Demon's Triad (24 page)

Anna J. Evans & December Quinn

what form the child may take on the outside. I can’t let that happen to you. You can’t let that happen. You have to leave him. He can’t ever touch you again.”

Aleeza shivered, her chest tight. All these years she’d wondered why Gunera were cursed. There was no pleasure in discovering the truth, only a cold pit in her stomach.

She could almost hear the screaming women, the crying men, parents whose minds and hearts were ravaged by the innocent act of creating a child. Or what would have been an innocent act, had demons not played their part. Her flesh crawled.

A noise at the door made her turn her head. Ferrin stood there, his face white. She didn’t know how long he’d been listening but it was obviously long enough.

“Ferrin…”

“He needs to wait outside,” Mona said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t have a monster in my house.”

Aleeza snapped her head around to glare at her mother. “Mona!” Dammit, just when they’d been gaining some ground with their relationship, she had to show her nasty side.

When she turned back, Ferrin was gone.

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The little park had seen better days, but the stiff grass still felt cool and good under his heated skin as he sank to the ground. More than anything he wished he was home, back in the forest with his family.

Maybe they weren’t his blood, but they were his family nonetheless. They would never have looked at him the way Aleeza’s mother had.

Not that he blamed her. She didn’t know him, and he was screwing her daughter.

The unhappy accident of his birth was merely icing on the cake of dislike he knew had been baking from the second she laid eyes on him.

So to keep from getting angry, he’d left. They obviously needed information from Mona. Maybe if he wasn’t there, Dorand and Aleeza could get it. That was the most important thing, to stop the demon from gaining power, from achieving whatever end it desired. What Ferrin wanted, what he could never have…it was secondary. He had to remember that. Lives were at stake, maybe even his own if he couldn’t force this black power back into hibernation.

From where he lay, he could just see Mona’s ramshackle front porch. This was as good a place to wait as any.

Time moved slowly. Birds chirped, children laughed, cars passed. A couple of men in ill-fitting black sweatshirts ran around the perimeter of the park, jogging, watching him—

Ferrin sat up, the muscles in his arms and back tensing. The “joggers” looked exactly like the guys who’d attacked Aleeza yesterday. They’d either picked an awfully convenient place for a daily constitutional or they’d been following them. Ferrin knew which he was betting on.

He pulled himself to a crouch and waited, resting on the balls of his feet. The men had disappeared behind some bushes. When they re-emerged, he’d be ready. There was no way he would let them reach the house if that’s where they were headed.

Under his breath he muttered the first words of one of his favorite attack spells. It was designed to arrest, not harm, and even though the thought of harming those men brought a cruel smile to his lips, he needed them awake and able to talk.

Something moved, a black-hooded head appearing from the hedge. He focused his power and shouted “Recanto!”, the last word of the spell.

The man went down. Where was the other one?

Quickly chanting a protection spell for himself, Ferrin got up and starting edging toward his fallen enemy. He could keep the man paralyzed and still get the information he wanted.

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Footsteps thundered along the grass behind him. He turned, raised his hand, opened his mouth to speak but it was too late. There were five of them, and even as Ferrin’s spell hit one, the others cast at him, breaking through his magical shields, knocking him flat into swirling, silent darkness.

* * * * *

“Ooh, you’re more handsome than I thought you’d be. What a pleasant surprise.”

Ferrin opened his eyes to find a woman smiling at him, familiar dark eyes shining in her beautiful face. He started to sit up, but stabbing pain in his head forced him back down. “Who the hell are you?”

The woman’s smile widened. “Just a friend.”

“My friends don’t usually…” he stopped. Had she captured him or was she his rescuer?

Captor, he guessed, since he was naked on her couch. He resisted the urge to cover himself with his hands. Let her have a good look if that’s what she wanted. “Were those guys your goons?”

