Demon Forged (51 page)

He stopped in the hub, looked in each direction. With a firm step, he started toward the hall leading to the conference room.

“Do you know, Olek, that it is not just demons who use slippery words? Roman senators—politicians—did as well.”

“I do know.” He swung open the conference room door. “This must be difficult for you.”

She shook her head as she stepped inside. “No. It is you, and so it is easy.”

He closed the door, pushed her back against it. His palm ironed up her spine, burned up her nape, until his fingers buried in her hair. He braced his left hand on the door above her shoulder. He didn’t kiss her, but watched her with steadily darkening eyes.

Anticipation prickled her skin. Her nipples tightened. She tried to rise up, to bring her mouth to his, but his hand fisted in her hair. Her muscles tensed. Need unfolded through her as she imagined him holding her still, working into her with slow, measured strokes.

“Do you need oil, Irena?” His murmur swept over her ears in a velvety caress, and she became intensely aware of the liquid heat at her core.

“No, Olek.” She let her gaze challenge him. “I could take you in now.”

She felt him stiffen. He wanted to. But he apparently had something else in mind. His fingers still clenched in her hair, he slid his left hand down her naked back. “I will judge for myself.”

She would not argue. But—“Kiss me first.”

“I’ll kiss you when you’re ready.”

She snarled. Expectation silenced her when his hand pushed down the front of her leggings. His fingers teased the curls just above her clitoris. She lifted onto her toes. He delved deeper. And stopped.

She snarled again. “Do you want me to hurt you?”

He gave her a look that was both amused and speculative. “No. But I would not mind.”

Her laugh became a breathless gasp when his fingers sank into her, the heel of his palm pressing against her clitoris. He made rough circles with his hand.

Ecstasy spiraled outward. Irena’s knees weakened and she clung to his upper arms, her nails digging into tightly sculpted muscle. He pumped his fingers and her hips rocked, pushing against him, pulling him in. She tried to look down, to see. She only saw his face, carved into austere lines by his own need.

She could hardly gather the breath to say, “Don’t deny yourself, Olek.”

“I do not.” He glanced down. The heat of his skin against her, inside her, flared hotter. “Learning you pleases me.”

He’d already learned well. Though he’d left everything untouched but her sex, the tips of her breasts ached. Her skin stretched over passion-seared nerves, her clothes a constriction that bound and teased. Warmed by her body, the wooden door pressed into her shoulder blades. Beneath her hands, his biceps flexed with each thrust of his fingers, each clench of his fist tilting her head back farther.

But if he was determined to learn her, then she would help him. Back arched by the pressure of his hand in her hair, she vanished her shirt. Though she couldn’t see, she knew her nipples were tight beads. “I want your mouth on me.”

“
I
want my mouth on you.”

Then why did he not put his mouth on her? She shrieked in frustration. In response, he cupped her sex, lifted her. Her feet left the floor. His fingers drove deeper. She held on, shaking, working her hips into his hand, release just out of reach but flying nearer, nearer.

He buried his face in her throat. “You burn so hot.”

“You don’t?” Her voice was thin, trembling as she poised on the edge.

“I do. Too hot.” He moved his hand, his thumb strumming over the slick bundle of nerves. Her inner muscles clamped around his fingers, and the silken warmth of his voice roughened into a groan. “I’m almost insane with it. I will take you here, Irena, and here.” His fingers slipped from her center, teased farther back. “No part of you will I leave untouched.”

By the gods, she wanted that. She strained toward him. He plunged his fingers deep inside her again. His mouth covered hers, taking her cry as she writhed into orgasm. She dragged it out long, riding his hand.

Her breath raced against his lips when she was done. Releasing her hair, withdrawing his fingers, he carried her to the table. With a laugh, Irena saw that they’d replaced the temporary one with another of solid oak.

“I should have hit you,” she said when he seated her on the edge. “I feel like I might.” No, that was a lie. But she might yank on his hair.

“So I’ll lose my head?”

“Yes.” And take her over and over again.

“I will. But I had to make certain you were satisfied first. Because I cannot keep my head if I am kissing you”—he lowered his head to hers, plundered her mouth in a long, hungry kiss—“or tasting you. And I am hardly finished.”

He caught the tips of her heaving breasts with his teeth, his fingers. Anchoring herself with her hands flat on the table, she arched and lost herself in the rapture of his touch, his heated tongue. Had he truly thought he might not satisfy her? He only had to look at her, and she ignited.

“You are mad, Olek.”

“So I have told you.” He brought his face to hers. She read the tortured need in his eyes, but more lurked there, a ravenous predator waiting in the darkness. “And when I do this, Irena, I have no hope left of sanity.”

She looked down as the broad head of his shaft parted her cleft. They both groaned as she took him in, but she was the one to whimper when he drew back again. She glanced up. Olek’s teeth were clenched, his body trembling with effort, his gaze locked on her face. He stroked forward again.

And she saw. Yes, Olek had been burning.
Too hot.
But he hadn’t wanted to repeat Caelum; he hadn’t wanted to take her in a frenzy. And now he tormented them both by containing that heat. Slowly, he pushed deeper. Pleasure rippled outward from her core, tiny waves that tightened nerves, muscles, and skin in their wake, but she held herself still, held his gaze as her slick inner walls gave way to his invasion.

When he’d breached her to the hilt, she whispered, “You are mine.”

Fierce possession exploded through his psychic scent. He pulled at her legs, hooking her knees over his hips, forcing his cock deeper. Pleasure stabbed through her, a sweet blade. Irena’s elbows gave out and she fell back, flat against the table. Olek leaned in, braced his hands beside her shoulders. His gaze skimmed down her length, lingering on her arms, her breasts, and finally, where they were joined. She could tell that everything he saw pleased him.

