Chapter One
They ambushed him with all kinds of long, sharp, and deadly— knives, daggers, and blades longer than his arm. Spook whirled to confront the attackers. Kicking out at anyone in his path, he tumbled head over heels, then reversed, flying through the air with aggressive whiz-bang moves that would have made a Wallenda nervous. Crunch. Pow. Bonk. Mowed them all the fuck down. Then surveyed the damage.
With his flurry of lethal martial arts acrobatics, Spokane Raines managed to lay out and disarm each of his five assailants. Four snoozed, all lights-out and lost to the world. One still panted on the ground. Planting a booted foot to still him, Spook searched the thug’s pockets for the purloined computer chip he’d been sent to retrieve, along with any other booty and incriminating ID.
Hell. Definitely getting too old for this shit. Took a lot out of him this time.
Grabbing the valuable object he’d haunted the night-silent office building for, he whiffed out of the Paris alley where he’d been waylaid and materialized in his hotel room on Avenue George V.
Was he beginning to lose it? What if he attempted to whiff somewhere one day and the mother lode of energy he called upon to transport him from place to place in a flash quicker than a mouse click wasn’t there anymore? Did he have to report to HQ for retraining or a tune-up? A shudder tap-danced through him at the idea. In fact, everything about his cloak-and-dagger employment made him itch lately.
The afterburn of the fight in the alley and the resulting edgy adrenaline sizzling through him left him both wired and depleted. The heaviness in his limbs spoke of bone-deep fatigue. But there’d be no sleeping yet. He vibrated with bloodlust and the urge to stick his cock into anything that moved. Not that that would happen tonight. Not unless he picked up some bimbo in the hotel bar, or paid for it, neither of which he’d risk until securing and safeguarding the chip. Another reason to quit his current line of work. If they’d let him.
The Company didn’t tell you about the crash and burn during clandestine services training. When the agency had first roped him in, it was all about the glamour, the adventure, the special powers with which he might be endowed, the abilities they could implant in him, depending on his aptitude. Abilities like whiffing from place to place in split seconds.
Sometime during the intensive training it changed, though, became all about the risks, the perils, all hints of glamour gone. He was a cog in the machine, drawing hazardous duty pay. A grunt in the war on…whatever the fuck the war was on at the moment. Oh. Wait. Was it Tuesday? Cool. War on Stolen Computer Chip Day. He’d called bingo on that one, all right.
Grabbing a container of aspirin off the nightstand, he downed the last handful of painkillers in the bottle with a gulp of Jack then dropped the chip into the childproof cap and twisted it back onto the latest dead soldier. Across the faux-wood finish of the small table, a battalion of Excedrin casualties guarded the graveyard of airport-sized whiskey empties. Leave no bottle behind.
He’d suffered too many aches and pains this trip, for too little reward. Hell, he was barely over thirty. But he had a lot of wear and tear and mileage on him, all things considered.
Yeah, time to retire. Start working on an exit strategy. The organization pretty much never let agents walk away. They knew too much. Maybe not about the Company exactly, but about past missions.
By the time the Company had laundered his brain, he no longer had any memory to speak of. It made sure agents knew jack squat about themselves— like not even where they came from. And despite his name, Spokane Raines, he was damn sure he didn’t hail from Washington. Not the state, anyway. His body temperature rose until he dripped sweat. What the fuck? Had he been poisoned?
He stripped down and stalked to the bathroom to shower. The icy water sluicing over his feverish skin did little to cool him down. Or shrink Mr. Peppy, who was still jacked up and whistling Alive, Alive-O.
After exiting the stall, Spook leaned on the vanity and stared into the bathroom mirror. Despite all the eager up-and-at-’em action below his waist, the glass reflected a haggard image, his laser-like crystal-gray eyes oddly unfocused, the pupils dilated, all but eclipsing the silvery irises.
The edginess, though, the tightness of his balls, the surging of blood into his dick…spelled sexual arousal. Way over-the-top sexual arousal.
Maybe he’d been drugged.
Wait. He’d seen that reflection gazing at him a gazillion times, every day of his life. But…why did the image suddenly resemble… someone else’s face? A face he’d seen recently. He was sure of it.
Still dripping, he slung a towel loosely around his hips and hurried to the desk beneath the window overlooking the Champs-Élysées. He shuffled through the hotel’s array of advertising placards and brochures touting features of the establishment like the spa and room service menus and must-see Parisian attractions. Sure enough, there it was in the tourist magazine, the come-on for the Louvre, featuring some sexy art on loan from the Night Gallery in New York. Erotic paintings by the reclusive Sleepy Hollow artist Maxwell…Raines.
Raines?
Spook gripped the edge of the desk, his brain beginning to short circuit. Common name, but still. Come on. How had he never heard of the freakin’ guy if he was famous enough and talented enough to have a painting in the Louvre?
And his picture? Not an identical match to the face in the bathroom mirror. Not that close really. But holy fuckin’ shit.
Spook’s own eyes, deadly familiar, every bit as frosty, stared back at him from the full-color glossy.
