Buch lesen: «Demon's Embrace»

Chapter One

I struggled through a haze of cool fog, pushing my way out to emerge naked on an empty city street where a solitary streetlamp lit the corner of the next block. Drawn to its unearthly glow, I floated along on silent feet, my focus forward, the warmth it promised tugging at me like an invisible string, guiding me, beckoning, pulling me.

As I neared, a shadow broke away from the lamp pole.

A flash of fear brought me to a momentary halt, my pulse leaping, flight instinct warring against the lure that urged me forward.

The shadow’s soft chuckle heated the night air. Warm hands reached out to grab me, wrapping me in a cocoon of naked, muscular male.

My fear evaporated and I sighed, burying my face against his chest. “Blaise.”

“Yes, sweet Katya, it’s me.”

My fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck, tilting his head toward mine, my lips longing for the caress of his. I hated that I needed him, like a body needs liquid to quench its thirst. “Where have you been?”

“Out.” He brushed his mouth across mine with the lightness of butterfly wings.

I wanted more, pressing into him, lifting my head, impatient, my nerves tingling in anticipation.

His lips met mine, crushing, invading, his tongue edging past my teeth. He pushed me backward until my shoulders connected with the solid brick wall of a building. Then he pressed a knee between my thighs to part them and lifted my legs to wrap around his waist.

The brick fell away, replaced by the soft, billowy bed of cottony clouds. I sank into the comfort, taking him with me, my ankles locking behind his back.

His cock pressed into me, thrusting into the slickness of my channel, stretching me with his thick, hard girth.

I moaned, my tongue twisting around his, thrusting in rhythm with his hips, his cock, the way he moved over my body.

Ripples of release pulsed across my nerves, building in cascading explosions until my back arched off the clouds.

His cock thrust one last time and we ignited in a simultaneous release of the purest sunburst of energy.

My breath held as I rode the waves of ecstasy to shore, the ebb and flow of sensation drawing me back in and out until I fell back to earth, my descent cushioned by the grasp of his hands on my hips.

When at last I could breathe on my own, I lay limp, my muscles and bones liquefied under Blaise’s intense assault.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered, pressing his lips to each eyelid, coaxing me to comply.

“Not yet,” I mumbled, my legs tightening around him, refusing to let go, refusing to awaken from whatever dream I was in.

An annoying buzzing blasted through my refuge of half-sleep, half-dream, shooting through my ear, straight into my head. “What the hell?” My eyes popped open, my ankles released, my heels falling to the mattress of my bed. The incessant buzzing continued, complete with a clatter of plastic on the wooden surface of my nightstand, effectively ending my sensual dream.

Blaise rolled off me, collapsing against the pillows.

I snatched my cell phone up, punching the talk button. “Danske.”

“Meeting at the precinct in fifteen.”

My boss’s words cut through the remaining haze of sleep, chasing back the lingering fluffs of fog, returning me to earth with a resounding thud.

“Fifteen?” I glanced at the clock and groaned. I wasn’t due on duty for another hour and a half. “I need a shower.”

“I don’t care what you smell like. Be here in fifteen.” Lieutenant Thomas, the detective assigned the illustrious duty of managing Manhattan’s Paranormal Investigative Team, had spoken. “And bring Blaise with you.”

“What if I don’t know where he is?”

“Cut the crap, Agent Danske. Where you are, he is. Both of you, in the War Room in fifteen.” The line cut off.

I glanced at my partner, Blaise Michaels, the demon who’d taken up residence in my life. “You hear that?”

He nodded.

“Does he think you live here?” I tossed back the blankets, strode naked to the scuffed dresser I’d purchased from a secondhand store and yanked open the top drawer, digging around for a bra and panties.

“How will anyone take me seriously, if they think you’re living with me?” I flung a narrow-eyed glare at him. “And how the hell did you get in? I locked the double bolts and windows before I hit the sack.”

He shrugged. “I have ways.”

“Don’t tell me another one of your talents is to walk through walls.” I shoved a foot into the leg of my panties and then another, drawing them up my thighs, completely aware of the demon eyeing my every move.

And damned if my body didn’t play traitor on me and burst into red-hot flaming desire. “You—” With my underwear firmly in place around my hips, I poked a finger at him. “—are not invited into my apartment without my explicit consent. Do you hear me?”

His grin infuriated me, at the same time it flicked all my damned “on” switches, sending a wash of purely decadent juices to my pussy.

“I mean it.” Ah hell, who was I kidding? “No one will take a female on the force seriously if she’s sleeping with a team member. We can’t see each other anymore.”

His smile broadened. “Okay.”

