Taming the Demon (16 page)

And the knife, suddenly in her hand, was no innocuous pen knife. It was stiletto, deadly and narrow, and she had no idea how that had happened, or even when her fingers had closed around the grip in the first place.

The blade will.

Fine. None of it made sense. Not from the first moment she’d met him. Crumbling men, healing wounds, a crazed hero battling some inner demon—

Demon.

It resonated through her mind, a hiss of triumph and threat. She almost flung the blade away—

Except she thought she would save this man’s life, and make sense of it later.

“Devin,” she murmured, and bent over him, touching her forehead to his upper biceps. “I’ll try.”

The blade will.

She found the neat bullet hole in his jeans.
Behind. They shot him from behind.

Of course they had. What other chance had they had?

Not a huge caliber.
Carrying concealed and cheap.
Those days with Ajay had taught her something after all. But still the blood pulsed steadily outward, soaking denim, and still the flesh tore raw beneath. And what was she supposed to do with a stiletto? Even if the bullet was close to the surface, a knife could hardly pluck it out.

The blade will.

As if he’d done it before.

Her hand shook, poised. “I hope this is what you mean,” she murmured, more for herself than in expectation of a response, for he had gone beyond it.

Or she thought he had, until she probed the stiletto into that wound.

“Son of a
bitch!
” He stiffened, a series of pointed curses spitting out through gritted teeth and his hand latching unerringly on to her elbow, tears damping the side of his face and his body clenched and trembling and just as honest as the open grin and the open desire.
“Son of a—”

“I’m sorry!” Her elbow ached and her throat had tightened down so hard she didn’t know if she would ever breathe again.
Oh, this is so wrong!
She should have called for help, she should have pushed Enrique for answers, she should have slapped Devin awake and insisted on them before doing
this
....

Oh, so very wrong!

Except there, in the instant of silence between his cursing and his harsh, bloody and damaged breath, she heard the faintest of
clinks.

And when, startled, she looked at the stiletto—withdrew it from the several inches it had claimed of that wound—on the end, she found a misshapen slug of metal.

Devin made a noise that could have been a sob, and passed out.

* * *

Nothing kept still in Devin’s world. The floor shifted; the ceiling rotated. Fiery coals burned his back, his lung, his leg, and flushed on through his entire body.

But he wasn’t alone.

And he wasn’t wearing any clothes, either.

At least, not many.

Cool air brushed over one leg where jeans had been; his shoes were long gone, and blood-soaked socks removed. Vest, jacket and shirt, gone. The furnace turned up to offset the chill of it all—set high enough so sweat dampened the nape of his neck and along his temple. “I’m naked,” he started to say, except it didn’t turn out that way. Just a groan of unintelligible words, forced from an aching chest. Aching back. Aching self.

But not dead.

“Hey,” he said, with more success. “Not dead.”

“Hey,” Natalie said, a cool hand resting on his side. “Not dead.” A warm damp cloth brushed along his leg, catching briefly on the crusted blood there. “But don’t expect me to sew you up like Enrique did.”

Alarm surged up—so did he, but no more successfully than he’d first tried to speak.

“I found him,” Natalie said, guessing his concern. “He sent me after you.” She hesitated. “I came looking for you in the first place because...”

“Compton,” he muttered.

“I don’t understand.” Her voice caught; her hand stopped moving. But then she took the cloth away, dipped it in water somewhere, and wrung it out, coming back for more. “There’s so very much I don’t understand. But none of this is coincidence. I know that much. Not what happened in the alley years ago...not what happened the other night.”

“No,” he said, voicing it on a sigh. And then, “Cut up my clothes, didn’t you?” He managed to twist his head just enough to see her—the overhead light bringing out the glimmer in her hair, the warmth of the room bringing out the flush on her cheeks.

Unless, of course, that was just the sight of his barely clothed ass, having its way with her.

Ha. Self-sarcasm. Must still be alive after all.

Flame licked through his body, reminding him. His breath caught; Natalie’s hand stilled, just for a moment—touched a little more firmly, just for a moment. Reassurance in silent understanding. She said, “Your clothes were wrecked. You really did it to yourself this time.”

No kidding.
Stupid.
He hoped the blade was paying attention, such as it could. That it knew, as he did, that he never would have been taken that way had he not been struggling with the wild road while he fought Enrique free of those thugs....