***
Geneviève Mortimer crept down the quiet hotel hallway, careful to bank her glow…at least for the moment. She’d sensed the presence of a demon on the floor, but something seemed off about the male’s aura. A weird lack of evil, like an impenetrable force field surrounded his consciousness, his psyche. As if he thought he were…human.
Had he been brainwashed? Drugged? Raised by gypsies? By wolves? Wait. No. Scratch that last one. She didn’t get the were vibe at all.
No matter, as a will-o’-the-wisp and a POLO, Protector of the Legion of Shadows, tasked with watching over humankind and keeping the unwary safe from visitors from the demon realms to the human plane, she lured the black-souled to their demise. Going all shine-a-light and sparkly until the evil ones fell under her spell and followed her anywhere. She needed to find this guy. Pounce first, beam a little hypnotic wattage, ask questions later. Take him out before he did any harm. To humans or innocents like her parents.
She sniffed. Getting warmer. Closer to the demon’s room. What would she find behind his door?
Ignoring the do-not-disturb sign, she jiggled the handle. Locked. But the absence of a key card wouldn’t be a problem for her, not with her brand of talent and the magick lock picks in her pocket. She got the door open in seconds and slinked into the room, masking her radiance, keeping to the shadows.
Holy shit. The scent of male arousal filled the air. Delicious, decadent, sublime. Total man candy, like nothing she’d ever smelled before. Calling to her sweet tooth. Her horny core. So intense, an ache blossomed between her legs. She closed her eyes and inhaled. Whoa. She could orgasm from the erotic scent of the guy alone. Was the dude going through breedspawn? Were all the rumors she’d heard of the full-on crazy demon male mating phase more than myth? She’d sure never encountered anything so powerfully sexy.
Cripes. This sort of thing never happened to her. I’m a demon hunter, damn it. She remained professional always, despite her ditzy, scatterbrained reputation. Did her job. And did it well. She’d fooled even her closest friends, those who didn’t know about her role as a POLOS and didn’t guess the half of it. Those who thought she slut-flitted around the world searching for mischief, adventure, and, most of all, pleasure, like some sort of fickle, commitment-shy, well, yeah, sure, okay, will-o’-the-wisp.
Back in Sleepy Hollow, even her best bud, the witchy Veronica Hardwicke, now content in co-habitation bliss with her hunky contractor, had no inkling. Ever since Madame Eve had successfully matched Veronica and Sean, her friend kept trying to hook her up with the exclusive 1Night Stand agency. The ultra high-end dating service came highly recommended—and guaranteed to provide a perfect night of erotic ecstasy. Not like Genny was looking for a Happily Ever After, though. Or even a Happily For Now. But well, hell, a few hours of just plain happy, a passionate one-night stand with a sexy, male fellow commitment-phobe, some time when she wasn’t on the job…that might be kinda cool. If she could ever leave the job behind her. Forget what the demons had done.
But, she’d gone so far as to fill out the extensive and detailed questionnaire just to shut Veronica up. Occupation: I glow in the dark and lure male demons to their deaths. Bizarrely, the application hadn’t been rejected. Instead she’d gotten an odd e-mail in response.
1Night Stand will be in touch when your ideal match is found. I expect that to be soon. Very soon. In fact, I’ve identified a potential perfect match for you, but he hasn’t completed the final application process yet. Please stand by.
Like she’d been ordering a set of Dial-O-Matic Ginsu knives on late-night TV and had nothing better to do than please stand by. And what the heck did that cray-cray e-mail even mean? She had to put it out of her mind.
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she regained her focus. No grunts, no moans, no other carnal sounds, no sex of any kind happening in the unmade king-sized bed, despite the heavy fragrance of potent male wafting into every corner of the room, drenching her in pheromones, splashing her with borrowed lust.
The demon target sat alone at the hotel desk near the French doors to the balcony. No female in sight, no shower sounds emanating from the bathroom. He didn’t seem very demonic. Huge and lethal, yes. Rippling with gorgeous muscles, mais oui. Demonic, no. But he gave off a pulse-crackling vibe that skittered along her skin and put her nerve endings on high alert. She hunted demons and never got it wrong. Not since the death of her parents, anyway.
With a towel slung over his narrow hips, her prey leafed through a tourist magazine, stopping to stare at a particular advertisement. Even that mundane act seemed faintly menacing. She stared at his bare, incredibly ripped back and broad, sculpted shoulders. Looking for fun and games, was he? She couldn’t imagine this grim, über-confident guy doing the camera-around-the-neck, tour-bus, Eiffel Tower, Left Bank, Notre Dame thing. Lifting a smartphone, he snapped a selfie then tapped a few more keys. The zwoosh of sound indicated an e-mail sent. A responding chime said it had been received.
Trolling for females on the Net maybe? Genny couldn’t imagine that, either. Couldn’t imagine this darkly dangerous dude searching for companionship, when any woman who saw him—smelled him—would lie down and spread her legs.
His presence filled the hotel room, shrank it down to the size of a matchbox. Heart pounding, she ran a finger around the collar of her black jersey, trying to loosen the turtleneck.
Hellfire. It’s fucking hot in here.
And the heat…came from him.