One Handsome Devil (18 page)

He wasn't the only one. Sara was wet, slick against the touch of his finger as he stroked her. She arched her back, bringing her hips closer to his. “Hurry."

He shared her sense of urgency. Sooner or later, reality would come crashing down, destroy the moments of pleasure he had found here. For the first time in a demon's eternity, he lived for the moment.

He kissed her again, then entered her, feeling Sara's tightness as her body welcomed him, squeezed him with the most intimate of embraces.

Involuntarily his wings beat harder seeking the rhythm that would join him with Sara in that dance of desire and fulfillment that formed a bond even between such disparate creatures as a woman and a demon.

Sara groaned but her aura spoke of a deep contentment. It wasn't anything he had seen in a human before, but he recognized it as powerful, dangerous, and wholly inappropriate.

"Jack?"

"Hum?” He tried to caress her with his voice as his hands caressed her body and his maleness caressed her deep inside.

"Don't think about it."

"What?"

"About why this is impossible. Can't you relax just for a little while? Can't you enjoy the moment?"

He had thought he was but he'd lied to himself—the only lie he could manage. He was afraid. It didn't make sense, of course. What had made sense lately? Sensible or not, he feared losing Sara although he knew he must.

Sara was right, though. None of his fears could prolong the time they had together. He had to seize each precious moment, capture it, and encase it in memory to serve as a shield for when he was returned to the pit.

"It isn't easy,” he admitted.

He floated kisses down her neck, then nipped.

She gasped, her muscles clenching against him. “Oh, my."

But Jack was past conversation. He wrapped one of her arms around his neck, then placed both of her hands under her bottom and pulled her to him, burying himself in her until she gasped again.

Sara wiggled in his grasp. Instinctively she matched the movement of her hips to the beat of his wings pressing when he relaxed, letting him pull away when his wings surged against the thick Dallas air.

She pulled her mouth to his ear. For a moment, he thought she would whisper something dangerous. Maybe she did too, for she stopped, then caught his earlobe between her teeth and bit down gently but strongly enough for him to take notice, to make the decision to trust her.

Her tongue caressed his ear then and he buried himself again in her. The desire washed over him in waves, its undertow clawing at him as he climbed closer to completion. This moment had always been the time of danger, the fleeting seconds when he would lose control and act according to his demonic nature.

He wanted to thrust Sara away from him to protect her from what he knew would come but they were too far above the earth now.

If he released her, she would die. Yet she lay in his arms trusting him. Trusting that he would not lose control, would not harm her, would not release her to fall.

Nobody had trusted Jack. Not for a very long time. Not since that day when he'd shown irrevocably that he could never be trusted again. Not since he'd become a demon.

Sara ran her hands across his chest. She'd released her grip on his neck trusting the light pressure of his hands on her bottom to hold her in place as she bucked against him pushing herself, and Jack closer to the magic moment of release.

Jack gritted his teeth and compelled himself to control. Yet even control was not the answer because Sara's body against his urged, compelled a loss of control.

"Oh, yes.” Sara's aura blazed in a yellow and blue flame as her orgasm overtook her. Her insides clutched him, holding him tighter even than before, surging with the beat of her completion.

Sara looked at him, her eyes glazed with desire, with need. She grinned then bent her head to bite hard on one of his nipples.

The hint of pain pushed him over the edge. Jack lost control of his emotions, of his fears. He felt himself balanced on a knife-edge of tension. A step one way and he would destroy himself, Sara, and everyone he could reach before the Angels arrived to herd him back to the pit. A step the other way and he would hurl himself to destruction in absolute grief that this moment must come to an end. Yet he remained balanced and, in that balance, climbed to climax.

He gasped, held Sara closer to him as if she was incredibly precious. Perhaps later, he would look back and see that he had been caught up in an irrational moment, but then he knew beyond any uncertainty that Sara was unique in his existence. That losing her, as he inevitably must, would hurt more than all of the fires of hell.

