Stalker (The Hunt Book 3) Read online

  It was a wonder Severus could even see what he was doing, there was so much blood. At the sound of the first flames crackling to life, he grabbed a towel and started to dab down her hand, gently, carefully. Face screwed up in concentration, he wiped it all away, the dusting of glass shavings gone too.

  “Up we go,” he murmured, helping her to her feet and steering her toward the fireplace. Malachi stepped out of the way with a huff, making space for Severus to set her down on the thick carpet in front of the hearth.

  “Why did you need to touch?” Malachi asked, arms crossed, head cocked to the side—that grin of his in full sneer mode. “Was it just too pretty to resist?”

  “Malachi,” Severus growled as he returned to the carpet, white bottle in hand. “Enough.”

  “I truly did think you were murdering her up here,” the demon mused as Severus twisted off the cap. “I came running in the hope of a little something to liven up the night, and I find you playing nursemaid? Really. It’s most unbecoming, brother—”

  Moira cried out again when Severus poured the thick liquid across her wounds, more out of surprise than anything. She had expected it to burn, to sting—something. Much to her delight, it was more like a salve, soothing the pain away as Severus delicately massaged it in, the milky white paste blending with her blood to produce a rose pink.

  “You’re wasting the last of Cordie’s stock on—”

  “Don’t you have associates to be paying off?” Severus snarled, finally glaring up at his brother. Moira nibbled her lower lip, her heart hammering, the light-headedness gone at last. Severus was always ready to defend her, to stand up for her, to comfort her. He could have responded the same way his brother had—and she would have deserved it. What a ridiculous thing she had done, but beyond his barely-there, noticeably amused smile, Severus hadn’t once made her feel like an idiot.

  Cool in a crisis.

  Comforting to a fault.

  Always her best interests in mind.

  Three reasons why she loved him.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about me,” Malachi announced with a long, heavy sigh. “My little birds are searching the kingdom. You’ll have Diriel by morning, so long as this one doesn’t maim herself further.”

  Severus had gone to and returned from the bathroom in the terse silence that had followed his snarl, broken now by his brother as if it hadn’t even happened. Moira watched the firelight dance across his handsome features as he knelt in front of her again, wrapping a long, thin, soft bandage around her arm and palm. The wounds on her fingers had stopped bleeding. The others were reduced to a trickle. The pain had disappeared.

  As he towered over the pair, Malachi’s expression hardened, and she noticed that when he flicked his hand toward the hearth, the flames soared. Petulant. A child demanding attention, insisting they acknowledge his dramatics. Moira flinched, the heat of the fire too much against her already-flushed skin. Severus remained focused on the task at hand, not even blinking at his brother’s antics.

  “Did you hear me, brother? By morning, you’ll have—”

  “Yes, I heard you, Malachi.”

  The older demon poked at Severus’s head with a rigid finger, and Moira pressed her lips together when the incubus looked up at her, visibly annoyed for the first time since all this had started.

  “The respectful thing to do is acknowledge me, then,” Malachi carried on. “I know you’re busy tending to your ridiculous lover, who thinks it necessary to throw herself out into a maelstrom—”

  Finished with Moira’s dressings, Severus caught Malachi’s hand this time when it went to stab at his head again. His brother grinned, the slight lift of his brow suggesting the move surprised him.

  “Enough, Malachi.” The flames responded to Severus too, crackling angrily, a shower of red flakes sprinkling onto the carpet, extinguishing on impact. “If you say one more word about Moira, so help me, I will—”

  Moira silenced him with a kiss. She couldn’t help it. Grasping his chin with her good hand, she pulled him back to her, into her, their lips colliding as Severus let out a sharp, startled exhale. Overhead, Malachi groaned, but he was already off her radar. She focused on the soft fullness of Severus’s mouth, the cool touch of his skin, the way he growled against her as she climbed into his lap. He toppled backward to accommodate her, eyes heavy-lidded and tongue eager as it slipped between her lips, which parted when she giggled.

  “Oh, for Lucifer’s sake.” Malachi huffed down at them a moment longer, but when they didn’t break stride, the kiss growing more frenzied by the second, a perfect rival to the roaring fire, he finally seemed to give up. “Fine. I’m going.”

