Demon Forged

that they changed. Wondered if there was anything conscious in the way they seemed to coil, waiting.
    Waiting to see if he would fight?
    So be it. If only one thing was settled today, it would be that he would not give her up.
    He did not try for silence as he approached her still form. Her fingers squeezed tighter on the table with his every step. She didn’t look around when he stopped behind her.
    The tension inside him drew taut. Four hundred years had passed and so much had gone wrong between them. Now, it had to be right—and he remembered one time when everything between them had been fiercely right.
    With a silent prayer on his lips, he lowered his mouth to the side of her neck, and pressed a soft kiss beneath her ear.
    Irena’s breath slipped out as a sigh. She tilted her head, lengthening the bare line of her throat. Damp auburn strands clung to her nape in spikes. He brushed them aside and trailed his mouth lower, opening his lips to the flavor of her skin. Her pulse beat frantically beneath his tongue.
    “Olek.” Her whisper was as thick as the blood pounding in his veins. “Do not begin this if you cannot finish.”
    If he could not take her to completion? Satisfy her? He accepted that challenge. But he would never be finished .
    In answer, he flattened his hands to her sides and slipped them beneath her apron, the heavy leather dragging against his knuckles. She wore nothing beneath. The swell of her breasts filled his palms. He found her nipples, stiff with need, and gently pinched the rigid peaks. Irena arched into his hands, a rough sound of pleasure in her throat. Her desire spilled through her psychic scent, pouring over his mind and body like heated oil.
    Holy God. Need speared through his shaft, bringing him to instant, aching hardness. He fought for control. Fought the urge to lift her onto the table and plow deep.
    He couldn’t control the heat flaring across his skin.
    Irena’s psychic shields were open. Her felt her hunger—and in quick succession, her rejection, her shame, her anger—before she closed to him. Alejandro froze.
    The demon’s skin would have been hot, too. No other man’s would have been. No vampire, no Guardian. Only Alejandro’s would remind her of the demon in this way.
    His heart tightened painfully. He couldn’t do this to her.
    He began to draw away. Irena clapped her hands over his, holding his palms to her chest. Though her apron separated their fingers, he felt the trembling in hers.
    “Can you not finish, after all?”
    Alejandro closed his eyes. And so this was why she’d made the challenge earlier. She’d known she might react this way to his touch. She’d known what his response to her reaction would be.
    “Irena—”
    “It is here , Olek. In me, though I hate it. Though I’ve fought it. Though I know it is not him. That it is not you. It is not—no.” Her voice cracked, then hardened with brittle determination. “This is not what I mean to say.”
    His throat a burning knot, he waited, calling himself a fool. He’d thought to turn back the clock four hundred years, but that was impossible. He could not ignore those centuries.
    They’d been four hundred years in which she’d fought what the demon had done to her. In which she had feared not being able to separate the demon from Alejandro. In which she’d thought that his guilt upon causing her any kind of pain would be greater than his need to stay, that he would have left her alone because his bludgeoned honor demanded he atone for his failure.
    He wanted to shake her. Wanted to shout that he wouldn’t have given up if she’d given him one damn sign that she’d needed him with her. Always, she’d faulted him for the size of his pride.
    Irena’s pride could fill oceans.
    But he could not go back and prove himself. He could only stand with her now.
    “What do you mean to say?”
    Her deep breath lifted her breasts against his hands. “I hunger for you. The rest is”—she flicked her fingers toward the pile of discarded swords—“damaged. But I will make another, and I will make it better.”
    Ah, Irena. Her memories of the demon could not be discarded so easily—and neither could his reluctance to remind her of them. And unlike the swords, they could not replace flawed steel with new materials; they could only reshape what they had with the strength of their will.
    And heat.
    Alejandro bent his head to her nape. He could reshape this, too. Rather than trying to recapture the