Stalker (The Hunt Book 3) Read online

  “Oh!” She tipped her head back, mouth open as one hand threaded through his coarse hair instead—but the other refused to give up the horn. Hadn’t he learned by now? He couldn’t scare her away that easily.

  Her second exclamation echoed throughout the room, maybe beyond, when Severus steered his cock to her wet heat, testing her with just the head. Even without the usual foreplay, she was desperate for him. Moira tugged at his horn again, but it would be a mistake to think that she could control him—that she alone held the reins here. Without warning, he thrust into her, not stopping even when their bodies collided soundly. He ground up against her as pain and pleasure wove together into a dangerous thread, twisting, coursing, through her veins.

  She whimpered his name, her hand tightening in his hair, and he responded by bucking against her. While she had kissed him out of affection, out of love, this wasn’t lovemaking—not by a mile. He took her hard and fast, relentlessly driving into her over and over again. No mercy. No rest for the wicked. Severus fucked her like this was the last time he ever would, until her body spasmed around him, awash with a climax that had her seeing stars.

  “Thank you,” she whimpered, whispering it again and again in his ear as she rode the pleasurable high, the pain completely overtaken by bliss. As her hand smoothed around his neck and up to his face, cupping it, she realized she’d yanked out more than a few of his hairs in the moment she had come undone, when everything shattered and she was purely a physical being of lust—and love.

  Love had to amplify the pleasure—it had to.

  “Moira…” He spoke her name breathlessly, their foreheads resting together as she tried to wiggle the bits of hair off her fingers behind his back. His pace had slowed just enough to prolong the ecstasy, and her body trembled through the longest orgasm she’d had so far.

  “Y-yes?”

  “I…” He closed his eyes for a moment, stilling inside her. “Moira, I…”

  She grasped his chin, her other hand still on his horn, and forced him to meet her eyes again. His lips parted, and she could hazard a guess, maybe, at what might be dangling on the tip of his tongue. He loved her too. She broke out into a smile, her eyes watery as he struggled.

  “I know,” she whispered. He didn’t need to say it—not right now, not if he couldn’t find the right words. She’d wait. Moira could wait for him. So, she nodded and stole a quick kiss. “I know.”

  He captured her mouth again, the savagery back against her lips and between her thighs. She clung to him with everything she had, riding it out, the gentle tide of pleasure slowly giving way to something else—something closer to pain. Soundlessly, she drove her heels into his lower back, and suddenly he stilled against her once more, his expression strained as his cock pulsed inside her.

  Slowly, the quiet settled around them again. Severus relaxed against her, his breath evened out. Moira stroked his back absently, drawing shapes with her almost too-sharp nails. She had come down here looking for a distraction, but Severus had proved, as always, to be the very best kind.

  “Severus?” She lifted his head, which had been resting heavily on her shoulder, cradling it in her hands. The poor guy looked exhausted, and not just because they’d had fantastic sex, sex that had probably been even more cathartic for him than it was for her. But his skin appeared sallower than she remembered, the bags under his eyes noticeable. How selfish not to think about it—about what today had taken out of him. Incubi needed the touch of humanity to revive themselves, to make up for all the energy they spent. Without it, they would fade; Severus had told her that.

  In that moment, she desperately wished she could give him what he needed, that the caress of her skin would fuel him, would invigorate him. Moira wanted, needed, to be the one who did that for him, so much so that it hurt her. The physical ache in her heart—it was overwhelming.

  And cruel.

  “How are you feeling?” she murmured, gently stroking his cheeks with her thumbs.

  “Perfect,” he whispered back, the look in his eye drawing another blush out of her. “With you, darling, I am perfect.”

  She swallowed hard, nodding—nodding but not entirely believing—and glanced toward the door of the expansive hall, no longer feeling the judgmental glares of his relatives boring down on her. Instead, Moira stole a quick, shameless kiss.

