Demons and Lovers Read online

  “Do I have a soul now that I am human?” she asked thoughtfully, then answered herself. “I must have one.” She looked up at him, her gray eyes big. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him again. “I am not beautiful. You are beautiful.”

  “I beg to differ.” He smiled and released her, picked up a sponge and poured gel on it to wash her. His body ached as he touched her.

  Before soaping her breasts, he paused to suckle each of her nipples. Lilin moaned and gripped her hands in his hair. She tasted so sweet.

  The crisp smell of soap didn’t mask her scent of desire as he knelt. He used the sponge as he paid close attention to her belly, thighs, legs, and each delicate foot. He turned her to face the spray and wash the soap from her body, then rotated her so that she was facing him again.

  Still on his knees, Archer nuzzled her soft mound. She fisted his hair tighter and cried out as he ran his tongue along her folds. She tasted sweet and her scent drove him to taste more of her.

  “Goddess. Archer.” She pressed his face closer. Her legs trembled, her body tensed, and he knew she was close to flying toward the stars. A little more and she’d go supernova.

  He bit her lightly and she screamed. Her whole body shook and her face flushed with the power of her orgasm. When her legs gave out and she dropped into his arms he felt somehow triumphant—that he had brought her to her knees.

  He took her mouth in a fierce kiss, feeling a sense of ownership and protectiveness.

  “I’ve never been pleasured before,” she whispered when he moved his mouth from hers. “I was always the one to give pleasure.” She shook her head. “I feel so weak now. I don’t know if I can get up.”

  Archer smiled and kissed her lightly before drawing her up to stand. She pressed her face to his wet chest and gave a deep sigh then tilted her face up. “I have few memories left, but I know that no male has ever made me feel the way you do.”

  The thought of any other man with Lilin sent a stab of jealousy through his chest. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but he wanted her to think only of him, as if he was her first. His touch, his kiss, his hips between her thighs as he took her.

  God, he needed to be inside her now.

  He wanted to rush, but she insisted on washing him as he had washed her. She worked her fingers through his hair, making a rich and thick lather. He was nearly shaking with need as she rinsed the shampoo from his hair.

  Then she started the slow torture of soaping his body with the sponge. Her pace was maddeningly slow and he grew harder with every touch of her hands, every stroke of her fingers. When he could take no more, he rinsed the soap from his body. After shutting off the water and climbing out of the shower, they stood on a soft rug as he toweled her dry. Her wet hair hung down her back to her buttocks and there was still water on her face. He gently dried her while having to hold himself back from taking her there against the shower stall.

  Once again she insisted on showing him the same care that he’d shown her. His cock was so hard that when she toweled off his groin, he thought he was going to explode from her touch.

  The moment she finished, he picked her up and she dropped her towel before she wrapped her legs around his hips and held onto his shoulders. She kissed him as he strode across the room and they tumbled onto the bed. The need to be a part of her was so great he was in a fog of lust.

  Love.

  The word came out of nowhere, pressing against his mind

  Could the feeling in his chest be love for Lilin?

  He touched her, kissed her, slid his hips between her thighs.

  “Wait,” she said, her voice husky and her eyes heavy-lidded.

  “What, baby?” he murmured as he nibbled at her ear.

  She gave one of her sexy little moans. “The protection you said you wanted to use the last time I came to you.”

  Stunned at himself and his forgetfulness, Archer rose and looked down at Lilin, the first woman he wanted to take bare, screw the protection. He brushed his lips over hers. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  It took him all of ten seconds to reach into his nightstand drawer and pull out a condom package.

  When he was ready, he looked down at his Lilin. She was so beautiful and she was so very much his.

  When he drove himself deep inside her, she cried out, “Oh, goddess!” with the sound of pain in her voice.

  Archer went completely still. “You’re a virgin?”

  She looked as surprised as he did. “My memories aren’t clear anymore. Maybe I am as a human.”

  He didn’t move. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She smiled. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. The way you fill me is wonderful.”

