Read The Demon You Know Online
Authors: Christine Warren
think he'd never done this before.”
"Perhaps if he survives this round, I can give him a few pointers," Rafe answered.
Rule looked up, focusing over Abby's head at the couple in the doorway. "I think perhaps it would be better if the two of you left us for a moment.”
"They're fine," Abby growled. "I have no problem with ripping you a new one in front of witnesses.”
Tess whistled. "Wow. For a nice Catholic schoolgirl she's got a mean streak, doesn't she?”
"Come, love. I think Rule is right. Let's give them a bit of privacy.”
Abby was too busy struggling with the unfamiliar urge to commit an actual act of violence to
watch them leave, but she heard the door shut behind them with an ominous click.
"If you have a problem with me," Rule said, his voice low and dangerously smooth as he prowled toward her in the suddenly quiet room, "I would appreciate your bringing it up with me, rather than airing it in front of an audience. No matter how appreciative they might be.”
"And I would appreciate it if you would stop making decisions about my life and my captivity with my brother and letting me find out secondhand," she hissed. By the time Rule stopped, he was looming over her like a golden-haired, black-eyed mountain, but Abby was too angry to be intimidated. "This is my life! Or it used to be. I'm sick and tired of being treated like some kind of inanimate object that can just be put up on a shelf or locked up in a closet without so much as a by-your-leave. I want my
life back!”
"You can't have it.”
"That is exactly what I'm talking about!" Abby threw her hands up, surprised one didn't land knuckles-first smack dab in the middle of his infuriating mouth. "You make these decrees on high and expect me to meekly go along with them! Well, it's not going to happen.”
"The last thing I expect from you is meekness, Abigail," he said. "But I do expect obedience. And I'll have it.”
She almost choked on a laugh. Not that she was amused, it was just either laugh or scream, and she knew she'd need her vocal cords to be in tip-top shape if she was going to get through that mile-thick demonic skull. "Do you even hear yourself? You sound like some sort of feudal lord. This is not the
Middle Ages, my unholy friend, and I am not some serf to be ordered about on a whim.”
Rule's dark eyes narrowed, and she saw a flicker of anger beneath the impassive mask. "You
have no right to call me that.”
"What? My friend? I realize we're not all that close, but since you're one of only about ten people I'm allowed to talk to these days, I'm not ready to shortchange myself on possible companions.”
"Unholy." He took a step closer until she had to crane her neck to look up at him. A flicker of unease shivered through her. "You are no more entitled to sit in judgment on me than you believe I am to hold you prisoner.”
A devilish voice inside her prodded Abby to take another step, never mind the chasm she sensed stretching before her. "Oh, am I hitting a little too close for comfort? It's not my fault you're a demon, Rule. It's not my fault you've been forsaken by God and condemned to a life outcast from heaven.”
She could almost hear his self-control snap. One minute he loomed before her, a wall of icycontrol, and the next he had her by the shoulders, hauling her up against a body she could now vouch for
as being a long, long way from cold.
"If you would condemn me as a monster, then at least I will give you a reason.”
And his mouth came crashing down on hers like a landslide.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Inside Abby's head, voices sang suspiciously like choirs of angels, and the explosion behind hereyes banished any thoughts of darkness more quickly than sunrise. If this was a sin, Abby would hang upher rosary and surrender herself to eternal damnation without a twinge of regret. It would be worth it, tofeel this man's hands on her forever.
He swept inside her mouth like a conquering army, bulldozing past any tentative explorations andplundering her heated response. Abby whimpered and sucked on his tongue, pressing herself closer
against him. He went to her head like a shot of whiskey but tasted a whole lot better. He sent the same fire curling into the pit of her belly with none of the bitter acid on her tongue. Instead, he was smooth and rich and sweet like fine chocolate, and for once in her life, Abby didn't worry about the treat going straight to her thighs. She rather hoped he would.
Rule, though, seemed determined to take the long road. His hands glided over her shoulders and down her arms, raising goose bumps in their wake. Everywhere they touched, she tingled, her nerves on high alert. Her breasts pressed against his chest, molding to his hardness, and when she shifted restlessly, her denim-clad thighs rubbed against his, pushing a moan through her swollen lips.