  “Good. Then let’s get the hell out of Hell,” she said, her smile blossoming as he grinned back. “Severus, take me home…”

  Exiting a hell-gate was nothing like entering one. When Severus had first led his little hybrid into the muck, she had been rightly disgusted with the whole thing. No one, demons included, enjoyed trudging into whatever disgusting bog the designer of said hell-gate had come up with. It was wet, uncomfortable, and there was some odor. Leaving a hell-gate was a breeze by comparison.

  All one needed to do was step on the ascending escalator, luggage and intrusive brother in tow, and ride it all the way to the top. By then, the hard part was over; the magic would take you where you needed to go.

  The departures terminal had a much more tedious process for citizens of Hell than visitors. Moira had merely needed to sign another form, give a drop of blood, and she was finished. He and Malachi, on the other hand, needed proof that they had permission to leave Hell; they needed to hand over a ridiculous amount of paperwork; and the departure agents hated their jobs just as much as those working the arrivals hall.

  The whole process took about an hour, which for the departures terminal was quick work; since the summer festivities were officially underway in Hell, most demons were arriving, not departing. The lines were short and the clerks bored. While it had been frustrating for all parties involved, they got through it.

  Same as the arrivals hall, at the very top of the departures escalators sat a thick grey cloud—the actual magic that would transport demons to appropriate hell-gates around Earth. Moira had been much calmer this time around, only clutching at his arm as the smog approached. Behind them, fucking Malachi wouldn’t shut up, yammering on about his excitement to come face-to-face with modern human technology, tossing a thousand questions Moira’s way before the hell-gate took them.

  When the trio finally broke free of the cloud, Severus wrapped an arm around Moira’s waist and helped her out of the gate, through the fog. The top step of the escalator was the soggy grass surrounding the bog they’d once descended into—she hadn’t been expecting it, and he didn’t want her to fall on her face. She had already been mildly annoyed at the fact that Malachi was accompanying them back to Earth, a little nugget of information Severus hadn’t seen fit to share, not wanting to spoil their intimate evening together, until Malachi showed up at the carriage with a huge bag, positively brimming with excitement.

  “Watch your step, here we go,” he murmured, helping her onto the grass, both of their bags thrown over his shoulder.

  “Oh, wow…” Moira still stumbled a little, but he managed to steady her just fine. “That was easy.”

  “Told you.” He grinned to counter the sidelong look she shot him, one paired with an annoyed huff. Traveling. Always a treat for everyone.

  “The air is so fresh,” Malachi boomed, looming over them with his enormous suitcase, which he promptly tossed aside before strutting forth and stretching every one of his long limbs. The hell-gate’s magic had removed their horns, their claws, their red-pupiled eyes—any demonic feature would be masked. Malachi, however, was still a broad, muscular giant, in desperate need of a haircut. And a beard trim. The two were so long, so wild, that he looked more yeti than man, the golden locks nearly blotting out his face entirely.

  A honk sounded from across the clearing, and Severus released his little hybrid when he spotted a frantic Ella racing out of Alaric’s SUV, sprinting straight for Moira. With the time difference between Hell and Earth, he suspected they’d been gone half a day, maybe a little more. The sun told him it was roughly two o’clock in the afternoon, and after Hell’s heat, the early days of summer in F
arrow’s Hollow were very pleasant.

  No longer in his grasp, Moira zipped across the clearing and straight into her best friend’s arms, the two colliding so firmly that it nearly knocked Ella off her feet.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked, half sobbing, half laughing, clinging to Moira like she’d been gone a century. Severus tried not to roll his eyes; this was all still very new—for both of them.

  “I’m fine,” Moira assured her, over and over and over again, the pair slowly morphing into a single entity the longer they held one another. Along with that, their conversation had devolved into high-pitched squeals and incoherent nonsense. Severus stood back, both bags thrown over his shoulder, utterly lost. Shaking his head, he headed toward Alaric as his best friend crossed the clearing, hands in his pocket and a warm smile on his face.

  “That’s all I get?” Severus drawled with a nod toward Moira and Ella. “Where’s my overly enthusiastic hug? Don’t I deserve your tears?”

  “You’ve been gone ten hours at the most,” Alaric told him, smirking. “I’m afraid I didn’t exactly miss you all that much.”

