Hellfire (29 page)

The blade flashed a quick
spark of blue, almost as if HellFire winked at him.

Alton stared at the scabbard.
“Though it would be nice if all this could happen without me having to die
first, don’t you think? I’d like to hang around and reap the rewards of
victory, if there actually is such a thing against demonkind.”

There was no response from the
sword.

Alton stared at the
tooled-leather scabbard and thought about their strange conversation. Then,
with one last look across the dark and silent desert, he went inside.

Alton paused in the bathroom
doorway after his shower. Ginny slept soundly, but she’d chosen the bed he’d
slept alone in the night before. Her arms were tightly wrapped around his
pillow, her face buried in its soft depths.

He wished he understood women
better, but he hoped it was a positive sign.

Standing here, warm and
relaxed from the shower, Alton opened his mind to Ginny’s and gently entered
without leaving any hint of his presence. He found her sleeping thoughts
unguarded, her dreams open and filled with questions.

He folded his arms across his
chest, leaned against the doorjamb, and wandered through her most private
images and ideas without any sense of trespass whatsoever. He’d gained a pretty
strong feeling of entitlement while he’d stood there beneath the biting spray,
his body aching with need for the darkly beautiful woman sleeping so soundly
just beyond the bathroom door.

Entitled,
because he’d finally admitted that she’d stolen his heart.
He wasn’t
about to let her get away with it—not without giving her own to him in return.

He wanted her smile—the one
she shared with him and no one else. He wanted her touch, wanted the warmth of
her long, lean body close to his. He wanted the joy of her laughter.

But even more, he wanted
Ginny’s trust.

It was more than a
feeling—instead, it was a powerful sense of the inevitable that Ginny was meant
for him, just as he was meant for her.

It seemed counter to the
lesson he felt HellFire’d been trying to give him, but at the same time, Alton
knew these potent feelings went deeper than merely satisfying his own desires.
He wanted to satisfy Ginny’s. He wanted her to stay, not only to fight demonkind,
but because she’d discovered exactly what she needed to fill all those empty
spaces in her heart, to make her life complete.

Somehow he had to convince her
he was the one. That only he could fill her emptiness, just as she filled his.

It wasn’t easy to admit he’d
never be whole without Ginny in his life. HellFire had forced the issue, but it
was something Alton had sensed from the very beginning, from the moment he’d
seen that beautiful woman with the tiger’s eyes fighting off a demon-possessed
concrete bear with nothing more than a scrap of wood. He’d known even then she
was special.

Of course, then his concerns
were a little bit different. He was still hung up on his rank in Lemurian
society and the fact he was immortal while Ginny wasn’t.

All that had changed pretty
dramatically when he’d been disowned the same day they’d discovered Ginny was a
descendant of Lemurian royalty.
Which meant that all the
issues keeping them apart weren’t issues anymore.
So why wasn’t he any
happier about it?

For one thing, that sleeping
beauty in his bed obviously didn’t feel the same way about him as he felt about
her, not if she was so willing to take her beautiful, shapely butt back to work
this weekend. Unfortunately, he didn’t think there was much he could do to change
the way he felt, and he had no idea how to convince Ginny.

What a mess. He’d never
imagined love could be so confusing, if that’s what this was really all about.
Was this love?
This sense that nothing in his life would ever
be right again if Ginny wasn’t a part of it?
The
powerful pressure that squeezed his heart and forced the air from his lungs
when he thought of her returning to Evergreen without him, when he imagined
going on in this battle without Ginny at his side?

He was incapable of imagining life
without her beside him. Not behind him, as a proper Lemurian mate would be, but
next to him, shoulder to shoulder, whether it be fighting demons or, if they
were ever so blessed, raising a child. When he thought of his future, he
thought of it with Ginny.

She was his future. She was
also very much his present.

What else could he call it, if
not love? What did Ginny call it? She was every bit as confused as he was. He
confirmed that little tidbit of information even now, tiptoeing through her
sleep-bemused thoughts.

Then he found something that
stopped him cold.

It wasn’t the job calling her
back to Evergreen—it was her fear of a future she didn’t understand. Her fear
of committing herself to a man who’d not promised her anything beyond the next
fight. No wonder she clung to the familiar security of her work. He’d offered
her nothing.

Nothing at
all.

Of course, what did he have to
offer a woman like Ginny?
His heart?
She already had
it, even though he’d not said the words. He’d hardly admitted them to himself.
She was, after all, Lemurian royalty and he was nothing more than the exiled
son of a pompous jackass.

Have you
already forgotten our conversation, Alton? It’s not all about you….