She didn’t seem to need an answer. Her hands—hurting, soothing—kept their steady work. Gently buffing away the gore of the night. She said, “Handy thing, your knife. Or sword, which I’m probably supposed to pretend I haven’t seen. Or the stiletto I held earlier tonight, the one that pulled bullets like it had a mind of its own. The folding knife that cut off your clothes—” She stopped. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Devin. Please.”

Yes.

Because it was time. It was fair. And it was too late for anything else.

“C’mere,” he said.

She didn’t ask what that meant. She moved aside whatever she’d used as a washbasin, stood. A moment later, the lightweight comforter from his bed settled over his shoulders. “The slugs are out,” she told him, moving around with a pillow—lifting his head with a firm confidence, sliding the pillow beneath. He closed his eyes and let her, and some part of him, in the middle of all this, thrilled to it. To more than just the touch, but to her assumption of the right to touch him in that way.

“I cleaned the wounds as best I can—I used some of Enrique’s stuff on them. And they’re not bleeding any longer. As far as I can tell, once I got the slugs out, whatever it is that you do...”

“Right,” he murmured. He’d learned that one early on. As long as a bullet sat in his flesh, the blade could do nothing to heal him—just reflexive, battering attempts at it.

“C’mere,” he said again, in case she’d missed that part.

But she hadn’t. She was already settling down on the floor with him, tucking in under the comforter, tugging out a corner of the pillow for her own use. A hand resting on the side of his face; fingers scraping lightly back through the damp hair at his temples. He closed his eyes, thrilling to that, too.

“My brother had the knife,” he told her. “That was chance, we thought, but now I’m not sure...now I think it chooses who it wants. Someone it thinks it can ride for a long time, turning us to its purposes. But there’s so much I don’t really
know.
”

Her thumb stroked the tight skin at the corner of his eye where those so very human tears of pain and distress beyond endurance had recently traced a path. “You realize that makes no sense.”

He laughed—no strength behind it, and even that much made his lung ache, brought a hot flush of pain through his body—caught up his breath and held him there, while Natalie fiercely kissed his forehead and his eyes and picked up his hand and kissed that, too. Finally he was able to say, “If it actually made
sense,
I would have figured it out a long time ago.
We
would have figured it out, and Leo wouldn’t be dead.”

“Okay,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense. Tell me again.”

He sighed, a shallow breath. Careful. And he let himself pull her in just a little closer. “It’s leaving me alone,” he said. “I think it knows...it’s not done with me just yet. It’s hedging its bets.”

“Mmm,” she said. “More sense than that, though, please.”

“Demon blade,” Devin said. “That’s how it thinks of itself.”

She stiffened slightly against him...but said nothing. Waited.

“You don’t choose it. It chooses you. I didn’t want it, that night Leo died. Didn’t have any choice.” He made a wry face. “Once it has you...nothing is the same. It...
drives
you. It wants blood. It sends you out into the night, hunting an excuse to find it.”

“Vigilante,” she murmured.

“I always give them a chance,” he said, but his raw voice betrayed him. Too much blood on his hands, because the blade had pushed him into places where the men he faced couldn’t and wouldn’t back down. Bad men, murderers and rapists and the worst of both at that. “They
could
walk away.”

“But most of them don’t.” She understood that right away. “And then the blade takes what’s left of them.”

Relief.
“You believe...”

She laughed. “With what I’ve seen? How could I
not?
” And then she added, “All of it. I want all of it.”

“Aside from the way the thing is so careful to heal me up once it shoves me out in front of knives and guns and the like?” He didn’t laugh again, no matter how darkly—he’d learned that lesson. “When I fight...it helps. It gives me an edge. Not much, but—”

“Enough,” she said softly, a contemplative tone. Thinking about what she’d seen, no doubt. She ran her fingers along his jaw, and he shivered with it. “And then there’s the wild road.”

“Enrique,” he said.

“You mentioned it, too,” she said. “I’m not sure you meant to.”

“Probably not,” he muttered, just enough strength in him to put a little edge to it. He pulled her in a little closer, fully reveling in the curves, everything toned and still smooth beneath his touch—at first resistant, and then softening against him. Even her breath, soft against the base of his throat. He let the rest of the room fade away, clinging only to the sensation of her. “The blade...
takes
you. Where it is, what it is...who the hell knows. We never found out. I only know what it does. What it
did.
” The hot fingers of it, slicing through his soul...setting its hooks into his being. “I know there’s no escape.”

“Shh,” she said, which seemed a strange thing, when she’d been the one to ask. To insist.

