She sent power into the dragon’s brain and the enormous female stopped, dropped and rolled onto her side, a ten-foot-long purple tongue smacking wetly onto the floor.
Darma leapt gracefully down and rubbed her hands together, looking way too proud of herself.
Giving the angry young male a wide berth, I joined her, crouching down to check that the female was still alive. She was, though I wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to form a cogent thought ever again after Darma’s electrical lobotomy.
I stood up and looked at my sister, confused by this new side of her that I’d never seen before. “Who are you and what have you done with my sissy-assed, magic-phobic sister?”
She glared at me. “Where’s Slayer?”
We heard a groan on the other side of the building, coming from beneath a pile of rubbish. Hurrying over to free him, Darma and I pulled huge chunks of wood and metal away and found him, bleeding and pale, at the bottom.
He had a thick splinter of wood sticking out of his chest and was covered in bleeding cuts of varying sizes and depths.
He was a mess.
I grinned at him. “You look like hell, Slayer.”
“Hardy, har, har, Astra.” He yanked the massive splinter ruthlessly from his own chest and then closed his eyes, his chest heaving and blood pouring from the wound as he pulled his power forward.
White light filled with heat pulsed from his skin, sending an electrically charged breeze to spin around us. The breeze was filled with his yummy Slayer scent.
My Settling rose in a wave to soak me with need.
As Slayer healed himself, cutting off the bleeding and knitting his wounds with the efficiency of an unplanned-injury-unit physician, my panties dampened and my nipples hardened in inspiration.
My mind formed a picture of how Slayer might look like naked, and proceeded to envision my hand cupping his balls and caressing his…
I stood up with a small cry, shaking my head to dispel the delicious vision. Fortunately for me, Slayer was too preoccupied to notice.
Slayer’s eyes fluttered open and his gaze slid from me to my sister, where it caught and widened in surprise. When his sexy lips tipped upward into a self-satisfied smile, I looked at Darma. I gasped.
Outside of an actual sexual event, I’d never seen naked lust written across someone’s face…especially when that someone was my cranky, judgmental sister.
Her lips were parted, her eyes were soft and her hands were clenched tightly at her sides, as if she were fighting some huge inner turmoil. Her gaze was locked on Slayer and filled with something that made me intensely uncomfortable.
I cleared my throat and gave Darma a mental nudge. She jerked and closed her mouth, climbing to her feet. She studiously avoided Slayer’s gaze.
“Okay, what was your idea for getting these things safely out of here, Slayer?”
He dragged his gaze from Darma long enough to smile at me. “You’re not gonna like it.”
I sighed. “I’ve known you long enough to be sure of that. But tell me anyway.”
“I’d rather show you.” He closed his eyes and a moment later a lusty roar sounded outside the building. I jumped and glared at Slayer. “Are you kidding me? How am I gonna explain this to my client?”
Right on cue, a male shout split the air. “Hey, lady, I’m payin’ you to get rid of the dragons in my shop, not bring more here. No, scratch that, I’ve decided I’m
not
payin’ you.”
A massive red head slammed through the mangled entrance and turned toward Slayer. The huge red made a purring noise and inclined its head at Slayer.
He looked at me. “Do you want me to do this, or not?”
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I nodded. “All right. But let’s get it over with, I have something I need to do.”
* * * * *
Fever boiled beneath the surface of my skin. My body thrummed with need. The adrenaline rush from fighting the dragon—and maybe a little bit the close proximity to Slayer—had fired my Settling to a near violent state.
As soon as we deposited the family of greens on Olympus, I popped away, stepping out of my space shift inside a well-appointed, lushly carpeted hallway. I strode quickly toward the golden doors at the end of the hall, ignoring the surprised red faces and beady gazes of Dialle’s guards.
As I approached, I lifted a hand and threw the doors open before me, barely slowing to acknowledge the guards’ attempts to stop me.
They were halfhearted attempts anyway. The guards were terrified of me since I put the pretty little tear-shaped mark on their boss’s neck.
