Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (58 page)

It wasn’t that she’d never felt sympathy for his plight before, but it was hitting her hard in her gut in that moment. She wanted to bolt out of his house rather than have to feel what she was feeling.
 

Instead, she forced herself to look at him closely. As she’d told him, he didn’t have that edge to him he’d had the night he’d divided. But he seemed upset enough that she had to wonder if that whole emotion muting thing was up to the task of mediating what he was feeling right now. His jaw was pulsing where he clenched his teeth together, and his whole body was tense. She still felt shaky with emotion, but now she wasn’t angry so much as scared. She realized she was absolutely terrified to lose him.
 

“I know how awful this whole thing has been for you,” she told him. Her voice came out with a tremble, but she forged onwards. “I know it’s basically your worst nightmare coming true. It's everything your parents feared in you, what you’ve feared in yourself. And what I’ve feared in you as well. But my God, Daniel, look at what you’ve accomplished in the face of all that! You keep accomplishing the impossible. Nobody thought a hiding spell for talents was possible, but you came up with one. Gelsenim said there was no way to avoid your going divided, but in less than two weeks, you came up with a fix. Even if it’s not a perfect fix, with more time, you’ll come up with something better. I have faith in you.”

His eyes finally came up at that, and encouraged, she went on, not really knowing what she was going to say until it came out of her mouth, going on pure emotion, pure instinct. “I do, I always have. I’ve been afraid of you at times, I know. I’ve put you through hell with all my fears and doubts.
 
But I’ve also trusted in your strength and your abilities, and I’ve never had cause to regret that. And more, I trust who you are, at heart. Your heart, my God, Daniel your heart.” She reached out and put a hand to his chest, in her need to somehow get through to him. “You have such a good heart. Please, please, don’t give up on it. I want, I can't go through, I need…” She stumbled to a stop, eyes filling with tears.

“What do you need?” Daniel whispered, his hand coming up to cover hers where it lay on his chest.
 

“Please don’t die,” she said brokenly, tears spilling out onto her cheeks. “You can’t die because, because I love you.”
 

Daniel’s face caught fire with passion at her words, and almost before she could register what was happening, he was kissing her, trapping her face between his hands, a hard, desperate kiss. And Bree surrendered to it, returned it with equal desperation. Their tongues clashed, and Daniel angled his head to be able to penetrate her mouth more deeply. Bree opened to him, hungrily, and reached for his shoulders, trying to pull him to her. She wanted him closer, wanted to feel the heat of his living body against her, and he obliged, reaching one arm over her shoulder, and another around her waist to pull her firmly to him. Her back arched as the intensity of his kiss pressed her backwards. Her tears had stopped as she threw herself into kissing him, into taking him in, the feeling of the ridged muscles of his back under her hands, the roughness of his beard stubble against her chin, her cheeks. Her whole body was swept by waves of emotion and desire. There was no room for thought as his warm hand worked up under the back of her shirt, and his mouth broke away from hers to kiss her throat.
 

Bree moaned at the flare of desire the kiss triggered. He moved his hands until they were holding her hips against his, freeing her arm so that she could push both hands into his hair. He raised his head and looked into her eyes, searchingly. An actual thought was able to make its way to her brain; he was wondering if he should stop, if they should stop. She answered by pulling him in for another kiss. At this moment, she didn’t care what would happen as a result. The world as she knew it was falling apart. This amazing, maddening, loving man might die in the resulting conflict. She might die. He might lose his mind and kill her. She didn’t care.

She reached her hands between them and began struggling with the buttons of his shirt. His hands gripped her hips harder, and she worked on his buttons until she was able to push his shirt off his shoulders. As he tugged at the sleeves to finish freeing himself, she kissed his neck where it met his shoulder. Daniel threw his head back, eyes closed in pleasure, allowing her exploration, hands temporarily trapped in his shirt cuffs. She took full advantage of the moment, tasting his neck, running her other hand across the strong curve of his chest muscles, down his side, then across his stomach.
 

