Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

his face. He inhaled deeply.
    That’s right, darling. Drink me in.
    He went back into the living room and checked the windows, one by one. Slowly, unhurriedly he made his way upstairs to the master suite.
    I switched to a different camera.
    The bed was purple, too. He locked the windows and walked into the bathroom. The tub was carpet. The toilet was carpet. I had cut carpet into a long strip and threaded it onto the toilet paper holder.
    He turned and finally noticed a mirror, the lonely spot in the synthetic moss that had sprouted all over his apartment. On it I had written in red lipstick, “Your personal padded room.”
    Raphael raised his head and looked up. An evil smile curved his lips. He was almost unbearably handsome.
    “Andreeaaaa,” he called, his voice seductive and wicked.
    I gulped.
    “I know you’re here.” His voice was like a purr wrapped in a growl. “You could never resist seeing me take this all in.”
    Bastard knew me too well. I tried to breathe quietly.
    His shoes came off. He stretched.
    “Andreaaa…”
    His voice sent tiny caresses all over my skin.
    Raphael raised his face and inhaled, sampling the air. He seemed slightly feral.
    “I’m going to find you,” he promised.
    Oh no.
    He followed my scent out of the master suite.
    “You can’t hide from me. I know you, I know how you think. I know you’re watching me. Did you wire the house?”
    He was hunting me.
    Fear dashed through me, mixed with delicious excitement. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose.
    He reached the attic.
    My heart was beating a thousand beats per minute.
    He reached for the cord.
    Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
    The attic’s ladder slid down.
    I took a deep breath.
    Raphael put his foot on the first step.
    I leaped up, tore my surveillance screen away from thecables, and tried to hurl myself through the attic window. And ran right into bars. Trapped.
    Raphael’s head appeared in the attic doorway. He saw me.
    I dropped my stuff and braced myself.
    Slowly, lazily he climbed the stairs. One step, two…
    “You’ll never take me alive,” I told him. It felt appropriate.
    He stepped into the attic. “You got it all wrong. The plan is for you to take me.”
    He pulled his shirt off. His scent hit me. He opened his arms…
    I jumped him.
    We collided. The smell of him, the feel of him, the heat of his skin on mine, oh my God, this cannot be happening. He kissed me on the mouth, searing hot. “I love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I was an ass…”
    I couldn’t even talk. I just kissed him, running my hands over his chest, over his muscled back, touching his hard ridged stomach, wanting him inside me, wanting to be one. He slid his hands under my T-shirt, and I pulled it off, in a desperate hurry. He touched me again, pulling me into his arms, and it felt so right, so good, so sensual that I trembled. I slid my hands into his pants and stroked the hot hardness of his shaft. I wanted to feel him inside me, sliding in and out. I wanted the ultimate proof that he was mine and that I was his, and I was hot and slick and ready. All of my tricks went out the window, and I just rubbed against him, tasting his skin and purring. He kissed my neck, sliding his tongue along the sensitive spots, and then he lost it, too. Somehow, intertwined, we made it down the attic steps into the hallway.
    We had had sex hundreds of times. We had tried dozens of positions, we had flirted with our kinks, we had long ago learned how and where to touch to make each other moan and gasp and to delay each other’s pleasure until the sweet anticipation of release became almost torture…and we used none of it. We made love in the tried-and-true missionary position right there on the hideous purple carpet in the hallway, awkward and impatient, fumbling about like two virgin teenagers caught in a selfless race to make the other happy.
    It was the best sex I had ever had.

    My eyes snapped open. I lay in the hallway. Raphael’s arm was wrapped around me. The carpet under us smelled like sex and plastic.
    The ceiling was steeped in shadows. Raphael’s drapes were open and they streamed down on both sides of the window. Moonlight flooded the city and struck the latticework of steel and silver bars on the window, setting them aglow with delicate radiance. The magic was up.
    I glanced at the clock. Two a.m. I’d barely had an hour of sleep.
    Something had woken me.
    A deep rumbling noise rolled through the house.
    My body