Burn

Eyes closed, she slumped over him as tremors racked her body. Knox hit the emergency button to release the elevator and then pyroported into the bedroom of their hotel suite. His little sphinx was so wiped out that even the lick of flames against her skin didn’t disturb her.

Carefully, he laid her on the bed and removed her clothes before removing his own and settling beside her. Shudders were still rocking her, but her panting had eased. As his arm slipped around her and pulled her against him, she opened eyes that were now a jungle green.

“Why do I get the feeling that the public psychic finger-fucking incident was brought on by Dario’s thoughts?” she asked.

“Because it was.”

Her brow furrowed. “I’m confused.”

Toying with her necklace, he explained. “I didn’t like seeing him so close to you. It was bad enough that he’d been watching and ogling you all night.” Her frown deepened. “You never notice when males are staring at you, but trust me, they do.” He smoothed his hand down her back. “But I picked up some of his thoughts. He was imagining you and him in some very—”

“La, la, la, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” She juddered, not at all turned on by the idea of Dario touching her in any way. “So, why did I get sexually tormented?”

“I was reminding you that you’re mine.” He buried his hand in her hair, loving the fruity smell and silken feel of it. “I’m not used to being possessive of another person. It’s also very new to my demon. Neither of us are good at processing it yet. Downstairs, I wanted to disembowel Dario. My demon was leaning more toward burning him alive on the spot. The only reason it held back was that Dario didn’t dispute its claim on you.”

“Its claim on me?”

“You haven’t worked it out yet? It wants to keep you. It wants to take you as its mate.”

It was only right then, as happiness threatened to burst through her, that Harper realized she’d gone and done what she’d always feared doing: she’d fallen for a demon. Fallen hard. Technically, it should have made her want to run. It didn’t, though, because she wanted him more than she wanted to protect herself. So why didn’t happiness fill her at the thought that he felt the same? She generally distrusted any situation where she got what she wanted. In her experience, if it seemed too good to be true, it wasn’t at all true.

“Always so wary,” Knox mused with a smile.

“See it from my point of view. You were very clear that your demon would soon lose interest. Now you’re saying it wants me to stick around.”

“Not just ‘stick around.’ It wants to keep you. Collect you. Own you.” The entity inside every demon was incapable of caring for others; it didn’t have the emotional capacity for that. But when it became as firmly attached to a person as Knox’s demon now was to Harper, it wanted to own them – and it never let them go. “It has always been possessive of you. So possessive that it branded you. Twice. But downstairs, the depth of its possessive fury surprised me. Then I sensed what had built that possessiveness to such a level, what fueled it. And I understood.”

“Good, ’cause I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You gave it what no one else has ever given it: total acceptance.”

“But your sentinels—”

“Are loyal to me, but there’s still that wariness of me and my demon. And there should be. They’re smart to fear us. But you…you believe it will never harm you, you trust it to never do so, and you accept it despite your fear.” She’d watched it call on the flames of hell, watched it destroy two practitioners. But she hadn’t backed away, even though there had been fear in her eyes and scent. The demon usually liked the scent of fear, but it hadn’t liked the taint of it in Harper. “And even though it spooked you a little downstairs with its jealousy, you didn’t reject it just now. In doing all that, you sealed your fate. It’s keeping you.”

“You know, it’s possible that this is because I’m your anchor. The demon could be a little confused—”

Knox shook his head. “It doesn’t think of sex on the same level that it thinks of anchors. To the demon, the first is a basic need, and the other is a psychic need. This attachment it formed to you isn’t about needs, it’s about you.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “My demon’s so powerful that it considers everyone prey. That’s part of what makes it very easily bored, but that also makes it lonely.

“When the demon pursues a female, it’s more about the conquest. It doesn’t think of any woman as unique, they’re interchangeable to it. And it reads people so well that it sees everyone as predictable. But you…it never knows what you’ll do or say next. You not only pretty much snort at my forceful personality, you stand up to the demon if you think it’s pushing you too hard. You intrigue it and accept it. Like I said, you sealed your fate.”

It was all very well that his demon wanted to keep her and take her as its mate, but…“What about you? What do you want?”

“I’m not a good choice for you, Harper.” He wouldn’t lie to her. “I don’t have a lot of good in me.” When she looked like she might argue, he said, “I’m not a self-loather, I’m a realist. The truth is that I’m as cunning and calculated as they say. I manipulate, I hurt, and I destroy to get what I want. You’ve seen what I’m capable of. You can imagine what damage and pain I can cause. I’d never harm you, but I have and I will harm others if and when I have to. I’ll always be ruthless and controlling. You can do better. But…it’s too late for you. I told you before, you belong to me. I won’t let you go.”