Daniel nearly tore the rest of his shirt off himself at that. When he had his hands free he reached for the hem of her green sweater, pulling first that, then the t-shirt on under it over her head, mussing her hair. He pushed her hair off her face, dark eyes staring into her, reading her. Her Reader sense answered, and she felt the wild river of his desire, felt him feeling hers. Then he lowered his lips to hers again, but this time, he kissed her more slowly, tongue taking on a more languorous rhythm at odds with the burning need to consume her she felt inside of him. Then he moved his slow kisses across her shoulder, then over the mound of her breast above her bra. Bree gasped as he moved to the edge of the lacy material, and ran his tongue along it. She tried to move away from him, to reach down for the button on his jeans, but he moved her hand away, and pulled her against him with a hand at her back.
 

She started writhing with desperate impatience to get to him. She pushed against his shoulders, forcing his mouth away from her breasts. “Daniel, please!” she whimpered. He only kissed her mouth again, more forcefully this time, and began backing her across the room, towards the stairs. Bree reached behind her back as they went, unhooking her bra and letting it fall away so she could wrap her arms around his neck and press her breasts against his chest.
 

When they got to the stairs, he reached for her hand, took it, and led the way up. His bedroom was just down the hall from the top, and he stopped in the bedroom doorway to kiss her again. As his hands stroked her back, up her sides, Bree could feel they were trembling. Some tiny, sane voice told her that they were going to blow his whole restraining structure straight to hell with all this emotion, but then his mouth was at her breast again, and she laughed. He straightened to look at her. “What,” he asked, voice breathless.

“I don’t care,” she said out loud. “I don’t care what happens next. I don’t care if it kills us both.”

Daniel smiled a feral smile that sent a weird mix of fear and even greater desire through her core. “I don’t care either.” He kissed her again, moving her back until her legs were pressed against the edge of his bed. There was only one window in his bedroom, and the blinds were just slightly open, lending the space a dim but glowing light where the sun was trying to enter.
 

As Daniel ran his hands up her arms, goose bumps arose. He pulled back, and stepped away, gesturing to heat the air in the room. Instantly, the temperature went up fifteen degrees. Bree seized her moment to go after the button and zipper on his jeans, pushing them and his underwear off over his slim hips. He toed off his shoes and kicked his way the rest of the way out of his pants as he went to work on hers.
   

Then they were both naked, and he carried her down to the bed, one hand behind her neck, the other beneath her back. Then he pulled her to face him, side to side, and they pressed against each other, deep, devastating kisses interrupted by long, stunned looks as their Reader senses continued to entwine, feeding them information on each other’s feelings and sensations.
 

Daniel finally pushed Bree onto her back, and lay atop her. She opened her legs to him, but he didn’t enter her, although she felt the warmth of him pressing against her. They were both breathing rapidly. Daniel rested his weight on one elbow and ran a trembling hand along the side of her face, over her lips. His fingers gently pulled down her lower lip, and he kissed her again. She thought her heart might burst with the love she felt from him in that kiss. He kissed her like she was a holy sacrament, like she was his salvation, like he was going to his death. Then he looked into her eyes and whispered, fiercely, “I love you.” And then he entered her, eyes locked with hers, and began stroking slowly. “I love you,” he repeated, and tears came to her eyes even while she rocked against him, her body pleading for him to go faster. She kissed his cheek, his lips, his neck, anything she could reach. Daniel moaned then and closed his eyes, lost in the sensation, and his pace increased.
 

As her Reader sense attuned to him more deeply, Bree’s mind began forming images of the restraint structure. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to see it start to break apart if that was what was going to happen. She pulled back, focused on the blessed feeling of him inside of her, the pressure of his body against hers, the beauty of his strong face. They were both starting to sweat in the warmth of the room, and that generated by their movement against one another. As she went back to the layer where everything was emotion, she could no longer tell which were hers and which were his. All she could feel was a soul breaking amount of love and desire, and the intensity of it put her over the edge into release. As her body jerked against his, he groaned and surrendered to it as well.
   