He almost laughed out loud.
Generally HellFire waited to be addressed before making comments, but in this
case, the warning was welcome, and right on the mark.

It wasn’t about him. Right now
it was all about Ginny. It was about her needs, her desires, and her fears.

He’d been brave enough to face
a demon-possessed gargoyle. Was he brave enough to accept that this horrible,
wonderful, terrifying feeling he had was love, and then face the woman he
loved? Brave enough to lay his heart out for her to mangle and stomp on as she
saw fit?

Nine hells, he hoped so.

He stepped back into the
bathroom and hung the wet towel over the shower rod. Then, naked, aroused, and
still damp from his shower, he quietly walked across the room and crawled into
bed beside Ginny.

She turned to him and rooted
against his chest as if she wanted to bury herself inside him. Alton wrapped
her slim body in his arms and drew her close. He tucked her head beneath his
chin and rubbed his cheek against her springy curls. Her scent was all warm
woman and invitation, but she slept so soundly he didn’t want to disturb her.

Nine hells…he was disturbed
enough, all by himself. How does a man with nothing tell a woman who has
everything—
who
is
everything—that he loves her? How does he convince her that she needs him every
bit as much as he needs her?

They’d been together such a
short time. How could he possibly trust desires he didn’t really understand?
He’d never felt this way about any woman before. He’d never known the same
sense of expectation—of desire or excitement—in his entire life. It wasn’t all
about sex, though he had to admit that the thought of burying himself in her
hot, wet sheath had him so hard he ached. No, it was something else altogether,
a feeling that the disquiet he’d lived with for most of his life had finally
found the calm he’d not even known to search for.

The feeling of having traveled
for countless miles before finally stumbling upon the perfect oasis, a flowing
spring that offered salvation to his weary soul and brilliant color to a life
lived in nothing more than shades of gray. It was such a simple thing, really,
now that he admitted it. Now that he allowed himself to accept it.

He loved Ginny. She gave him
hope. She was hope, and he’d felt hopeless for so very long.

Never again.

With that promise uppermost in
his mind, Alton closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.

The faces were pure evil.
Twisted, loathsome things coming at her from all
directions—horrific creatures beyond even her worst nightmares.

Demonkind.

She stood alone—all alone
except for DarkFire. She grasped her crystal sword in her right hand and
planted her feet firmly. She knew she had to fight, had to protect…someone. She
wasn’t sure whom she guarded, but she knew it was important.

Knew she could not afford to
fail.

She called out to DarkFire,
but the crystal didn’t respond. The voice was silent. The shimmering crystal
blade had gone dark and dull. She stared at the flat, dark blade, shocked by
DarkFire’s silence.

The creatures loomed closer.
Voice or no voice, she had to fight, but why couldn’t she lift her sword? Her
arm had no strength, her hand no sense of touch. As she stared at her fingers
clutching the hilt, DarkFire fell from her grasp. When the sword hit the
ground, the crystal blade shattered. The sound of breaking crystal echoed,
repeating over and over like waves against the shore growing louder, more
strident with each repetition.

She stood there, alone in the
darkness with a broken sword, an arm without strength, a hand that had failed her,
and she was more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. Terror washed over
her, fear unlike anything she’d ever known, but it wasn’t the advancing demons
that frightened her, or even the sword that lay in scattered shards of amethyst
across the dark floor. No. Her fear was based on something worse, something
beyond the monsters, more than shattered crystal.

She was alone. Isolated by her
own choice, set apart to fight or flee by her own design. DarkFire was
gone—destroyed now, her sentience lost because Ginny had been too cowardly to
commit. Even Alton had abandoned her and turned away in disgust. She’d proved
herself unworthy in so many ways. She no longer deserved to carry crystal. Even
worse, she’d shown herself unworthy of love.

Her life was empty and the
demons were coming, but she had no strength left to fight, no will to continue.

No strength, no help, no hope.
The demons were all around, but this was the choice she’d made. She’d done this
to herself.

She’d chosen this path. Chosen
it all
on her own
.

Ginny lay there in the
darkness as reality slowly pulled her free of the nightmare. Her arm was numb,
probably from sleeping on it. Something big and heavy held her down. She should
have been terrified, but she was warm and cozy and it was still dark in the
room. Instead of fear, she felt protected as she rubbed her face against a
solid, warm wall of…Alton?

Blinking, Ginny
struggled
the rest of the way out of sleep, away from a
dream of horrific creatures and fears that were even more terrible to imagine.
Thank goodness Alton was here, his
body close
and
warm, the weight of his leg across her thighs the physical proof he’d not
really turned away.

