Demon Marked

Even as she dove deep into his mind—searching through the day-to-day images, hunting for memories that would make him a man worth stealing from—she couldn’t help but notice how close his face was to hers, how his breath whispered across her lips. She fit perfectly against him, each curve finding a strong hollow, as if she was made to fill in all his missing pieces.

Shivers of awareness sizzled across her skin, making her ache in a way that was entirely new and a little ... terrifying. She’d felt ghosts of this feeling before—with the one boy at the group home who she’d called her “boyfriend” for a few months—but never anything so strong. Nothing that made her nipples grow tight and sensitive against her shirt or made that quiet place between her legs wake up and celebrate the fact that a very good-looking man was very close.

This was what other people must feel when they rubbed against an attractive member of the opposite sex; this was the reason people hunted desirable partners to grind against in those darkened clubs. This was desire; this was ... lust.

The realization was nauseating. The man was contemptible in every way—from his excessive spending to his compulsive tidiness to his careless use of women to his smug assuredness that there was nothing in the great wide world that he might not completely understand. Even the way he smelled—of strong soap and heady cologne—had always made her cringe.

But for some reason, he smelled different now. What had made her head ache now made it spin, the spicy scent calling to a hunger entirely separate from the dark craving that surged to the surface as soon as her fingertips found the pressure points just above Andre’s neck.

Oh yeah, this was lust—no two ways about it—and it was ... overwhelming. Her heart beat faster, and her hands yearned to roam across every inch of Andre, to intimately learn the body hiding beneath his designer suit. The lure of that undiscovered flesh was so strong that it took several long minutes for her mind to get past the unfamiliar need coursing through her veins and focus on the business at hand.

She saw a woman, a beautiful woman, but different from all the other beautiful women Andre had taken to his bed. This one was special. Emma watched Andre brush the woman’s bright red hair behind her ear, saw the way she laughed, the way she smiled with tears in her eyes when Andre slipped a ring on her left ring finger.

Before the question in her mind could fully form, Emma had her answer. The memories flew at her, faster and faster. The redhead, huddled in a corner, sick and wasted from demon drugs, Andre screaming at her, the woman crying, begging him to stay. But he doesn’t, he can’t, he can’t keep watching her ruin herself. She’s crawling across the floor on her belly when he slams out of the small apartment, leaving her there ... leaving her there to die.

He never saw her again. She died, but it wasn’t his fault. It was the drugs, the demon high she couldn’t quit chasing once she’d had her first taste. Still, Andre blamed himself. For days, months, years ... The grief Emma sensed in his memories was overwhelming. Even as he flirted and teased and seduced, the pain was there, the loss a wound that would never, ever heal.

Emma slid her trembling hands down to Andre’s shoulders, severing her connection to his memories. She’d found nothing there worth taking. Bribing judges and aiding tax evasion were hardly punishable sins in her book, nothing compared to killing people; that was for damned sure.

And the pain that was so fresh in his memories ... it had gotten to her ... made her see Andre in a way she’d never dreamed she could, made her want to help him, to comfort him, to connect with the man who had lost someone he loved so deeply. That love intrigued her. She’d seen a lot of hate in the memories she’d sifted through over the years, but not much love, and nothing so ... intense.

His whisper ended in a moan as Emma pressed her lips to his, grateful that she’d taken the time to wash the taste of the Death Ministry thug out of her mouth before she left the pub. She wouldn’t have wanted another man to color the flavor of this kiss. This perfect kiss.

Andre’s lips moved against hers, taking the comfort she offered, devouring her with a naked hunger that drew an answering moan from Emma’s throat. His arms tightened at her waist, pulling her closer. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight, clinging to him as their tongues met with sweet, seductive strokes that made her ache all over.

This was so completely different from the invasion of Blue Eyes’ kiss, from any kiss she’d ever known. This was a communion, a mutual exploration, a challenge neither of them was backing away from. With every passing second, Andre’s kiss made her hotter, higher, bolder, until her hands were roaming down his broad back and up under his suit jacket, wanting to get closer to his warmth.

Her fingers clawed into the thick muscles of his shoulders, wishing the soft cotton of his shirt would vanish, wishing that she could be skin to skin with this man who made her body respond in a way no one ever had. There was no fear, no anxiety, only need, more than she knew what to do with. Not even the dark craving could compete with the desire flooding her every cell. The demon-created hunger faded into the background, a thread of smoke dwarfed by the fire that had sparked to life inside her.

