A Demonica Novella
By Larissa Ione
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From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Larissa Ione comes a new story in her Demonica Underworld series…
As a special class of earthbound guardian angel called Memitim, Hawkyn is charged with protecting those whose lives are woven into the fabric of the future. His success is legendary, so when he’s given a serial killer to watch over, he sees no reason for that to change. But Hawkyn’s own future is jeopardized after he breaks the rules and rescues a beautiful woman from the killer’s clutches, setting off an explosive, demonic game of cat and mouse that pits brother against brother and that won’t end until someone dies.
Aurora Mercer is the half-wytch lone survivor of a psychopath who gets off on the sadistic torture of his victims. A psychopath whose obsessive psyche won’t let him move on until he kills her. Now she’s marked for death, her fate tied to that of a murderer…and to a sexy angel who makes her blood burn with desire…
* * * *
A blast of heat roared through the house, and the temperature shot up at least twenty degrees. Aurora always kept the house at a sixty-five degrees at this time of year, so the instant jump to summer temps was like stepping into a dry sauna.
“How the is he doing this?” Hawkyn’s raw curse bounced off the walls. “He’s going to force heat exhaustion and then take you while you’re too weak to fight back. We need to get you out of here now.” He slid one warm hand down, his fingers skimming lightly over her jaw and lower, to the sensitive skin on her neck. “With your permission.”
Blinking, momentarily confused, she watched him flick the pink tip of his tongue across a fang. Oh, right. He could feed from her to recharge. Take her blood with those huge, gleaming canines.
She waited for the revulsion to kick in, but something else happened. Something…hot. Hotter than the serial-killer induced heat that was testing the limits of her deodorant.
There’s a serial killer outside.
The sudden thought came with a blast of memories, of Drayger with the scalpel that made tiny, stinging cuts. Of sharp things and his laughter and pain—
“Will it hurt?” she blurted.
“I’ll make it feel good, I promise.” A fresh blast of heat drove up the number on the thermostat near the door to 103. “But we need to hurry.”
She nodded, and his emerald eyes darkened, holding her gaze prisoner as he lowered his head. Gently, he tilted her face to the side and opened his mouth over her throat, and she shuddered with a mix of anticipation and trepidation.
She’d only dated a handful of men in her twenty-six years, wasting most of them on her high school sweetheart, a human who had never known the truth about her. If he had, he might not have cheated on her during their junior year in college. Then again, maybe he enjoyed her curse of flatulence he came down with every time he kissed a girl.
The other guys had come after the breakup, mostly rebound dates she’d used for sex. Wytches needed to discharge their energy often, either with sex or magic, and she’d gone through an extended anti-magic phase for a while. But not one of those men had made her nervous the way Hawkyn did.
Granted, none of them had fangs. Nor had they been supernatural beings, let alone angels. And none of them had looked like Hawkyn, with his six and a half foot, thickly muscled build, a cocky smile that radiated confidence, and intelligent eyes that she doubted missed anything.
Hawkyn’s breath whispered over her skin, and she shivered as her anxiety became excitement. As his tongue flicked across her vein, she even had to hold back a moan of pleasure. When his fangs sank into her flesh, the mild pinprick gave way to a shocking spear of ecstasy that went straight to her core.
His arm slipped around her, bracing her body against his big one as he disengaged his teeth and repositioned his mouth. She let herself go, sinking into him as he swept her up and then settled them both on the couch so she was straddling his lap.
He took slow, easy draws, one hand holding her head in place, the other gripping her waist, settled tamely above her hipbone. His pinky finger wedged between her waistband and her sweater, and consciously or subconsciously he was stroking skin, his touch adding to the heat that was building inside and out.
A drop of sweat trickled down her temple, and she glanced at the thermometer. 115 now.
Shifting slightly, Hawkyn let out a groan and swept his tongue over the punctures in her throat. She felt no pain, only a pinch and tingle that told her the holes were sealing themselves.
“Are we done?” she whispered, making no move to climb off him. She wasn’t even sure she could. Her bones felt like noodles and her muscles like water.
“Yeah,” he said roughly, tucking her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder. “I just need a minute to clear the fog.”
“I get that,” she murmured into his shoulder. “Because I feel like I drank a couple of Long Island Ice Teas spiked with some kind of super-aphrodisiac.” Reluctantly, she pushed herself up, just in time for another heatwave.
125.
“Come on,” he said, lifting her off him. “We’re going someplace much cooler.”
“And where’s that?”
He grinned as he flipped the duffel into the air with his foot and caught it in his hand in one easy motion. “Hell,” he said, taking her hand. “We’re literally going to hell.”