Demon Bound

her skin wasn’t from their kiss.
    She was sick.
    Something twisted inside his chest, painful and hard. The infected smell was almost gone, but the sword had left something in her. It had to be the sword—a Guardian’s wounds always healed cleanly, and Guardians never became ill. But Michael’s sword wasn’t like any other weapon; when he’d impaled the dragon’s heart with it, the metal had taken some of the dragon’s power.
    Jake had once heard about a Guardian who, before his transformation, had been cut by the sword, tainting his blood. The transformation hadn’t completely taken hold, so he hadn’t had all of a Guardian’s abilities. Eventually he’d Fallen or Ascended—Jake couldn’t remember. But he hadn’t remained in Caelum.
    And there was a vampire living in San Francisco who’d been tainted the same way—but instead of being weakened after his transformation, he was the strongest of his kind. Able to walk in sunlight and resist the daysleep. But the taint had also created in him one of the few anchors to Chaos—the dragon’s realm.
    What would it do to a Guardian who’d already been transformed?
    Maybe nothing, he prayed. Maybe it just took longer to heal, for her body to fight it off.
    He drew back, wished that he could see Alice’s face. He repeated her name, then again, changing it so that the press of his thumbs was a dot, his fingers on the back of her hips was a dash, and a squeeze of both signaled a break between letters—streamlining the code so that it wasn’t so dependent on intervals of time. A waste of superspeed, in his opinion.
    Alice picked up on it fast, made hers a subtle right-and-left pressure behind his ears, and fit her lips to his again.
    If we only sit quietly together, she explained, they might suspect we are communicating.
    But not if we are making out?
    Her laugh was a soft burst of air into his mouth. Yes. Exactly.
    Okay, but listen—with you sitting so close to certain parts of my anatomy, I might not be able to prevent something from happening. Just so you know.
    How unfortunate it is when one’s body is so easily aroused.
    Yeah. And they needed to stop talking about it, or his cock was going to demonstrate exactly how easy it was.
    I am pleased that you agree. Because—if something should happen—I might not be able to prevent myself from rubbing against it.
    Hot damn. But though his body was screaming at him to drag her forward over his happy-to-demonstrate dick, Jake checked himself.
    Not the time. Not the place.
    He ran his palms up to her waist before heading back to her hips. How are you feeling, goddess?
    I can fight. I can fly.
    Which told him that doing both was going to hurt her, but she’d push through it. Okay, he said, and adjusted his plan so that it wouldn’t burden her as much. It’d be a little more humiliating for him, but he was used to that. So how are we getting out of here?

CHAPTER 12
    By the time Alice crawled off Jake’s lap, cackling again, she’d decided that he was quite possibly mad.
    Surely that was the only explanation for the insanity that was his plan to get them past Belial’s army. But for the moment, she would not think of it. She would lie perfectly still . . . and hope that this dizzying arousal subsided quickly.
    She ought to have found another way to communicate with him. But she hadn’t, and now she thought that it was fortunate that they’d decided to wait before their attack.
    She fisted her hands to keep them at her sides, and listened to the pounding of her heart—and to Jake’s. Something had happened, she was certain of it. At this moment, he was likely no more comfortable than she was. Dear heavens, it was almost like Enthrallment: her senses hyperaware, so that even the quiet and the dark rushed in upon her like the ocean. The ache in her shoulder was all-encompassing, as was the heaviness in her breasts, the tight heat below her womb.
    She’d known frustration before. Yet that had had a different flavor, a yearning for something she didn’t possess but knew existed, like spying a desperately wanted novel on a shelf too high to reach.
    But this was worse. This was as if she’d been given leave to thumb through a few pages and had discovered it was everything that she’d hoped for—but was unable to finish the story.
    And this was what her aunties had spoken of when Alice had been a young woman. It was what her mother had hinted passion should be—it was what had helped form Alice’s