When Andre’s hands cupped twin handfuls of her ass and pulled her close, pressing her against where he was obviously aroused, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she tilted her hips forward, grinding against him. Damn. It was ... unbelievable. He felt so good. So very, very good.

She was going to have to take back every critical thing she’d ever thought about the girls who made their dance partners into stripper poles at the Demon’s Breath. She wanted to do a lot more than dance with Andre, and she didn’t care if it happened right here. Right now.

“Wait.” Andre broke off the kiss with a suddenness that left Emma gasping. He grabbed her fingers and removed them from his belt, then transferred his hands to her shoulders. “We shouldn’t do this,” he said, though his breath was coming as fast as hers and the look in his eyes left little doubt that he wanted to pick up where they’d left off. She’d seen that look in men’s eyes plenty of times before, though she’d never been as pleased by it as she was at this moment.

Emma laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “If that’s your only concern, you can relax. I’m not a child. I’m not anywhere close to being a child. I never have been.”

She stared into his dark eyes, willing him to see that she was telling the truth. She’d never known what it was like to trust anyone or anything—even herself. It had shaped her, aged her well beyond her two decades. There was no need for him to consider her some kid in need of protection from his big, bad self.

“But I still have a lot more experience.” Andre’s hands slid down her arms, sending shivers across her skin. She still wanted him so much, so much that it hurt to watch his face harden with the resolve to put a stop to what they’d barely started.

“I doubt it,” she said. She’d seen things, lived through things, done things that Andre couldn’t even fathom. He was an infant in the world of pain and suffering and supernatural terror. So he’d slept with dozens of women and she hadn’t slept with ... anyone. So what?

Sex was just sex. It was like eating. It fed a basic human drive—the need to reproduce and replenish the species. Just because Andre had screwed around with more than his fair share of women didn’t make him worthy of her respect, or better than her, or above her in any way. His excuse was ridiculous and thin and maybe just a flat-out lie.

Maybe he didn’t want to sleep with her because he thought she was an ugly, gangly girl with nearly nonexistent breasts, stringy hair, and dirty fingernails. Maybe she repulsed him. Maybe he’d kissed her only because he would kiss just about anything female that rubbed up against him.

She’d seen other hidden truths in Andre’s memories. She’d seen the way he’d changed after his fiancée’s death, watched his womanizing morph into a flat-out addiction that, in many ways, ruled his life. A part of Andre was always thinking about where to score his next fix, wondering where he’d find the next willing, suitable partner, worrying that he’d eventually resort to hiring prostitutes.

Knowing he was a certified man-slut with a monkey on his back should have turned Emma off, but it didn’t. She knew what it felt like to need something she didn’t want to need, to prowl the streets looking for someone suitable to scratch the itch that made her skin feel too small and the hunger too large. She knew how scary it was to worry that someday the hunger would rule her completely.

A man was dead, and she’d blacked out for an hour after feeding on his energy. What did that mean? And why did she still feel so ... off? She hadn’t been able to take a single sip of her coffee back at the diner. Just the smell of it had made her stomach heave and pitch. And now that the rush of kissing Andre was behind her, she felt sick again. And dizzy. And ... wrong.

“So we aren’t going to finish this?” Andre actually blushed when she glanced up at him in surprise. “I mean the life-force-sucking thing. I didn’t see any blue light. Did you—”

“I did. You’re not such a bad guy, after all,” Emma said, though it was obvious Andre didn’t believe in her power any more than he had ten minutes ago. “So there’s not going to be any blue light. I guess that means there’s not going to be any help.”

“Don’t worry about my uncle. I’ll take care of it. No one’s going to be angry with you.” His warm hands came down on her shoulders once more, but this time the touch was purely friendly. “Trust me.”

“Okay, okay.” Andre held up his hands in mock surrender, his face a study in amused disbelief. “If you say you did ... you did. I wouldn’t think reading my mind would make anyone trust me, but—”

“I don’t care about the illegal shit,” Emma said. “I always figured you cooked the books for the Conti family, and what do I care if you have a judge or two in your pocket?”

“Oh, come on, is that the best you’ve got?” The bastard actually had the balls to laugh, like this was all some kind of joke. “You’re going to have to give me more than that if you expect me to—”

“I was prepared to give you more.” Emma stepped closer, until her lips were only a few inches from Andre’s. He was close to six feet, but in her heeled boots their faces were nearly level. The slightest movement on either of their parts would bring them back into intimate contact. The sizzle of attraction arced between them once more. She could tell he felt it, too, see it in the way his smile faded and his breath picked up speed. But was that because he was attracted to her or because he’d do anything with a pussy?

