Demon Forged

with a steady gaze and he fought not to throw his psychic shields up.
    Her hands moved to his trouser fastening. “And so you give pleasure with your mouth, and you take your own when you fuck. But that is not how it will be with me. You will be taken, Olek. And I will enjoy it all.”
    Taken. A part of him rebelled, though he realized this was what she had demanded from the beginning.
    He hissed in a breath as her fingers circled his erection, aroused to the point of pain. She raised his straining length toward her mouth. His anticipation was a physical ache in his shaft, through every muscle in his body. Her tongue wet her bottom lip. His hands fisted.
    She met his gaze and opened her shields.
    Her desire jolted through him like an electric shock, more powerful than any physical sensation. She hungered to please him, to taste him—hungered for him, as fiercely as he had for her.
    She lowered her head, and wet heat engulfed him in a steady, deep slide. Alejandro clenched his teeth, trying to hold onto sanity, onto control. God! Is this what she had felt? This ecstasy as he’d taken her with his mouth and his Gift open? He’d never experienced anything like it. He hadn’t prepared for it.
    And she had softened beneath his lips, but he became harder, steel forged by the heat of her mouth, shaped by the strike of her tongue. Folded and worked until he thought he might fracture beneath the pressure.
    She made him. She could destroy him. And if she ever tossed him aside, he would be nothing.
    Panic threatened, and he fought not to push her away. His fingers dug into the floor. His body shook, and he stared up at the wooden beams supporting the forge’s metal roof.
    He looked down when he felt a light touch against his hip. Irena’s fingertips traced his skin. As if she was forming a statue, her Gift pulsed, and her emotions washed over him, more than need and desire. Reverence. Admiration. Joy. Her fingers moved higher, and his body shaped the trail her fingers took.
    Alejandro unclenched his hands, sought hers. At his hip, her fingers threaded through his and tightened. Her mouth took him deep, and she drew so hard he dizzily thought that she would also take his heart, his soul.
    So be it.
    The orgasm lunged through him with teeth and claws, ripping away his breath, throwing his head back. Irena growled her satisfaction deep in her throat and drank him down. When he could breathe, when he could think, he saw that she watched him. With a few leisurely licks, she finished, and crawled up his body until she lay on his chest. Her fingers stroked his hair. He closed his eyes, certain he’d never felt this lassitude, this contentment in his life.
    He was stretched out naked on a dirt floor. He’d never been happier.
    “I should have come back before this, Irena.” No—he should have made the forge his home while she’d been gone those two centuries, and been here to welcome her when she returned. “I have missed you.”
    “I have missed you,” she said, her cheek against his shoulder. “And I should have dragged you back.”
    He smiled and passed his hand over her hair. They had not settled many of the problems between them.
    But they had settled the most important one.

    Deacon left the warehouse, hit the sidewalk, and started going, headed for nowhere—and wishing that he could still get drunk. A nice, falling down stupor.
    Unfortunately, nothing could make a vampire less than clearheaded but drinking live blood—and he couldn’t stomach the thought of it now. Couldn’t stomach his own company, but he was stuck with himself.
    Three nephilim. And Irena.
    It didn’t take a fucking genius to figure out that the message he’d sent had pushed them straight to her. She’d survived, but according to the description Dru had given the novices, it had been close. Closer than Deacon had ever gotten at the hands of the demon.
    Maybe Guardians couldn’t take care of themselves against this.
    So he’d go back. He’d tell them everything. And he’d probably die.
    He started back, anyway.
    About four blocks from the warehouse, a black car with dark-tinted windows rolled up beside him, kept pace. He could sense a human in the front, but that wasn’t what was behind the rear window. It slid down, revealing a blond male with a little too much polish to be hanging around an area like this—at this time of the night. He smiled at him.
    “Mr. Deacon.”
    Deacon kept walking. He’d seen the news, heard the buzz