Demonfire (34 page)

Her breasts called to him. He
leaned forward and took one taut nipple between his lips. He could never grow
tired of this, her sweet taste, the way the rosy peak pebbled between his
tongue and the roof of his mouth. When he sucked on her, she moaned and thrust
her chest forward. Her fingers fluttered over his shoulder and down his arm,
leaving shivers of sensation in their wake. He rubbed against her like a cat
marking its owner, dragging his face with his stubbly chin over her breasts,
down her belly. He could have spent the night like this, touching and being
touched, but she wouldn’t have it.

Eddy rose up on her knees
beside him and pushed against his big shoulders. For such a slender thing, she
was much stronger than she looked. Of course, he put up absolutely no fight at
all as she tumbled him to his back. He thought she was going to come astride
him, but instead she slithered down between his knees and, without any warning
at all, took him in her mouth.

One moment he was erect and
waving in the cool night air—the next much of his length was engulfed in the
liquid heat of her mouth. She took him deep, sliding her lips and tongue around
him, scraping gently with her teeth, sucking hard so that her cheeks hollowed
with each powerful draw.

He moaned and fought to keep
from thrusting into her mouth, but the demon inside him would have none of it.
His dark side roared to life, and his cock slipped forcefully past Eddy’s lips.

She wrapped her hands around
his thick shaft and held on, controlling Dax, controlling the demon. Dax fought
the need to rut like the creature he’d once been, but the struggle tested him,
had him clenching the tumbled blankets beneath his rigid body in both fists.
His muscles tensed and knotted as he struggled to hang on to some semblance of
whatever sanity Eddy chose to leave him.

He raised his head and looked
down the length of his body, over the shimmering colors of the tattoo, directly
into Eddy’s deep brown eyes. Her lips stretched wide around his shaft, but she
still managed to smile at him as she worked her mouth slowly up and down his
length.

Again he felt the demon’s
frustration, but he worked it now, raising and lowering his hips to a rhythm
Eddy set. Then, so slowly he almost cried out, she raised her head until her
lips clasped nothing more than the broad flair of his crown. She suckled him
there for a moment, ran the tip of her tongue beneath the lip, and dipped it
into the tiny eye at the center of his glans.

Then she released him.

Cool air brushing over his
damp skin made him shiver, but when he raised his head, the look in Eddy’s eyes
made him burn. Dax felt the demon growl with barely contained need as he
reached for her. She crawled up over his body, kissing his belly, his ribs, the
scar where the demon’s fireshot had first struck and burned him with its deadly
curse just five days ago.

Five short days. He’d lived a
lifetime during those hours, and yet there was still more to learn, more to
experience. Eddy straddled him. She came down slowly over his erection and took
him deep inside. He felt the powerful clench of feminine muscles, the strength
of her thighs clasping his hips.

He fought his demon side even
as he gave himself over to Eddy. She leaned over and kissed him, dragging her
pointed nipples across his chest while her lips plucked at his mouth and her
tongue teased his. His demon grumbled, but Dax held firm until the darkness
faded into the background.

Then, without warning, as he
raised his hips to thrust into her heat, the snake came to life.

Eddy’s eyes went wide. She
stared at his chest. Then glared at him, as if the colorful tattoo writhing
painfully over his body were all his fault. “It’s moving, damn it. Why, when
all I really want is to make love with you, does that damned thing have to show
up?”

She slapped her hands down
over Dax’s heart and scowled at his chest. Dax realized he was grinning as he
kept up the steady rise and fall of his hips. Her irritation was actually
endearing. From what he’d learned of the females of the race over the past
week, most women would have been screaming and recoiling in horror.

Not Eddy Marks. She just got
pissed.

She’d shown him she could
handle his demon, and it was obvious she could handle the snake. She was tough,
and she loved him. He didn’t doubt her abilities at all.

Warmth radiated from her palms
to his heart. He felt the snake twitch along its full length. The tail flicked
against his inner thigh; the tongue slipped out between Eddy’s fingers.

She held it down, pressing the
serpent close against his body while Dax continued his thrust and retreat,
lifting her up with each rise of his hips, then dropping low to do it again.