I turned my back so that I wouldn’t have to look at his mocking face and slipped into a pair of black jeans, yanking the zipper up before I could get further sidetracked. The patronizing look he’d given me only made my gut tighten along with my resolve. As I clipped on my bra and twisted it around my ribs, I prepared a scathing retort.

Before I could slip the straps up my arm and deliver a suitable comeback, warm hands reached around from behind me to cup my breasts.

“Tell me you want me to stop, and I will.” He kissed the sensitive area below the back of my right ear, his breath stirring tendrils of hair, tickling my skin and sending shivers down the length of my spine.

Oh, sweet Jesus. How was I supposed to resist him when he was a damned demon with the ability to throw my hormones into hyper-drive with a single touch?

I dragged in a shaky breath, reveling in the heat he generated, his naked body aligned with my backside, his cock nudging at my bottom. With the strength of a saint, I shoved his hands from my breasts and leaped out of reach before I faced him.

“We can’t do this anymore,” I said. “I want my employer to respect me for my skills as an officer of the law, not for my skills at pleasing our token demon.”

He nodded, the smile disappearing from his too-handsome face, his ice-blue eyes boring into mine. “As you wish.”

In the time it took me to complete dressing and brush my hair into a ponytail, he was dressed and waiting by the door to my apartment.

Together, we walked the couple blocks to the station. When we were within a stone’s throw of our destination, I paused at a newsstand. “You go ahead. I want to get a pack of gum.”

Blaise stopped. “I’ll wait.”

“Not only are you arrogant, you’re thickheaded. I don’t want to arrive at the same time as you. Now, go.” I shoved him toward the station and turned my back on him. When I’d paid for the pack of gum, I resumed my trek, a good fifty yards behind the demon.

Take that, Lieutenant Thomas. We’re not together.

Yeah, yeah. The only person I was fooling was myself.

In the War Room, Lieutenant Thomas paced the floor in front of the huge whiteboard, deep lines furrowing his brow. “About time you got here, Agent Danske. Now we can begin.”

I glanced around at the empty chairs. “Where’s the rest of the team?”

The lieutenant’s lips thinned. “Out patrolling the streets where you and Michaels should be.”

“I wasn’t due on duty for another hour. If you’d wanted me earlier, you could have called earlier.”

“I did. No answer.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket and scanned the recent calls. Just as the detective stated, there were three unanswered calls from Lieutenant Thomas. “I don’t understand. I didn’t hear it ring.” I glanced across at Blaise.

His gaze didn’t meet mine.

Irritation flared, pushing heat into my cheeks. “Perhaps my phone was mysteriously off at that time.”

“I suggest you talk to the technical personnel and get that fixed. I have to be able to contact you at a moment’s notice. Paranorms can’t be trusted to stay on a set schedule.”

“You were right when you said paranorms can’t be trusted.” I glared at my partner, the only paranorm in the room.

Lieutenant Thomas calmed. “You’re assigned to follow Jimmy Raggio tonight. He’s a small-time werewolf druggie. I have it from a good source that he’ll be making a purchase to stock up on drugs to push to the local lupine teens. I want his contact. Teens and drugs are a bad combination to begin with. Werewolf teens and drugs can get downright dangerous.”

“Got it.” I gathered the street address of one Jimmy Raggio and the keys to one of the unmarked vehicles at our disposal. Without waiting for my partner, I headed for the door.

Blaise caught up with me as I reached the elevator. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have set your phone to silent, while we were...”

I jabbed the down arrow. “Damn right you shouldn’t have.”

“I promise I won’t do it again.” He gave me that dark-eyed, heart-stopping, sad-demon look that always made my knees go weak.

Not this time.

The door dinged and slid open. “Damn right you won’t.” I stepped in and hit the button for the garage level and the button to close the elevator door. “You’re not ever going to come into my apartment again.”

Blaise jumped in before the doors closed. “You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t.” I faced him, all the anger I’d contained while in the same room with my boss bubbling up. “You have no right to interfere with me or my job, and today you crossed the line.” I turned away. “Don’t show up at my apartment, uninvited.”

“What if I need to get a hold of you?”

“You can call my cell phone. I’ll leave it on, unlike you.”

Blaise stood beside me, his height and broad shoulders filling the tight confines of the elevator car.

Before he or I could utter another word, the bell dinged and the doors slid open into the garage. I found the car and slid behind the wheel, turning the key in the ignition as Blaise dropped into the passenger seat. With more force than necessary, I whipped the shift into reverse and backed out of the parking space, laying a strip of rubber on the pavement when I gave it more gas than necessary.

We drove to an area in Brooklyn that had seen better days and bordered on a warehouse district. Some of the buildings were being renovated, others stood dull and poorly maintained, dusk adding to the air of gloom. Warehouses built in the 1940s stood empty, broken windows like so many sad eyes staring down at them as they passed.

