Immortal (18 page)

Straddling, straddling. Images of Jim with Devina warring in her mind with the information he'd just given her so calmly and succinctly . . . like he had no interest in hiding anything from her.

“It hurt,” she heard herself say. “When you left like that. I was . . . confused. I thought I'd done something wrong.”

He winced. “Last thing I wanted to do. I swear.”

“I don't know—”

Jim laid his hand on his heart and stared straight into her soul. “I swear it on my mother.”

“Looks like you need some help.”

As Ad heard the nasty female voice behind him, he closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking about how much his bad leg hurt. “Not from you.”

He turned around. Devina had oiled up to the front of the house in her big black Mercedes, and somehow managed to get out from behind its wheel without making a sound.

Which made him wonder exactly how long she'd been there.

She smiled at him like a raptor as she lounged against the nearest quarter panel. “You know, Adrian, we go well together, you and I. Surely you haven't forgotten how we—”

“I try to forget every day, bitch.”

The demon faked a pout and threw some of that heavy brunette hair over her shoulder. “Playing hard to get?”

“Are you here for a reason, or did you just feel like wasting my time.” At least the extra protection spell was up and rolling, its red glow separating them. Thank God.

“Jim called me. So I came.”

“You sure about that.”

“Very.”

Adrian turned back to the plywood he'd managed to wedge
into one of the empty sills. Putting three nails between his teeth, he hammered the upper right-hand corner first and then worked his way around. All the while, the demon just stood there, staring at him.

The only reason he didn't push her to get the fuck going was because at least he knew where she was—and it was not with whatever soul was up in this round. But, man, this was like the worst case of the
Jeopardy
theme he'd ever been through.

“I could help you, you know,” she drawled as he straightened with some effort.

He smiled with all his teeth and waved his hand around at Jim's spell. “No, you really can't. And I guess my boy ain't coming out to see you, so how 'bout you run along and scare a little kid or something.”

“Sissy's an interesting girl, isn't she.”

Ad frowned and contemplated hammering something that didn't involve a nail head or any kind of plywood. “You're done with her, remember?”

“Am I.” The demon straightened off the sleek sedan. “Tell Jim I'll be back.”

“And now you're the Terminator.”

“You got that right, Adrian.” She high-stepped around the hood like she was on the goddamn catwalk. “Give my regards to Eddie.”

“That one's getting old, baby girl.”

“Not on my end, it isn't.”

“What happened to your hood ornament?”

“Happy accident.”

She gave him a wave, and a moment later she was gone, easing on down the road, maybe to Hell . . . maybe to a sale at Neiman's.

“Goddamn bitch.”

Ad limped over to one of the other sheets of plywood by the
Explorer and muscled the thing over to the next window. Probably was a bad idea, pulling a DIY on a house like this—what with the whole architectural-integrity/historic-building thing going on. But he had to do something to improve their situation. As it was, all he did nowadays was creep around and complain about the aches and pains he'd taken on.

So this was what eighty felt like for humans, huh.

Shit, he could only hope Matthias was putting the sex drive he'd given the guy to good use—

With a feeling of abject dread, Ad stopped what he was doing and looked through the opening into the parlor. Over on the dusty, bare floor, the book that Devina had supposedly written was right where Sissy had left it.

Oh, God, he thought. What if . . .

Propping the heavy sheet up, he followed a horrible instinct and stepped through the opening with a grunt. His boots crunched on broken glass—not from the windows as they had blown out onto the lawn, but because of the mirrors and lamps that had cracked from the change in pressure before being consumed by the portal.

Bending down, he picked the book up and leafed through it. The sentences were utter nonsense to him, but that wasn't what got him worried. The letters . . . the words . . . didn't look even remotely Latin—and though he wasn't multi-lingual in the slightest, he should have at least recognized some prefixes or suffixes that were common to English words.

Nothing. Hell, it was more symbols than alphabet.

And yet Sissy was reading it just fine.

As he started to wonder how that was possible, warning bells rang in his head.

Stretching his palm out across the kitchen table, Jim knew Sissy was lying to him. Something had happened between their little excursion out and her bolting to come home alone. But whatever it was seemed less important than getting her to believe what he was telling her.

“I'm sorry,” he said again. “I wish I were Bryan Reynolds or Stanley Tatum. I'm not.”

There was a heartbeat of silence and then she cracked a smile. “You mean Ryan Reynolds or Channing Tatum.”

“Yeah, whoever they are.”

The lift to her lips didn't last long. “I don't know wh— er, what to believe.”

“You don't have to make up your mind now. You don't have to make up your mind at all.”

Another long pause. “How did they . . . what happened with your mother?”

His heart skipped a beat and every molecule in his body screamed for him to get up from the chair and walk out of the room. Instead, he took a sharp inhale on his Marlboro and retracted his hand, using the thing to bring the ashtray he was using closer to him.

Even with the TO, he had to clear his throat. “We lived out on a farm. My mom and I worked it, and we made a pretty good living. I was in school, but summers, early mornings, late nights . . . I helped as much as I could. One thing about rural places: not a lot of money around. People tend to scrape by and that's okay, as long as there isn't an external imperative to do otherwise. Like drugs.”