“Only you,” he told her, his hand tightening on the swell of her hip; she pressed against him in response. She’d shown him how to keep hold of himself, if only for a little while longer.

“Shh,” she said again. “I’ll be here.” Her lips landed on his neck; her lashes came to rest against his collarbone as she tucked her head up against him.

And Devin ached, and Devin fought the blade within, and Devin knew that death likely waited from without...but he still fell asleep with a faint smile lingering at his mouth.

* * *

I’ll be here.

That’s what she’d told him.

So Natalie didn’t tear away, and she didn’t throw herself into a corner in a fetal ball of denial.

She faced it.

After all, she’d asked.

And who was she to deny the existence of a thing called
demon blade
when she’d seen it at work? When she’d been waiting, these past weeks, for him to finally speak out loud of it? To tell her this, which explained so much.

But it didn’t explain all.

Either he’d fought a man on her porch, or he’d hallucinated it.

Either that old man—
old man
—had been a threat, or Devin had, in that moment, lost all perspective.

Either he could still be trusted, or it was already too late. No matter the work they’d done together.

“Shh,” she’d told him, when she’d come to realize he had no idea the weary pain on his features, the despair that drew his brow together or the faint clench of his jaw between words.

Just as she doubted he’d realized his own faint smile, lingering on his mouth even as he fell asleep in her arms—hurting and wounded and yes, already healing.

Pulling her closer, a reverence in his touch. Needing her—gently rousing to her even in his battered state.

And so she’d be here.

Chapter 17

D
evin’s mouth tasted like death and old blood.

He opened his eyes to deep night, the lights on and Natalie fast asleep beside him, rolling slightly away as she’d relaxed. Not so hard to disengage, to climb to his feet—pulling himself up on the bed and then moving from the bed to the wall and down the hall to the bathroom.

The hall was, of course, a mess. No little wonder this place always had a new carpet smell to it.

The bathroom yielded his toothbrush—oh, small mercies—and the harsh vanity lights. No mercies there. They showed the smudged fatigue under his eyes, the tight stress...the pain, with his lung a burning ember and his leg a smug, fiery throb that had little intention of truly supporting his weight.

But he’d been right. The blade was all about survival...about keeping its puppet useful for as long as possible. It had tortured him when that seemed the best strategy; now, when he had been so close to death that another such night would have killed him, it merely healed him. As in the old days, the first days. The accelerated healing had its own price, but tonight that didn’t include his sanity.

He looked in the mirror, gave himself a hard grin of a challenge. A lifted lip, a growling voice—seeing the blade in his eyes, where the darkness lingered. He told it, “Or maybe she’s just got you on the run.”

Sullen, shooting pain pushed back at him; he gasped a laugh, doubling briefly over the sink. “You,” he said to the blade,
“really suck.”

It had no particular opinion about that.

For all he knew, the notion pleased it. There, where it lay tucked up against his leg in quiescent pen knife form, having gotten back into his pocket who knew how or when.

He straightened again, eyed his jeans—one pants leg entirely missing, though she’d left him his boxer briefs. Who knew where his shirt was, and an uneven film of blood still washed over his side like a grisly real-life watercolor.

But the hole in his back had a distinctly healing look about it. Not a man raw and wounded, but a man who could take a deep breath if he wanted.

He tried it. Hell, yes, it hurt, but for a man who’d been spitting up blood mere hours earlier...

The leg told a similar story. Not happy about bearing weight, not ready to run any marathons...but healing. Healing fast.

And that told him exactly how much the blade had put him through for that simple arterial slice he’d taken the night he’d met Natalie. “Bastard,” he muttered at it.

A smug tickle of awareness was as much warning as confirmation.

The blade used him, all right. It wanted him out there stalking the bad guys like prey. Chasing them down, taking them down.

He knew it wouldn’t end there, either—the innocents would come next.

But he also knew something else. He knew that Leo hadn’t simply snapped that night in that alley those years earlier.

He’d been driven.

He’d been manipulated.

He’d been known and he’d been used—not by the blade, but by some outside force.

And maybe it was now no different for Devin.

Except that it was. He
knew.

And he had Natalie.

He rinsed out his mouth another time, took a deep slug of water.

He had Natalie.

Didn’t he?

With careful, unsteady steps, he returned to the bedroom. She’d moved into the spot where he’d been, as if seeking his missing warmth—curled up around herself, limbs long and slender, hair a mass of wavy brown and blond. Her hand rested quietly over the carpet where he’d so recently lain.