I parked in an alley a couple blocks away from our designated pick up point, picking a spot behind a stack of broken pallets and trash. Jimmy was due to leave his apartment building around nine o’clock. I sat for a few minutes, taking the time to check my Glock and flipped the safety switch on.

Blaise and I hadn’t spoken two words since we’d gotten into the car. It suited me just fine. And the demon hadn’t pushed any words into my thoughts. Even better.

Beside me, his lips twitched. I was afraid you’d shoot me.

I’d spoken too soon. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay the hell out of my head.” Infuriating demon.

With more force than accuracy, I jammed my radio headset into my ear and handed one to Blaise.

He shook his head. “We’re going together on this.”

“I want you a block over. We don’t want him to catch our scents and make a run for it.”

With a heavy frown, Blaise plugged the miniature radio into his ear and tested it. “I don’t know why I can’t just push thoughts.”

“I like having a back up.” I got out and stretched, checked my watch and nodded. “It’s time.”

Before we reached Jimmy’s apartment, I spotted a man fitting his description on the other side of the street, heading away from where we were standing. He disappeared around a corner.

“You take the next street over. Don’t lose him.” I took off at a controlled jog, eager to close the distance before I lost the werewolf.

I slipped through the streets, dodging yellowed streetlights and hugging the shadows of buildings as I ran a parallel course from my target, one street over. “You have Jimmy?” I whispered into my headset.

Yeah. Blaise’s warm tones invaded my head sans the headset, sending shivers of awareness across my skin. Twenty yards ahead, moving slowly.

Pushing aside the toe-curling lust his voice induced, I focused on the task at hand. “Stay far enough back he doesn’t get wind of you.”

One of Manhattan’s young werewolves, Jimmy Raggio, had better olfactory nerves than I did and could smell a demon within a fifty-foot radius. Farther, if the wind was blowing his way. Although, this kid’s senses might be dulled by the amount of drugs he’d been snorting or shooting. His habit had pushed him over the line into selling to support his drug needs.

That’s where Blaise and I came in. When otherkin ran amuck, we were called in to clean up the mess. Tracking Jimmy to his source should be a slam dunk. Nab Jimmy, nab his contact and we’d have two less scumbags trashing the New York City underworld.

A month ago, I’d have laughed in anyone’s face who tried to tell me creatures that weren’t human roamed our city streets.

All that had changed in a matter of days, when NYPD recruited me to their special taskforce—the Paranormal Investigative Team—lovingly referred to as the PIT crew.

He just turned into an alley, headed back your way. Blaise’s thoughts cut through my musings.

The alley I assumed he was referring to loomed half a block ahead of me like a dark maw, the streetlights barely penetrating the entrance. I held back, ducked behind a huge trash bin and waited, giving the young werewolf time to emerge. As I crouched there, the stench from the trash overpowered my senses.

A really long minute went by.

“See him?” Blaise asked.

“No.” I gave it another half of a minute and left my hiding place and the smell, moving toward the alley entrance. I eased the night vision goggles over my eyes, careful not to look back and be blinded by the streetlight a block behind me. Werewolves and some demons, like my partner, could see at night. Humans, not so much.

I paused at the corner of the building, my Glock drawn, thumbing off the safety switch.

Voices echoed off the brick walls, the actual words garbled by distance.

Squatting low, I peeked around the corner. Through my night vision goggles, three figures appeared in the alley, two standing, one carrying a limp form, glowing just as green as the others. A warm body, possibly alive for now.

Damn. A simple drug run was turning into more.

The green glowing figures stepped toward her, their voices low, intense, as if they were arguing in whispers.

Don’t move on them until I get around to where you are, Blaise warned me.

I slipped back around the side of the building, pushing the goggles to the top of my head. “They’re heading my way. Don’t try to come up behind them. The wind’s coming from that direction.”

“Hide and wait.”

As quickly as I could, I moved half a block back to the trash bin, sliding between it and the building.

As footsteps clumped toward the alley entrance, I could make out their words.

“If ya know what’s good for ya, you’ll ditch the bitch.”

“Can’t. She’s my cousin. My ma’ll kill me if I leave her there.”

“When Nic finds out you took her, he’ll do the job and make it hurt as you go down. He likes to make examples of anyone else who takes what’s his.”

“He wasn’t there when I took her.”

“That demon has eyes and ears everywhere. He’ll know.”

“Look, Jimmy, I can’t leave her.”

“You’re on your own, Mario.” Jimmy emerged from the alley, leading the way. He glanced right and left before cutting across the street.

“He’s on the move,” I said into my microphone. Before Blaise could respond, a hand clamped over my mouth, another around my waist pinning one of my arms to my side. I was hauled up against a solid wall of muscle.