  His footfalls clicked noisily across the tile, followed swiftly by the bedroom door slamming shut—hard. Fingers threaded into Severus’s hair, her bandaged hand cradled to his chest, Moira whimpered softly when he broke the kiss, their foreheads resting together. Thunder rumbled outside, the bedroom briefly illuminated by another lightning display. Silence blanketed them, a welcome, easy quiet punctuated by the crackling flames and the chorus of their panting breaths.

  “Why?” he murmured, nuzzling her cheek before stealing another hard, firm kiss. Desire blossomed within her, a raw, dark heat unfurling in time with her racing heart.

  “You know why,” she whispered back, breathing the words against his lips—the unspoken declaration. Because I love you. Because she had only just realized it, accepted it. And because she wanted to kiss the man she loved, over and over again, until they forgot about the storm, forgot that they were in Hell.

  Until it was just the two of them, alone in the universe—alone and content.

  So, grinning, she kissed him again. And again. And again.

  And again.

  Chapter Eight

  Malachi wasn’t wrong—his little angel hybrid was ridiculous.

  But in the best way possible.

  In the way that made his love more ardent. Sharper. More acute. Like he could feel it in his bones. You know why. Severus tasted the words in her kiss, each one a delectable morsel sliding across his tongue, trickling down his throat, pooling in his core. He didn’t, in fact, know why she had kissed him, but he would take it all the same.

  You know why.

  You know why.

  You know why.

  He growled, both in frustration and desire, then yanked her against him, her supple body molding to him. A lapful of moaning Moira—it was the sweetest torture. For Severus wanted to be sensitive to her injury, the silly thing. He wanted to be sensitive to the fact that this was her first time in Hell, that Malachi had been a fucking bastard, that he no longer looked like a fetching man, but a demon…

  Yet as she ground against him, her hands cupping his ashen-grey face, her tongue sliding between his dangerously sharp teeth, he also didn’t want to be sensitive. Severus wanted to take her as she ought to be taken—brutally, the body Hell had granted her withstanding even the harshest storms of his lust.

  Sucking at her bold tongue, relishing the little squeak she made when one of his canines grazed the side, Severus ran his hands over her figure. Her fuller, softer figure, no longer all hard edges and sharp points. No longer bony and angular. She had seemed happier this way, dressing in better outfits, showing off her shape more readily—no longer suffering through clothes that were too big, too baggy, too much. Severus could appreciate the fashion upgrade, sure, but he liked her best in nothing at all. And it had been fucking weeks without a glimpse of more than her legs, her arms, the tips of her collarbones under some well-fitted T-shirt.

  So, rather unceremoniously, he grasped the neckline of her black sweater dress, the wool scratchy under his fingers—and ripped it all the way down. She dragged herself away with a gasp, a scolding look in those grey eyes. Severus merely grinned back, peeling the fabric off her shoulders, resisting the urge to toss the damn thing in the fire.

  Moira got him back, of course—and the punishment certainly didn’t fit the crime. As he dragged he
r thin sleeping shirt over her head, admiring the way the slouchy fabric was nearly see-through with the firelight, Moira wriggled against him. Purposefully. She swirled her hips. Bucked them back and forth. Teased his cock, hard and straining to meet her, and she wore a grin of her own as he tossed her shirt aside and smoothed her staticky white hair down around her face.

  “Don’t start what you can’t finish.”

  “Is that a challenge?” she purred back, rocking against him again as he trailed a lone finger along her jaw, up to her bottom lip, full and ravaged by his kiss. He plucked at it once, twice, not missing the way her breath hitched.

  “A plea,” he finally whispered. She swallowed hard as his finger ghosted down the column of her throat. He felt her gulp, rode it out with his thick black claw, sharp enough to peel the flesh from her bones. Not that he ever would. In fact, Severus was very mindful of all the new sharp and pointy edges he had gained since crossing over the hell-gate, knowing Diriel’d had some semblance of them topside. Still, he couldn’t resist prodding just a little into the hollow of her throat, admiring the poppy-red blush that bloomed across her cheeks in response. He cocked his head to the side, watching, admiring the rise and fall of her breasts, trailing that claw between each full mound.

