Lilly huffed. While she could understand that he didn’t trust her any more than she trusted him, it galled her all the same. It was difficult at best to find something when you knew what you were looking for, but damned near impossible when you didn’t. Until they found that door she wasn’t going to get any closer to escaping Rathe.
“You know, I have different senses you don’t. If I knew what we were looking for, I might be actually able to help you find it faster.”
“You mean you’d find it faster with or without me.”
“That’s not what—”
Colt whirled, grasping her in a firm but gentle, no-nonsense grip on her upper arms. The coil illuminator still in his hand threw light up toward the ceiling, giving an eerie uplit cast to his rugged features, and exposing the dark stubble growing thicker on his jaw and chin. He pulled her close enough to him that her breasts brushed his chest. “Coy doesn’t become you. I know you’re smarter than that just by looking at you.”
Her skin and hair were coated with a fine powdering of dust leaving them feeling gritty. Beneath the hems of her skirt, her bruised knees throbbed. They’d gotten scraped and her fishnet stockings torn on the rough floor of the cavern when the blast had propelled her forward. As succubi went, she was sure she looked like hell.
Lilly tried to pull back from his magnetic touch. It was causing small sparks to fire just under her skin in a most distracting manner. Despite her own misgivings, she wanted him to kiss her again. Not because of some pact, but out of pure desire.
She wet her lips, tasting the dust that lingered on them. “We have a pact. I’m going to help you find whatever it is you are looking for by opening this door you’re seeking.”
“True. But that doesn’t mean you’ll forget the pact you’ve made with your master either, does it?”
“
You
summoned
me
, remember?”
The thumb of his right hand brushed over her upper arm in a slow back-and-forth skimming movement that tightened her skin in an all over body shiver.
“Just look for the door and you’ll find out what’s behind it the same time I do. Deal?”
Exactly how annoyed would he be when he discovered that she already knew. And how quickly would he renege on his promise to let her go free or, more importantly, help her disappear once he knew she wanted the piece of the Book of Legend as much as he did?
“Fine. I’ll stop asking.”
“Good.”
Colt dropped his hands from her, making her feel noticeably cooler. He pulled the map out of his pocket where he’d stuffed it and shook it out.
“Looks like there’s another branch in the shaft up ahead.”
Lilly peered over his shoulder at the page. “How much farther?” His long, blunt-tipped finger ran along a crooked line following it across the page.
“Another mile, maybe mile and a half. The map isn’t exactly to scale. Winn said when the temperature got warmer, we’d be getting close.”
Not surprising. If the crudely drawn compass points in the corner were anywhere close to true, they were headed south, closer to the rim of the Darkin realm, rather than away from it. No wonder the Scoria had been waiting for them. They might as well have danced right across the welcome mat to Hell itself.
“I suppose you’ll want these back now,” she said, holding the saddle packs out to him. Colt slung them over his shoulder, turned on his heel without a word of thanks and started walking.
At the next turn, the trail descended steeply, and a runnel of water made the rock slippery. The demon grabbed hold of his arm, heedlessly bumping her hand against the gun in his low-slung hip holster.
His gaze snapped to hers, his skin tightening. That had been awful close to her rubbing the precise part of him that was most interested in the demon. “Careful there, darlin’. You might set it off.”
The sound of rushing water grew louder, filling the chamber. Colt’s chest tightened reflexively, a giant invisible fist squeezing all the air out of his lungs.
“Sounds like a river or waterfall.” Her tone was a mixture of curiosity laced with boredom.
Yeah, he heard it. And he prayed it was neither. “Winn didn’t mention any waterfall or river. In fact, he didn’t mention any kind of water at all.”
She pressed in against him, her breasts warm and soft against his back. A pleasant buzzing started at the base of his skull growing louder and filling his ears, drowning out the sound of the moving water that terrified him, making him think about how he’d like to sample just one more kiss from Miss Arliss before he sent her back to wherever she’d come from. He inhaled the cinnamon rose fragrance of her. So different. So much better than sulfur.
“Perhaps we took a wrong turn.”
His vision snapped back into focus. The sound of the water grew louder as they continued walking down the slope.