Dialle turned in surprise as I strode into the room, along with several hundred dark-world types who had gathered there for an audience with the newly crowned King of the Royal Devils.
The special guards flanking his throne stepped in front of him, closing him off from view. Without even thinking, I flicked my fingers toward those guards and sent them flying. My steps barely faltered as Dialle’s loyal soldiers smacked hard against the wall behind the throne.
Dialle stood, his impossibly handsome face dark with anger. “Astra!”
I didn’t stop until I stood inches away, only a shallow platform separating him from me as I reached for him, touching his hickey with the tip of my finger. His face went pale. He reached up and clasped my wrist but didn’t wrench my finger from his throat.
I need you now.
This isn’t a good time…
I don’t care.
You see, the thing about my Settling is that it isn’t just a sexual thing. The struggle a Tweener deals with at age twenty-five, when her Settling sets in, is with the dark and light sides of her nature. Right at that moment my dark nature had bitch-slapped my light into submission and my devil had come out in a big way.
I’ll take you right here.
For the first time, the hint of a smile curved Dialle’s lips.
You wouldn’t dare.
I sent a small jolt of power into the hickey and Dialle’s eyes rolled back in his head. He jerked my wrist and slammed me hard against his body.
My breath escaped from my lips and the burning coil of need I’d been nursing low in my belly tightened, my skin rising in goose bumps under the force of Dialle’s emerging power.
His black eyes swirled with red and orange lights, making me dizzy when I gazed into them. He lifted his head and cast that gaze around the huge room. “Out!”
His power-drenched voice thundered around the room, bouncing off the walls and coming back with teeth-jarring force. He didn’t wait for the room to clear.
His lips descended to mine. His hot, talented fingers grabbed at my clothing, tearing the soft sweater I wore into pieces and flinging it toward the floor. I ripped into his gauzy white shirt and wrapped my arms around his hard, smooth body, plunging my fingers into the waistband of his leather pants at the small of his back.
My soft slacks fell in a puddle on the floor, nearly torn in half.
I yanked him into my body, grinding my hips against the hard ridge of flesh that tented the buttery leather of his pants. I infused the leather with power, ripping the pants down the back and scoring his skin in the process.
Dialle sucked in a breath at the pain and his head fell back. I covered his hickey with my lips, sucking hard. Dialle growled and picked me up, slamming me into his velvet-padded throne. I hit the soft back hard and before I could catch my breath, he was on me, his long, hard body covering mine. He pulled my legs apart and buried himself in my body. My body stretched delightfully to accommodate his thick, hard length.
I screamed, my body shattering with pleasure.
Dialle initiated a steady, aggressive rhythm, the rigid flesh of his cock scraping delightfully against the super-sensitized skin of my pussy. I wrapped my fingers around his arms and held on, gritting my teeth against the pleasure-pain racking my overheated body.
Sparks built around us. A wall of heat and fire obscured us from the outside world, dancing in time to our sexual rhythm and flaring with the bright colors of passion. Reds, oranges and purples infused the wall of flame, creating heat without destruction, pleasure rather than pain.
The flames were an extension of our passion, a visible measure of our need. And they had built to massive proportions, threatening to touch the ceiling high above our heads.
As Dialle built the tempo to a near frantic pace, I reached up and wrapped my fingers around the back of his neck, pulling him down so I could capture his lips. His kiss brought me another notch higher in the lust scale, turning my entire body into flame. My skin felt as if it had been rubbed raw, every nerve ending firing in an overload of sensation. My clit throbbed painfully, my nipples ached. Heated cream ran from my pussy to drench our straining thighs.
Dialle’s tongue engaged mine in a sweet dance. The scent of his breath intoxicated me, making me dizzy. My lips slid from his mouth and forged a path over his chin, down his throat, to the spot just above his shoulder where I’d marked him.
He tensed as my lips covered the spot. Electrical energy surged from the hickey as I covered it with my lips, making my lips tingle. I opened my mouth and pulled the area between my lips, nibbling the sensitive skin in a tease.
Dialle stopped moving within my body and went into a waiting posture, his muscles bulging as he held himself perfectly still. Only his cock jumped within my channel, too close to climax to stay still.
