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  Ahnvil shook the morbid trail of his thoughts away, hunkering down into the bed once again, wincing at the blossom of pain the movement caused. He needed to rest and heal and he needed to do it as quickly as possible. When the storm let up he would have to be on his way immediately. But it worried him, this storm. He had to get all the way to New Mexico, and after a storm airports were bound to be shut down for a while. Normally he would fly on his own, but this time he couldn’t. Not without risking permanent being. He could put off being away from his touchstone perhaps a few more days as long as he didn’t turn into his grotesque state. At this point even his stone state was taking a risk.

  And then there was the issue of a compact little beauty with eyes the color of bourbon and hair like nice dark mink. He could not, absolutely not, leave her behind. Not with the knowledge she now had.

  She didn’t know it yet, but rescuing him was going to change her life as she knew it forever.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A blizzard. His wife had just sent them dead-on into a blizzard. Jacob wrapped his body around his wife’s immediately using his Demon power to transform them both into dust. The trouble with that form, however, was that they were going to be subject to the whims of the blustering winds even more than they had been thus far. But Bella had refused to wait out the storm and had pressed him on almost fervently, making him really start to question what was driving her. His wife’s premonition abilities were known to be dangerously consuming, especially if she didn’t obey them. She may not realize precisely why she was being driven in a certain direction, just that she had to go at all costs.

  This was beginning to feel like one of those situations. Which meant that their so-called vacation was going to be anything but.

  They stumbled onto the porch of the cozy little hunting lodge in Stone Gorge, turning solid immediately, getting pushed inside by the driving ice and snow. As they checked in, to the shock and awe of the proprietors who wondered how they had even made it up the mountain, Jacob began to fret more and more about why they were there.

  They were both exhausted from the trip, him mainly because so much of it had taken place during daylight hours. The touch of the sun made Demons weary, forcing the weaker ones to sleep. He was of considerable age and talent, on the verge of being a powerful Elder, and so had been able to bear it more than another might, but still it had taken a great deal out of him.

  The minute they checked into their room and shed their frozen, wet clothes, Jacob ushered his wife into the hottest shower their icy skin could stand. His curvy little wife immediately snuggled her wet, naked body up to his, her hands running up his back in that inviting caress she almost always used in order to draw him in closer to her. It worked every single time.

  “Stop worrying,” she said. “I can hear you thinking and worrying.”

  Of course she could. As imprinted mates they lived constantly in each other’s thoughts. They spoke telepathically just about as much as they spoke aloud. Which came in quite handy when they were feeling amorous with a nine-year-old running around. A very bright nine-year-old who could tell what they were saying even if they s-p-e-l-l-e-d words out over her head. It had been quite some time since they’d been able to do that.

  It was a wonder he’d missed out on the understanding that she had been feeling neglected. But sometimes, when she put her mind to it, she could hide her feelings and thoughts from him.

  “I think you know, as well as I do, what is driving you here.”

  “I know,” she said with a frown. “I don’t know why it has to be here and why it has to be now, but you know that if this is premonition driving me then that means it’s important that I be here.” She pressed forward and drifted her lips across one of his pectoral muscles. “However, that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy our child-free existence while we’re at it.”

  Jacob sighed as a very familiar heat began to bleed into him, originating from the touch of her mouth and the stroke of her hands. Even after over ten years of being together, he knew it was never going to cool. They would always be quick to fire to each other’s touch. It was the essence of their connection. It was surprising, he agreed, that they had gone so long without touching each other like this. She had been right to feel neglected. And with gentle fingertips skiing down the slope of her breast, he began to rectify the situation.

  The meaning and reasons of why they were there could wait.

  Panahasi had a dilemma. The Gargoyle had escaped … with the Amulet. An Amulet that promised to have great power and that, somehow, the Gargoyle could unlock. That is, provided the scripture was accurate … and provided he could figure out how. Panahasi knew exactly who the Gargoyle was and exactly what importance he had with the highest ranking members of the Politic Bodywalker faction. If the Gargoyle couldn’t figure out how to unlock the Amulet there was most certainly someone among the higher echelon of the Politic who could.

  He had even heard rumors that Kamenwati had defected to the other side and was now working with their enemies. The traitor. But that meant he would immediately recognize it and would already know what it was capable of.

  Initially, he had considered his luck in capturing the Gargoyle twofold. First he would use him for the Amulet to give himself power, then he would turn him over to his mistress, Odjit, in order to obtain the glory of her praises for a job well done in capturing an enemy so close to the Politic throne.

  Not that she was actually known for praises. Not lately. Lately the Templar Bodywalkers had come to have reason, more reason than ever before, to fear the ruthless Odjit; ever since she had changed in appearance, growing somehow larger and more imposing than she had been before. No doubt the result of some kind of spellwork she had discovered and implemented, much in the way Kamenwati had discovered the Amulet. They were always on the hunt for more powerful magics, anything new and possibly able to give them a stronger foothold in the war against the Politic.

