Demon Marked

cried out, lifting against his mouth. With a groan, Nicholas bent his head, took another long swirling taste that left her panting, writhing.
    “God, Ash. So sweet and hot.” Coming up for breath, he pushed her knee wide. “And we’re going to go slow now.”
    So slow. An eternity of the thrust of his fingers and the flick of his tongue, the bed creaking with the desperate jerk of her hips, his hungry assault against her slick flesh, the raucous pounding of their hearts.
    And then it all disappeared, narrowing down to just the ecstasy bursting through her, white-hot. She screamed with it, her back arching as it burnt her down.
    Slowly, she built her awareness again, of Nicholas’s soft kiss against her thigh, her stomach, moving up until she opened her eyes and he was there, too. She smiled up at him, and his gaze slipped to her mouth.
    “Don’t move,” he said.
    His head dipped, and he flicked his tongue across her lips before sliding between. Ash moaned at the subtle penetration, then stiffened when he licked the long point of her left fang. A shiver ripped over her skin, a sweet and painful tightening. She cried out in surprise.
    He lifted his head again, studying her face. “Do you like that?”
    “Yes.” She licked her own, but it wasn’t the same. “How did you know to do that?”
    “I heard it about vampires once. But it looks like you get the benefits, with none of the bloodsucking.”
    She grinned, and realized that the fangs were already gone. A laugh escaped her when she saw Nicholas’s disappointment. She’d make up for it. Rising up, she caught his mouth in a kiss, her fingers sliding down and curling around the thick shaft behind thin cotton. Somehow, he wasn’t naked yet. But she—
    Had to let the dog out.
    Slipping out of the kiss, Ash groaned her frustration, hoping she’d been mistaken. The sound came again. A scratch at the front door, an anxious whine.
    Nicholas froze, as if suddenly aware that she’d heard something. “Ash?”
    “The dog. I’ll be one second.”
    Or two, depending on how long it took the dog to slip out of the door. She left Nicholas on the bed, still aroused and his heart pounding. Hers pounding, too, so hot and thick that it seemed to echo in her ears. The dog sat in front of the door, tail wagging. She opened it and he merely looked up at her, giving her a doggy grin.
    Cute, but she was standing there naked and the cold was seeping into her skin. “Out,” she said. “Do your business. I’ll let you back in. I promise.”
    He shook his head, flapping his ears wildly. Hope lifted when he rose to all fours, but he only snuffled at the edge of the doorway before padding back around to the middle of the room. The bed creaked, and she heard Nicholas coming to the door of the bedroom.
    She looked at the dog. “I’m only going to have it open for a second longer. Then you have to hold it.”
    He chuffed at her.
    Shaking her head, she turned back to close it—and stopped. Her boomstick should have been on that rack next to the door. It wasn’t.
    Neither was Nicholas’s rifle, and the holsters that hung there were empty. Sudden dread filled her stomach, her heart began beating sickly thuds. And the rhythm of Nicholas’s had changed, too . . . and there were still the echoes, but they were beating at a different time.
    “Ash.” Behind her, Nicholas’s voice filled with a cold that she’d never heard before—the ice of fear. “Don’t look around. Just run. Go. As fast as you can.”
    And leave him? She couldn’t. She looked around, and her blood turned to ice water.
    It wasn’t a dog anymore. Standing as tall as the ceiling, it had three massive heads, jaws filled with gleaming dagger-teeth. Its eyes glowed, not steady crimson like hers, but flickering as if lit by the fires of Hell. Short fur as stiff as needles poked between crimson and black scales. She couldn’t see Nicholas beyond its enormous body, but the monstrous creature was watching them, each of them to one set of eyes, and the third . . . was watching the door.
    Pressing her back to the wall, she kept her eyes on the monster, let her fingers search for a weapon. A chair, a curtain rod, anything.
    The head watching her growled, a long deep rumble. She froze.
    “Nicholas?”
    She heard the low noise he made, despair in the back of his throat. “ Go . I’ll distract it, keep it here. You have to go now or you won’t have a chance. It’s a hellhound. One bite can paralyze