After a moment, she raised her
head and grinned at him. “I’m actually getting used to the little sucker. Are
you in pain? Is it hurting you when it moves?”

He shook his head. “When he
comes to life while we’re making love, it’s different. The pain is part of the
pleasure. I feel it rippling over my thigh and across my chest, I feel the heat
in my groin, but it’s one more sensation, another part of the whole.”

He arched into her. Eddy
closed her eyes, groaned in pleasure, and ground herself against him. Her palms
held the snake in place, and she tilted her head back. Dax wrapped his hands
around her hips and held her close. Then he rolled with her, until she was
beneath him, smiling at him as he took her higher with each powerful thrust of
his hips.

Suddenly she arched her back
and cried out. Her palms flattened against his chest, and he felt the heat
flowing into him, felt her strength and her love. The snake thrashed along his
body, rippling in time with Eddy’s tight contractions. Lifting away from his
flesh, then clinging once more as if it were merely a colorful tattoo without
life or form.

The combination of writhing
snake, shivering woman, and the knowledge that she loved him enough to fight
for him, loved him enough to stay even as his days grew short, took him over
the edge. He felt the rolling charge of power radiating from the base of his
spine, spreading out through his balls and along his hard length.

He groaned with his final
thrust as orgasm took what little control he might have thought was his, stole
it away, and left him sated and sweating in Eddy’s warm embrace.

Quiet now, the snake glowed
between them, the soft golden glow they’d ended with before. There was no pain
from the tattoo, no sense of the curse. Even his own demon lay quiet. Dax
wrapped Eddy in his arms and rolled to one side. Her palms still pressed
against the tattoo, and her vaginal muscles clenched in a rhythmic pulse along
the full length of his shaft.

He thought of rising long
enough to find a soft washcloth to bathe her. Thought of it for a good ten
seconds or so. And then he thought of nothing.

Eddy woke during the night.
The house was quiet, the bedroom dark. Dax must have shut the light off at some
point. She’d loved making love with him with the light glowing softly beside
them tonight. He was such a beautiful man, all broad shoulders and muscled
chest, with more muscles defining his thighs and the most perfect butt she’d
ever seen on any man.

Now though, the only light
came from the softly glowing tattoo that ran from the top of his thigh to his
heart. She lay beside him, propped up on her elbow, studying everything about
him, saving and savoring the memories.

When she’d first seen him,
he’d been so badly hurt she’d not noticed what a perfect specimen of a man he
actually was. Now, though, the deep burn on his chest was mostly healed, and
the four holes along his side where the garden gnome had stabbed him with a
pitchfork were gone altogether. The glowing tattoo should have freaked her out,
but it was part of who Dax was. Not a good part. No, nothing that hurt him was
good, but it had been there as long as she’d known him.

And she alone could keep it in
check. Eddy had no idea how she did it, why the mere touch of her hands to his
tattoo should have the power to quiet the serpent, but as long as it worked,
she’d be there for him.

As long as she could. She
glanced at the bedside clock. It was almost four in the morning. They’d be
getting up soon, but the sixth day had already begun. Not even two full days
left, and he’d be gone.

She would not cry. She
wouldn’t do that to Dax. She loved him too much, and he had no control over
when his time here ended, when his borrowed body went back to wherever bodies
waited for things like this.

She lay back beside him and
stared at the ceiling. Who’d have thought, less than a week ago, that she, of
all people, would be having this conversation with herself. She’d teased her
dad for years about his acceptance of all things weird.

She grinned into the darkness.
It didn’t get any weirder than this—lying in bed beside a demon turned warrior,
a man in a borrowed body with an impossible deadline to save her town.

She rolled her head to one
side and gazed at him for a moment. Well, maybe it did get weirder…. He was a
glowing
demon turned warrior. She traced the golden
outline of the shimmering tattoo with her finger, and realized she didn’t know
quite what to make of it.

The tattoo was cursed, and it
kept turning on Dax, trying to kill him, but she had the power to stop it. That
fascinated her, that she could stop the pain, stop the whole damned thing,
something as dangerous as a demon’s curse, merely with her touch.

Not only stop it. She made it
glow.

