Faith Hunter - Host

“You going to smother someone in peanut butter or scoop them to death? If you go for the smothering I’ll volunteer to be a test subject. Soft foods have all sorts of interesting possibilities”—his lips turned up at the corners—“especially if you add whipped cream and melted chocolate. And that saddle I’ve been wanting to try.”

“The mental picture is interesting but messy. And I just know the girl would have to clean up afterward. Why do you think I want to kill someone?”

Eli chuckled, all basso notes deep in his chest. It made things low in my belly do a little flutter and shimmy. “Better than interesting.” He pushed back the brim of his hat so I could see his remarkable eyes, warm amber and gold. “You can leave all the work to me, even the cleanup. All you have to do is wear red the color of your hair and moan. Real loud. Maybe scream a time or two.” His voice went up an octave. “Oh, Eli, enough, enough. Don’t. Stop. Don’t stop!”

Grinning, I dropped the spoon into the jar where it clattered in the empty bottom. I walked to the kitchen and put them in the sink.

“And,” he said, “I saw Cheran Jones leaving. From the look on his face and now yours, it looks like slaughter brewing.”

I turned from the sink and braced myself, both hands on the counter at my back. His eyes strayed from my face to my chest, but only for a moment. I gave him points for effort. “Who are you?” I asked. “EIH or AAS?”

He didn’t answer, and I felt, more than saw, him evaluating. “May I come in?”

Earth Invasion Heretics were, in their own way, as dangerous to nonhumans as the AAS. As likely to be enemies. But there was something about Eli Walker that I liked. I gestured to the kitchen table and poured water into a teakettle, setting it on the stove to heat. Once, I would have used a match, but today I drew on a fire amulet and the flame ignited with a little puff of sound and the smell of gas.

“Nice trick. You pull rabbits out of a hat too? Because if you do, we need a rabbit big enough to kill and eat a Dragon.”

Shaking my head, fighting a smile that was at all odds with my mood, I set out teacups and offered him a choice of teas. “Whatever you’re having,” he said. “I’m more of a beer man.” From the fridge I pulled a bottle of Black Bear Brew, twisted off the top, and held it out. The Bear Brewery near Asheville had a short list of offerings but they were all good, and I kept a varied supply handy. Unlike hard liquor, beer wasn’t proscribed by seraphs or kirk.

Eli took the beer, one hand wrapping around my wrist, the other around my hand on the bottle. With a gentle tug, he pulled me and the bottle to him. Human muscle mass beat mage any day, but his grip was loose enough to give me a choice. I let myself be dragged to him. Gaze locked with mine, he drank, his encircling fingers warm, the cold bottle condensing and wet in my grip. When the bottle was half drained, he eased it away, but kept one hand curled on mine. The other he slid around my hips and pulled me close. It was a graceful dancer’s move, all controlled power, fluid and lissome. His arms went around me.

I was left holding the bottle as his mouth came down on mine, our eyes still fastened together. The little things doing somersaults in my belly began to do backflips and handsprings when his mouth touched, lips wet and chilled from the beer, searching and yeasty and delicious. He melded my body to his, and my free hand went to his shoulder. His tongue touched mine and I heard myself sigh. He chuckled again, that purely masculine sound that could make a woman’s nether regions stand up and beg, and deepened the kiss.

I was evil, foolish, heartless, and uncaring. My stepdaughter had been threatened, yet I was standing only a few feet from her, kissing a man who might be an enemy.

Eli was only a little taller than I, maybe five and half feet, and we fit together perfectly, his yin to my yang. Or maybe it was the other way around. But his hardness fit into my softness in just the right places.

Guiding me, he drifted us into motion, and I let him lead, dance steps that brought our hips together, apart, together, my belly just brushing his. Tension gathered in my flesh, my knees weakened, and I sighed into his mouth, not thinking at all.

When we came up for air minutes later, the beer was on the counter and we were stretched out on the couch, his body beneath mine. “I like a woman who wants to be on top,” he said with a laugh that vibrated through me. I really liked that laugh. Then he spoiled it totally. “Let’s get naked and party,” he said.

I dropped my forehead to his chest. “You really need to work on your pitch. And I don’t think so. I don’t know anything about you. Except you have amber eyes and really soft hair.”

He nudged my head back up and nuzzled my nose with his smiling lips. “What? You want roses and declarations of love? All that romantic stuff? I have really soft hair all over. You know that too, if I remember that incident in the street in the middle of the fight last night.”

I blushed hotly and he laughed again, the rumble vaguely catlike, like a lion’s purr. It seemed to rub against all the warm things deep inside me that were aching to be touched. Okay. I really really liked his laugh. With me pressing against him, it was a rumble deep in his chest, a growl of desire and humor, and I had no doubt that he wanted me in the worst way. Or maybe the best way. To combat the need growing within me, I asked, “So. EIH or AAS?”

The laugh eased away but his smile didn’t. At some point, he had loosened my hair, and it covered us in a tumbled snarl. He took a single strand and stroked it, curling it around his finger, the vibrant scarlet contrasting on his winter-white skin. “You want to talk about work when things are going so well? Wouldn’t you rather—” I rolled away from him and he finished with, “Guess not.”

I wriggled my bottom between his thigh and the couch back, my legs across his, feeling the hard shape of a gun strapped on his thigh, like a wild west gunslinger’s. There was something about hard steel jabbing me that was strangely exciting, but I kept my reaction off my face. Getting turned on by close contact with guns was downright disturbing. “I don’t sleep with men I don’t know.” I could have added that I had only slept with one man, and had married him, and that I didn’t intend to sleep with another human, not ever, but that sounded a bit like a challenge and I had a feeling that Eli didn’t turn away from a challenge. “EIH or AAS?” I repeated.

Eli had lost the hat and his coat somewhere and, wearing only two layered shirts, stretched up an arm, tucking his hand behind his neck. The position stretched out his chest, giving him a long, lean line. He grinned lazily when he saw the direction of my gaze, but I shook my head. “No way. Answer the question.”

His amusement evaporated and he considered me, sitting beside him, my legs draping him, our thighs in intimate contact. “What do you know about the heretics’ organization and the asseys? Do you know the difference?”

“Between the EIH and the AAS?” It sounded like a school question, a compare and contrast assignment. I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’ll bite. One is an antigovernment, antiseraph organization at odds with every religious group on the planet, composed of poor, disenfranchised members of society, who advocate anarchy. The other is government to the core, working hand-in-hand with the Realms of Light, doing whatever the seraphs want, including tracking down and killing any unlicensed witchy-women, turning over EIH operatives to the local kirks, fighting demons and Darkness wherever they can, providing covert intelligence about the movements of Darkness to the military, and coordinating military action during conflict. And the biggest difference—asseys’ salaries are paid by tax money.”