Jaci Burton - Taken by Sin

She smiled down at him, smoothed her hand over his face and hair. “You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Glowing.”

He stilled, frowned, not knowing how to stop it. Not when he had all these feelings pouring out of him.

“Don’t.” She caressed his bottom lip with her fingers, then bent down to slide her lips across his. She whispered against his mouth. “Don’t make it stop.” She clenched her fingers against his shoulders and lifted, then slid down his shaft in a way that made him forget about the light pouring from him, made him forget everything but making love to her, taking her to that place where she’d forget, too. He gripped her hips and lifted her, set the rhythm as madness took over.

Isabelle gasped as he held her tight against him and lifted into her with a hard thrust. She rocked back and forth, clutched his arms, and whimpered, her sheath tightening around him. He watched as she came apart and then he couldn’t hold back, going with her. And then he saw it, too: light bursting all around them as he poured forth everything he had. He lifted up to wrap his arms around Isabelle, taking her mouth in a kiss that spoke of everything he wanted to say, but couldn’t.

He held her like that for a long time, both of them sitting up, wrapped around each other. It seemed like neither of them wanted to let go, but he knew they had to.

“We need to get back,” he said, murmuring against her neck, kissing the soft column of her throat. He was still inside her, still throbbing with the aftereffects, and more than ready for round two.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“You going to live out here as a marsh rat?”

She giggled. “Maybe. I do know how to fish.”

“So do the alligators.”

She shuddered. “Dirty trick. Now we’ll have to get dressed and leave.”

“Hot shower. Food. Warm bed,” he said.

“Oh, now you’re upping the ante. That’s not fair.”

“Just stating the facts, babe.”

She sighed. “Okay. I guess we have to.”

They untangled themselves and dressed, then walked back to the cabin where the hot shower felt pretty damn good, especially since this time they took it together. And it took a long time to finish that shower, since washing each other led to touching, and touching led to tasting.

By the time they fell into bed, the sun had started to peek up over the horizon. Dalton growled, rose from the bed, and yanked down the shades. They needed at least a little bit of sleep.

“Dalton,” Isabelle said, snuggling against him.

“Yeah.”

“We need to talk. About you.”

He inhaled. “Okay. We’ll sleep for a while. Then we’ll talk first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said with a yawn. “I’m holding you to that. Tomorrow.”

He had to think. What was he going to tell her? Or rather, not tell her?

Things were changing between Isabelle and him. He wasn’t sure all those changes were for the better.

Mandy looked through the glass at James-the demon. He-it-looked so human, so normal, lying on the table like that. Who knew that inside lurked a demon? No one would know if they hadn’t seen what Mandy and Michael had seen.

“Why wouldn’t freezing have worked to save Lou?” she asked, turning to Michael who had walked up beside her.

“Huh?”

“That demon can’t do a thing in the cold room. Couldn’t we have done the same thing to Lou? And to Isabelle? Frozen them until we figured out what to do to … fix them?”

Michael shook his head. “This demon is a unique species, Mandy. It would be like trying to treat a human and a shark the same way. Even demons can be biologically distinct from one another. This demon is nothing like the demon that was inside Lou, or Isabelle. Just like half demons and hybrid demons are different from one another. And like the Sons of Darkness are different from every other demon.”

She scratched her nose and frowned. “Genetics and evolution?”

“Yes. They’re constantly changing the demons, mixing up genetics and producing something new. And we have to keep up with them so we know how to fight them. Because every demon species is unique. How we treat them, how we fight them, is unique.”

“So freezing Lou like we freeze this demon would have done no good.”

She saw the sadness in his eyes. “No. It wouldn’t. I’m sorry.”

She had to ask. She had to know if there was some way that Lou could have been saved. She should have known there wasn’t.

She followed Michael into the weapons room. “So do we really get to battle it?”

The Realm scientists had run tests on the demon for two days now, while Mandy had paced and waited, biding her time, keeping watch over James to see how it reacted, what it did. It did nothing but stare at the walls, at the glass, as if it knew she was on the other side, watching.

Maybe it was waiting for its opportunity to do battle with her. She hoped so.

“We’re going to test it, see what it reacts to,” Michael said. “We know from Ryder battling the disappearing-in-the-mist type of demon that anything silver makes it dematerialize. Assuming that this is the same type of demon, we don’t want it heading back to the Sons of Darkness to report on where it’s been. And we don’t know if the silver just weakens it enough to make it disappear with its tail between its legs, or if the silver can kill it.”

“Which means what exactly?”

“Which means we’re going to have to try out different methods under a more controlled atmosphere. We’ll test several silver weapons.”

Ugh. That meant the cold room again. “It’s going to be really hard to wield weapons in that arctic chamber.”

“I’m not going to chance it getting away. That’s a risk I’m unwilling to take. But we do have new weaponry. It would give us a chance to try it out on this demon.”

“And I’ll be the one to do that, right?”

He stopped, looked at her. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She cocked her head to the side and grinned. “Aww, Mike. You care about me. You really do.”

“Of course I do. You’re a valuable demon hunter. Losing you would put a huge hole in our team. Do you know how long it takes to find and train new hunters?”

She laughed. “I’m touched. Really. I’m near tears at the depth of your caring.”

He rolled his eyes. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ll be going in with you.”

She frowned. “That takes all the fun out of it.”

“I’m sorry you won’t be able to fight the demon on your own, but you need backup. And we’ll have our tech team on alert in case we need to take it down in any other way.”

“Meaning?”

“Knock it out if it gets out of control, or to a point where we both can’t handle the situation. The last thing I want is that demon getting past us, escaping and killing our techs and scientists, then dematerializing. Or worse, taking you with it to wherever the hell it goes.”

There was no point in objecting. Michael was right. They had to have fail-safes in place to protect everyone in the center. “Okay. But I still want to be the one to battle it.”

Michael’s lips curled in a wry smile. “I’ll do my best to stay out of your way.”

“So what do we have in the way of weapons?” she asked, turning to the toys laid out on the tables.

The weapons room was her favorite place. It was like the mall of her dreams. Racks of lasers, guns, swords, and all the high-tech weaponry and accessories she could ever want. Lots of new things, too, all spread out on a few tables in front of them.

“We’ve converted a few of the standard ultraviolet lasers that we’ve used in the past on the other demons.” He picked up one of the rifles that looked like the ones they used to fill with the blue liquid that shot out UV light and melted demons down to nothing but gelatinous matter. “Now, instead of UV light, this will inject bullets of liquid nitrogen.”