Every time he blinked, he saw flashes of that horrible afternoon when he'd walked into the kitchen and found his mother in the process of dying a horrible death. Click—a close-up on her ashen face, her mouth struggling to work. Click—blood on the
linoleum. Click—ripped clothes. And the shit came with the worst sound track imaginable, his mother's voice nothing but a weak rasp, her breathing a wheeze. And the smell . . .

Fucking hell, it had been the potato-and-copper smell of fresh meat and blood, like when he'd taken the pigs in for slaughter.

“I didn't stay to watch her die. She told me to run because they were still in the house. I didn't want to leave her . . . she made me go. I ran out to the truck and flew down that fucking dirt road. They came after me, but I got away. Went to the cops. When I finally came back, she was gone. Her body was cold.”

“Oh . . . my God.”

“The guys who did it went into the court system, but they got out on bail. I figured out who they were—it wasn't hard and I knew what to do to them even though I was young.” He shrugged as he tapped his ashes off the tip of his cigarette. “When you live on a farm, you learn about death. How to make it happen. I used her favorite kitchen knife and a saw I'd cut firewood up with. Plus a few other things I found at the three different scenes.” He leveled his eyes at her. “I made them suffer just like she did. And I will never be sorry for that. Never.”

Jesus Christ, when was the last time he'd spoken about this . . . ?

Interview process for XOps, he thought. When they'd given him the psych screening—to make sure he was a good little sociopath.

“I'm so sorry,” she said hoarsely. “I can't imagine what that was like.”

“Yeah, you can. I only lost her. You lost your whole family—and you saw them suffer, too. You were at your own grave site.” As she ducked her eyes, he cursed. “It's because of what happened with my mother that I just couldn't let you fucking go when I found you in that bathtub. I tried to save you. I tried to . . . get
you to breathe . . . they had to peel me off you. I didn't want you to die.”

As his eyes actually got teary, he curled up a fist to remind himself that he was a man, goddamn it. And that mostly worked.

“Jim, I—”

“All I want is for you to be safe and stay that way,” he said in a tight voice. “That's it. That's why . . . just don't take off on me again, 'kay? You nearly gave me a fucking heart attack.”

“Do you still want me?” she blurted.

Okaaaaay, cue the coughing on his side. And not because he'd taken a bad drag. “Sissy, I—”

“Considering everything you just told me, I think you can afford to be honest. And I need . . . I need to know. One way or the other, even if it's no—”

“Yeah, I fucking want you.”

Off in the distance, he heard nails being hammered, and sorry, he wasn't feeling guilty at all about not helping his gimp-ass buddy go home-improvement. This had been a real ball-squeezer of a convo, but he was making headway with her. He could feel it.

He didn't want to be at odds with her.

Besides, Ad was right . . . the soul had always come to him. In every single round, the soul had come—

“Prove it,” she said. “Prove that you still want me.”

Across the table, the change in Jim was instantaneous. Even as he stayed right where he was, his big body dwarfing that chair, the smoldering cigarette held in between the fore- and middle fingers of his right hand . . . he was completely different.

And Sissy guessed that was proof enough. But she wanted more. She wanted . . . everything.

“Sissy, I don't think it's a good idea to—”

She shook her head. “It's the only thing I can independently verify. There is so much here . . . that I can't know, and I've got to have something to stand on.”

There was a long, tense silence . . . and then he shoved his chair back with such force it landed on the floor with a clatter. He didn't even bother coming around the table. He reached across with his long, powerful arms and grabbed her by the head, yanking her out of her own chair, bringing her mouth to his. The kiss was hard and raw, his lips grinding against hers, his tongue penetrating her like he wanted to be doing that kind of thing with totally different body parts.

When he finally shoved her back, they were both breathing hard. And his eyes . . . his eyes burned through her.

“Happy,” he said grimly.

Jesus, and to think she'd assumed he was passionate before.

“You're not going to break me.”

“Don't be so sure about that.” With his mood clearly in the crapper, he broke away from her, jerked his chair back up and sat in it. Then he shifted with a curse and rearranged something.

He tapped his ash again. Took another drag. Drummed his free fingers.

And then a quick, rhythmic tapping started up under the table.

It was his foot going upanddownandupanddown.

With slow, deliberate movements, she rose to her feet and came around to him. His shoulders were bunched up under his T-shirt, his biceps hard and tight—and as she stood beside him, the twitching started. In his face. His wrist. His jaw.

When he refused to look at her, she almost lost her nerve.

She put her hand on his arm. “Jim.”

He shook his head. “Don't ask me, please, don't ask me—I'm not keeping it together here.”

“I just want to know—”

She didn't get a chance to finish the sentence.

All at once he was up and at her, taking her body and driving it backward until she landed against the wall. Pinning her with his pelvis, he ripped the tie out of her hair and shoved his free hand into the stuff—but not to smooth it.

He grabbed hold and forced her head to one side. “You want this?” he growled. “You sure you want this?”