Andre’s breath rushed out as if she’d punched him in the chest, and his self-assured facade crumbled before her eyes. For a split second she imagined she saw Andre as he’d appeared as a younger man, before events had conspired to make him an arrogant ass. He looked so hurt, vulnerable, almost frightened.

A part of her felt awful for putting such a stricken expression on his face, but the rest of her was too angry to care. She could handle the smug chuckles and the insinuations that she was crazy, but the condescending rejection had pushed her to the edge. He could take his “beautiful girl” comments and shove them.

The city air glowed pale pink and orange, and the sounds of cars and buses lining up to get through the barricade rumbled toward her from Broadway. It must be after five o’clock. Ginger had to be back at their apartment by now. Emma knew she could have asked Andre to call for her, but there was no way she was turning around. Instead, she lengthened her stride, hurrying toward the street corner.

She half expected him to come after her, but he didn’t. He let her go, which made her feel even sicker than she had a few minutes ago. But then, what else was new? Being around Andre always made her a little ill. She shouldn’t have expected this encounter to be any different, especially not because of some stupid kiss.

Andre watched Emma’s narrow form hustle down the street and turn the corner, presumably heading back to the west Southie apartment she shared with one of Sam’s friends. He knew he should go after her, follow her, and make sure she got home safely—she’d said she’d passed out earlier and might not be in top form—but he couldn’t seem to make his feet move. He didn’t want to look at Emma again, not until he’d had some time to pull himself back together.

And call Jace in Seattle and rip him a new asshole. He didn’t care if his cousin was on his honeymoon. He deserved every harsh word Andre intended to hurl at him.

How dare he tell Emma about Katie? Even if Jace had told Sam and Sam had told Emma, it was still unacceptable. Katie was Andre’s own private business, his own private misery, not to be shared with anyone. She’d been dead for eight years, and no one in the Conti family had mentioned her name since the funeral.

Even his mom and dad pretended he’d never been engaged. His parents hadn’t said a word when Andre started bringing other women to the family restaurant only a few weeks after Katie was put in the ground. They simply cleared a place at the table and ran back to the kitchen to make an extra salad, because they knew better than to do anything to pick at the empty, aching hole Katie had left inside him.

But Jace had spilled his guts for some stupid reason. Maybe Katie had come up in reference to Jace’s own addiction—he’d still used demon drugs for almost two years after she’d overdosed, a fact that had nearly destroyed the cousins’ friendship—but that didn’t offer much comfort. Jace was one of the few people Andre felt he could count on. Jace should have known better than to open his big mouth.

“And maybe she killed a man with her life-sucking magic hands,” Andre whispered under his breath as he flipped his earbud into the “on” position and ordered it to call Michael—one of Conti Bounty’s most formidable bounty hunters and another of Andre’s many cousins. Michael was Uncle Francis’s younger son and one of the most dependable men Andre knew.

His cousin answered on the third ring, growling into the phone in typical Conti fashion. If it weren’t for Andre, the entire lot of them would be an uncivilized tribe of sweaty men with guns. “This better be important. It’s five o’clock in the morning.”

“Don’t bring Mary into this, Mikey.” Andre started down the street toward the barricade, the hint of a smile on his face. “Unless you want me to tell her to take the pesto gnocchi off the menu for Thursday.”

“Okay, I’m up, I’m up,” Michael said, nothing in his voice giving away that he was on his way to pick up a dead body, but Andre knew he’d understood the code phrase.

The very idea that he’d really call Michael to “pick up the laundry” was ludicrous. The Contis owned a chain of laundry services, the better to “launder” some of the profits from the family’s extracurricular activities.

“Oh, and on your way, could you stop by the Demon’s Breath? I think they left a few things out back that they need washed up.” Andre would usually e-mail the location of a corpse to Mikey in code, but he figured his cousin would get the message.

And if the police were listening in on the phone call, they wouldn’t be suspicious. It was common knowledge that the Demon’s Breath was now considered a Conti business, though Samantha Quinn was the owner on paper.

“No problem.” Michael’s voice was muffled for a second. He was probably pulling on clothes without bothering to shower after his long night. Speed was paramount. The body had been behind the pub for more than an hour. It was time to make sure this mess was taken care of before any Death Ministry came sniffing around and complicated an otherwise easily handled situation.

