Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (56 page)

“Do you wish me to be merciless as I take my pleasure?”

Heart pounding, she rasped, “Yes.”

“I already have been, Andromeda. I should make myself smaller for you, make it easier. But you take me as I am. And I can’t give that up.”

Already deep, he pushed harder against her, spreading her knees wider. Crying out, she took him to the hilt, her senses exploding in a dizzy whirl, the roughness of his voice her only anchor.

“And I can’t give up the opportunity to know your response, to feel you around me. Holding me inside you, so tight.” Palm cupping her chin, his fingers splayed across her cheek, his thumb pushing between her lips. “With your wetness all over me—and wetter every time you come. Every time you do, that is for my pleasure. Because I can’t wait to lick it up when you’re done.”

Oh, God. Beyond words, she bit his thumb, her body shuddering.

With a groan, he withdrew—his hand still at her jaw, the other hard at her hip. Sliding out of her, then hauling her back over his steel length. Taylor moaned with helpless ecstasy, and knew he was watching her body yield to his endless penetration. She’d expected a hard fuck but it was slow, slow. Relentless. And she’d expected to beg for every orgasm, but that wasn’t Michael’s idea of merciless. His merciless was to bring her more pleasure than she could bear.

So that he could give it to her. So that he could watch her come, again and again.

His fingers slipped around her hip to her clit. Bucking against his hand, she cried out even before the vibration started. And he was merciless in this, too. Fucking her faster now, her mind a haze of pleasure as she rolled from one orgasm to the next. Michael bent over her, surging into her with sharp, hard thrusts, and she went wild against him, determined to push him over until his teeth in the back of her neck sent her reeling.

Spinning, like teleportation. But it was just Michael, sliding out of her body and gently turning her over. Then sliding down.

Licking her up.

Completely spent, lethargy unlike anything she’d ever known made her limbs feel like golden liquid, as if she were made of nothing but the pleasure that coursed through her body with every stroke of his tongue.

But her heart was heavy, and she wanted to cry. “Michael.”

His reply was a hungry groan.

His hunger, never ending. And she couldn’t satisfy it.

“Michael.” She tugged at his short hair. “Stop.”

He did, kissing his way up her belly as he rose over her, then her breasts, taking a long, slow path.

God. She loved him so much. No wonder this was killing her.

He must have sensed it. His big hands cupped her face. Looking down at her with amber eyes, he swept his thumbs across her cheekbones. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. But you never let yourself go.”

“I told you I would not.”

“But . . . you’ve come before. Maybe not in a long time, but before.”

“Yes.”

That was real pain. Not just an ache, but a slash through her heart. She pushed at his shoulder, tried to roll him off of her.

But he only went over and pulled her atop him. His hands caught her waist, held her in place. “I do not lie when I say that you give me more pleasure.”

“Okay, but obviously it’s not
enough
pleasure. Because I’m trying to get you there, too. But I lose it on the way. I just go wild for you—and I want you to feel the same way.”

“I do, Andromeda. You affect me as no one else ever has. And I want you more than anyone from my past. Infinitely more.”

“Then why do you hold back?” Frustration sharpened her voice. Because he’d said he was hers.
Hers.
But he wouldn’t give her that. “I thought you would actually take me before you left. Like, fuck me right there against the stone, and come inside me. But when you returned, it was like a wall had gone up inside you. Like everything changed while you were gone.”

And something was wrong. His body had tensed beneath hers, and the light in his eyes dulled. Not to black, not flat. But as if something within him was burning out.

Pain and fear suddenly gripped her heart in a tight fist. “Michael? Look, I’m not saying this was bad. You blew me away. Sex has never been like this for me. But I’m not here with you just to come. I could get that from a vibrator. But I’ve never felt this way about anyone and I just thought . . . you would want more, too.” She’d been so sure that he did. So what was wrong? “Are you afraid of jumping into the abyss? Of that destruction when you hit bottom?”

Oh, God. She recognized the torment on his face, the frozen wasteland it made of his beautiful features. His silence was terrifying her.

Desperate, she cupped his jaw, tried to warm him with her hands. “It’s okay. We’ll try again. Maybe not this week, because so much is going on. But maybe the next. Heck, maybe we’ll just practice fifty thousand times. I wouldn’t mind.”

His throat worked. When he spoke, his harmonious voice was a painful scrape. “We won’t have fifty thousand times. Or next week.”

“What?” Heart pounding, she slid off him and onto her knees. The finality in his statement had been unmistakable. This was ending. “Because of Lucifer?”

Wordlessly, he shook his head and sat up. For a second, his wings blocked her vision of him, then he was standing beside the bed wearing his tunic and loose pants.

Feeling suddenly naked, utterly vulnerable, she formed a big shirt. “Do you know something we don’t? Did Lucifer already create the portal?”

