Demon Night

over a demon’s opinion of my character.”
    She sighed. “He must have said a lot to her.”
    “I reckon. But it may be once she returns home, she’ll start looking instead of just listening.”
    “I hope so.” She paused, and her eyes searched his. “Was there anything different I could have said?”
    He studied her for a long second. Was she feeling she’d done an inadequate job of convincing her sister? Even when she’d been angry, every point Charlie made had been sensible; Jane just hadn’t been in the same place.
    “I figure there was one thing you might have done,” he said slowly. “And that was if you’d gone for her heart, and given her the same choice she gave Sammael: telling her that if she didn’t come around, you’d be writing her off as lost.”
    Her dark brows drew together. “But I couldn’t say that, let alone do it.”
    He’d known that; he thought Jane did, too. “Then there was nothing short of tying her down.”
    Charlie pursed her lips, tilted her head as if considering it, and cast a speculative glance down the road.
    He felt the grin sliding over his mouth and turned to conceal it. She really was something. “You have anything in the room you want to take?” He’d already retrieved all of his weapons.
    “No.”
    “You want to feed before we check out?” She’d spent the day sleeping; her scent would be all over the bed. She could crawl right up onto him and he’d be surrounded by her, the soft mattress beneath and Charlie firm and aroused all over the front of him.
    He stopped walking, pulled his coat forward before looking around for her answer.
    She had her hands tucked into her sweater pocket again. “I don’t want to feed in there. Where are we going?”
    “San Francisco.”
    He felt her hesitation before she said hoarsely, “How long will that take? I don’t know if I can…” She trailed off, and her jaw firmed, her pink lips thinning to white.
    She sure didn’t like needing something so bad. He’d have to make certain it didn’t get to this point again.
    “A little over an hour and a half, if I fly quick.”
    She blinked. “Really? All the way down in an hour and half?”
    “Yes,” he replied, smiling when eagerness projected briefly from her psychic scent, cutting through the now-constant heat of her bloodlust. “And if you need to, you can drink a bit on the way.”
    Her gaze lowered to his neck. The hunger flaring in her brown eyes brought out the green as well as the sun had, and within an instant he was hardening again.
    God Almighty. She’d have him falling out of the air, laid out moaning on the ground like a dying horse. And he suspected he’d just lay there grinning as she worked herself over him.
    Her mouth softened into a tiny smile. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
    “No,” he said, and took her hand, pulled her toward the office. “I reckon it’s not.”
    Though the more he considered it, the more he thought it sounded just fine.
    And when she was in his arms and the wind preventing easy conversation, her bloodlust eating through him like a thousand fire ants, there wasn’t much to do but consider it. By the time he flew down low over the Golden Gate Bridge, giving her a view that made her sigh in pleasure, he’d imagined taking her in just about every way a man could take a woman, and in his mind she’d sucked the blood from his body a hundred times over.
    He figured she’d imagined the latter, as well. She’d touched his throat twice, each time jerking her fingers away from his skin. And he didn’t know if the physical scent of her need was caused by the bloodlust or by her wanting him—but if he slipped his hand low, he reckoned he’d find her wet enough that he wouldn’t need to put his mouth on her in order to ease his way.
    Wouldn’t need to, but he’d still have taken real good care of her.
    Her brows pulled together in a frown as they flew over Hunter’s Point, banked toward SI, and dropped in quick.
    “It ain’t much to look at,” he said as he set her feet on the ground. His nerves began jumping as her gaze lifted and ran over the building. It wasn’t much at all; even her inexpensive little apartment had appeared better maintained, and had more space than her room in the warehouse did. “But it’ll do until we can find a place for you. And it ain’t so bad inside.”
    She nodded and turned in a slow circle, taking in the empty parking lot and the high fencing without expression.