Sara's body convulsed against his as his excitement pushed her over the edge again, bringing her to a second climax.

He'd always been able to see her emotions. Now, his vision seemed even sharper as he sensed the physical and emotional surge of their release flowed between them like huge tides.

The sensation was like nothing he'd experienced before. His wings seemed to lose purchase on the air. It seemed to him that he was falling, all of his powers suddenly vanished into the wave of desire and completion that Sara represented.

Sara loosened her bite on his nipple and grinned at him. “Oh, wow."

He stroked his wings against the air more strongly. Something was wrong.

Sara's grin turned to an expression of pure terror. “We're falling."

Sara watched in silent terror as they plunged from the sky. In seconds, Dallas resolved from a distant and softened blur to the hard edges of reality. She couldn't even scream.

Jack's wings swooped with frantic intent. Before, they had seemed to seize the air effortlessly. Now, they found no purchase. All of his expended energy amounted to exactly nothing.

"What's happening?” she asked in a triumph of will against her freezing fear.

"I forgot to look where I was going,” Jack admitted.

She looked more closely. Directly below them sat one of the fine brick churches that dotted so many street corners in Oak Cliff where she lived. “The church?"

"It's like a black hole sucking all of my power."

Their forward momentum had carried them to the middle of the churchyard but seemed to have petered out there with no chance of carrying them out of range before they hit the ground. “What will happen to you?” she asked.

"Don't worry about me.” He twisted in the air so his body rested below her. As if Jack's hard muscle would protect her from a multi-thousand foot drop.

"I'm worried about both of us.” She angled her body into the stream of air that buffeted both of them, trying to create at least a fraction of a glide rather than the pure plummet that would carry them to destruction. It wouldn't take much.

Without her having to speak, Jack sensed what she was doing and added his body and his wings to the equation. He might as well not have been there for all of the difference he made.

"Angle to the right,” he urged. “Uh, my right,” he corrected when she tried to follow his instructions.

She obeyed although his choice seemed perverse, carrying them directly toward a tall steeple that threatened to end their lives with piercing rather than with a crushing collision with the ground.

Jack tightened his grip around her with his right arm. “Hold on,” he breathed.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his body. If she had to die, she couldn't imagine a better place than deep in Jack's embrace.

They must have reached terminal velocity but the ground seemed to be approaching ever faster. Sara made a mental note never to consider sky-diving. This experience provided all of that kind of adventure she would ever need.

Jack reached out and grasped the steeple as they flew past, his body convulsing into hard muscle and harder bone. His grip on her tightened, knocking out her wind and leaving Sara gasping for breath.

If he'd thought he could hold, Jack was clearly mistaken. He maintained a grip on the steeple for only a fraction of a second. In that time, red sparks launched themselves from the steeple and surrounded Jack's body in a haze of attacking flames.

He dropped off, the scent of ozone filling Sara's nostrils as she gasped for a life-sustaining breath.

Jack's effort barely slowed the fall but Sara's adrenalin rush made every second stretch itself out, let her see everything, feel every brush of Jack's skin and fabric against her body.

He jerked, twisting again to present his body to the Spanish tiled church roof.

A wave of heat arose from the roof as he struck it, but the friction didn't seem to slow them at all.

Then they dropped off the roof, their descent angling toward the street.

Sara tried to gather her breath to scream but couldn't. Jack's grip held her so close that she couldn't move, couldn't struggle, couldn't even cry out at the last instant of her life.

A lifetime of regrets filled Sara's mind. Had she told her grandmother that she loved her? Had she misplaced her priorities when she'd ignored Katra's complaints rather than forcing Jack to rectify them instantly? Should she have left Jack in Hell when she'd had the chance?

The ground zoomed closer, seemingly climbing up to meet her rather than waiting for her to fall.

Again, Jack twisted himself, this time so he was on top. Was she seeing his true colors, at last? She couldn't believe he would sacrifice his body against the tile roof and then use her to break the fall, yet no other explanation met the facts.