With nothing of stealth or power or grace, he lowered himself beside her and gently pulled her hair back from her face, revealing the amazing angle of cheekbone beneath.

That, he bent to kiss.

And the corner of her eye, and the corner of her mouth. And he felt every minute variation in the softness of her skin, the flicker of her lash, the twitch of her cheek. When she opened her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she murmured.

He didn’t answer right away—not until she turned to look at him, there from a hairsbreadth away. “I want you to know,” he said then, deadpan, “how very hard it is not to say the obvious thing here.” As in,
what do you
think
I’m doing?

She rolled over to face him, and gave him a somber look—but not one that could hide the deep humor behind her eyes. “That must be very hard indeed.” Damned if her gaze didn’t flick down below his waist.

He didn’t hide his amusement—or his intent. “I’m finishing what we started, that’s what.”
While we still have the chance.

Her expression lost the humor, turned direct—still so close, as she reached up to touch the side of his face. “You could have done that a long time ago, if you hadn’t walked away at the canal. You must know that.”

“I know it wouldn’t have been right for you,” Devin said bluntly. “I know it wouldn’t have been a true
choice
for you, with so many things unsaid. You wouldn’t have been happy when you realized that.”

“No,” she admitted. “But I wasn’t happy the way things were, either.” She touched his face, his shoulder...she stroked his side. “There’s something about you that makes me feel free. I see you in the middle of all
this,
and you give me that
look
.... You make me see that avoiding life...that’s no choice at all. So you know what?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t dare. Not to mention that her hand had found its way to the inside of his thigh and he’d forgotten how to speak.

“I choose you,” she said.

* * *

“Thank God,” Devin muttered, and lowered his forehead to hers, the relief on his face bringing a sweet pain to Natalie’s throat.

Come here,
she wanted to say, but that throat wouldn’t let her, so she did the first thing that came to mind, brushing nails across the inner thigh she’d already claimed. There, up very high, bare tender skin. Sensitive skin.

Then she welcomed him when he abruptly settled over her; she ran her hands down his sides, feeling the play and flex of muscle along his back and spine, the tight clench in his buttocks. She shifted to fit them together more precisely. Her sound of utter satisfaction didn’t entirely smother a little laugh. “I guess you didn’t lose as much blood as I thought.”

“Saved some,” he said, his voice thick, the words distracted and all the more charming for it, one hand working on the buttons of her blouse. “Special occasion.”

“I approve.” But then the breath hissed through her teeth and she arched up against him, pushing into his hand as it overcame the obstacle of her bra and found her breast—reverence and demand wrapped up in clever fingers, followed by his own groan.

She wasn’t sure what her own hands did then. Or her body. She was suddenly aware that he’d stiffened, his breath gusting out across her now-bare shoulder, a strangled noise in his throat. It brought her back to the floor and the winter night and the oddity of legs wrapped around half a pair of jeans. Concern flooded her. “Dev—”

“Nnng,”
he said, or something like it. “Don’t—no—it’s okay—
gah
—”

She laughed, breathless, he nibbled along her exposed neck, and when she reached for him again, he trapped her hand and said, “Uh-uh,” before bending to her ear to whisper, “Think about
this.
Feel
this.
” Her own words of these past weeks, driven right back at her.

The carpet disappeared. The night became irrelevant. There were only his hands—the one at the side of her head, angling her mouth just the way he wanted it, strong and gentle fingers, inexorable grip. The other hand roaming her body, touching...skimming and undressing. Pausing to lavish attention, stroking and warming and finding all possible sensitivities. He came down on her mouth, nipped her lower lip and turned it into a deep kiss. “Feel that,” he told her again. “Feel
this.
”

And so she lost her mind as his hand found her, all clever and gentle and then
plunging,
so she pushed up against him, desperate to open to him and tighten around him at the same time, no longer able to do even as much as kiss him, only crying out into his mouth. Clever, clever fingers, striking sparks everywhere in her body at once, winding her tighter...letting her back down again.

She took advantage to reach for him—he wasn’t hard to find. He twitched in her hand, a throb of response that came with a gust of breath on her neck. She stroked him gently, learning him—smiling against his kiss when he thrust against her and growing bolder with her touch.

He made his strangled noise again, clamping his hand on her hip and quite suddenly holding her still, but this time she understood, and this time she wasn’t willing to wait. She found her hands clenching into his back—demanding. And reaching into his back pocket for his slim wallet, tapping him on the ass with it.