They rounded the bend to find the tunnel through the rock led to a natural underground cavern more than fifty feet tall. The light from the coil illuminator was too weak to reach to the vault of the cavern, but it did well in picking out the giant stalagmites jutting up from the floor like a ridge of teeth and stalactites that dripped down in giant stone canines from the ceiling. At the far end of the cavern a wall of water cascaded from thirty feet above, flooding their path.
“Looks like we’re going to have to go through the waterfall to keep going.” Her tone was so blithe it pissed him off.
Beads of sweat popped out on his skin. Just the sound of the running water had him in a lather. The thought of having to drench himself for who knew how long under thousands of gallons of water pelting down on him, obliterating his air, left his stomach queasier than a greenhorn after an all-night party on white lightning.
He gripped the map in his hands, making the paper snap taut. “We’re going to have to find another way around.”
Chapter 7
Miss Arliss swiveled, looking around the cavern. “Unless you know a clever trick to walking through the rock, I suggest you plan on walking through the water.”
He deliberately ignored her. “Maybe you were right. Maybe we took a wrong turn.” He turned to go in the opposite direction of the waterfall, back up the slippery, steep path.
He damn well knew they had to go through that waterfall, and he’d rather be whipped on his bare back than do it. Colt stopped dead still as her hands feathered in a light, skimming touch up along his arm. “You don’t have to do this alone. I’m right here with you.” The silken, sultry quality to her voice made his mind fill with thoughts of tangled sheets and sweet female warmth. More than that, it lulled him into wondering what it would be like to be with Miss Arliss if she were human.
She led him by the hand into the mist coming off the waterfall. It roared as it fell, far more feral than any supernatural beast he’d ever encountered. Every sensation he’d experienced underneath the surface of that water trough when he was fourteen came back with a vengeance. The burning in his lungs, the clammy, cold sluicing over his skin, reaching in and numbing him to the core. It wasn’t something he could control, dammit. His breathing became shallower, faster as his heart rate sped up and his lungs started to shrink in his chest. Her grip on his hand tightened.
He pulled back. “You don’t understand.”
The demon didn’t hesitate. She stood up on tiptoe, her soft curves pressing against his chest, and wrapped her arms over his shoulders and around his neck. Her lips were dewy soft and warm as she kissed him. A shock, like something from a sting shooter but far more pleasant, arced through him, energizing every cell, making him feel invincible.
He liked women. A lot. He liked how they smelled, how they tasted, and how they felt. Her sensual assault was like giving a drinking man a bottle; he simply couldn’t resist.
Colt threw his arms around her waist, pulling all her warmth closer until it filled his senses. Damp heat steamed off them. The tip of her tongue slid along the seam of his mouth, slick and warm, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to taste her. She was sweet and spicy, cinnamon and honey. She ground her hips against him. Colt couldn’t think straight. Hell, he couldn’t think at all past the thrumming pulse of sensual heat she was wrapping around him.
In the next instant water poured down, drenching them both, streaming over his hat. He broke their mind-numbing kiss with a startled intake of breath and found they were on the other side of the waterfall.
They had passed straight through.
Colt blinked in astonishment.
“See, that wasn’t so bad.”
He gazed down into her eyes. Droplets of water sparkled in her long, dark eyelashes. “You did that on purpose.” His voice was rough with longing and need. For an instant he was insane enough with desire to want to plunge back under the water just so she’d keep kissing him.
Her lips, slightly swollen and rosy from their kiss, tilted into a sweet, sexy-as-hell smile. “You’re welcome.”
Now Colt was rattled for another reason altogether. In the space of a heartbeat she’d taken over his ability to think with the touch of her body and the heat of her kiss. Hell, she’d overridden a fear that went straight to his gut. Not to say that he hadn’t enjoyed it, but if she could do that, then exactly how much power did she possess and how deep in trouble was he?
The air on this side of the waterfall was noticeably warmer. Wisps of steam curled in white mist off her clothing as well as his. For a second Colt was grateful for the reassurance that it wasn’t just his overactive libido causing the heat he sensed.
