Demon's Triad (15 page)

“Aleeza,” he whispered.

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Her eyes flew open. “Dorand. No, Dorand, you shouldn’t—leave me alone.” Her fingers and hips didn’t stop moving, despite the look of shame that crossed her face.

The night before, they had. She’d been in the grips of the very first orgasms she’d ever had in her life—he could only imagine how powerful that must have been after twenty-five years—but she’d still stopped. Now she didn’t, her lust-glazed eyes begging him somehow to help her.

He reached for her, meaning only to still her movements, but she shook her head.

“Just go. I can’t let you touch me!”

“Why?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked away. “I just can’t. Please…please…” The last words came out as a moan. She was coming again, her left hand twisting and pulling at her right nipple. Dorand could hardly breathe. He wanted to help her, the gods knew he did, but he didn’t want her to stop. He wanted to watch her again, wanted to see her face as she brought herself to another orgasm and another. He wanted to bury himself in her and feel her throb around him. Something was wrong with her, and he knew it, but being so close to her that her gasps of breath were hot on his face made it hard as hell to think clearly.

A sob escaped her throat as she pulled the club out of her pussy. He watched, amazed, as she moved it back, tilting her hips forward and placing the sodden leather tip at the small, puckered entrance of her ass. Her hand snaked down to her clit, plump and exposed to him in that position.

“Aleeza,” he said softly, unable to take his eyes off her hands. “Let me touch you.

Let me help.”

She sobbed again, her face contorting as she started working the club into her ass.

Dorand thought the buttons on his jeans were going to explode open as he watched it disappear. He couldn’t wait anymore for her permission. He reached out and grabbed her, wrapping his left hand around her thin wrist, taking whatever power possessed her into himself.

His head flew back. He screamed, his throat already aching, just as his entire body ached and burned. It hurt, oh goddess how it hurt. His skin crawled. He thought he was going to be sick. How had she been able to withstand this at all, this raging, greedy black lust thundering through his body? Desperately, he tried to ground the energy, to send it away, but it didn’t work. Somehow he knew nothing would work but to let the power go where it wanted to go, but at the same instant knew he could not allow that to happen.

Aleeza’s sobs stilled. Through the reddish haze of want and pain he saw her hand slow, her back straighten a little. It was working. He was helping her, but at what price to himself?

He had to banish this energy, find a way to release it. Only one method came to mind.

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“Help me,” he managed, not daring to take his hand off her as he fumbled at his jeans with the other. Her fingers, slick with her juices, covered his, tearing at his fly and finally freeing his swollen length.

He was so hard he was dizzy, so hard his cock looked almost twice the normal size and dark purple. It twitched and shuddered in the cool air.

Her wet hand closed over it. “Dorand,” she gasped. “Dorand, come here.” The club fell to the leaves below as she started to kick off her shoes and jeans, struggling with the heavy denim.

“No. No, I could give it back to you,” he managed. He’d never heard of such a thing happening. Usually when Ferrin or Carantha or both got too carried away, when that blackness that sometimes invaded Ferrin reared its ugly head, he was able to ground it within himself. Whatever this was, he could not ground it, could not hold it. He could not risk releasing it back into her.

Her dazed expression gave him no clue that she truly understood, but she stopped trying to remove her clothing. Instead she moved her hand, sliding up the length of him and back down, her juices making his skin slick.

He gasped and leaned forward, taking one of her hard nipples into his mouth. It tasted of her arousal. He pulled it in between his teeth, pressing it against the roof of his mouth, sucking as hard as he dared to keep from crying out.

Aleeza had no such compunctions. Her back arched toward him, one hand snaking around to tangle in his hair and pull him even closer. Her grip on his cock twisted, almost painfully.

He let go and licked a path to her other breast, teasing it with his tongue. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her hips pump forward, and so reached down to the incredible slick heat between her legs. She cried out again, the pressure of her hand speeding.

