Blood of the Demon (24 page)

Ordinarily, she pushed these memories into the recesses of her psyche, not wanting to relive anything about that day. Now, for the first time ever, she was going to talk about it. “I was walking home from school one day when a man drove up in his car and snatched me.”

Keegan gave a pained wince and touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded. She was strong enough to tell this story. With Keegan by her side, she might be able to do anything. “He took me to his house, locked me in the basement.”

“I had no idea. You must have been terrified when I took you.”

She shook her head, driven by the inexplicable urge to reassure him. “No, it wasn’t the same thing. I think... somehow I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. I sensed that you were a good man.”

Keegan looked away. He clearly didn’t believe that, and it broke her heart that he judged himself so harshly.

“He left me there in the dark for a few hours. When he came down again, he started to say horrible things about what he was going to do to me. He was so big, so scary.”

“You don’t have to tell me—”

“It’s okay. There’s a happy ending, I promise.” Taking a deep breath, she continued. “He tore my dress and... and touched me. In that moment, I just knew. It was like I felt this thing inside me, wanting to come out. I put my hands on him and closed my eyes, and just concentrated. It was so crazy. I felt the energy drain out of him. He collapsed to the ground almost instantly. I kicked him a few times to make sure he was unconscious, then ran to one of his neighbors’ homes. They called the police.”

What a relief to get that part of the story over with. Not only that, but she actually felt better now that she’d shared it. Maybe the wound from that day was finally healed. “They said he had a minor stroke, but I knew it was me. And I tested it a couple of times after, with guys who wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“You’re very brave.” Keegan’s tone made it clear he was a hundred percent sincere.

“Somehow, I have a feeling that what I went through was nothing compared to you, was it?” When he looked away and didn’t respond, she touched his cheek and gently nudged his gaze back in her direction. “Tell me, Keegan. About your father. What did he do?”

§

Keegan mentally traced the curves of Brynn’s face. She was so lovely, with her curious gaze trained in on him as she waited for him to speak. But where to begin? His past wasn’t something he liked to revisit, but she deserved to know. She
needed
to know.

“I told you before that Mammon is a scientist and was once an adviser to the Council, right?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, he decided during one of his cataloging missions to experiment with cross-breeding for personal gain. He was in the shifter world at the time and being the self-centered demon he is, decided to pick the most majestic and elusive race: dragon-shifters. He captured my mother and used drugs to keep her insensible, unable to shift. He raped her repeatedly, only letting her go when he knew she was pregnant.”

Her eyes full of unspoken emotion, Brynn touched his shoulder. It was soft and warm, and just the slightest touch of her fingers drove him crazy. How was that even possible?

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“I don’t remember her,” he confessed. “I only know the story because my father told me.” Coldly, and without a care in the world. His mother had been nothing but an instrument for Mammon. Just as he and his brothers were meant to be instruments. “Later, when I was almost a year old, Mammon returned to that world and took me from my mother. She struggled, and he killed her. He brought me back to Infernum with him, to be raised by a successive string of wet-nurses. He had a habit of burning through them.”

“But... but you said permission is needed to travel through the portal,” Brynn sputtered. “Didn’t the Council find out about him killing her? Didn’t they care at all?”

Keegan gave a humorless chuckle as he began pacing the length of the balcony. “They found out and disciplined him, but it was nothing more than slap on the wrist. Like I told you before, to the Council, evil is relative. They didn’t condone his actions, but he was valuable to them at the time, and so they let it slide.”

“How could they do that?” she asked, her voice thick with horror. “How could they care so little about a woman’s life? About a child?”

“They are what they are, Brynn.” He’d stopped trying to figure out their agenda ages ago. What was the point? “Later, on another world, he captured a faerie. An—”

“Oh my God,
faeries?
” Brynn took a shaky breath, visibly composing herself. “Sorry, keep going.”

“The faerie was an air sylph, to be exact, one of the most innocent species among the fae. After studying the race, he managed to ground her so she couldn’t dissipate into the air or flash away to escape.”

“Flash?” Brynn asked.

“Some faeries can manipulate space,” Keegan explained. “Travel from one spot to another in the span of an instant. They call it walking the fae path, or flashing. After Mammon captured the sylph, he raped her until she was pregnant, and later came back for the child. Taeg.”

“Whoa.” Brynn shook her head. “So even though you and Taeg are brothers, you’re very different, aren’t you?”

“In some ways,” Keegan said. “We’re all half-breeds, byproducts of Mammon’s crazy experiment. Dagan’s mother was a siren. Same story with him. But Ronin... he’s a little different. His mother was an angel.”

“One of the beings from your planet?”

“Right. She got away after he raped her, and she was harder to catch. But eventually, he tracked Ronin down, when he was a young boy. Ronin’s mother wasn’t there at the time. Mammon told him he would kill his mom unless he came to live with him, so he did. But he was always disobedient. He hadn’t grown up with Mammon like the rest of us did.”

“So Mammon beat him,” she finished.

Keegan nodded. “All the time.” It was what finally drove him to escape Mammon’s household with his brothers. He’d sworn to protect them from their father. To teach them to be the exact opposite of him.