She dipped her head. Her smile did not waver. Something about her made Ferrin ache. Not his muscles or his skin, although certainly he’d felt better. But something inside him, a yearning. The closest feeling he’d ever had to this was when he’d watched Aleeza and known he couldn’t have her.

But no, that wasn’t it either. This woman felt familiar, the way Aleeza did, but Aleeza didn’t make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. There was something wrong with this women, something…dark hidden beneath her beauty.

“My name is Kali,” she said. The name whispered from her lips into the room, echoing in his head. “I want to help you.”

“The only help I want is help getting out of here. No, wait. You know what? I don’t want any help. I can get out of here myself.” He tried to sit up again, ignoring the pain.

Stars swam in front of his eyes. He clenched his teeth together to keep from groaning.

Kali laughed. The sound crawled up his spine. From a table by the couch on which Ferrin lay she picked up a small, steaming cup and held it out to him. “Drink this.”

“No thanks.”

“It’s just tea,” she said. She lifted the glass and took a sip, opened her mouth a little so he could see she was indeed drinking, and swallowed. “It will make you feel better.

You’re probably a little dehydrated. You’ve been asleep for hours.”

“How many hours?” He took the glass from her but did not drink, afraid of her answer.

“Fifteen or so,” she said.

Shit. Dorand and Aleeza…did they think he’d stormed away angry? That he was sulking now, hiding? Why had he left them to begin with? Had he wanted to punish 126

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them, to…no…he’d only wanted to give them some privacy, wanted some of that privacy for himself. Wasn’t that right? By the gods, he could hardly remember. His head ached.

He wondered where they were now. Were they angry? Were they hurt?

Were they looking for him?

And most importantly, did they give a shit where he’d gone, or had they skipped off to bed together, their sanctioned pairing making it even easier to forget him?

He didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t help that a part of him did. His stomach clenched, and he forced down the tea in an attempt to still it.

“I need to go.”

“Rushing back to that Gunera woman so quickly?”

“What?”

She stood up gracefully, her lithe body covered by a loose red silk wrap. Ripe breasts strained against the fabric, hard nipples creating sharp points in the softness.

Ferrin didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help it. His cock shifted. It knew what Kali was after and wanted it, even though the rest of him did not.

She noticed his beginning arousal and slipped the robe off her shoulders. “Ferrin.

I’ve been watching you. I’ve been…wanting you.” Her musky fragrance assailed him while the sight of her soft curves made his mouth water.

He didn’t want her. He wanted Aleeza. He just wished his cock would get the message.

“There’s nothing special about me.”

“You know there is,” she said. “Daiesthai man. Don’t you know what you were made for? How good it could be?” She ran her right hand up her body from thigh to breast, stopping to rub a circle over her nipple on the way up. Her nails were long and red, filed into sharp points. As he watched she scraped one along the smooth skin of her breast and left a mark.

Ferrin swallowed. There was no hiding his erection, no matter how much he wished it wasn’t there.

“You’ll never be able to have what you want from the Gunera woman. Not with your third there. You’ll never be able to take her, to make her bruise and bleed, to feel your own blood pouring over your skin…this is the Daiesthai way. I know what you need, Ferrin. I can give it to you if you let me.”

“I’m not interested.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think they’re waiting for you? Do you think they’re not taking this opportunity to fuck each other’s brains out?” She put her arms on either side of his face, leaning over him. He tried to slide back, away from her, but it only brought his face closer to hers. “Think of it, Ferrin. The two of them, their bodies twisting together, your brother’s cock deep, deep inside the heat of her cunt…just the way they were when you saw them that first night.”

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“How did you know about that?” He tried to shut out the image she described, but he couldn’t. His erection jerked. The sane part of him knew he should get out of here.

He didn’t want to touch this woman, didn’t want to listen to this.

But he was trapped by her eyes like a fly in a spider web, unable to look away, unable to ignore the sense that he needed her.

