? This ecstasy as he’d taken her with his mouth and his Gift open? He’d never experienced anything like it. He hadn’t prepared for it.

And she had softened beneath his lips, but he became harder, steel forged by the heat of her mouth, shaped by the strike of her tongue. Folded and worked until he thought he might fracture beneath the pressure.

She made him. She could destroy him. And if she ever tossed him aside, he would be nothing.

Panic threatened, and he fought not to push her away. His fingers dug into the floor. His body shook, and he stared up at the wooden beams supporting the forge’s metal roof.

He looked down when he felt a light touch against his hip. Irena’s fingertips traced his skin. As if she was forming a statue, her Gift pulsed, and her emotions washed over him, more than need and desire. Reverence. Admiration. Joy. Her fingers moved higher, and his body shaped the trail her fingers took.

Alejandro unclenched his hands, sought hers. At his hip, her fingers threaded through his and tightened. Her mouth took him deep, and she drew so hard he dizzily thought that she would also take his heart, his soul.

So be it.

The orgasm lunged through him with teeth and claws, ripping away his breath, throwing his head back. Irena growled her satisfaction deep in her throat and drank him down. When he could breathe, when he could think, he saw that she watched him. With a few leisurely licks, she finished, and crawled up his body until she lay on his chest. Her fingers stroked his hair. He closed his eyes, certain he’d never felt this lassitude, this contentment in his life.

He was stretched out naked on a dirt floor. He’d never been happier.

“I should have come back before this, Irena.” No—he should have made the forge his home while she’d been gone those two centuries, and been here to welcome her when she returned. “I have missed you.”

“I have missed you,” she said, her cheek against his shoulder. “And I should have dragged you back.”

He smiled and passed his hand over her hair. They had not settled many of the problems between them.

But they had settled the most important one.

Deacon left the warehouse, hit the sidewalk, and started going, headed for nowhere—and wishing that he could still get drunk. A nice, falling down stupor.

Unfortunately, nothing could make a vampire less than clearheaded but drinking live blood—and he couldn’t stomach the thought of it now. Couldn’t stomach his own company, but he was stuck with himself.

Three nephilim. And Irena.

It didn’t take a fucking genius to figure out that the message he’d sent had pushed them straight to her. She’d survived, but according to the description Dru had given the novices, it had been close. Closer than Deacon had ever gotten at the hands of the demon.

Maybe Guardians couldn’t take care of themselves against this.

So he’d go back. He’d tell them everything. And he’d probably die.

He started back, anyway.

About four blocks from the warehouse, a black car with dark-tinted windows rolled up beside him, kept pace. He could sense a human in the front, but that wasn’t what was behind the rear window. It slid down, revealing a blond male with a little too much polish to be hanging around an area like this—at this time of the night. He smiled at him.

“Mr. Deacon.”

Deacon kept walking. He’d seen the news, heard the buzz around the warehouse. Demon, with a murdered wife.

Irena had been involved in that investigation, too.

“Mr. Deacon, please get in. You are done here. I am taking you home.”

“I’ve got friends who can fly.” Not many would be left. But it was much better than what a demon might offer him.

“And
I
am an associate of Mr. Caym’s. I only have to make one phone call to him, Mr. Deacon, and tell him that I am displeased—and you will have a few less friends.”

God
damn
them. Deacon stopped.

“Get in.”

He got in.

A dark partition divided the front and back seats. He couldn’t see the driver, only an outline.

“That’s Maggie,” the demon said. “She can’t hear us back here, and she won’t help you. She’s very loyal. And she has a contract.”

Maggie, whoever she was, might be loyal—but she was clearly broadcasting worry, and a distinct sense of uncertainty. But maybe the demon liked that, too. Maybe, he’d get her to a point where she wasn’t sure what was going on, but she felt scared and trapped—then he’d offer her an out.

And she wouldn’t know until too late that the out he offered was worse that being in.

He eyed the glass. Was she watching them? Could she see anything other than shadows?

When the demon smiled at him, Deacon grinned back, showing every inch of his fangs. Surprise and doubt dropped into the mix of Loyal Maggie’s swirling emotions. Doubt, then rejection.

The demon laughed. “No humans believe what they see anymore, Mr. Deacon.”

“Fuck you.”

“That is what you have left?” The demon smiled at him again, but Deacon sensed a little disappointment. Or maybe he was
supposed
to sense disappointment, and react to it. He remained silent.

“All right, Mr. Deacon. I understand—you must be at the end of your rope. Perhaps you’ve just discovered how some of the information you’ve given us has been used.” He sighed. “It’s so difficult to lose a friend.”

A friend . . .
Irena
? The demon thought Irena was dead?

She should be. It’d been close. She’d gotten lucky.

But Deacon wasn’t going tell this demon differently.

“Fuck off,” he said.

And he realized the demon was right—that pretty much
was
all he had left.

The demon sighed again. “You are almost done, Mr. Deacon. You have just one more task. You’ll spend the day in my home, and we’ll fly to Prague tonight. And you
will
be on your best behavior around my employee, Mr. Deacon, or I will make that call. Just do as you’re told, and everything will end well.”

Deacon closed his eyes. What had Rosalia said? “It never ends well.”

“Mr. Deacon, that
is
disappointing,” the demon said. “You should have a little more faith.”

Irena had known weeks and months—even years—when she’d done little but wander her territory, searching for demons and nosferatu. And then came days like this, when she wondered how she would complete everything she needed to—particularly when her duties sat on opposite sides of the world, and the window of time to meet with vampires lasted from sundown to sunrise. When the day began in San Francisco, night would not fall for three more hours in her territory.

Thanks to Selah, she could start at SI and not lose too many hours flying to and from the Gates.

Before she and Alejandro left the forge, she quickly made him four swords with her Gift. She would craft others later, better suited to his growth in speed and strength these past four centuries.

Every moment in the forge with him had been perfect—almost unreal, as if in a dream. She did not mind. Irena hadn’t slept in sixteen centuries, had not dreamt. It was time for one: a waking dream.

And she was trying to remind herself of that when she stood in the conference room with Taylor, Preston, and Lilith, looking down at the files Michael had brought regarding Margaret Wren. Irena barely listened as Michael told them he’d teleported into a secured CIA facility to obtain them; she only felt the conflict in Taylor’s psychic scent. Irena wasn’t sure if the conflict stemmed from Michael’s method of retrieving the files, or the information within.

Irena looked up at Olek, who’d read through the reports within a few seconds. “What are we looking at?”

“An assassin.”

What did that matter? “She wasn’t the shooter.”

“No.” He flipped through another folder. “But she was issued and used the rifle. Going by the serial number, it’s the same weapon. She’d listed it as destroyed during one of her assignments.”

Assignments she no longer had. “Why did she resign?”

“She only stated ‘personal reasons,’ ” Alejandro said. “But for her last assignment, she was ordered to assassinate a fellow operative. An operative that she knew well: She’d trained with him, completed assignments with him. He saved her life twice.”