He tried to right himself by gently, but firmly, unlacing her delicate fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Don’t worry so much, Colt. I’m not going to let anything happen to you on this venture. You’re safe with me,” she said.
He very much doubted that. He was anything but safe with her. A beautiful woman was a weakness for him, but a woman who could make him forget himself, forget his deepest fears, his darkest memories, that was a force to be reckoned with.
Resorting to a glib smirk, he tried to cover his discomfort and put some distance between them. “Maybe I did that on purpose just to get you to kiss me again.”
The succubus gave him a knowing smile in return that said maybe I wanted you to. His stomach dropped to his shoes. Damn. She was testing him, and there was only so much a mortal man, Hunter or otherwise, could bear.
She reached up and pulled the pins from her hair, letting the dark, wet, red tresses curl down along her back. She ran her fingers through it, separating the curls with her fingers, where they dried instantly into spirals of flame-colored silk.
Damn, it was hot in here.
Colt swallowed down a thick lump hard. His fingers were itching to follow the same path as hers, but he forced his hands to stay at his sides and instead rubbed the butt of the revolver in the holster at his hip.
“So where do we go from here?” The sweet lilt to her voice started to suck him in all over again. His brain spun with visions of having her naked beneath him. Of waking up with her, slumberous and soft, tucked in beside him each morning.
Stop it. Get hold of yourself
, Colt berated himself. Letting her kiss him like that had been a mistake. There was no denying that having her kiss him in the heat of the moment had been damn near the hottest thing that had ever happened to him with all his clothes on, but it was still a mistake. And if he didn’t watch himself, next time it could likely be a soul-stealing mistake. He’d forget himself. Forget who he was and why he shouldn’t want her. Next thing you know he’d be thinking about nights by a warm fire and a cozy bed. Home-cooked meals and how it’d feel to be welcomed into her arms each night. Things a Hunter had no business thinking about. He had to be careful from here on out if he wanted to find Pa’s piece of the Book and forgo a one-way train ticket straight to Hell.
“There should be a second large chamber up past this stretch of the shaft.” He stalked past her, deliberately not looking back to even see if she followed. He could tell by the soft, lingering feminine scent that overpowered the dank, damp, swampy smell of wet earth and the stench of sulfur in the mine that she was still right on his heels.
“So this door. What’s it supposed to look like?”
Winn hadn’t known. He’d never seen it, merely repeated word for word what Pa had told him. Leave it to Pa to leave out the waterfall, unless that had come later. Who knew? Things underground could have changed in the last twenty years. But one thing would never change. They were closer to Hell than he’d ever been before, which made him damned uncomfortable.
“Not sure. All I was told was that we’d know it when we saw it.”
The coil illuminator didn’t like being wet.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
It refused to work, so Colt shook it harder.
Clack ClackClackClack
.
“Let me.” She held out her hand, and in it materialized an oil lamp. She lifted the glass on the lamp and blew on the wick, making it light.
Colt had realized her kisses were hot, he just hadn’t realized she could actually create flame with them! “Well, aren’t you handy?”
She gave him a sly grin. “On occasion.” She started walking and he took a moment to admire the sway of her hips beneath the damp calico still clinging to her. She paused, glancing back over her shoulder at him. “Are you coming?”
“Not yet, but give me time,” Colt muttered under his breath. How he could find a demon so damn captivating, when he’d spent years destroying anything from the Darkin realm, was beyond him. What was it about this one demon that had him tied into knots like some green boy fresh off the farm?
He should be planning how he was going to send her back to Hell, not admiring the way her creamy skin glowed in the lamp’s light. They might be united for the moment in their search, but he hadn’t a single doubt in his mind that Miss Arliss would turn on him the moment she’d gotten what she really wanted.
Water dripped off the cavern ceiling, plunking in the damp rocks at their feet as Colt tried to analyze the situation, discover where his weakness lay. True, she was an incredible combination of unusual beauty and sensual appeal, but certainly it had to be more than that. He wasn’t that easily led astray, was he?