A growl rumbled in his chest, a low, thrumming response. She felt his hands slide beneath her arms to close around her ribs, tightening as if to warn her against trying to escape. As if the thought had even crossed her mind. She wanted to put less distance between them, not more. She wanted to be skin to skin. Closer if she could manage it.
The intensity of her need surprised her, but she didn't stop to think about it. She didn't want to
waste that kind of time. For the first time in her life, she burned with desire. She'd always assumed, especially after her disastrous first and only sexual experience, that when people wrote about lust in terms of aches and fevers and trembling needs, that was why they called it fiction. People didn't really feel that way. She didn't. She'd lived without sex for almost a decade, and she was none the worse for the wear. Or the lack thereof.
Oh, how naive she'd been.
Rule had kick-started her sex drive, and the power of it now drove her on with a vengeance. She felt it like the sting of a whip driving her on, driving her closer, driving her to tempt him into a frenzy she had no idea if she could handle.
She had a feeling she was about to find out.
In the back of her mind, her conscience whispered at her. She had known this would happen.
When she'd come storming down here driven by her frustration and the anger that had welled when Noah told her it might be weeks before she could go back to her old life, she'd known the spark of herfury would light this inferno. Yet she'd done it anyway.
It was the coward's way, her conscience chided her. It wouldn't let her get away with putting theresponsibility for this on Rule's broad shoulders. She had known she didn't have the guts to followthrough with Tess and Samantha's suggestion that she seduce the demon, so her subconscious haddecided to shift the burden onto him. If she prodded him in just the right way, at just the right time, she'dget her seduction, and probably her vindication of her anger, and she'd never have to make a move for itto happen.
Cowardly.
But Abby's hormones didn't care. They were too busy glorying in the feel of his thick golden hairbeneath her fingers, the heavy weight of his muscular body pressed against hers. They were too busyurging her to spread her legs, to wrap them around his waist and push him past the next barrier, to careabout why she had made this move. They just celebrated that she had.
Abby moaned into his mouth, moaned again when those lips shifted off hers to blaze a trail alongher jaw and down the side of her throat. He nibbled his way along, all but consuming her, tongue andteeth tasting every square inch of pale, heated skin. Her body quaked in his arms, and as she hooked herankles together in the small of his back she realized her hormones had won that particular battle. She heldhis hips cradled against hers, the heat of his erection pressed snugly against her center.
Her eyes flew open and their gazes locked. She saw the fire of passion in his and something else,
something simultaneously fierce and protective, greedy and giving. And beneath it, a question. One more step and neither would be able to turn back. He may have led her this far, but as she drowned in the black depths of his gaze she knew she would have to cross that last distance on her own.
Breath frozen, heart pounding, she slid her hands to his shoulders and braced herself against him. She felt his hands gripping her hips, felt his fingers flex as if to force her into the place he wanted her, then they eased, and he began to lift her away from him.
No way was she going to let that happen.
Fingertips digging into his flesh, Abby caught his gaze again and held it while she tightened the
grip of her thighs and rocked her hips suggestively against his.
The dam broke and swept away the last of her doubts in a torrent of rushing need.
Large hands slid from her hips to her butt, gripping and shifting her, pressing her heat more firmly against him. Abby felt a moment's astonishment that the two layers of denim between them didn't spontaneously combust and dissolve in a cloud of ash. No such luck. The heavy cloth separated them, but even through the barrier her center ached, empty and wanting.
Her entire being felt empty and wanting. With any luck, he wasn't planning to let that continue.
Abby felt the earth move. It took a minute to realize it was actually Rule, walking backward across the room to a large leather chair in front of the fireplace. She tightened her thighs around his hips to steady herself and heard him growl in response. Curious, she repeated the motion and got the same response along with a light smack on the ass.
"Don't tease," he rumbled, his gaze burning into her. "I don't want to hurt you.”
"Would you?" she asked, leaning forward to drag her tongue over the pulse beating visibly at the
base of his throat. She felt as if some other Abby had taken control of her body, but it was too pleasurable for her to care.
"You tell me.”
He shifted her weight into one hand and used the other to grasp one of hers. Dragging it between them, he slid it down and down and down until he wrapped her shaking fingers around the insistent ridge of his erection, pressing eagerly against the fabric of her jeans.