Demon Marked

It’ll be easy for you—too easy, actually. But if you practice with someone slower, it’ll still be more natural for you to react quickly if it’s a demon or a Guardian.”
    Building up her reflexes. “Okay. I’m ready then. Go for it.”
    “Okay.”
    But he didn’t throw a punch. He looked at her over his fists. His mouth firmed.
    Silence hung in the air for a moment.
    Then he whipped around, shoving his hands through his hair. “Jesus!”
    “What?”
    “Even knowing what you are, that you can cross the room in a blink . . .” He shook his head, turned back, raised his fists again. Still, he hesitated.
    She supposed he wasn’t used to punching women. She liked him for that. “Are you going to dick around like this when you’re up against Madelyn?”
    His eyes narrowed. “No. I do wish you could shape-shift, though.”
    “To look like her? No, thanks. You’d probably lose control and kill me.”
    “Hardly.” He smiled a little. “All right. Are you ready now?”
    Ash didn’t point out that she hadn’t been the one delaying. She only nodded.
    His fist snapped toward her face. Oh my God, so fast . Her heart leapt . . . and his fist all but stopped. So he was pulling back anyway, throwing a little practice punch. It moved toward her at only a fraction of an inch every second or two—and okay, that was ridiculous. A baby could avoid that. Hell, a baby would be an old man before it hit him.
    She frowned at Nicholas, wondering if he was just joking with her now. But no, he stared at her, his eyes and expression almost frozen. And she couldn’t hear his heartbeat. She couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. What the hell?
    Her mouth dropped open as she realized: It wasn’t that they had no heartbeats. They were between heartbeats. Either time had frozen . . . or her perception of it had really, really sped up.
    Incredible. How long did it take to throw a punch? A second? Yet his fist had only traveled three-quarters of the distance between them. She could have run around the room several times before it would touch her. Maybe outside to the tree line and back. Was the clock frozen, too? She glanced at it. The second hand didn’t move. Maybe next time, she’d try to time everything.
    Unless her perception was stuck this way now? Oh, God, she hoped not. Maybe it had just been an involuntary reaction, like a spurt of adrenaline into her system. A reflex, kicked into gear by instinct. If so, how long would it last? Would Nicholas be stuck like this for what felt like forever, or would Holy shit he was going to hit —
    His fist smashed into her mouth. Ash’s head snapped back, and she staggered into the table. Pain shot through her lips, her teeth. Blood spilled over her tongue.
    Gross. And, ow .
    “Jesus fucking Christ!” His heart pounding—and her perception obviously back to normal now—Nicholas reached for her, cupping her jaw in both hands and raising her face to his. Horror and shock whitened his face. “Jesus. Are you all right?”
    “Yes,” she said, but the blood she could feel spilling from her split lip must not have convinced him.
    “Ah, fuck. Goddammit. Come here into the light.” Though his voice was rough, his fingers were gentle as he touched her lip, her teeth. “Why the hell didn’t you move?”
    Hot anger leaked through his shields. Not at her, though, she realized. Anger at himself. Guilt was mixed in with it.
    “I meant to get out of the way, but I ran out of time.” She ran her tongue along her teeth, didn’t feel any broken edges. “Is my lip bad?”
    “No. No, it’s already healed. You just need to wash it.” His gaze lifted from her mouth, but he didn’t let her go. Still cupping her jaw in both hands, he said, “Don’t do that again.”
    “It didn’t hurt much,” she said. “Either that or I can take more pain that I realized. And I didn’t know how quickly a cut would heal. Now I do. It’s better to know both of those things.”
    “Don’t do it again.”
    She hadn’t meant to this time. But maybe she should have. “I should have made it part of my plot: how to make Nicholas St. Croix feel bad.”
    His fingers tightened. That familiar flatness moved across his expression, the coldness into his eyes, as if to say that No, Nicholas St. Croix didn’t give a shit whether he hit a demon. But he couldn’t say that, because they both knew he did.
    “Just don’t do it again.”
    And now he wasn’t talking about forgetting to move, she knew. He