They stayed entwined, breathing hard, long enough that his arms started to quiver with the effort of holding his weight off of her. With a little shake of his head, he pulled himself out of her and collapsed onto his back next to her. Bree rolled onto her side, her head on his shoulder, arm across his waist. Little aftershocks made her draw in her breath as she moved against him, throwing a leg over his thigh. Without conscious volition, her Reader sense drew back inside her. They lay quietly, his arm caressing her shoulder, hers his side and hip. “Well,” he said after a time, “we didn’t die.”
 

Bree started giggling, and once she got started, she couldn’t stop. Daniel started laughing as well, and he laughed until tears came. Bree felt a wild relief. It was true, they hadn’t died. And that internal structure of his hadn’t prevented his having feelings for her after all.
 

Her giggles began to run out, and it took her a few beats in her relieved and satiated state to register the tinge of hysteria creeping into Daniel’s laughter. She pulled away a little so she could look up at his face. His eyes were closed, and his breath was being pressed out of him now in small, explosive jerks. His body started to shudder, and he brought a clenched fist up to his chest and started hitting himself with it. Bree grabbed at his hand and said, urgently, “My God, Daniel, stop! What are you doing?”
 

His eyes flew open, and his pupils were dilated, making his eyes look entirely black. “The divided thing, it’s happening,” he gasped. “The structure, I blew it out. You've got to leave, now!”
 

Bree felt like she’d been shocked with a cattle prod. Her whole body flooded with electric panic. “No, Daniel, let me help!” She prepared herself to go into him in a read, prepared to call on Gelsenim for help.

“No!” he roared. He reared up and shoved her off the bed, then pointed at her, shouting, "I bind you to my will! You will leave, now. You will not try to read me or perform a healing on me!”
 

She felt the force of his binding strike her, and against her will, she gathered up her things and ran down the stairs. She barely spared time to pull on her jeans and tug her crumpled sweater over her head. She abandoned her shirt and bra, shoved her feet into her boots and snatched up her coat.
 

She was at the front door when she heard Daniel’s voice call her name. She turned to see him halfway down the stairs, dressed only in his jeans. He was clutching the stair banister in a death grip, and his face was white. “You will sit in your car and activate your Demonsense. If you feel me call a demon, you'll drive away, then call Javier or any Keeper you can get hold of, and you will tell them I’m a burned Demon Master and I’ve lost it, that they’ll need the best the Ecclesias has to take me out. If I don’t call a demon within that hour, do not call a Keeper or the Ecclesias.”
 

No,
a tiny voice, pressed almost to nothing beneath the binding, protested. Shaking with effort, she said it out loud. “No.”
 

Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and the binding wrapped her tighter, so tight it was hard to breathe. “You will stay for an hour, and may go at that time if nothing has happened. When I’m able, if I’m able, I’ll call you. You will not attempt to come back inside or contact me until I contact you. Go now, and do as I said.”
 

She found herself opening up his door, closing it behind her, and went to her car, where she called up her Demonsense. As she sat there, shivering in shock and grief, tears coursing down her face, she brought up her Reader sense as well, but at this distance, she couldn’t get anything on Daniel.
You idiot!
she berated herself.
You irresponsible fool! Why did you have to admit you loved him? Why come over in the first place?
Had she wanted this to happen? Had she wanted to push him? Well, she’d pushed him, all right, pushed him right over the edge. And all because she was too weak to bear her upset over the bombings alone, too weak to put a stop to things when it was clear he was starting to feel strong emotions. She should have known then that the restraint structure was weakening. She’d wanted too badly to see proof that he still wanted her, that he loved her as she loved him.
 

Her Demonsense remained quiescent, and her trembling and tears gradually abated, though she started to shiver with cold. She took the time zip up her and fasten her coat. As reason started to reassert itself, she admitted Daniel bore some part of the blame. He’d been as irresponsible as she. She suspected they were both reacting to some kind of primal urge to procreate in the face of possible looming war and death. Well, procreation was probably off the table given where she was in her cycle. And that was a relief, though a small part of her swelled with emotion at the thought of having Daniel's child.