  Only of late, the Templars had been less about finding new magics and more about pleasing their deadly mistress. Along with her physical changes had come a more powerful need to subjugate her followers. Perhaps some blowback from whatever she had done to herself.

  But that made Panahasi’s position all the less enviable. Did he risk his neck right off, risk enraging her by telling her what had happened? Or did he simply remain quiet and hope she never found out about it? She might be displeased if he got out ahead of it, possibly enraged, but if he failed to tell her and it got back to her what he had done, then he would no doubt forfeit his life. It wouldn’t be the first time she had claimed that sort of price in order to mollify her anger and sense of betrayal.

  Panahasi, however, was more along the lines of a coward. He did not readily admit it, but he did so now, telling himself it was only in the face of his mistress’s wrath that this side of himself came to bear.

  He decided silence was the better solution. Die now or possibly die later, the choice was actually more simple then he had made it out to be.

  There was only one problem.

  Moribundi. His companion from earlier was privy to the knowledge of his flawed attempt at power. Should Moribundi find himself in the position where he could obtain clemency for a wrongdoing or position for revealing his friend’s failure, he would not hesitate to do so. It was far more likely Moribundi’s betrayal would lead to his ultimate death than it was likely the Gargoyle and Politic Bodywalkers would somehow gloat to Odjit about what had happened. Luckily, the Politic were not the gloating sort.

  But Moribundi was even more of a coward than Panahasi was and there was no loyalty among the Templars. It was every man for himself.

  So Panahasi began to research poisons.

  He wasn’t about to take any chances.

  And then he was going to send some of his underlings out on a search for the lost Gargoyle. If he could get Adoma’s Amulet back before the Gargoyle got too far, then all of this would be swept under the rug completely.

  None of this wou
ld have been necessary if he’d been powerful enough to create his own damn Gargoyle. But as it stood he was not. Neither had Moribundi been. And he was unwilling to trust anyone else with the quest. No, he had to finish rectifying this. The Gargoyle had been wounded. Perhaps fatally, if Panahasi was lucky. Now it was just a matter of time. Time before his success or his failure was known.

  And his first step was taking care of the one loose end he had left out there.

  When Kat returned to the bedroom with a tray of food, having noted that he seemed to grow stronger the more he ate, he was asleep. Luckily what she had prepared was cold-cut sandwiches and macaroni salad. It would keep. She placed the tray gingerly on the bedside table, not wanting to wake him.

  Then the lights went out with an audible grinding down of all the background sounds in the house, including the television and the weather report. She gasped reflexively as total blackness surrounded her. At the sound of her surprise, her patient shot upright in bed, grabbed her right off her feet, pinning her to the mattress underneath him, his large hand grasping at her throat until she couldn’t breathe. She choked, her hands pushing hard at the wall of his chest, her whole body trying to buck him off her. But it was like trying to dislodge a mountain. He would not be moved until he wanted to be moved. Obviously in his shocked confusion he had mistaken her for a threat and, even as she panicked for lack of air, a calm part of her mind wondered what kind of world it was that he came from that made him perceive threats around every corner. Considering his wounds, it was probably a greatly dangerous one.

  She knew her only hope was to make him realize she wasn’t the threat he thought she was. So she went against every natural instinct she had to fight, dropped her hands, and relaxed completely beneath him. At the very least he might think she was already dead, threat neutralized.

  It was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.

  And it worked. Through the darkness she saw his face change as awareness settled onto him.

  “Jesus God!” he said explosively, launching himself off her and out of the bed. He stumbled, the bedcovers tangling around his legs, and fell hard onto his backside. Kat meanwhile was dragging for much needed air, her bruised throat rasping as she coughed and tried to breathe in through an equally bruised windpipe.

  “Good God, Kat lass, I’m so bloody sorry.”

  He was scrambling over to her the very next second, back on the bed and running his big hands around her head. Jesus, she felt so small in between his hands. But the way he was touching her now, as if he might break her, made her also feel somehow treasured. It was a ridiculous perception, considering he’d just tried to kill her.

  “It’s okay,” she lied with a cough. Well, in a way it wasn’t a lie. She was alive, wasn’t she? And she knew he hadn’t meant to hurt her.

  “No, it bloody is no’! Lord help me, look at your wee throat. ’Tis bruising.” Shaking fingertips stroked her along the length of her throat and an inexplicable shiver of warmth trembled through her. Then, out of nowhere, he dropped his head down and pressed a gentling kiss at the corner of her lips, their breaths exchanging as each tried to calm theirs for their own reasons.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered again, her words making the side of her mouth brush against the side of his. She could feel several days’ worth of stubble against her lips, could feel the way he was shaking for fear he’d hurt her. It calmed her. Calmed her breathing. Cleared away whatever remaining fear his actions might have caused her to feel.

  And through the dark she could see the amber of his eyes. Could see the way they were almost luminescent, in spite of the fact that there wasn’t so much as a streak of lighting to be had anywhere around them. She found herself thinking that they were possibly the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen in her life.