The sidewalk grew in her eyes until Sara could see every crack in the depression-era concrete.

Then, without warning, they lifted.

It shouldn't have been possible. Sara had aced Physics in both high school and college. The sudden stop should have broken her neck regardless of whether it was caused by the ground or by some external force. Instead, she was lifted into a cloud of comfort. Jack's wings again found purchase in the air.

"How—"

"Flying is not completely in tune with human physics."

She'd never get used to this mind reading thing. “What happened."

"When we got beyond the church grounds, I was able to reclaim my powers. Are you all right?"

"Of course not. I came literally within an inch of my life, have the worst form of coitus interruptus I've ever heard of, and realized how little I've accomplished with my life."

Jack winged down to the back of a vacant lot a block from her apartment. “Perhaps we should straighten our clothing. It wouldn't do to look like this when Katra and Bob arrive."

Straightening her clothing was easy enough, although it hardly hid the evidence. Her hair was a mess, she'd lost her panties at ten thousand feet, and her dress was both twisted in strange ways and charred by the fiery holocaust that had surrounded their plunge.

Worse, Jack had lost his hat and his jacket. He tucked his wings under his shirt and she finger-combed his hair over his small horns, but the evidence was painfully obvious.

"Could you give me a hand with this?” Jack's voice sounded embarrassed—something she would have been willing to bet was impossible.

She looked where he was pointing. “You need more?” This hardly seemed like the place for lovemaking, even if she had been in the mood, which she emphatically was not.

He fumbled with his open zipper. “I can't do it alone."

"It may be big but I think you can lift it."

"Please.” He reached out his left hand.

Sara's heart climbed into her throat. She'd been so fixated on her own problems that she hadn't noticed what had happened to Jack.

"Well that was pretty interesting, wasn't it?"

As conversation gambits went, Reverend Bob's wasn't the greatest. Still, Katra wasn't in the mood to be fussy. He hadn't said anything at all for the first ten minutes of their taxi ride to Sara's apartment.

"Sara has always been good at media and science. Literature and history questions got her. Jack seems to have a knack for those.” Go figure.

"Hum.” He paused, downshifting and turning onto the Sylvan viaduct. “That Jack seemed to know just about everything."

She had hinted about Jack's secret identity before, but she felt reluctant to bring it up again. Sara would never forgive her if Katra butted into her love life just when she was finally getting a little action.

Speaking of action, Reverend Bob had been looking her over for most of the evening. Katra didn't think it would be too difficult to wangle a date out of him, but should she? After her experience with Derrick, was she ready to date anyone?

"I think Jack's been around more than he looks.” Although if you looked closely and checked out the horns on his head, you might just guess he wasn't the nice boy from the suburbs that Maura wanted for her granddaughter. Evidently Rev. Bob wasn't one for looking closely. Lucky for Jack they were in Texas where nobody thought twice about a man who kept his cowboy hat on all night.

Rev. Bob hemmed and hawed for a moment clearing his throat and nodding to himself. “Has Sara known him for long?"

Hum. Maybe Bob was more interested in Sara than in Katra after all. “He came into her life rather suddenly."

Reverend Bob nodded slowly. “I'll have to check him out on the church's database. Sara has always been cautious. I'm a little suspicious about this sudden interest. If you ask me, there's something a little strange about this Jack."

Strange like he was butting in. The funny thing was, Reverend Bob had never seemed to notice Sara before. Some guys were like that, though. They didn't look at a woman until some other man had shown interest. Then again, Katra didn't pretend to understand men. As far as she could tell, they were all crazy anyway. Why else would women like Katra and Sara have to spend their evenings summoning spirits?

"Don't you think we should do something?” he continued.

Katra gave Reverend Bob a good look. He was kind of cute in a rough-hewn way with his dark hair, habitual black shirts and jeans, and well-built shoulders. Maybe Sara was supposed to end up with him. Maybe the magic had only brought Jack into the picture to get a little jealousy going and kick-start Reverend Bob's romantic interest.