  His gaze snapped up to hers, only to find her heavy-lidded, her lips parted just enough to make him groan. That caught her attention, her sultry stare jumping to his, and he claimed her mouth again with the brutality she deserved.

  Her hand buried itself in his hair, tactfully avoiding his horns at the back of his head, but Severus didn’t mind. Too lost in the way she gave in, her mouth opening desperately, her lotus-bloom scent drowning him as she arched up. He plucked at one pebbled nipple, his cock practically screaming to plunge deep inside her when she snapped at his lower lip, catching it between her own set of sharp, Hell-brand teeth. She held firm, slowly circling her hips, and Severus pinched the other nipple, harder this time, his eyes flicking open to find her watching him.

  He could taste her smile—just as he could soon taste the metallic tang of his own blood. Severus gave her nipple one last tug, enjoying the way she squirmed against him in protest, then snatched her good forearm. The bandaged hand in his hair tightened, but she released his lip with a gasp.

  He went for her throat next, grasping it firmly, feeling her steadily thrumming pulse against his fingers, and captured her lips. She moaned, and he swallowed every delectable decibel of it, wanting to burn it to his insides—to carry it with him forever.

  Slowly, he let himself tip backward, until he was flush with the hideous shag carpet someone had seen fit to add to his once tastefully, albeit sparsely, decorated bedroom. Moira toppled down with him, exhaling sharply on impact, and he released her with a smirk. She immediately propped herself up, her hands planted on his chest, which rose and fell in time with hers.

  The fire beside them hissed and spit, as if annoyed that the show had ceased, no matter how momentarily. Severus twitched as one of the sparks settled on his bare arm, but nothing could divert his gaze from her—from this goddess, this exquisite creature whom he was desperate to keep all to himself.

  She pushed her hair back with one hand, the bandaged one resting limply on his taut stomach, but no amount of fussing could rid her of the white halo surrounding her flushed face. In the glow of the hearth, he noted that her grey pupils had darkened, from flint to iron, a heady intensity about them that made the hardness of his cock almost painful, restrained by his silken sleeping pants and pinned by the weight of her body, by her heat.

  Slowly, she stopped fixing her hair, that hand drifting to her lips instead, to his black demon blood dribbling down them. Ah yes, his ethereal goddess, tainted by darkness. She was primal, an old-world creature with no place among today’s living. His breath caught, snagged in his throat, as she ran her finger the length of her lower lip, then licked it clean. Not ostentatiously. She didn’t do it for his benefit, to put on a show for her tortured lover. Moira seemed to do it to satisfy her own interests, her own dark curiosities, and he swallowed hard when her tongue swept along that swollen bottom lip, collecting the rest of the blood along the way.

  Save for the thin stream that ran from her lip to her chin. Severus wiped that away with his thumb, and she caught him before he could retreat, both hands wrapped around his wrist. He held his breath, heart pounding, as she dragged her tongue the full length of his thumb, cleaning it, her eyes never once leaving his.

  “Tease,” he hissed, bucking against her—hard, hard so she could feel exactly what she did to him. Moira grinned, engulfing his thumb in her hot mouth, scraping her teeth along it. This was for show. Ostentatious. Brazen. Cruel. Severus loved every second of it, almost as much as he loved her.

  When she released him from her clutches, Severus pillowed his head on both hands, the curled ends of his horns pressing into the underside of each wrist. Her hands had fallen back to his chest, studying him just as he watched her, serenaded by the crackle of the fire and the drumbeat of thunder outside. Every so often, lightning illuminated the room, casting a shadow over Moira, her back to the window, and in that moment she was his dark queen—yet still he watched her. He tracked the bright blue veins under her nearly translucent skin, so much paler in Hell. At first, he’d thought she might try to hide it, but Moira bared herself to him, seeming more curious about his changes than hers.

  Slate-grey eyes wandered his chest, his neck, the hard cut of his jaw. Soon her fingers followed, whispering over his lips, his nose, the delicate flesh around his eyes. Up and up she went, rubbing his hair between her thumb and finger—no doubt finding it coarser, more savage. And then his horns.