  She was so tight. Her velvet core gripped him like a fist and he couldn’t move for a moment or he’d come.

  Slowly, he drew out, then slid back in. He didn’t want to hurt her.

  She dug her fingernails into his biceps, the pain increasing his pleasure. “More, Archer.” Even the way she said his name was sensual, making the moment even more erotic.

  He gritted his teeth as he withdrew, then drove himself back inside her. Again he drew out slowly, then thrust into her. She made small cries and he nearly growled with the feelings of possessiveness that took hold of him. His body wanted to take her hard and fast, but his mind wanted to take it slow.

  While he made love to her.

  As he took her, Lilin’s body began to tremble, her thighs shaking against his hips. Her lips were parted, her eyes glazed and her moans louder.

  Slowly, he continued to make love to her, waiting for her to reach her pinnacle, holding back his own orgasm.

  One more thrust and she tipped her head back, arched her back, and screamed. Her body rocked and writhed beneath him. Her core clamped so hard on him that he lost it, too. He shouted and he thrust a few more times before he pressed his hips tight against her as she continued to contract around him. The throbbing of his cock seemed to go on forever.

  Finally, he collapsed, barely rolling to the side in time to keep his weight from crushing her petite frame. He gathered her into his arms.

  For a long time they held one another, her head against his chest, their breathing deep and ragged, him still inside her.

  When he had the strength, he kissed her forehead, his lips trailing over her skin as he inhaled her special scent. He felt incredible warmth deep in his heart and soul.

  He brushed her damp hair away from her face with his fingertips. She lifted her head to look at him and smiled. Such an innocent, sweet, genuine smile. Nothing like the sultry, experienced look she’d given him when she’d been a Succubus.

  Archer no longer doubted his sanity—or hers.

  Now he’d lost his heart to this sweet woman in his arms. He wanted to show her the world and then give it to her.

  Give everything to her.

  Pain slammed into Archer’s head and he put the heels of his palms to his temples. His mind spun. A vision of a clear multi-faceted stone was forced into his mind.

  “Archer?” Lilin’s voice sounded odd, as if from a distance.

  He clenched his jaw. The pain in his head, plus the image, was as if someone was forcing something into his memories that he hadn’t thought about for longer than he could remember. He wasn’t even sure what that something was—but he knew where to look.

  Head aching, he drew away from Lilin, rolled out of bed, and got to his feet.

  “What’s wrong?” She sounded concerned. “Archer?”

  Confusion still clouded Archer’s mind along with the image of the stone. A sparkling, clear stone. Somehow he knew he had to go to his bureau. “Wait.” It was on the tip of his consciousness. “There’s something…”

  His voice trailed away as he staggered toward his bureau. When he reached it, he opened his sock drawer and dug through it until his fingers finally touched something round and hard, hidden in one of his socks. When he returned to the bed, he shook the sock out over the mattress. An enormous diam
ond slipped out of the sock, its facets sparkling like small sparks of fire that were similar to those that had glittered in the air when Lilin opened and closed her wings. Archer’s eyes widened at the sight of the stone, and so did Lilin’s.

  Where had it come from and why had he just remembered having it?

  He reached for the diamond and closed his hand around it—and everything came back in a rush, so fast he nearly collapsed.

  Every memory of being an Incubus, every woman he had ever taken. And Rusalka…he remembered the air goddess with her fierce beauty and even fiercer temper. She’d been pissed with him when he’d said no to becoming one of her concubines. He’d never expected her to take his wings and make him human. If anything, he had thought she would send him to the Realm of the Dead.

  He had been one of her favorites, until he’d refused her.

  The goddess had given him the stone so that every now and then he would remember what he had lost—an immortal life and the ability to bed any woman he wanted, every night if he chose.

  Rusalka…she had wanted him to know he had lost the chance to be with her, too. Right now she’d been so jealous of his relationship with Lilin that she’d caused him to go to the stone.