Only in her
nightmare, in the deepest fears of her subconscious mind.

But what of
DarkFire?
Would the sentience in her sword abandon her if she refused
the challenge she’d been offered? What kind of coward walked away from sentient
crystal, from a battle that was nothing less than a holy war pitting the powers
of good against the encroachment of pure evil?

I did. I
have.

Good Lord.

No wonder Alton was disgusted
with her.

Or was he? Would he be here
beside her if he didn’t still like her at least a little? What if he didn’t?
What if he’d finally realized what a fool and a coward she really was?

She’d never really thought of
herself as a needy person, but right now, Ginny needed. Forget pride, forget
fear,
forget
everything that might deter her from her
goal. She needed Alton, but she wasn’t sure how he felt about her.

Crap, she wasn’t even certain
how she felt about him! She liked him a lot, but she didn’t know if she loved
him. Did that really matter? She didn’t have any promises that either of them
would live through the coming battle against an unthinkable foe, but if her
dream had taught her anything, it was that she had to get her priorities
straight.

DarkFire had nailed it
perfectly. There were other women who could handle her dispatcher’s job at
Shascom, but only Ginny could wield DarkFire. Only Ginny Jones had the strength
and the ability to carry the dark crystal sword, the only sword they knew of
that showed demons in their true guise.

It was time to stand up in
spite of her fears. Time to act like a grown-up, which meant she must accept
DarkFire’s challenge. Somehow she needed to find the strength to face the evil
that was coming, to stand against the threat of demonkind.

She needed the strength to
take a chance, to take control of her own future. But first, she had to admit
that, for all her bravery and all her tough words, she needed the man who slept
beside her.

It was definitely time for
that.

The question was
,
could she open herself enough to allow him inside those
private recesses of her heart?
Inside her mind?
No man
had ever touched her heart, not like this. No man had ever made her feel needy
and uncertain. It terrified her even as she felt tempted by the strength of his
arms, seduced by the honesty of his character and by the innate goodness of the
man.

He treated her as an equal
even though he came from a world that looked at women as lesser beings. He’d
never tried to hold her back, had never asked her to be less than she was. He’d
been proud of her fighting strength, proud of her ability to carry crystal. Not
once had he treated her as if she didn’t matter.

Because, to
Alton, she did matter.
She mattered greatly. No one—man or woman—had ever
held her in such high esteem. She had no doubt of that, but was it enough?
Enough to change her life, to give up all she’d worked for, what she was
familiar with?

Not if
you’re a frickin’ coward, it’s not.

Is that what this was all
about? Was she just too big a coward to take a chance on whatever was building
between them?

Ginny
Jones isn’t afraid of anything.

Well, not usually, but this
was all new, unexplored territory. Not just fighting demons—this meant accepting
love.

Giving
herself
over to love.

There. She’d labeled it, the
thing that had her so freaked out. Was it fear of falling in love that held her
back? If that was it, she was a bigger coward than she’d thought.

She drew in a deep breath and
inhaled his scent, the warm, sleepy smell of shampoo and soap and man. Tears
filled her eyes, unexpected and unwelcome. What the hell was wrong with her?

“Ginny?”

Alton’s drowsy mumble tickled
her ear.

“Hmm?”
She nuzzled his chest and quickly blocked her thoughts. Damn. Had he been
snooping around in her head?

“Are you okay?”

His words were clearer, his
body suddenly taut, muscles tense and hard.

“I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
She forced herself to relax.

His long fingers stroked along
her flank, over the curve of her buttock. Her hips tilted of their own
volition, bringing her belly up close against his rising erection. He fit
tightly against the swell of her stomach, a burning brand she couldn’t
ignore—didn’t want to ignore.

“I’m awake now.” He nuzzled
the soft skin beneath her jaw and nipped her throat with sharp teeth. “I want
you, Ginny. I need to be inside you. I want to taste you and touch you and make
love to you.”

He punctuated his soft
whispers with kisses that traced the swell of her breast and ended when his
lips fastened around her tightly puckered nipple. He sucked hard, drawing it
into his mouth.

She arched her back and cried
out. His teeth scraped the sensitive tip and his fingers stroked her flank. He
moved to her other breast, suckling and licking, pulling the nipple painfully
tight between his full lips. She concentrated so intently on the way his mouth
ravaged her breast, she lost track of his roaming fingers.

But not for
long.

His tongue pressed her nipple
against the roof of his mouth at the same time his long fingers slipped beneath
the elastic waist of her panties and slowly but certainly plundered the cleft
between her legs.
Two long fingers, stroking deeply inside
while his thumb made tiny circles over her clit.