  “Ahh, but you did miss me.” He nudged the hybrid’s arm, more pleased to see him than he let on. A gentle breeze, warm and thick with humidity, ruffled the man’s copper waves.

  “New topic.” Alaric looked pointedly at Malachi, who stood some distance away in one of his better suits, arms limp at his side and face turned up toward the afternoon sun. “What is he doing here?”

  Severus rolled his eyes. “He assisted me in finding Diriel and getting the answers Moira needed. He wanted to come topside to continue to help—” as much as he hated using them, Severus added air quotes for effect “—but mark my words, he’ll be gone by nightfall.”

  “What a load of bollocks.” Alaric shook his head, casting Malachi one last look before turning his attention back to Severus. “I’m so glad you’re back. That one is a talker when she’s nervous. She hasn’t shut up since you left, even while I was napping—just gabbed away to Gibson the whole time. Drove me mad.”

  “I’m glad to be back too.” Severus studied Moira with a little smile of his own. She held her friend by the shoulders now, the two of them about a foot apart, tears streaming down their faces—but her eyes were happy. They shone in Ella’s presence, back to their regular ethereal blue selves, and the sight made his heart sing. “I didn’t want to keep Moira down there longer than necessary. We’ve discovered the information we need.”

  “Fill me in later?”

  “Of course.” At the sound of Ella gagging, Severus motioned toward the car. “We should get her out of here.”

  The smell of the hell-gate must have been getting too overwhelming; the human stood closer than she had last time, and already her face had blanched three shades whiter. With a hand on her stomach and the other over her mouth, Ella gagged again, this time more noticeably. Definitely time to get moving. Severus snapped his fingers at Malachi, not waiting to see if his brother got the message, and strode toward Moira.

  “We should get her—”

  “And who is this fetching creature?” True to form, his brother burst into the conversation, seemingly out of nowhere. He barreled through, knocking into the bags on Severus’s shoulder in the process, throwing him off-balance, and dragged Ella away. He held her at an arm’s length, one giant hand on her delicate, hunched shoulders, and Moira exhaled indignantly, her eyes ablaze, as he perused the human’s figure. “Utterly exquisite. A vision of modern—”

  Mercifully, Ella was the one to cut off whatever ranting monologue his brother had up his sleeve—by promptly vomiting all over his shoes. Wrenching her away from Moira as he had, Malachi had inadvertently put her even closer to the hell-gate. Nose wrinkled, the chaos demon took one large step back as another wave of puke spilled out of her, and Moira rushed in to take his place.

  Steering her friend away, she shot Malachi a positively scathing look—then pinned one with only slightly less venom on Severus too. He stood there, utterly confused, because how the fuck was this his problem?

  “I need a nap,” Severus grumbled, readjusting their bags over his shoulder. Alaric had the SUV running by now, with his daytime demon handler Gibson waiting to load everyone’s luggage in the back. Malachi had already toddled after the girls, seeming utterly bewitched by Ella, vomit and all, and not doing a thing to disguise it. Exhausted, no longer able to ignore the crushing weariness in his bones, Severus trudged after everyone, his mood improving slightly when Moira slammed the car door in Malachi’s face before he could climb in after her.

  Where the fuck were they going to put him? The SUV only had three seats in the middle section, and the back had been dismantled to accommodate for the bags. Severus had a lifelong shotgun in place—they’d just have to put Malachi with the luggage. The only other option was the roof.

  At the sound of his brother’s booming voice carrying across the clearing, shouting something to Alaric despite the fact that the hybrid was already in the car, his door closed, Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. With Hell’s protection gone, his aches and pains no longer instantly healed, a tension headache had started to develop behind his right eye, and Malachi’s voice was only making it worse.

  “Hey,” he snapped, shoving his and Moira’s bags at Gibson before dragging his brother aside. “You’re here to help, not cause a scene. Behave yourself. Ella is Moira’s best friend—”

  “How delicious.” Malachi practically rubbed his hands together in glee, all the while wiping his shoes off on the grass. “I’ll have her by tonight, brother. You’ll see.”