  He had to be holding the diamond in order to remember. Once he parted with the stone, his memories would gradually slip away again.

  Her final words came to him. “With that stone in your hand, call to me and beg for your old life. I will bestow upon you your life as an Incubus and I will make you one of my concubines, as it should be.”

  He looked from the diamond to his beautiful Lilin. She stared at him with wide, almost innocent eyes, and his heart squeezed. He would give her the stone, allowing her to fully remember her past—and return to Otherworld. Without a doubt, he knew that Lilin could call to the goddess and she would take Lilin back.

  “Take this.” His heart in his throat, he placed the diamond in her hand and folded her fingers around it. “My gift to you.” He let his hands slip away from hers.

  Immediately, shock registered on Lilin’s features as she held the stone. Her eyes darted from the stone to him and back, as if she was watching a Ping-Pong match.

  “I could return,” Lilin whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. It was as if both pain and excitement combined fueled the outburst. “The goddess would take me back.”

  Her words hit him like a blow to the chest. Lilin would call to the goddess and leave him. She would go back to the other realm and she would forget he existed.

  But he would never forget her. Stone or no stone, he would never forget Lilin.

  In that single crystal-clear moment he realized how much she had come to mean to him over the period of time he’d known her.

  He didn’t want to lose her. He refused to lose her.

  Archer was on the verge of grabbing her, taking her into his arms and holding her tight so she could never leave him.

  She blinked as if coming back to reality and looked at him for a long moment, her eyes wide, her lips parted.

  His words and his breath caught in his throat as she took the sock he had hidden the diamond in, and slipped the stone inside so that it dropped to the toe.

  She held out the sock to him and she smiled. “I choose to live a mortal life if it means I can be with you.” She bit her lower lip before adding. “If you’ll have me.”

  The relief was so great it stunned him.

  “Will I have you?” Archer grabbed the sock with the diamond, tossed it over his shoulder, and it landed on the wood floor with a hard thump. “Does that answer your question?” He planned to take that damned stone and bury it in the landfill first thing in the morning.

  She grinned, flung her arms around his neck, and pressed her body against his. “I think I love you, Archer.”

  “With every part of my heart, I know I love you, Lilin.” If he’d tried, he couldn’t have kept the love out of his smile and voice as he looked down at her. “And I am never letting you go.”

  No Cursed Allowed

  A “Night Tracker” Novella

  (Rewritten and expanded. Formerly published under the title Double Dead in the “Chicks Kick Butt” anthology)

  by Cheyenne McCray

  Welcome to New York City’s Underworld

  Present Day

  Dark Elves/Drow: We rock.

  Demons: I am so through with Demons.

  Doppelganger: A paranorm who can shift into one specific animal in addition to having a human form.

  Dragons: You think fire is hot?

  Fae: You asked for it. Don’t blame me if you get a headache—Abatwa, Brownies, Dryads, Dwarves, Faerie, Gnomes, Goblins, Nymphs, Pixies, Sanziene, Sidhe, Sirens, Sprites, Tuatha, and Undines.

  Gargoyles: There’s a reason birds poop on statues.

  Incubus: No Adonis could begin to compare to these paranorms. Stay. Away.

  Light Elves: Mirror, mirror how art we better than all?

  Metamorph: Slimy paranorms who are cursed and can take on the persona and appearance of any human and almost any paranorm. And not in a good way. Metamorphs have no redeeming qualities. None.

  Necromancer: Exactly what you think. They talk to and raise the dead. Freakin’ creepy.

  Shadow Shifter: A paranorm with the ability to shift from human form into shadows.

  Shifter: Can transform into any animal of their choosing as well as take a human form.

  Succubus: Promises sex good enough to sell your soul for. One word: Don’t.

  Vampires: The only good Vampire is a dead Vampire.

  Werewolves: Can take wolf form almost anytime, but at the full moon they go nuclear.

  Zombies: I do not want to talk about Zombies. You can’t make me.