“No. We still have to stop the sentinels. And if we don’t, we will stop him from breaking through to Chaos.” His body rigid, Michael closed his eyes. “But I won’t be with you again after that.”

I won’t be with you again after that.
Each word was a bullet through her chest. She shook her head, too stunned to feel the pain yet.

But she knew the hurt was coming soon. “Even if we win?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

A struggle seemed to move across his expression, as if it were a battle just to speak. “I will be leaving.”

“Where?” Her mind raced, trying to understand. Where would Michael go that he couldn’t easily come back from? “Or do you mean leaving the Guardians?”

“Yes.”

“Forever? Or just taking a break?”

“Forever. As soon as Lucifer is stopped. As soon as you are safe.” His voice had flattened, and now his face was like stone. “You will be fine. You have many good friends so you won’t be alone.”

But she wouldn’t have him. “So why won’t you stay? Are you bound by a bargain? Is this what we talked about the first morning after I woke up, that after a few weeks you would never bother me again? Because I never thought of that as a bargain. I even said I wasn’t agreeing. That I’d just think about it.”

God. She was babbling, on the verge of begging, but she didn’t try to dial it back. She didn’t care what it took to keep him. She couldn’t lose him now.

Then Michael shook his head, and the cold began settling in, freezing everything inside her. Her chest was a cold, solid ache, like ice waiting to shatter. She saw the bleakness on his face and knew what he’d say next.

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Well, you fucked that up.” Suddenly angry, she gestured to the bed. “What was all this, then? Did you know you’d be leaving before you fucked me?”

There was nothing in the blackness of his eyes now. No pain, no regret. Just emptiness.

“Yes,” he said, and the word was as dark and as empty as his gaze. “I’ve spent enough time as a Guardian. I want to live my own life, with a new face and a new name, and try to learn as much as I can.”

So he was just going to go off and leave all of them behind. Maybe he deserved to. He’d saved the world a thousand times over. If anyone deserved his own quiet life now, it was him.

But
she
didn’t deserve this. “How long ago did you decide to go?” Her voice cracked. “How long?”

“Since before you woke.”

Before she woke?
“And not even a full day passed before you offered to please me in my bed. You knew
then
?”

“I knew I’d be leaving. I wanted to carry some of you with me.”

Memories of her. Well, that explained why he watched her so damn carefully. “So let me guess the rest of it. You never thought it would go this far. You only thought that, maybe, we’d put Caelum back together. You’d apologize, maybe I’d forgive you, maybe we’d end up in bed and you’d make me come so I wouldn’t feel so bad about what you did to me in Hell. But you never intended for me to feel anything for you. Is that how it went?”

His single nod was a spear through her heart, cracking the ice surrounding it. Beneath her, Caelum trembled. Michael’s body stiffened as the ground shifted under his feet.

His face blurred in front of her. “Well, thanks for the best fuck of my life. Now fuck off.”

His gaze flew to hers, eyes no longer empty but burning. “Not yet,” he said hoarsely, and the coppery scent of his blood filled the air. “Not like this. There’s still a little time.”

“There’s no time left, Michael. Not for you and me. You want to leave? I want you to fucking go.” Behind her, a column cracked. “You should have told me that ‘I am yours’ had an expiration date.”

“It doesn’t. I will always be yours.”

Her hysterical laugh smashed through the courtyard like a wrecking ball, splitting her new columns in half. Marble toppled and fractured into ruins on the ground.

Built with hope and happiness. Then shattered.

“Oh, my God.” The tears were starting, ice melting from around her shattered heart, streaming from her eyes. Bending over against the pain, she clutched at her chest. “Oh, my God.”

The realm shook with every word. The ground buckled, ruins cracking and toppling over each other again, the destruction an expanding roar through the city.

“Andromeda.” He held out his hand, the harmony of his voice an agonized plea. “Let me take you away from here.”

“Just leave now.” She was never letting him touch her again. “As you said, I’ll be fine.”

He started toward her. “Then let me protect you—”

He’d taught her to protect herself.
Jab and lunge.
The sword leapt into her grip. He didn’t turn aside but froze, the tip of her blade an inch from his chest. The realm was suddenly deadly silent.

Everything inside her was screaming, but the words that came out were hard and even. “Every block of stone in this realm could crush my body and it would hurt me less than you just did. So if you want to protect me, then leave me the fuck alone. As you should have done when I woke up.”

His features a desolate mask, Michael stared at her over the sword. His obsidian gaze searched her face, as if seeing as much as he could all at once, then swept down her length. His chest rose on a long, shuddering inhalation. Then he vanished, and all that was left of him was the lingering scent of his blood.

Taylor folded to the ground and let herself break.