  “The vomit didn’t deter you?” And the fact that he was nearly double Ella’s size.

  “I’m made of tougher stuff,” his brother mused before clapping him hard on shoulder. “Now, is this the transport vehicle I’ve heard so much about? A car? They were mere whispers the last time I was topside.”

  Eyes twinkling with delight, Malachi shouldered past Severus and wrenched open the front passenger door, nearly ripping the damn thing off its hinges in the process. He climbed in with an exultant, “Spectacular! Not a horse in sight!” and slammed the door much harder than necessary. Severus pinched the bridge of his nose again, eyes closed and a string of Latin curses raining from his lips.

  Mercifully, after he’d grabbed Malachi’s forgotten suitcase too, Gibson volunteered to sit amongst the luggage, which put Severus next to Moira—but the second he settled in, Malachi’s seat slammed right back into his knees.

  “Brother, for fuck’s sake—”

  “Right, right, right, just trying to fit in this infernal contraption,” Malachi muttered, the seat easing about two inches forward and nothing more. Severus shot Moira a pitiful look as Alaric started a three-point turn to get them back toward the dirt path through the nearby forest.

  “Don’t give me that look. I’m not switching seats with you.” She grinned, then returned to fussing over Ella. Exhaling sharply, Severus pressed his forehead against the blessedly cool window, demanding Alaric crank the air-conditioning immediately—and lusting over the thought of climbing into his own bed soon.

  Chapter Eleven

  “We good?”

  Moira nodded as she tiptoed down the last few steps, careful to avoid the creaky bottom one. “Yup. Everybody’s asleep.”

  Severus had been dead to the world for the last thousand hours after a whirlwind day of getting his brother settled into twenty-first-century living. At six in the morning, Alaric was still conked out after his bar shift, having returned home only three hours prior. Malachi, who’d dipped into Alaric’s very pricey top-shelf booze last night as he sat glued to the television, was still sprawled on the L-shaped sectional on Alaric’s level, snoring up a storm. Only she and Ella were up, and Ella was only awake because Moira had begged her last night to come with her. Ella had agreed, but she also probably hadn’t considered how early five thirty actually felt.

  “You know I need my eight hours,” she’d whined, half
serious, half joking, as Moira roused her a half hour ago. But, here she was, her hair especially frizzy, but otherwise totally recovered from puking her guts out at the hell-gate yesterday. They’d been inseparable ever since; Severus had had his hands full with Malachi anyway, and Moira had spent a lot of the day resting and catching Ella up on everything that had gone down in Hell. After an awkward house dinner, Malachi hitting on Ella with every breath he took, they had all watched a movie together—Alaric had been present until work called, Severus until he passed out, and Malachi until the bitter end.

  To his credit, the chaos demon had been nice enough to help get Severus, who was currently the most drained Moira had ever seen him, to bed. He’d ruined it all by asking if she and Ella wanted company in their room, and he was currently right where she had left him.

  As she slipped on her old ballet flats, Moira motioned to the set of hooks arranged between the doorframe and the front window. Ella pointed from key to key until she finally nodded—that was the one they’d need. No way would she dare drive Alaric’s Lamborghini, which was currently parked at the curb outside, a ticket in the windshield. With her purse over her shoulder and sunglasses on top of her head, Moira took Ella’s hand and crept out of the building, gently shutting the door behind her. The early-morning rush hour was still about an hour away, and together they jogged across the street, Moira’s gaze fixed on Alaric’s SUV, which was currently parked in the alley between the flower shop and the upscale shoe store.

  “I’m still never going to get used to the house just disappearing,” Ella said once they reached the sidewalk, pausing for a moment to study what Moira knew would be an empty, dingy alleyway. However, now that she had Cordelia’s pentagram mark on her ribs, the house remained visible whether she was in it, touching it, or not. As much as she would have liked for Ella to be able to do the same, getting that damn mark had been one of the most painful things she’d ever experienced, and she wouldn’t wish it on her best friend for anything.