Brynn tilted her head to the side. “What abilities do your brothers have?”

“Taeg can flash, as well as charm.”

She laughed. “I’m familiar with the latter, thanks. Wait, if he can flash, does that mean he can find us anywhere we go?”

“No, he has to know where we are.”

“Well that’s a relief. What else?”

“He can change from his normal form to air, and become intangible and invisible.”

“Invisible?” She let out a delicate shudder. “Creepy.”

But extremely useful, unless you were someone like Mammon who anticipated that and took steps to ground any air sylphs within a certain range. “Ronin can also grow wings, though they look very different from mine. He can heal himself or others by touch. He also has this really annoying ability to calm others with his presence.”

“I sort of noticed that.”

She was more perceptive than he’d even realized, then. “Dagan, like all sirens, can breathe underwater. He’s got an incredible singing voice, though he’d kill me if he heard me say that.” He let out a laugh. “He also... well, like sirens, he seems to have sex appeal that many women can’t resist.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed that.” She actually seemed surprised. Then she gave him a sheepish grin. “I suppose I was too busy looking at you to notice much.”

Her frank admission caught him off-guard. To his chagrin, his face heated, along with other body parts.

“Your father was trying to create his own army of people with special abilities.”

Very perceptive of her. Again. “That’s right. It threw a big wrench in his plans when we left instead of falling in line with him.”

“I’m sorry you had to grow up that way. But more than anything I’m so proud of the man you are in spite of it.”

His breath caught at her words. He moved away and turned to look out over the balustrade before he went and did anything stupid. Like lose his heart. “I’ve been thinking more about these dreams you had of my father. Have you had any other strange dreams since you met me?”

“Strange dreams?” she asked in a choked voice. “I guess I’ve had some vivid ones, but...”

She moved beside him and pushed his arm so that he was forced to turn and face her. Damn she was beautiful, with her flushed face and her slightly dilated pupils. Like a goddess.

“Wait a second. That first night after you took me from the gallery, do you think you might have been communicating with me through my dreams?”

That first night? He froze. His dreams that first night were nowhere near G-rated. “Why? What did you dream about?”

“You and me. In my bedroom?” She flushed, but rather than look horrified or embarrassed, she looked almost like... well, like she might be a little turned on.

“I had dreams like that, too,” he admitted. “You think it was telepathic communication?”

“I think so.” She cast her gaze downward and nodded fervently.

“It wouldn’t be the first thing Mammon held back from the Council.” Damn that bastard.

Her chest rose and fell as she took a deep inhale, then let her breath out slowly. Despite himself, his gaze was drawn downward. Did she have anything at all on under that tiny excuse for a robe? From the way it dipped between her breasts, he didn’t think so.

What would she do if he untied the sash of her robe? Just thinking about it made him grow hard. He wanted her, with an intensity he’d never felt before.

“What are we going to do about Mammon? About your brothers?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But I’ll figure something out.”

“No,
we
will,” she said, her eyes intense. “I don’t know how we ended up here or why you chose to save me, but I’m thankful for it. We’re in this together.”

Together.

Why did that very word make his heart rate accelerate and his limbs go weak? Devil, but he wanted her. Given the gravity of the situation, the last thing on his mind right now should be the creamy expanse of her skin visible above the neckline of her robe, or the little pearls of her breasts budding underneath the silky fabric. But he couldn’t help himself.

As if sensing his thoughts, she peeked up at him from underneath her long, curly lashes. “So what do we do now?”

“Now?” His voice came out raspier than he’d intended. “Now we rest here for a bit. You’re safe here.”

“Do you really think we’re safe?”

On an island in the middle of the ocean, almost a thousand miles from where they were last located? “Yes.”

Maybe not forever, but for now they were.

She shot him a seductive smile and just like that, his body was ablaze. “Then I know a few things we can do.”

“What?”

Brynn took a deep breath. “Keegan, make love to me.”

Chapter Twenty

If she weren’t so turned on, Brynn would have laughed at the shock evident on Keegan’s face. She wanted him. Knowing about his father, about the way he was conceived and raised, only made her want him more. He was a survivor. Selfless. And for right now at least, he was hers.

“Brynn,” he said in a choked voice, “I don’t know if that’s a good—”

She pressed her lips to his before he could finish his protest. Lord, he was warm. So incredibly warm.

He crushed her to his body with a muffled groan. Even through the fabric of his jeans, his erection pressed hot and hard against her side. She ran her hands from his neck down to his back. His muscles tensed and pulsed under her fingertips, a testament to just how taut he was right now. If ever a man needed loosening up, it was him.

She slipped her hands in between their bodies, fumbling with the zipper of his jeans. He broke away long enough to say, “Wait, I—”

“No more holding back.” She unzipped his jeans, rising to her toes for another kiss. Then, sliding her hands up his chest, she broke the kiss. She trailed her lips down to his throat and farther down to his waist, where she swirled her tongue around his belly button, much as he’d done to her before.

“Brynn,” he groaned.