After deciding to become a vampire, Joe Preston had made an effort not to miss a single sunset or sunrise, because after his transformation he wouldn’t see another one again. He did all right with the sunsets. But sunrises could be a bitch sometimes, especially when he’d been up half the night, chasing down four people who were likely on their way to becoming murderers.

That morning, Joe overslept. The sun was streaming through the gap in his bedroom curtains when he woke up—still wearing his suit pants and work shirt, which hadn’t happened in a while. Not since Carolyn.

Carolyn. Shit.

He glanced at the clock and hauled his ass out of bed, scrubbing his hand over his face to clear away the lingering sleep. His palm rasped over a thick growth of whiskers. Due at her house for breakfast in five minutes, but he wasn’t getting out of here without a shower and a shave.

And he didn’t want her sitting around unprotected while she waited.

At the front door, he swiped the blood from the three symbols, then stepped outside into the frosty morning and grabbed his paper from the porch. He stood on the cold boards in his bare feet, his gaze sweeping the street. He knew this neighborhood, the cars, the people. Nothing out of place. Not that he would see a demon coming. But the demons weren’t who a human had to worry about.

An icy breeze touched the back of his neck. Jesus. Mornings this cold weren’t fit for anyone.

He went back inside, locking the door. Carolyn would have lowered the shielding spell around her place now, expecting him to knock. He called her from his cell phone, instead, and walked into the kitchen.

And remembered that goddamn stove.

“Joe,” Carolyn answered. As always, the warm sound of her voice made him grin at nothing. “You’re not here, so does this mean you’ve been called to the job?”

Once a cop’s wife, always a cop’s wife. And
his
wife, soon enough. He slapped a pod into the coffeemaker, which had to be the best damn invention in the history of the world. That and the microwave.

“It means that I took an extra few winks of beauty sleep. I’m running late.”

“Hmmm. I suppose that’s a decent excuse. How much prettier are you?”

“I can give Ames-Beaumont a run for his money.”

“Ooooh. Send a picture.”

He grinned again. “You’ll see when I get there. Give me a half hour.”

“And put up the shield again?”

God, he loved the smart ones. “Yep. And any people you don’t know show up, you don’t let it down. Even if they’re bleeding.”

He’d known demons to pull every trick in the book. If the humans were being helped along by the sentinels, they might pull the same.

“Drifter came by a half hour ago and gave me pictures of those four.”

“Good.” And they both needed to get the shield up again. “All right. I’ll see you in thirty. Love you.”

“Love you.”

He grabbed his coffee and returned to the front door. A pin stuck out of the frame beside the symbols. Poking his finger, he set the spell again, then made his way to the bathroom. The phone went on the toilet tank, within easy reach of the shower. The coffee went next to the sink, the chain of his personal alarm over the door handle, then he turned the faucet to hot.

Eyes closed, he stood under the spray. A cold draft snaked through the shower curtain, and he tipped his head back, groaning at the thought of yet another thing to fix before Carolyn moved in. But a drafty shower wouldn’t do.

Though, on the other hand, maybe it would. Vampires didn’t take hot showers. They didn’t even like warm rooms. So maybe he’d just let that draft blow all it wanted, and save himself a bundle.

He’d call it a perk. Some fancy, cold-air spa.

But it was a damn shivering nuisance now. The draft slipped through again and he shut off the spray, grabbed a towel, and scrubbed himself down. At the sink, he chugged down the coffee before brushing his teeth, grimacing at the slightly sweet taste. He’d used the wrong damn pod again.

He swiped his hand across the foggy mirror and froze.

His alarm was gone.

For a long second, he stared at the door handle in the reflection. His emergency alert had been hanging from the chain that he wore around his neck. Now it wasn’t.

Heart thumping, he snared his phone. No service. Because the goddamn shield was up.

Then how the hell had they gotten in?

His skin prickled. There’d been a breeze on the porch. A demon, rushing past him?

If it was just a demon, then he’d be all right. But he wasn’t taking any chances. The demon could have taken down the shield and let someone else inside the house while he was in the shower, then put the shield up again so that Joe couldn’t call for help.

His weapon was in the next room. A bullet might not hurt one of the bastards much, but Joe would be glad to shoot it anyway. Phone in hand, he started for the hall.

But his vision wavered on his first step. His legs were heavy, sluggish, and the sweetness of the coffee was still thick on his tongue.

Something clattered against the floor.

Joe looked down, and forever passed before he recognized his phone on the tiles. Because he’d dropped it. Just slipped out of his fingers. And then he was on the floor, too, thinking that it was just sensible to lie down right now, that he hadn’t gotten enough sleep after all.

The bathroom door pushed open. Cold air swept in, followed by a tall figure with white wings. A Guardian. Thank God. Except that when the winged figure bent over him, his eyes glowed crimson.

Softly, the sentinel
said, “My lord Lucifer wants to know—are you laughing now?”

And then the world spun away into the dark.