’Course, he’d never been up against a succubus before. Vampires, certainly. Shape-shifters, demons, chupacabras, even a fire wraith, and now Scoria soldiers, but never a succubus. It was a bit unnerving to realize that perhaps he did have a weakness. Well, if it was a weakness, best to find out how to challenge it and reinforce his defenses. He had a duty to humanity that outstripped any of his own personal interests.
He caught up to her side in a few fast, long-legged strides. The damp, swamp-like smell of the mine shaft was replaced by Lilly’s distinctive floral-and-spice scent that tugged at his gut. Colt did his level best to ignore it. Maybe if he just inhaled deep enough he’d get used to it and wouldn’t be able to smell it any longer. He inhaled as deeply as he could. The scent dug deeper into his soul, causing an eddy of need to wash through him. Damn. That wasn’t working.
Maybe he just needed to talk to her, find out she was no different than that scheming shape-shifter China McGee. But before he could speak, she turned those unnaturally bright green eyes on him. They bored straight through him, stealing the breath right out of his lungs, making the words on the tip of his tongue fade into nothingness.
“Have you killed every child of the night you’ve met?”
Her question shocked a little sense into him. He tore his gaze away from hers and stared straight ahead into the dark tunnel ahead. “Almost every one.”
“So, one escaped the great Colt Jackson?”
He shrugged, thinking of how he’d narrowly wriggled out of the rubble at the bank, leaving China behind for the authorities. Better they put a shape-shifter in jail than him for trying to steal Diego’s safety-deposit box. “I wouldn’t exactly call it an escape, and neither would China McGee.”
“A woman?” Her brow arched.
“I wouldn’t call China McGee exactly a woman. She’s a shape-shifter.”
“So you’ve had a relationship with a supernatural?”
“I wouldn’t call what China and I shared exactly a relationship.”
“Well, obviously you are intimate enough to call each other by your first names, and she was helping you.”
“More like helping me by helping herself.” Diego had been a Hunter in the same generation as Colt’s pa. His safety-deposit box supposedly held a clue to the location of a map, which would lead to another piece of the Book hidden south of the border. China had brought the information to him in exchange for payment. He’d told her he would pay her when he got hold of Diego’s safety-deposit box. Not that it was his problem now. He had his pa’s part of the Book to track down. Remington could get the box from China, decipher the clue, and find a way to get hold of that map, and it would probably be a whole lot smoother and more legal than blowing a hole in the back of the bank.
“And you left her behind?”
Colt locked his unflinching gaze on hers. “Absolutely.” He held no illusions about China. Anything she did was for her own benefit. And while attraction had flared between them, it had always been tempered by wariness and distrust. He’d yet to meet a Darkin he could trust. They’d screw you every single time. His chest ached as he thought of how often his family had suffered at the hands of Darkin, and Colt grew irritated with himself at how his common sense seemed to dissipate around Miss Arliss’s considerable charms.
He had to be better than good as a Hunter. If he was going to bear the name Jackson within the Legion of Hunters, he had to be just as good, just as sharp, as both Winn and Remy. Being the youngest wasn’t any kind of excuse for being softheaded around a female Darkin, no matter how tempting she seemed.
He’d already given his brothers a reason to taunt him when he’d been bested by China. He sure as hell wasn’t about to listen to them tell him Pa had wasted his training on him because of another Darkin who seemed too good to be true. The shaft narrowed, forcing him to walk close enough to brush shoulders with her. She slowed her steps, causing him to slow too.
She turned into him, setting the oil lamp down beside them and placing her dainty hand over his heart. The heat of her touch seeped through his shirt, making him break out into a sweat. “Am I mistaken in thinking there’s a heart in that broad chest of yours?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his voice solid, despite the increased pace of his heart beneath her hand. “I’m a Hunter through and through.” His groin throbbed with a beat that matched his pulse. Hell, he didn’t need a heart to want a woman, did he? But this wasn’t a woman. This was a succubus, he sternly reminded his libido.
Duty. Honor. His family name among Hunters
, he recited in his head.
She stepped in closer to him, the flare of her hip grazing his erection. She made a sound deep down in her throat, almost like a purr. “Hunter you may be, but you’re human too. So was I, once upon a time. I wish I still were.”