Dorand thought his head would explode. He shuddered and twitched, his hips jerking forward in time with her inexpert rhythm. Making sure to keep his skin in contact with hers, he shifted his grip so he could run his hand up her arm to cup her breasts, lifting them each in turn and feasting on the puckered skin at their tips. His other hand was coated with her juices, his fingers making circles over her clit.

She was almost hot enough to burn him. The feel of her soft wet folds under his fingertips sent him flying, made the alien blackness burning across his skin scream.

Whatever it was, it wanted to be inside her. He could not let it. He had enough presence of mind to remember that although he didn’t think he’d be able to tell someone his own name if they asked at that moment.

Keeping his fingers buried in her pussy, he slapped her hand away from his cock.

He needed to finish this, finish it now before he lost control and gave in. “Keep your hand on me,” he gasped. “On my shoulder.”

She obeyed, her hand a soft, familiar weight on his skin.

For another minute there were no sounds in the forest but his own frantic growls and her softer moans, which grew louder as she swelled under his fingers. His balls 77

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tightened—his cock grew even larger. The thing screamed to thrust into her, to take his hand away, to come inside her. He fought it as hard as he could, but deep down he was terrified he could not win.

At the last second, his body twisted toward her, against his will, but still too late.

She cried out, arching toward him, and his own orgasm rolled through him, expelling the force within him as he shot his seed all over the bare, tawny flesh of her stomach.

His howl of ecstasy and fury echoed through the trees around them.

They were still for a long moment, drawing great gasps of cool misty air. Dorand’s eyes focused on her skin, on the drops of his ejaculate decorating her torso. “Shit.”

His legs and arms like rubber, he bent down, hunting in the fallen leaves for the tshirt he’d discarded, and picked it up. Leaves and sticks clung to the damp fabric and it smelled of his sweat, but he didn’t care.

Aleeza jumped when he started scrubbing her off with the cold, wet fabric. “Wait.”

She tried to twist away, but he grabbed her arm and held her fast. “It can wait until I get a shower, can’t it? The cabin is close and—”

“No. Whatever…infected you, whatever that thing was, it might try to get back in through your skin. I don’t want that to happen.”

“But I don’t…” her eyes widened. “You think it could be transmitted by fluid?”

“Many of the ancient magics are, especially black magics.” He finished cleaning her and stepped back, balling the shirt up in his fist. “What the hell happened to you, anyway? What were you doing before this happened?”

“I was doing my job,” she snapped, stepping away and yanking her shirt back in place. Her cheeks were bright red. “I was investigating.”

“Yes, but what were you doing?”

She pulled up her jeans and fastened them. “I was looking at the runes, the ones found on Rimer Lorcan. I tried tracing—” She stopped, her lips still moving but with no sound coming out. “I traced the rune.”

He stared at her. “You traced a rune when you didn’t know what it meant? What the hell is the matter with you?”

“I didn’t say any words, I didn’t cast with intent!”

“Yeah? So what? You don’t know what this rune needs to activate it. How could you be so stupid? How could you put yourself at risk like that?”

“What do you care?”

The words stung more than he’d thought they would. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means why do you care if I put myself at risk? You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

“Yes, but I—” Why was she looking at him like that, like she suspected he would make some sort of declaration? Like she
expected
he would? Something haunted that look, something scared. He didn’t know what it was, but he wanted to find out.

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“We’re almost there. Once I find a place to park, we’ll be walking up the steps to the apartment in ten minutes.” Aleeza swallowed hard and pushed aside the nervousness that had plagued her from the moment Dorand settled into the passenger’s seat of her Vesta.

So she was bringing a man—a man she’d slept with—home with her for the first time. So what? He probably thought she was some kind of sex pervert at this point and had absolutely no intention of trying to take advantage of her. There had definitely been some dark magic afoot in what had possessed her in the woods, but she still couldn’t keep from feeling ashamed of herself for the fact that she should have sensed the power moving within her if nothing else.

“I’m not in any rush. I don’t have any responsibilities on coven grounds until tomorrow evening,” Dorand said, his voice completely calm and at ease.