  His rapid breathing audibly subsided as well. His eyes seemed to study her face as he pulled slightly away from his brush against her lips. And understanding passed between them there in the dark. Forgiveness was given and accepted. Gears shifted. And suddenly fear and regret had melted away and something else was left in its place. Something she wasn’t sure she exactly understood. Then, as her eyes drifted over his handsome countenance she realized with an internal groan what it was.

  She found him attractive. Appealing. Arousing, she thought. Oh God! I’m one of those women who let a man beat on them and then forgive them for it five seconds later!

  But why wasn’t that thought keeping her from licking her lips, wetting them with a sort of anxious anticipation.

  “Ah, now there’s a pretty picture,” she heard him mutter softly, his eyes fixated on the brief appearance of her tongue.

  Ahnvil wanted to doubly curse himself for the fiend that he was. Oh, he had known for the better part of three hundred years that he was as much beast as he was man, a thing that acted more on instinct than it did the rules of civilization, but never had that bothered him more than it was bothering him right then. He’d just tried to kill her, for fuck’s sake! Now what? What was he thinking? He was thinking about how fine her lips might taste. Because the brief touch of his mouth before had done nothing to tell him what it would be like to press his mouth over hers and slip his tongue inside of her mouth. And the minute the curiosity crossed his mind he could no longer think of anything else.

  And then, over the idea of a simple kiss, he grew hard. And by the way her eyes widened, she became instantly aware of it.

  “I’m a rough beast,” he said, by way of excuse and apology. “Make no mistake about it, Kat lass. I’d never be an easy man tae be with and you’re such a wee thing.”

  And instantly he knew it was the wrong thing to say. Or perhaps the very rightest thing he’d ever said because she got her back up in a fiery flash of indignant bourbon eyes.

  “I am not small! Nor am I frail! Stop treating me like I’m some kind of porcelain figurine!”

  “And you’re tough enough to survive a beast that grabs you by the throat in the middle of the darkness? A beast so used tae fighting for his life he’d crush you wi’out even knowing he was doing so? Wi’out a regret?” he demanded of her angrily.

  Her eyes softened in their regard of him. “You sound very much like a man with regret.”

  Well, it was hard to argue with that when he took a moment to think about it. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m … Ah, God, Kat lass. I know what I am but I canna think of anything but how fine you’d taste right now. What does that make me in your eyes?”

  She swallowed visibly and audibly. She didn’t answer, but her gaze dropped to his mouth and a sort of answering craving seemed to blossom in her eyes. He could see it and he could feel it. Just as true as he could feel himself grow even harder at the very thought of it.

  “Damn me tae hell and back,” he muttered as his breath fell hotly over her lips. “You’ll hate me and then some one day. Mark my words.”

  And with those prophetic words, he gave in to his impulses and rushed his mouth against hers. There was nothing gentle about the kiss, nothing introductory. He kissed her as though he’d earned every right to ravage the breath from her body. His words had spoken of caution and concern, but his mouth … Oh, his mouth was not holding anything back. It took only a second for utter craving to take the wheel. He pressed into her with a deeply indrawn breath, his weight falling over her, his body propped on one elbow while the other hand gripped her at her hip and drew her tightly against him.

  Sweet hell, he thought an instant after he ran his tongue across the plush seam of her lips, the craving she felt for the coming of it reflected in the softest little moan on the back of the softest little sigh. Had he not been so keen of hearing he might have missed it, and that would have been a crying shame. He swept his tongue into her mouth and there it was, instant bliss, the sweetest of flavors known to man. Oh, and the heat of her. Wet and lush it was searing him to the quick. All of her was searing him to the quick.

  He feared he was being too rough with her. After
all, he’d not been with a human female in nearly three centuries. No. He’d slaked his bodily needs on Gargoyle females. Women as much beast as he was. Women who could readily take him at his worst.

  But here was this gentle, delicate thing beneath him and he had no right, no right at all, to be doing this. Yet that lecture, like all the internal lectures thus far, fell on his completely deaf ears. He was too full of longing. Too overwhelmed with the taste and feel of her. And then her hand reached for his hair, her fingers plowing through the thick black locks, her palm pressing against him and …

  … encouraging him? Wanting more of him? She was unafraid? Or was she just unaware of the fire she was dancing so close to?

  That was when her tongue came forward and slipped inside his mouth. Had he thought himself hard before? Oh, what an unsuspecting fool he was. The feel of her aggressing into the kiss was the most erotic thing he could ever remember to that date. But why? Why was she affecting him so hotly?

  He didn’t care. He grabbed her at her hip, shifting himself over her, groaning when she parted her thighs and welcomed the weight of him between them. Their kiss took on a new, fiery life, her lips burning against his, the wetness of her toying against his tongue. He felt honored. Couldn’t help but to feel it. He knew he was undeserving of her trust after what he’d just done to her, undeserving of her, period. But he couldn’t make himself pull away, couldn’t keep himself from pressing his hips forward against her, his naked flesh rubbing up against the denim of her jeans.