Demon Marked

running the length of her naked torso and pausing on her breasts. “Dinner comes with a show?”
    She bent over to haul off her boots. “It’s so we can take pictures of these symbols and send them to the Guardians.”
    “That’s not happening tonight.”
    “Why?” Barefoot, she straightened and unbuttoned her jeans. “You had to use a credit card to reserve the hotel. How long do you think it’ll be before they find us?”
    “Not long. We’ll find another place that takes cash tomorrow morning, but stay checked-in here so they won’t know we’ve gone.”
    “So it won’t matter if we send the pictures.”
    “It will, because they might not have connected my name to the card I used. We might have a few days. An e-mail would bring them in right away.” His gaze lifted to her face as she lowered her zipper. “Whatever you’re doing right now, it won’t work. You can choose that body or any other. You look gorgeous, perfect—but I know you’re still a demon.”
    Perfect. Ash liked that, too. And was it evil to be glad he thought so, despite his obvious desire not to? If it was, she didn’t care. It felt good. Nicholas thought she looked gorgeous. Too bad he’d gotten the rest of it wrong.
    “I didn’t choose this body,” she pointed out. “I have no idea why I look like this.”
    “Right.”
    Oh, yes. Her plot. “So you’re attracted to me, just as you were to Rachel. And you think I deliberately chose this body to foster that attraction. I didn’t.”
    “Don’t compare yourself to Rachel. You look similar, but there’s a critical difference: She wanted me in return.”
    Not much of a difference, then. “I do, too.”
    “Jesus. You expect me to believe that?” He shook his head, then dismissed her by returning his attention to the paper.
    So he’d decided to take the irritating route again, conveniently forgetting the portion of their bargain that made it impossible for her to deceive him.
    “I can’t lie,” she said. “You made certain of that.”
    Oh, that little smile again. But this time, he didn’t bother to look at her. Now that was interesting. She knew he liked her body. Why not look at it, unless he felt her nudity threatened him in some way?
    “I made it part of our agreement,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you haven’t been lying. It only means that you’re fucked if you do lie. For all I know, you’ve been lying since the moment we struck that bargain.”
    “So basically, I’m either lying about everything, or I’m not. But you choose to believe that I’m lying. You chose to believe that I was breaking our bargain from the word go .”
    “Making any other choice would be stupid. You’re a demon.”
    Maybe he was right, and any other choice would be stupid; he did know more about demons than she did. But he also had to know that there was no middle ground here. Either she’d lied . . . or he’d made the wrong choice.
    And if he believed that she’d lied, why keep her around? If she’d broken her bargain, Nicholas had no use for her. He lived for revenge. He discarded anything that got in the way of his goal, and a lying demon wouldn’t be any different.
    So despite his response, he must be allowing for the possibility that he might be wrong. That he didn’t know everything. He might not admit it to her, but he must acknowledge the possibility to himself. Otherwise, he’d have already dumped her off on the side of the road.
    She liked that about him, too.
    Nicholas looked up. He’d been waiting for her to answer, she realized. Maybe waiting for her to argue. But when his gaze dropped to her bare chest and he took a long, slow breath, Ash decided she’d rather do something else.
    “I want to have sex.”
    He met her eyes again. Aside from that small movement, Nicholas didn’t react.
    His body did. A slight darkening of his skin followed the increase of his heartbeat. A flush, a quickening. Born of anger or arousal? Maybe caused by both—and both pleased her. She liked provoking that reaction, whatever it was.
    And even if it was physical arousal, it wasn’t desire. He didn’t want her. His cold blue stare communicated that perfectly across a room full of silence: Don’t fuck with me.
    Too bad, because she fully intended to. She didn’t expect him to fulfill her request for sex, but she wanted— needed —to push him about this. To make him acknowledge that she felt something.
    Holding his gaze, Ash arched her brows. She could do cool and