  Her exploration stopped there, as she leaned over him, breasts dangling above his face, the most enticing, succulent fruit he had ever seen. The fruit of temptation. His lips parted, ready to arch up and close around her nipple, but he stilled when she touched one of his horns. Black like his claws, thick, with rings slicing across them. He had heard a rumor once as a child: if you cut off a demon’s horns, you could count the rings inside, much like a tree, and discover their true age.

  Severus had never seen the theory put to a test, nor did he feel much of anything when Moira touched his horns. He had been most worried about them, the two gaping demonic identifiers thrust out from the tip of his forehead, unsightly. Only to her, they didn’t appear that way. To Moira, they appeared—curious. She followed one horn’s curve along his skull, tracing it to the very tip, then gasped at the razor-sharp point. He braced himself, expecting the fear to come flooding back, waiting for her to climb off him and bring her knees to her chest, all of this just too damn much.

  As she had done many times before, Moira proved his fears unfounded. She examined the second horn with equal interest, not pricking her finger on the end this time, and her nipples, soft pink pearls, brushed his cheeks with her deep breath. Severus finally risked a glance up, searching out her face, and his lips twitched to a lustful snarl at the ghost of a smile splayed across her features.

  She wasn’t frightened.

  She was openly inquisitive.

  Fuck, he loved her.

  He snatched her wrists tight, no longer minding the bandages, a little voice inside reminding him that the salve would have healed all her wounds by now anyway. A surprised cry slipped out of her, quickly silenced as he claimed her mouth again. She fell into him, kissed him back with such fervor that he almost came right then and there, like an inexperienced boy who had never touched a woman before.

  And in a way, he hadn’t. Not as a demon. He had been with lesser creatures before he fled Hell—dark fae, mostly visitors from the Unseelie Court, along with the occasional vampire here and there. They were the only ones who’d touch him. The only ones lower than lust demons in the grand scheme, and none of them had felt like Moira. None of them had felt this sturdy, this eager.

  None of them had been his match. His equal.

  His claws descended on her sleep shorts at t
he thought, shredding them to nothing, scraps of fabric, until she was bare as sin on top of him. The last semblance of her humanity gone. She was as he saw her—pure divinity, straddling him, commanding him, controlling him. And Severus was her most willing acolyte, with no other purpose in this life than to shower her with pleasure.

  Tongue between her lips, hand between her thighs, Severus found her wet and wanting, drinking down her whimpers as he stroked her. She grasped at his face, holding him, caging him, her hips bucking against his fingers, and he yanked down his black silk trousers as best he could. The fabric tore. He didn’t give a fuck. All that mattered was her—and burying himself deep inside her.

  Moira broke their kiss as soon as his cock’s glistening tip nudged at her entrance, her eyes closed and lips parted in a voiceless cry. Grasping her hip with one hand, steering his cock with the other, he eased into her. She moaned the whole way down, engulfing him with her heat, taking him, her body clenching slickly around him until they collided. Her eyes fluttered open then, the grey verging on black, and he encouraged her to move, to buck her hips—to ride him screaming into the morning.

  She felt so fucking good. Tight and hot. A perfect fit, the pair of them, and it took everything he had not to lose himself in her. To take the reins. To fuck her into oblivion. But she was on top—she had never been on top before—and he wanted to watch her soar on her own. Hand still resting on her hip, he waited, swallowing thickly, as she adjusted to the intrusion, as she ground against him. Unable to resist the swollen bud at the helm of her cunt, he trailed his hand lower, moving until his thumb found it, until he worked it. Her little squeak of surprise had him smiling, and he rubbed her clit in slow, lazy circles.

  Their eyes met and held. Locked. He could lose himself in her eyes just as readily as he could in her body, and he hated that when she finally lifted herself, his traitorous eyes fluttered closed. At least his thumb managed to do its job, massaging her little bud, careful not to get his claw anywhere near it, as she dragged herself up, then let herself fall. Up and down, she stroked him just as he did her. Slow. Torturously slow.