When he looked back at her, the challenge in his eyes was unmistakable. “We will see who belongs to whom.”

She grinned up at him and tensed, ready to hold out against a hard fucking, but he came into her again in a liquid surge, a fluid roll of his hips. Her throat captured her surprised cry. He rocked into her again. Her hands scraped at the table, then clamped on his arms when his next surge pushed her along the smooth surface. He dragged her back to the edge, back over his cock, and the slippery heat of her arousal made each stroke a luscious glide, the wetness heightening the overwhelming sensation of every thick inch stretching and pushing within.

Deliberately, she tightened her inner muscles around his shaft, and gasped as that intimate clench set off tiny spasms through her core. Olek’s eyes half-closed before he locked his gaze with hers again.

Every stroke of his cock pushed her closer. Her hold slipped, and she clawed for orgasm, desperate to fling herself over, but it was all heat and wet without rough edges to give her purchase. One hard, sharp thrust and she would—

Olek gave it to her. She screamed and arched, her spine a rigid bow. Convulsions ripped through her. His face taut with need, Alejandro reared back and clamped his hands beneath her ass and lifted her to slam deep. Finally letting go, he fucked her with heavy strokes that had her tightening again, flying over. He stiffened, his hips jerked. His release pulsed hot inside her—but he was silent.

He fell forward, bracing his hands again. His chest heaved.

“I screamed,” she said breathlessly. Her legs were still around him; she couldn’t bring herself to let him go. “So I think I have won.”

His shoulders shook with quiet laughter. “If you have won, it is only because you can still think.”

Not very well. Remnants of their passion still sparked in her veins. Emotion filled her chest, her throat. She turned her cheek against the tabletop. Only a few days ago, she had been in a rage here. Only a few days ago, she’d refused to fuck his pride. Had he brought her here to make reparations for that? Did he know he didn’t have to? They had both made mistakes, but they did not have to pay for them forever.

“Why this room?”

His hand swept down her arm, his thumb tracing a winding pattern over her skin. “It is soundproofed, holds the sturdiest table, and the door is reinforced.”

So pragmatic, her Olek. “The others expect us to tear down the warehouse. You will disappoint them.”

“So be it.” His eyes smiled as he lowered his head, and he said against her lips, “You are mine, Irena.”

That they belonged to each other was far too obvious. And so her only response was to open her mouth for his kiss.

Three hours later and four thousand miles south, Irena sat beside Alejandro at another table, trying to remember that strangling a man was not the rational way to win an argument. Sensible, perhaps, but she didn’t think she could declare a real victory.

She’d accompanied him on his assignment to determine whether a drug lord who had rapidly been gaining power in Colombia was a demon—and if so, to slay him. On the flight from a Gate outside Caracas, she’d told Alejandro about her conversation with Michael, and Khavi’s predication that a dragon would escape Chaos. She’d watched his expression tighten when she showed him the images Michael had projected into her mind, of the demons riding the dragon as it torched the Earth.

After that, she’d been looking forward to killing a demon—more than she usually did. But the drug lord and everyone else at his jungle compound had been human. Upon seeing her disappointment, Alejandro hadn’t hidden his amusement, and asked whether she’d have killed the man if he’d been a vampire.

She’d answered with an unequivocal yes. Alejandro disagreed, stating that his decision to slay even a vampire drug lord would depend upon the circumstances, and the consequences of power changing hands in the region. She’d given him a look. He’d laughed and winged his way toward electric lights that clustered at the edge of the jungle. The village seemed half-tourist destination and half-trading post, with Mission-style hotels, thrown-together shops, and a marketplace set up with stalls that had only begun to close for the night.

At the north end of the village, an open restaurant had drawn her in with the music of a steel drum and a guitar, and the rich scent of grilling meat.

The kitchen was housed in a long shack that consisted of a stove, a worktable, and a bar, surrounded by three reed-thin walls supporting a tin roof, with a circle cut out for the stove-pipe. The open-fronted kitchen overlooked a patio that was nothing more than a cleared rectangle of swept dirt, its dimensions marked off by discarded tires. A string of flickering electric lights connected the broad-leafed trees that, during the day, would provide shade for the patrons. Most of the tables were filled—primarily by the hotel clients, Irena guessed by their new clothes, pale and sunburned skin, and the variety of languages they spoke. Her longstockings and brief shirt had raised a few brows among both tourists and locals, but they were quickly forgotten when Alejandro chose a table in the corner farthest from the kitchen to continue their argument.

With a surface made of rough-hewn planks cobbled together to form a circle and held up by toothpick-narrow legs, the small table didn’t seem sturdy enough to rest her elbows on, let alone the platter heaped with chorizo and fried steak, rice soaked in coconut milk, sweet corn bread, avocado and fried bananas—flanked by two bottles of tequila—but Irena did her best to lighten its burden. Over the next hour, she fed herself and Alejandro, offering him bites from her fingers, and while his mouth was occupied, used the opportunity to tell him all the ways he was wrong.

And while she steadily sipped her way through the tequila, relishing the fiery slide from her tongue to her stomach, Alejandro held her hand, kissed her fingertips, her wrist, trying to weaken her by adding seduction to his arguments.

She appreciated his technique very much. So much that she decided not to strangle him.

The night wore on. Her senses were intoxicated—by the burn of peppers and alcohol, the quiet heat of their argument, the lazy strum of the guitar, the lush fragrance of the jungle. By Olek, the darkness of his eyes and the music of his voice. By his liquid grace that made him appear at once completely relaxed and yet poised to strike, though seated in a spindly chair with uneven legs and a rigid back. She wanted to crawl into his lap, tell him to run his lips beneath her jaw, to feel the soft brush of his goatee over her skin.