She shook her head. “God, imagine all he’s seen and done in two thousand years.”
“Mostly spawning unimaginable evils, I’d guess.”
“Why don’t we have that kind of power on our side?”
He definitely wasn’t going to tell her nobody was on their side anymore. “Only the good die young.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Tell me everything you learned.”
He didn’t. But he told her some. He avoided all mention of Ecco’s theory. How could he explain it when he didn’t understand it—didn’t believe it—himself? How could the heat between them mean anything against hellfire?
Not to mention she’d want to know how the league planned to make use of their united effort when he’d just proved himself the worst sort of team player. After he killed Corvus, and she was safe, he’d figure out how this partnership thing worked. Sacrificing his solitary hunter cred was a small price to pay for the chance to rid the world of darkness.
And, hell, didn’t even the lone wolf sometimes take a mate?
He lured her back with a dark chocolate bar and pomegranate. She stopped her endless questions long enough to frown at the dessert. “Odd.”
“I don’t have even two hundred years under my belt, but I’ve tried some things.” Thinking about what was under his belt made him shift awkwardly. He leaned back against the daybed and held a wedge of the pomegranate out to her.
She eyed him, then took the fruit and a square of chocolate. She copied his lounging position, leaving a space between them.
He handed over a plastic shopping bag. “I brought you some other things too.”
She rifled through the contents. “A toothbrush. Jasmine tea.” She paused. “Underwear? Just my size. You thought of everything.”
“Yeah.” Oh, he’d been thinking.
He’d gone predator-still he realized when she glanced away, looking up at the little white lights and the black sky beyond, anywhere but at him. “Is it going to snow?”
“Not in here. This is paradise.” And because he was possessed and couldn’t leave paradise well enough alone, he leaned forward through that carefully made empty space between them and kissed her.
He breathed the heat of chilies and the pineapple sweetness, tasting bitter chocolate and tart pomegranate. Had there been a time when he couldn’t feel anything?
Touch was still agony, though irresistible, the hot tension in his body almost more than he could bear. His fingertips ached for her. He filled his hands with the fall of her hair to cradle her head as he kissed her. The rush of blood through his veins held a single, sustained note of desire. That keening note morphed into his name on her kiss-bruised lips.
“Ferris.” Her hand in the middle of his chest was a gentle restraint.
He dredged up some last semblance of sanity to ease back.
She nibbled at her lower lip. “Are you all right?”
He thought a moment. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m so used to seeing at least a few purple sparks in your eyes.” She raised her hand to his cheek. “All I see now is you.”
“The demon is here. I’ll never be free of it.” It had just been pushed to a way-back burner by the entirely earthly urge that possessed him now.
“Just as well,” she murmured. “You couldn’t be here now without it.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment, resting against her palm.
Her hazel eyes half closed. “What excuse shall we use this time? Our first time, you saved my life. The second time, we celebrated life after a death. And now?”
“How about making my life worth living? For the night at least.”
He saw the flare behind her lashes. Not the violet flash of demon light, but a quick shine of something else; it was gone too fast for him to name. Then her thumb brushing his mouth sidetracked him.
He lifted her, laid her back, and pressed between her thighs to admire her sprawled across his bed. He leaned down to kiss her navel, where her shirt had ridden up. The warmth of her under his mouth was like the promise of spring, and he had only to coax the blooming blush from her skin.
“Come here,” she murmured.
“In a second.” A minute. An hour. A life. Since his possession, the thought of how long his lifetime lasted had horrified him. But now . . .
Just below his lips, he knew the first tendril of her demon mark waited, inscribed on her skin. He eased back.
“Ferris?”
He unzipped her jeans, hooked his fingers through her belt loops, and tugged. The black reven uncoiled across her pale skin, a winding path that had led him from the restless dreams of an unbound demon to where he knelt now.
“Yet again indebted to a demon,” he muttered.
“What?”
Always with the questions. He ran one hand up inside her shirt and splayed his fingers wide to press her flat. His thumb circled her nipple, and she caught her breath. “Have I mentioned that a side effect of immortality is staying power?”
Another tug on her jeans and he was feasting again.
Her hips rose under his questing mouth. Her breath grew ragged, each stuttering gasp twanging through his body so that his own desire strained to the breaking point as he pursued his quarry.
She tangled her fingers in his hair. “Be with me now.”
Demonic intervention couldn’t have gotten him out of his jeans any faster. She locked her heels behind his thighs and guided him in.
He groaned as she closed around him, hot and tight. “Oh God.”
“Really?” Her eyes sparkled up at him. “Is this a good time for that?”
He growled and buried himself deep, bringing himself as close as skin would allow. She arched her back as he eased out again, a torment at leaving her. He held her on the edge, relishing the challenge. She never dropped her gaze.
He remembered her staring at him, defiant with the feralis’s carcass in her lap in the moments before the demon vanished. He remembered how, covered in blood and ichor, he’d yearned to surrender to her clear-eyed compassion, to follow where she led, even into hell.
Suddenly, he realized why Ecco’s comparison of fucking and their trick of piercing the Veil didn’t quite ring true. Sera in his arms made his blood rush and his senses sharpen as if the demon in him rose to some terrible threat, but nothing compared to the dangerous intimacy of her smile, of falling into her gaze. The old archive record had intimated that the mated-talyan bond had changed the world, which—call him a selfish bastard—wasn’t anywhere near as terrifying as what it was doing to him.
She touched his cheek. “Don’t stop now.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
If it wasn’t lust that had opened a path through the Veil to banish demons forever . . . His heart raced as if it would find a way out.
Maybe it was love.
CHAPTER 22
Sera woke to a sweet perfume. When she rolled her head to the side she saw Archer, his face looking unbearably young in sleep. Just over his shoulder nodded the curved petals of a lily.
A florist, who made almost as many trips to hospice as Sera, had once told her that lilies symbolized death and resurrection, hence their popularity at funerals. Sera eyed the smooth ivory flower. If she were the sort to believe, such a foreboding portent might make her nervous.
As it was, the weight of Archer’s arm on her belly just made her have to pee.
She eased out from under him. He snuffled lightly in his sleep, reached for her, and contented himself with the warmth of the pillow.
She touched the hint of a wayward curl at his brow, the only suggestion of disobedience in his otherwise-brusque haircut. He didn’t move.
After his efforts last night, she couldn’t blame him. He’d kept her wild with wanting, his excruciating restraint almost driving her mad before his control had finally broken.