“Nnng,”
he said again, reaching for it—fumbling it between them. She released him to join the effort, applying herself to the task of covering him with eager and inventive fingers. And where moments before he’d had her right at the edge of sanity, now he quivered beside and above her, and now his fingers clawed into the carpet, and now his breath gusted hard onto her skin, his head bowed and his forehead resting against her shoulder. “I,” he managed, a mere grunt of a word, “am...
so
...going to—” was that a whimper, between clenched teeth? “—
take
you...for this.”

“I
choose you,
” she reminded him, a whisper of a laugh and invitation, reveling in the quiver and tremble and restraint of him, but ready for the fulfillment of promise—that which he’d offered her from the beginning: glimpses of honesty and passion and completeness.

Oh,
there.

Like
that.

“Oh,” she breathed, the wonder of it. And
“Oh!”

And what he said, she wasn’t sure. But it sounded like honesty. It felt like passion.

And it left her complete.

* * *

Whoa.

Gahhh.

It was as sentient as Devin got, right in that moment, his muscles collapsing and only half successful in rolling his weight off Natalie.

All the aches suddenly shrieked; all the wounds suddenly throbbed. The fire of it wrapped around him, darting through his inattentiveness to take control. He had nothing left to hold back a heartfelt groan.

“Devin?” she said, twisting up to her elbow, her legs still wrapped around his hips and showing no sign of releasing him anytime soon. “Oh, I’m so sorry! What was I even thinking?”

He laughed, low and true, startling her into silence. “Oh, God,” he said. “That was
so
worth it.” Even if it took another moment of struggle to get control of it, another grunt of pain, a hiss, a restless shifting as a swell of it washed through him. “Not kidding,” he panted, feeling her worried gaze on him, her touch at the side of his face. And then, finally, as the piqued blade eased its grip on him, he tucked her in closer. “Be with me,” he asked her, and she relaxed again. She reached behind him to tuck the ultra light comforter back into place over them both.

For a moment, he thought of nothing else but the touching—the places they touched, the ways they touched. The warmth of her skin, the scent of her hair and her body. His own scent, just a little bit sharp—stressed—and the raw hint of blood lingering in the background.

Natalie whispered, “What are we going to do?”

“Make love,” he muttered, not truly thinking about it. “Repeatedly. Until I pass out.”

“I think,” she told him gently, “you might be just about to do that.”

He grunted a denial, and she held him a little tighter for just that moment, affection filtering through the worry in her voice. “I mean what’re we going to do about what’s happening. I think...” She took a breath. “I don’t think this has anything to do with the restaurant—that’s just a ruse. I think it’s been Compton all along. He’s had cameras in my home. The guys who came for me that night...they were on his payroll. That’s what I came to tell you.”

He considered that, and frowned against her shoulder. “Thought you came because you were wrong. About us.”

“Well,
obviously,
” she said, in a tone that made it clear he was lucky she hadn’t tacked the word
doofus
on to that response. “But I came
now
because of what I learned. I can’t make it make sense, but I know...somehow, Compton is tied up in this.”

“I know,” he said, and even if it still came out in no more than a mutter, there was heat behind it. “The alleys...they’re part of this, too, somehow. My brother. And I think...your ex-fiancé.”
Ajay.
Too much coincidence, to hear that name from her lips and then from the man at Enrique’s.

Her voice sounded subdued. Miserable. “Yes,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how, but...”

“We’ll sort it out.” He said it with utter confidence, and tucked her a little closer. Or at least he made the effort. They were already pretty much as entwined as they could get.

“But—”

“Tomorrow,” he said simply. “Tomorrow, we go to him.”

Silence, as she absorbed that. But her body remained relaxed against him. Her hand, comforting on his arm; her lips, just barely resting against his temple. Then she said, “Tomorrow.”

“Love first,” he said, so low she might not even hear it, except her body tightening around him told him that she had. “Repeatedly.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “But I think you’re going to pass out first.”

And he did.

* * *

Devin woke toward morning, and found she’d been busy. She’d cleaned up; she’d brushed her hair into gleaming brown and blond. She’d acquired one of his button-up shirts, old and soft and a red that looked so good on her that he instantly vowed to put it aside in his closet as a shrine.

She’d turned most of the lights off, leaving more intimate illumination.

And right. She sat on him, straddling him, rocking her hips ever so slightly. Just enough to bring a rushing swell of pleasure streaking through his body and up behind his eyes, a gasp in his throat and his head tipping back to ride it out...to absorb it. To revel in it. “How—?” he rasped, when he could.