Christine Warren: Huntress

“Not a bad move.”

She shot him a very level glance. “I don’t give up on a case,” Lilli informed him steadily. “If I agree to bring something in, I bring it in. I don’t care where I have to go to make it happen.” She paused. “Well, okay, I care, but I don’t let it stop me. I went in after the goblin.”

Aaron shook his head. Already he could tell this story would not end happily.

“I decided to do it the smart way, though,” she told him. “Instead of just following the trail and stepping on a bunch of pointy tails, I found out which part of the pit he’d gone to and I decided to ask the prince of the area for his permission to wander around his land. And then I decided to go for broke and ask if he would be willing to ensure me safe passage until I found the goblin and left.”

“With brass balls like that, I’m surprised you don’t rattle when you walk.”

Lilli snorted. “It had less to do with balls than with a sincere desire not to have to fight my way into and out of the principality. So anyway, the prince agreed, provided I paid for the favor.”

“How?”

“I agreed to do him three favors in return,” Lilli explained her agreement with Samael, including all the restrictions she’d insisted on. “This—getting the book back for him—was supposed to be the last favor. I almost had it.”

He could hear the wistful tone in her voice and felt a stirring of sympathy. She might have broken into the house and attempted to steal part of his inheritance from his uncle, but frankly he couldn’t swear he wouldn’t have done the same if their positions were reversed. He figured he’d be willing to do whatever it took to get a devil off his back, too.

“I understand the bargain,” he said, “but how did you get into Hell to begin with? I always thought that humans had to either be summoned there or escorted by a demon or devil to get onto the plane in the first place.”

Lilli shrugged. Her gaze held steady on his, but he could see a flare of defiance in her unusually colored eyes. “Humans do, but I’m only half human. My father was a devil.”

He experienced the shock just as if he’d built up a bunch of static electricity and then grounded with a jolt. “You’re a demi?”

Her mouth tightened. “If you want to use the term. Personally, I’m not wild about it. Labels aren’t really my thing.”

Aaron could sense her discomfort with the subject, but he couldn’t stifle his curiosity. He’d never met a demi-human before. They were incredibly rare, mostly because few humans chose to associate with Hell-folk, let alone mate with them. Of course, according to the stories, choice often had very little to do with it. Often the children of human-devil matings owed more to rape than to romance. He longed to ask her about her parents, about her history, but his conscience managed to step in and rein him back.

“That must be where you got your eyes,” he said finally and a little weakly. “They were the first thing I noticed about you. Well, after I noticed you were in my house when you weren’t supposed to be, and you were armed like a Navy SEAL.”

“Yeah, the eyes are hellish. Some people get freaked out by them, but I’ve always considered myself lucky not to have inherited horns or something even worse. I knew a kid when I was growing up who had the complexion of a three-day-old corpse—kind of a greenish, purplish gray. He went to the tanning salon every damned day, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t change his skin tone. Made weird eyes seem like not much to worry about.”

Aaron shook his head. “I don’t think they’re weird. I think they’re beautiful.”

Lilli stilled and raised her eyes to his, her gaze searching his expression for the truth. “You do?”

He nodded. “I do.”

“Oh.”

She swallowed, and he watched the muscles in her throat work until the urge to lean forward and trace the movement with his tongue nearly overwhelmed him. He swayed forward, caught himself, jerked back. He cleared his throat.

“So, uh, like I was saying,” he coughed, struggling for calm, “I, uh, I think what we should do next—”

He never got to finish his sentence, ridiculous though it would have been. Not when Lilli rose slightly from her chair, leaned forward, and laid her soft, warm, expressive mouth over his and stole his breath in a kiss.

The world froze. Time may have stood still, the universe may have stopped expanding, he couldn’t be sure. All Aaron could be sure of was that sinking into Lilli’s kiss felt like coming home. He may as well have been the people of Israel, wandering the desert for forty years, and now finally entering the promised land. She tasted of coffee and strength and a subtle tang of smoke that wrapped him up in an ever-tightening ball of fascination.

Moving without thought, he rose from his seat, careful not to lose the contact with her mouth. He would rather have lost his mind, which seemed like a distinct possibility. Two shuffling steps brought him around the corner of the table toward her and more importantly allowed him to get his hands on her. He slid them around her waist, his fingers flexing on the soft, muscled warmth of her. She felt as resilient as youth and as tempting as experience. When she answered his touch with a soft sigh that filled his mouth with her flavor, he felt his body tighten and his knees go weak. She laid her hands over his, then slid her palms up his arms, kneading as she seized the opportunity to explore him.

Aaron deepened the kiss, pouring into it the mysterious, inescapable intensity that had seized him. He slid his arms around her back and explored the slim length of her spine even as his tongue explored the slick, inviting cavern of her mouth. He could feel the superb conditioning of her muscles, the hard, faintly intimidating capability of them to move, attack, defend, absorb, and carry her through places as dangerous as Hell and still guide her back to safety. But he also felt the blatant flare of her hips, the incredible, luscious femininity of the bottom he cupped in his hands and kneaded with frank appreciation.

Lilli moaned and pressed herself against him, her arms twining around his neck, slim, clever fingers burrowing into the shaggy fall of hair at his collar. He felt the scrape of her fingernails across his scalp and his head reeled, his entire body tightening and quivering as electricity jolted through him. He tugged her closer, his hands on her bottom, pressing her hips against the hardness of his erection. Instead of backing away, she rubbed against him like a cat in heat, all elastic muscle and shameless sensuality.

Christ, he couldn’t ever remember being this aroused. Not from a first kiss, that was for sure. One taste of her, and he was ready to lay her back across the table, drag those no-nonsense BDU pants down around her ankles, and sink into her up to his damned fool neck. He guessed this was what people called “chemistry.” Morons. Aaron had never in his life felt a more powerful magic.

Magic, he thought hazily as he skimmed one hand up her side to close it around the soft swell of her breast, was the only possible explanation for this madness.

But at least he wasn’t alone in his insanity. Lilli continued to press and rub against him as her mouth ate at his. It was like she was trying to climb inside him, which made perfect sense to Aaron; the only thing he could think of right now was getting inside of her.

Shifting, he pressed her half a step backward until her ass—and his very appreciative left hand—bumped against the edge of the kitchen table. He had urgent, heated, erection-swelling thoughts about whether the ancient piece of furniture would hold up to what he planned to do to her, but by then it was too late to care. Tightening his grip on her bottom, he boosted her up a few inches and nearly swallowed both their tongues when she parted her legs and wrapped them around his hips, pushing the hot, damp softness of herself against the monster in his pants. He could almost picture coming just like that, like a teenager dry humping on his parents’ sofa.