Mikey was a pro. He’d collect the corpse, transport it to one of his secret dumping places near the river, and make certain the entire thing was consumed whole by one of the water-dwelling demons. Andre had heard rumors that Mikey had some sort of spice rub he worked into dead skin to make the flesh irresistible to the amphibious demons haunting the waters near the old East River Park. He’d never asked whether the rumor was true. Some things were just too much for a sensitive lawyer’s stomach to handle.

“No, don’t worry about calling Little F,” Andre said, keeping the words casual. “I’m headed over to the office later today; I’ll let him know you’ll be in late. But I won’t tell him about the laundry thing; wouldn’t want him to think he can get you to do all his errands, too.”

Uncle Francis had been out of town on business for two weeks, and in his absence Conti Bounty had been under the thumb of Little Francis, his uncle’s oldest son and a man who needed a hobby in a bad way. Little F was a decent guy, but he had a tendency to micromanage, a habit that crawled up the asses of most of the Conti Bounty hunters, especially his little brother, Mikey.

He’d taken a risk hinting that Mikey should keep this from his brother, but he didn’t want Little Francis losing his cool and calling his dad in a panic. His father was close to finalizing an agreement with the DM leaders—setting a number of demons they could kill per month and arranging to supply them with stun guns that couldn’t be used to kill innocent people. He would definitely lose his cool if he realized they had a dead Death Ministry member on their hands and someone in their organization implicated in the murder. It killed Little F to see Conti Bounty profits sag as more demons fell prey to the Death Ministry and the growing demand for demon highs. He’d want to know who had dirtied their hands and put the agreement at risk, and Andre wasn’t ready to tell him that Emma Quinn was the lady in question.

What Little Francis didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anyone. Andre would explain the situation to Uncle Francis himself ... when the time was right. Maybe two or three months down the road, once the entire situation had resolved itself and any accompanying angst had blown over.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d kept his uncle in the dark. Uncle Francis was the big boss, but he was also on several heart medications. His family conspired to keep stress away from his door unless it was absolutely necessary, and Andre wasn’t convinced this situation was that critical.

Emma hadn’t killed this guy—no matter what she thought—and there would have been no reason for them to get involved if the thug hadn’t made the poor decision to die on Conti turf. Even if Emma hadn’t touched him, it would have looked strange for a DM member to be found dead behind the Demon’s Breath. She wasn’t to blame. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Andre ignored his smart-ass thoughts and hurried across Broadway, threading his way through the cars idling in a line that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, filling the area below Union Square with exhaust fumes. His own car and driver sat in the employee parking structure, the one with the special access ramp that dumped the fortunate back into Manhattan on Park Avenue South without waiting in the horrendous line or paying the ten-dollar toll.

Thank god. He’d never been more grateful for his uncle’s connections. The sun wasn’t even fully up and it was already hot and sticky enough to make his light cotton dress shirt stick and cling. It was a miserable morning to sit in traffic and sweat, so he’d head back uptown, get a coffee and some eggs at a clean, cool, patisserie instead of some Southie rat hole, and—

His earbud pulsed, then announced a call from Michael Conti, interrupting his fantasies of air-conditioning and coffee that came with its own little pot of warmed cream.

“Nothing much. Just wanted to let you know there wasn’t any laundry outside the Demon’s Breath.” Mikey sounded completely at ease, but Andre sensed the urgency in his words.

“Shit.” Andre stopped dead in the street, ignoring the cabbie who honked and screamed for him to get out of the way. The barricade had opened just a couple of minutes ago. This asshole wouldn’t be going anywhere for a good thirty minutes. “You checked out back? By the Dumpsters?”

Emma’s bud rang three, four times and then went to voice mail. Shit again. She’d called him from the pub earlier in the evening. She must not have her earbud with her. “Emma, it’s Andre. I need you to call me ASAP. Stop whatever you’re doing and call me.” Andre ended the call and broke into a jog, weaving through the increasingly crowded sidewalk, searching for any sign of Emma.

He wasn’t sure where she lived, but he could find out. He’d call her sister. It was two in the morning in Seattle, but knowing Sam and Jace, they’d probably been out hunting demons until at least midnight. Hopefully Sam would have her bud on.

“Don’t worry about it. Head into work. I’ll call you later.” Andre ended the call with a firm tap on his bud and broke into a flat-out run, all thoughts of keeping cool vanishing in a wave of concern. What if the Death Ministry members had found their dead comrade? What if the gang had already decided to track down the girl they’d seen him talking to last night at the bar? Emma could be in very real danger.

“Samantha Quinn,” Andre ordered. He hated to bother his cousin-in-law on her honeymoon, but he had no other choice. Sam would know how to find her sister, and he had to find Emma ... before anyone else did.