Life would never be the same
again. She’d always been so pragmatic and rigid in her thinking, so quick to
tease her dad about his acceptance of the strange and unusual. No longer. She’d
experienced things she’d never imagined existed, never in her wildest dreams
would have accepted as real.

Now she believed.

She’d never been in love
before either. Never expected it to find her, but it had, and it was wonderful.
She refused to think of the future, of going on without Dax, but just as she’d
told her dad, she honestly wouldn’t have traded the past few days for anything.
Dax had changed her life in so many ways.

All of them for the better.

Eddy stared once more at the
ceiling, smiling into the darkness. “And I’m the one who makes him glow,” she
whispered. Still smiling, she closed her eyes.

Friday morning—day six

Dax awoke with Eddy’s arms and
legs wrapped around him and her nose buried against his chest. Her tousled hair
tickled his chin, and she was naked. Vaguely he recalled waking once during the
night, turning to her, making love yet again.

Or maybe it was a dream. She
pursed her lips and licked his nipple, and it all came back to him. No, they’d
definitely made love. He remembered that part really well, when she’d run her
lips across his chest, sucked on his nipples and shocked him with how sensitive
they were. He’d had no idea…. He ran his fingers through her dark curls. “Eddy?
Wake up, Eddy,” he said in a singsong voice. “It’s almost seven.”

“Mmph.” She wriggled her hips
and snuggled even closer.

He kissed the top of her head.
“I forgot to tell you that Mr. Puccini remembered the turkey coming to life.
Alton and I saw him last night.”

She muttered against his
chest, grumbling, “And you’re waking me up to tell me this why?”

He laughed. “Because it
changes some of our plans for today. Alton gave him another compulsion, but he
doesn’t know how long it will last. If Mr. Puccini’s memory came back, you can
bet the townsfolk are beginning to remember stuff. Alton needs to strengthen
the earlier compulsion, and he has to do it today.”

Eddy raised her head and
glared at him. “Did you really need to tell me this before my coffee?”

“Yep. I did. Now get moving.”
He smiled when he said it, but there was no time to waste.

A shower helped, but Eddy
still felt spacey when she finally wandered into the kitchen. Dax and Alton sat
at the kitchen table, but her father was nowhere in sight.

The guys both mumbled a sleepy
“good morning.”

Eddy glanced around the
kitchen. “Where’s Dad? Is he okay?” She poured herself a cup of coffee and
added two teaspoons of sugar for more energy. She had a feeling she’d need it
today.

Alton nodded over his steaming
cup. “He’s fine. I’ve got him soaking in a hot bath for a bit. He’s stiff and
sore from all the walking yesterday, but he’ll be okay.”

Eddy leaned over and kissed
the tall Lemurian on top of his blond head. “Thank you, Alton. Did I ever tell
you what a good guy you are?”

He leaned back in his chair
and grinned at her. “No, but you’re welcome to whenever you like.”

Dax raised his head from the
map he’d been studying. “Watch it, Lemurian.” At least he was grinning.

“You watch it.” Eddy leaned
over and kissed him full on the mouth. “You boys play nice.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dax gazed at
Alton. “Don’t ever, ever make her mad.”

Alton grinned and nodded, and
went back to reading the morning paper. Eddy’s father had the
Sacramento Bee
delivered daily, and so far they’d not seen
any articles about the odd events in Evergreen. Alton was careful to read the
paper from cover to cover each day, just in case.

He folded the last page. “So
far, so good. Eddy, we need to get to some of the central points in town today
so I can strengthen the compulsions I’ve used.”

“Dax told me about Mr.
Puccini.” Eddy still hadn’t figured out all of Alton’s Lemurian abilities, but
so far he’d managed the seemingly impossible on more than one occasion. “Can
you cover an entire community? How do you do that?”

“I can,” he said, as confident
as always. “There are various points of energy around town, places I can sense
when I’m near them. I already know a few, but I want to see if there are
others. If I stand at those points when I broadcast a hypnotic compulsion, it
has more power and affects more people. Remember, though, that it’s never as
strong after the first time. I’m hoping that if I renew it today, it will hold
through the weekend.”