  Chapter 1

  Sprites, Brownies, and Goblins, oh my. It had been a hell of a week that didn’t want to end.

  “Remind me. Why are we in here on a Saturday?” My human PI partner, Olivia DeSantos, mumbled as she uncrossed her ankles, took her orange Keds off the desktop, and shoved her chair back.

  I glanced at her black T-shirt, stretched over her melon-sized breasts that read:

  I sometimes go to my own little world, but that's okay. They know me there.

  Olivia always wore T-shirts with sayings that ran from the amusing to the disturbed. Sometimes I worried about her.

  “Somewhere to be today?” I closed a folder on my desk and leaned back in my chair.

  “Anywhere but here.” Olivia stood and stretched her compact five-foot-two frame.

  Before she came to work for me, Olivia was formerly on the NYPD SWAT team and she had a third degree black belt in karate. She spoke several languages and was even starting to pick up Drow—primarily the curse words I let fly out of my mouth every now and again. Olivia’s skin was like dark brown silk, thanks to her mother being from Kenya and her father from Puerto Rico.

  I, on the other hand, am half Drow, one of the Dark Elves, and I turn a light shade of amethyst when the sun goes down.

  Yes, amethyst. Olivia would say purple, but it’s amethyst, and I’d appreciate it if you remember that.

  I am half-human as well. During the day I am Nyx Ciar, human-looking paranorm PI. After sundown I am Drow and a Night Tracker.

  “I’m done.” Olivia grabbed her New York Mets sweat jacket off the back of her chair and slipped it on. “I think I’ll take the GTO out for a spin. Wanna go for a ride?”

  “Not today.” I was not in the mood to let her take my life in her hands—the way she drove I never knew if it was my last day on this Earth Otherworld. I grabbed my phone and Coach purse and got to my feet. “I have to take care of a few things. Rodán wants to see me this afternoon.”

  “Personally, I think he’s never gotten over you.” Olivia smirked. “That’s why he wants to see you so often.”

  “That’s far in the past for both of us.” I rolled my eyes. “Rodán couldn’t settle for less than multiple partners for any length of time. He’s just made that way.” And he wa
s. Erotic, sensual, seductive…Rodán, one of the Light Elves and my mentor, as well as Proctor of the New York City Night Trackers, was all of those things and more.

  “I’ll deal with the Gnomes on Monday.” Olivia’s black eyes snapped with fire. “They’re going to regret what they did to Macy’s.”

  I nodded. “Once we find them.”

  “We will.” Olivia said it as if it was a done deal. “Unless you get to them first when you go tracking tonight.”

  “Not likely.” I blew out my breath. “I’ve got Metamorphs to locate and deal with.”

  Olivia wrinkled her nose. “Good luck.”

  Fae bells tinkled on the office door when she let herself out and the door thumped shut.

  I wrapped up what I was doing, locked the front door and headed into the chill winter air. I jogged up the stairs to my apartment, which was one of several over the PI office.

  Using my elemental magic, I unlocked my apartment door and pushed it open. I closed and locked the door behind me, dropped my purse on the floor, and slumped into my favorite chair. It was barely noon but it felt like a Monday that had just started and I was struggling trying to catch up.

  Saturdays should never feel like Mondays. It was a law against nature or something.

  A yowl made me groan. “Kali, please give me a break.” Another yowl and I raised my head to see my Persian carrying what had been one of my satiny new Victoria’s Secret bras into the living room—completely shredded. She had a mean glint in her eyes and I knew most of the rest of my lingerie drawer had suffered the same fate, consequences of my being away from home most of the week.

  I groaned and looked up at the ceiling again before I sighed, pushed myself to my feet, and headed for the kitchen. “Fine,” I grumbled before finding and opening a can of Fancy Feast, scooping some out and onto a plate to warm it a little in the microwave, and then serving it in her favorite Waterford crystal bowl. I’d tried using a regular plate or bowl to serve her food, but she’d made it clear by attacking my bustier that she wasn’t having any of it.