“Oh…good.” Aleeza tried to ignore the possible implications of that statement. Did that mean he wanted to spend the night? That he planned to stay with her as she followed whatever leads they might uncover in her apartment?

She hadn’t planned on letting anyone help her on this investigation, especially not a potential suspect, but it seemed she needed Dorand. If the vibrations of this black magic were subtle enough to take her over without her knowledge, it would pay to have a member of the undefiled coven, and his magic, by her side. Dorand was the only one who knew her secret at the moment, making him by far her safest choice. The fewer people who knew, the better. Not to mention he had connections in the demonology department at Savior City University. They needed to know the meanings of the runes, the sooner the better.

It might still be three weeks to Samhain, but some sort of black power was already afoot. The only good thing that came from her possession in the wood was that now she and Dorand knew for certain they were dealing with demon-based magic. Only demon spells could live in the atmosphere, lurking in wait until they found a proper host. Like an “impure” witch. Aleeza swallowed. The thought brought to mind the question that had been plaguing Aleeza since they left the woods.

“Do you think it’s because I’m Gunera that the rune was activated?”

“Any witch could have activated it, but if it’s demon-based—”

“Only one of the three impish covens could host it.”

“Impish?” He turned to look at her and raised an amused eyebrow.

“The phrase ‘demon-infected’ does roll off the tongue, but…”

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“Right.” He laughed, and it made her smile. The sound was strangely, achingly familiar, bringing a rush of melancholy that wiped the smile from her face. “Perhaps. It could be the reason the murderer placed the victims on Amiantos land. We can’t serve as conduits for black magic, and we’ve never allowed non-Amiantos in our woods, not even Gunera spouses. So they could be fairly certain the spell would lie dormant until they wished it to become active,” Dorand said, echoing her thoughts exactly. “But that doesn’t explain why I was able to take the power from you and release it. I shouldn’t have been able to do that if it were pure-demon.”

“Maybe a hybrid? A magic-fast spell?” Aleeza asked as she cut in front of an aging station wagon to grab the last parking space at the end of her block. The car honked its horn, and the driver cursed a blue streak before he pulled down the road. For some reason the interaction was comforting. Amiantos men, sex, demon spells, they were new to her, but she’d been pissing off human drivers for years.

“By the gods. It’s a wonder you haven’t been killed before now.” Dorand looked a little pale and actually winced when she nudged the car in front of her with her bumper to help the Vesta wedge itself into the space.

“I’m an excellent driver.”

“You’re an aggressive driver.”

“I thought you liked aggressive women,” Aleeza said, the words flying from her mouth before she could think twice. Dorand paled further, and she wondered again where this instinctive knowledge of the man had come from. Stolen magic, lost soul or something else entirely, she planned to find out.

“It could be a hybrid spell, I suppose, but then you have to ask the question: Who has the ability to magic-fast with a demon?”

Dorand ignored her question, shooting her a pointed look that made her mind race to follow his line of reasoning.

“One of the impish covens.”

“One of the impish covens who can perform the fasting ritual,” Dorand corrected.

“They would have to be able to have sex,” Aleeza said, a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach. The Pandorian and Daiesthai covens had been extinct for centuries. That left the Gunera…

Dear gods, she wasn’t the only one. Someone else in her coven was free of the curse and they were aiding a demon in ritualistic death magic. The sinking feeling in her stomach shifted into full-blown nausea, and the shame she’d been feeling a moment ago grew even more profound.

“There could be another answer. It might not be one of your coven.” Dorand placed a comforting hand on her arm as she shut off the ignition.

“The other covens are extinct, Dorand. It’s a Gunera. Hell, I would be a suspect if I had freed myself of the spell sooner,” Aleeza said, trying to pull away from his touch. It affected her too deeply, bringing to the surface a need more than sexual. She wanted to 80

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lean into his arms and bury her face in his chest, wanted to take comfort from him in a way she had never let anyone comfort her. It scared her nearly as much as the demon magic.