“Yes.” As he tightened his hold a little harder, she was forced to curve further into his strength, until he was the only reason she wasn't on the floor. “You're not going to scare me.”

In fact, he seemed like the one getting rattled as she pushed her hands up under his shirt and onto his smooth back—but the double take didn't last. Lowering his head, he went for her neck, biting his way down to her collarbone.

And then the world spun.

It took her a moment to figure out what he'd done, but as she heard another clatter, she realized he'd picked her up and sat her on the edge of the counter.

“Is this what you want,” he growled as he pushed her legs wide.

“Yes,” she breathed, pulling him back to her mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Aw, fuck.” He kissed her deeply and worked himself against her core. “Jesus, are we going to do this here . . .”

The sound of a hammer going strong in the other half of the house meant they had time—but not a lot of it.

“Yes, we are.” She went for the waistband of his sweats and yanked them down, releasing his . . . “Oh . . . wow.”

“Yeah. Oh,” he said dryly. Like he'd proved his point.

Except before he could disengage, she gripped his arousal with both hands. Against her palms, he was hot. Hard. Big.

Jim's head fell back, the corded muscles that ran up his neck straining as he cursed. “Sissy—”

“I want to feel you come in my hands.”

The groan he let out vibrated through his body—and there was another right on its heels as she started to stroke him, down the shaft, up to the head. Down again. Back up. She had no clue what she was doing, but she knew she was onto something—especially as his hips began to work with her, increasing the friction.

She watched the whole thing, his hips rolling and then pumping, his lower abdominals curling and releasing. It was dizzying, this feeling of power, the sense that she and she alone was doing this to him, bringing him closer and closer to the brink. He was a man, a strong, aggressive man . . . who was at her mercy.

And that was hot.

“Gimme your mouth,” he growled as he forced her chin up.

He took without apology, unleashing himself as his lower body rocked faster against her hold. He tasted like fresh tobacco and wildness, and as much as she wanted to stay hyper-aware about everything that was happening, it wasn't long before she was swept up, too.

And then he orgasmed, barking her name as he bit into her lower lip.

Nothing slow and easy this time. Rough and raw, his arousal jabbing into her hold, hot jets coming out of him.

And she loved it.

When he finally fell still, he dropped his head on her shoulder as if he couldn't hold it up. He was breathing like a freight train, his body as hot as his erection still was. And yet he didn't seem finished.

More like this was the appetizer to the meal he wanted.

As Jim lifted his head, his eyes still burned. Especially as he straightened, took hold of the bottom of his shirt, and lifted it up and off of his magnificent chest. Switching his still-lit cigarette to his opposite hand, he pressed the soft cotton into her hands, cleaning things up.

The way he stared at her . . . she felt like prey.

In a good way.

She was not supposed to be like that, Jim thought as he ground his Marlboro out in the ashtray on the kitchen table.

Sissy was supposed to have run out of the room when he pushed things just a little, all come-to-her-senses thanks to him. Instead, she'd had him coming all over her hands. And now, even after that was over, she was sitting back against the cupboards, her hair tangled from his hands, lips red and parted, legs . . . spread.

For him.

He wanted to tell her later. He wanted to tell her no.

He didn't. He tossed his now-dirty shirt on the floor, and went back to her, running his hands up her thighs, going for her core with his thumbs. He wanted to go down on her. Right here in the kitchen. Just get rid of those jeans and put his knees to the floor and let his tongue do whatever it wanted.

But he didn't need Ad finishing shit up and coming back here for a drink.

His next option was to go the true penetration route—God knew he was still hard and raring to go. Again, though, that involved her going pants-off, and the idea of any man seeing her undressed and in mid-orgasm during sex made him want to get a nuclear weapon.

The last option was the conservative one. But it was so much better than stopping—and a big-ass improvement over getting caught red-handed.

“You know what I'm picturing right now,” he said into her ear.

“What . . .” So hoarse, her voice was so hoarse and he loved the sound of it.

“You're naked.” He started rubbing at her faster. “You're on your back . . .”

She moaned and pushed herself against him, like she was seeking exactly what he intended her to have.

“You're naked and you're on your back and I'm between your legs.” He kissed her lips and lingered there. “But I'm doing this”—he circled the top of her sex—“with my mouth.”

He thrust his tongue into her as she orgasmed, her nails biting into his back, her breasts arching up. He helped her ride the release out until she went loose in her own skin, her body so pliant and relaxed, he wondered if he could just slip inside of her and . . .

No more hammering, though. So Ad had either taken a breather or was about to.

Easing back, Jim brushed the hair out of her face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes dazed and wide. She was in a state of total undone . . . and the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

“Do you believe me now?” he whispered as he pressed a kiss to the side of her neck.

“Yes . . .”

“Good.”

When she yawned so hard her jaw cracked, he scooped her up into his arms. As he turned around, he recoiled at the mess he'd made: chairs all over the place, crap that had been on the counter now on the floor, his pack of cigarettes spilled across the table.

“We gotta stop trashing this house,” he muttered as he walked out.