Unable to ignore, too, the voice that now started roaring in his head. His blackness swirled and shifted. He saw Kali’s face through a filter of darkness.

Take her! This is what we want! She’ll give us what we want!

He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away. Bad move. Kali’s pearly teeth nibbled at his neck, just over his racing pulse. He could not keep from gasping.

“I know enough about you to know I can give you everything you need,” she whispered, her breath hot on his skin. “We could mean so very, very much to each other.”

The warm, incense-heavy air in the room swirled against the hypersensitive skin of his cock. Kali pulled him up to a sit. His head still throbbed but not as badly now. He could sit up. He could look at her.

She picked up a riding crop from the floor at her feet—he noticed several other items down there as well, but couldn’t make out what they were—and slid the tip between her breasts. “You could hit me with this if you want.”

The beast inside him roared but he did not speak. He still had the strength for that, even as his mind clouded with black, seething need.

“Not ready yet? How about if I do it for you?” She lifted the crop, made it sing through the air to smack down on her breast. Her skin flamed where it landed. She closed her eyes, the tip of her tongue sliding out to lick her lips.

“No.” He barely managed to choke out the word.

“Are you being disobedient, Ferrin? Do I need to punish you?”

He looked away, clenching his jaw so hard he thought his teeth might break.

The crop whispered again and landed on his upper thigh, a hairsbreadth away from his throbbing cock. His hips jerked. A groan escaped his lips.

Again she smacked him, on his other thigh this time. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He fisted the couch cushions, desperate to keep still, fighting himself not to grab the crop from her hand and hit her back,
hit her, throw her to the ground and climb on
top of her, bite her, fuck her, it’s what we want—

“No!”

Kali grinned at him and adjusted her stance, spreading her legs and placing one foot on the edge of the couch by his side, taunting him with the flesh between them. She dragged the crop up the inside of one trim thigh, rubbed it over her pussy. The leather gleamed with her juices.

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He could not drag his eyes away, and she knew it. She leaned backward, tilting her pelvis, and ran the slick tip of the crop up his swollen length. He groaned but did not move.

“Not enough? Let’s see…what else do we have to play with?”

Ferrin closed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the sight of her pussy, of the crop on his cock. All he had to do was lean forward and he could taste her, bury his tongue in her. All he had to do was grab her and he could bring her onto the couch and impale her in one quick motion.

She slapped him across the face. His eyes snapped open and a growl more animal than human escaped him. The sound scared him. It also excited him. Something built within his body, something great and terrible, the thing that had always been hiding, forced to hide. Now he could let it out—he knew he could—with this woman who was a stranger and familiar all at the same time. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to touch her, but his body was almost out of his control.

Think of Aleeza, think of—

But it didn’t help. Thinking of Aleeza and how he loved her only made the animal roar louder in his head because he could never have her, not the way he wanted, and here was this woman who practically begged him to fuck her like they were both about to die.

And maybe they would. And in his confused state, that didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

She slapped him again, and before he could stop himself he hit her back.

Her cry of pain sent a shiver through his body as she fell to the floor, her hand clasping her cheek. Almost immediately she sat up. Her eyes glittered with triumph and tears, and her lips curved in a wicked smile. “I knew it,” she said.

His breath came in hard gasps as she knelt before him and ran those sharp nails up his thighs. He was glued to the couch, unable to take his eyes off her. Thoughts of Dorand and Aleeza were very, very far away as she grabbed his hips and pulled them forward so his ass just rested on the edge of the cushions.

He struggled, tried to pull away. She muttered something under her breath, words he didn’t recognize, but suddenly he couldn’t move. He was trapped, unable to do anything but watch as her tongue darted out to snake over the tip of his cock.

“No! Damn it, no!” Again he tried to move and found he couldn’t. The captivity only fueled his rage, and his rage only fueled the black lust in his head. He wanted to scream, to cry. He was totally helpless as the beast within him roared and shook, ready to unleash itself in any way possible.