She whimpered as he teased
her, as he showed her what her body was capable of feeling.
All
so new, so unbelievable.
She wasn’t like this—she’d never been this
responsive, her body so sensitive, her heart so unguarded. His mouth and lips,
teeth and tongue, and probing fingers took her to the precipice and over before
she even realized what he’d done. Gasping, arching her back, Ginny pressed her
breast against his mouth and clamped her legs around his wrist.

Her whimper became a cry, the
cry a soft scream of surprise and completion. Writhing within his tender hold,
she didn’t know whether to press close or pull away from so much, so fast. He
held her there, caught in the midst of an orgasm that wouldn’t end, carrying
her through wave after wave of sensation until her body shuddered with its
final release.

Not until her spine lay flat
against the mattress once more did Alton release the pressure on her nipple and
gently lick the sensitive tip. He eased his fingers out of her, swirling them
in damp circles over her sensitive clitoris as he slowly pulled his hand out of
her panties.

Her hips jerked in response.
Alton’s laughter was strained when he leaned close and kissed her mouth. Then
he rolled away and she heard a sound that could only be Alton ripping his way
into one of the boxes of condoms. A moment later he rolled back to her, hugely
erect, fully sheathed.

She expected him to penetrate
her immediately, but he scooted down between her legs and slipped his long arms
beneath her thighs.

Ginny raised her head and
glared at him. “What are you doing?”

He looked up and smiled at her
from between her raised knees. “Something I’ve wanted to do since the first
time I saw you.” His palms slipped under her butt.

She tried to shove her knees
together. His wide shoulders held them apart. He leaned close and blew a soft
little puff of air over her damp and swollen folds. Her hips jerked in
response.

“Hold still.” He was laughing
softly. Ginny tried to squirm out of his grasp but he held her in place without
any effort at all.

Held her in place, dipped his
head low, and slowly ran his tongue in one long lick between her legs. She
giggled, embarrassed and flustered and a little bit afraid. She had no idea
what to expect, how to act, what to do. He swirled his tongue around her
sensitive little nub and then speared her deep, licking and suckling as if he
loved every taste and all the different textures of her feminine parts.

No one had ever done this with
her before. No man had tasted her so intimately. She should tell him to stop.
Really.
It was too personal, too much, too soon. She hardly
knew him. She’d never know him well enough to allow him to do this.

He licked and sucked and
explored with teeth and tongue and lips, and she wanted to die. She should be
embarrassed. She was embarrassed…she was so close to coming and his tongue felt
so amazing that if he’d suddenly decided to quit she was sure she’d scream and
pull him back down between her thighs to finish what he’d started.

Then he wrapped his soft lips
around her clitoris and sucked, exactly the way he’d suckled her nipple.

Ginny screamed. Arched her
back, thrust her hips forward, and screamed again. Laughing softly, Alton moved
over her body, covered her mouth with his and she tasted him and more—she
tasted herself.

Her first thought should have
been
how gross, how disgusting,
but it wasn’t.
Not at all.
This was something shared, a taste so intimate
she wanted to cry, a climax so perfect she sobbed with the pulsing, quivering
ripples still racing through her body.

Once again Alton shifted his
position, moved his long, lean body over hers, and pressed the broad head of
his penis against the mouth of her vagina. Slowly he surged forward, filling
her, stretching her inch by full inch, sliding along sleek, sensitive muscles
until he was buried deep inside.

He held perfectly still,
giving her body time to adjust. He was huge and the size of him made her burn,
but she remembered when they’d done this before, how the burn had quickly eased
and the pleasure of his size and his skill had taken her places she’d never
expected to go.

She’d thought it could never
be better than it had been that night. She was wrong. This time she felt a
connection to Alton she’d not known before, a sense that they were meant to be
together, meant to love each other.

Almost a
sense of destiny.

If only she
knew for certain how he felt.
His muscular body covered hers, warming
her, protecting her. His long, silky hair draped over them both and tickled her
shoulders and breasts like a thousand tiny fingers across her skin, enclosing
the two of them in shimmering golden strands.

He turned her on, he made her
feel safe, and she knew without a doubt she wasn’t going back to Evergreen. Not
yet. Not until this fight was finished. Not as long as Alton needed her by his
side.

Slowly rolling his hips, he
stroked her, deep and full, and her body rippled and clenched around him,
holding him close, loving him. Still, there was a sense of something missing, a
feeling there should be more between them. A connection she’d somehow missed.
Slowly she raised her lids, looked into his beautiful emerald-green eyes, and
knew exactly what that was.