My teeth teased the area, drawing out the moment. Dialle’s breath came shallow and fast in his chest.
My fingers slid over the warm silk of his pecs, tweaking the small brown nipples into rigid peaks. His body vibrated in expectation. I flicked my tongue across the slightly reddened flesh.
Dialle shuddered and arched his back, sending his impossibly hard cock deep inside my body on a spine-bendingly slow stroke. I sucked in a pleasured breath.
The flames around us stopped their frantic dancing and hung, hopeful and still over us. The air was scented with our sexual musk. The heat bathing us in the warmed scent.
I love your cock, Dialle. I need your body. But your heart is everything. I need you to come back to me.
He opened his eyes and fixed me with a silver-spun gaze. Gentle blue hovered behind the silver swirls. He promised me nothing with that gaze. It was warmer than before, but still cold in comparison to the heat we were creating with our bodies.
Dialle?
Finish this, Astra. It is all we have right now.
Tears filled my eyes. I closed them to shut out the cold nature of his gaze and sucked Dialle’s hickey into my mouth. His body arched over me, power speared between us, pulling us into the air, off the throne. Hovering ten feet above the floor, I sucked that hickey hard and sent us both spiraling over the edge, our bodies tightening and twisting under an onslaught of sexual power.
My pussy clenched and throbbed around his jumping cock. My breasts felt heavy and swollen, the nipples painful with desire. Dialle wrapped his fingers in my hair and yanked my face away from his neck, covering my lips with a starving kiss.
There was more than lust in his heated kiss and less than love.
It felt almost like an apology.
I am trying, Astra. It is all I can do.
I sighed against his lips as our bodies softened into the aftermath of an incredible experience. It wasn’t enough. But it would have to do for the moment. And as my fingers slid across the warm, silken skin of his well-rounded buttocks, I knew I’d do whatever I could to make it right between us again.
Chapter Three
Witchy Woman
Our poor miss has much to churn, not the least of which is death,
The booger made her body burn…but bleurgh…who nursed her back to health?
The sky outside my office window was blue touched with wispy white clouds. In the distance, air vehicles of all shapes and sizes spun and dipped in an effort to beat the clock and maximize their drivers’ schedules.
I sighed, feeling all twitchy and at odds with myself.
My relationship with Dialle was a large, smoldering turd at the moment. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever forgive me for marking him.
My sister had lost her tiny little mind. Breaking up with Torre had apparently unhinged her. She appeared to be trying to become mini-me…unbelievable. She used to
hate
all things me. And now she was demanding that I hire her to help me exterminate evil bugs.
Yes, I was shorthanded. And yeah, I could use the help. But I’d rather eat chocolate-covered bidgie bugs than hire Darma to help me on the job. Unfortunately for me, she’d been dogging me relentlessly about it.
So I’d been looking for something innocuous and safe to send her on.
There wasn’t a lot of that in my line of work.
And then there was the Slayer thing. That worried me too. It was obvious to me that Darma found him attractive. And Slayer was perfectly capable of taking advantage of that. He was even worse for Darma than Dialle’s brother had been because he was all strong, capable male. He’d stomp all over my love-challenged sister.
And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it, other than watch it go down. If I said anything negative about Slayer, anything at all, Darma would latch onto him quicker than a fish demon could snorf up a light fairy. I sighed, leaning my head back and trying to blank out my mind.
My thoughts were giving me a headache.
And then there was Slayer himself. I had to admit he fired my furnace more than he should. I kept asking myself the hard question. If I was committed to Dialle, should I be having sizzling thoughts about another man?
My Settling was at fault. I knew that. I couldn’t control the urges that swamped me as long as I was under its control. That was just a fact. It was nothing new. Every Tweener went through the process. And it was an ugly thing.
More importantly, Dialle understood it too and mostly didn’t care about my abbreviated forays into sexual diversion, as long as I came back to him for the final curtain. But Slayer was a sore spot with him. And I knew he wouldn’t be able to overlook a mistake in that particular direction.