Kali Sweet Series, Three Urban Fantasy Novels (Boxed Set) Read online

  The lust Lilith had elicited a few minutes earlier was gone. We didn’t need it. Humans call it sexual chemistry, but demon or human, it doesn’t matter. We’re all hardwired to respond sexually to certain pheromones, certain triggers. Doesn’t matter what logic tells us, we lust after the wrong people at the wrong times.

  This was one of those times and definitely one of those people.

  Because he was my blood slave, I not only felt my own desire sizzling in my veins, I felt his as well. A drenching warm rain of need and craving. A demanding pressure filling me from the inside out. I licked his neck, tasting his salty skin and letting his human and demon emotions lift me higher. He pressed a hand over mine, where it rested on his chest, and kissed me, slow and deep.

  It was nothing like Lilith’s searing kiss. Nothing like Damon’s probing one. Rad’s lips were greedy and demanding, but strangely reassuring. The kiss was about him and me, not a contract, not control.

  I kissed him back. My head spun, my brain spewing arguments, but I ignored them. What if I let the lust take over? I could free myself from the tension, doubts and responsibilities weighing on my shoulders for a little while. I’d have better control over my inner demon.

  And right now, that sounded like a damn fine idea. The world wouldn’t end if I took an hour to two for myself, right?

  With Lilith on the loose, that was actually an unfortunate possibility.

  Shutting down my brain, I kissed Rad harder. The world was going to end one of these days anyway. Why couldn’t I find a little solace before it did?

  My imagination went wild as I imagined pressing Rad down to the floor and straddling him. Removing the rest of our clothes and reacquainting myself with his beautiful body. Riding him until I could blot out everything else. I wanted to hear him cry out my name. Wanted to hear him beg me for mercy. Wanted…wanted…

  A deep voice and metallic smell brought my imagination to a screeching stop. “Damn, it’s hot in here.”

  Cole.

  I jerked out of Rad’s embrace, stumbled into a standing position. I hadn’t heard my bodyguard enter. How long had he been standing there? My pulse pounded in my ears, my breath coming out in jerky huffs. “We were just..um..”

  “Yeah, I figured that out.” He scowled at Rad. “Damon thought I’d better interrupt you before you did something you’d regret.” He put air quotes around something you’d regret.

  Rad rose to his feet, brushed off his jeans and started rebuttoning his shirt. Lilith had sheared most of the buttons off, so it was pretty much a lost cause. Not that I minded seeing his chest.

  I picked up my cape, fiddled with the weapons. Running my hands over them calmed me. “Any word on Hone?”

  Cole pointed at his temple. “Bump on the head, probably a mild concussion. He’s at the hospital.”

  He was alive. Good. “And what about Lilith?”

  “Damon put two Tracker demons on her. They’ll report in hourly and inform him if she does anything requiring the Bridge Council to take action.”

  Like eating souls and killing humans wasn’t enough? “Have there been any news reports of unusual activity? Mass, unexplained deaths?”

  “Not as much as expected. Damon went back to the Institute to monitor everything.”

  Which meant I could get back to work without him breathing down my neck.

  Rad touched my waist. “We should doctor your back,” he murmured in my ear.

  My wounds were painful but not life threatening. His either. He wanted to get me alone so we could talk. Or resume what we’d started. He looked exhausted, as if the confrontation with Lilith had taken as much out of him as it had me.

  Cole wasn’t fooled by Rad’s pretense. “Damon wants you back at the Institute, Kali. Right away.”

  “No dice.” I started for the stairs. I had work to do. A lot of it. “Call JR and tell him I want security cameras, infrared, the whole works, installed around the church and the cemetery, and call Damon and tell him I want two more bodyguards besides you—Merc demons—on twenty-four-seven duty until the coronation. I also want my security system to feed into the Institute, rather than a human service, and I want Yasmin to set me up with a firewall like she’s got around the Institute grounds.”

  I didn’t wait to see if Rad was following me upstairs or if Cole was already dialing. I headed straight for my bedroom, hung up my cape and started making a list. I needed JR to locate Lucifer’s witch, I still wanted to check Nudra’s weapons stash, and I wanted the lowdown on Toel so I could shut him down before his game shifted into high gear. I also needed to send Hone flowers.

  A noise behind me made me turn.

  Rad, looking dangerous and hungry, stood in the doorway.

  “I need to feed,” he said, taking two steps forward and promptly passing out at my feet.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Rad!” I dropped to my knees beside him, patted his face. Got no response. He was pale and his breathing was too slow and too faint for my liking.

  Rolling him onto his side, I checked his waistband. Sure enough, a silver dagger was hidden there in a leather sheath. I drew it out and frowned. It was identical to the one Nudra had used to cut me.

  There was no time to worry about it. I shifted Rad so his head was in my lap, took a deep breath and scored my wrist with the sharp blade.

  Blood bubbled to the top of my skin and pooled on my wrist. It ran over the sides and dripped onto Rad’s lips. My stomach did a flip and I looked away for a second to get hold of my queasiness before I parted his lips so the blood could drip into his mouth.

  He’d gone several days without feeding on me but so had Arman and Victoria and neither of them were beating down my door in need of more. Why was Rad already feeling the effects?

  He stirred, and without opening his eyes, grabbed my wrist in a two-handed vice grip and brought it to his lips. He sucked my blood with such ferocity, I nearly cried out. A sudden surge of pleasure rushed up my arm and into my chest, tingling my nerve endings in its wake. The room spun and I dropped the dagger.

  The memory of Victoria and Arman drinking my blood trickled into my brain, but only long enough for a couple of synapses to fire. They had both drank deep, robbing me of a good deal of blood. Rad had only had a taste. That’s why he’d gone belly up so soon.

  As Rad took another deep pull of my blood, a second surge ripped through me, this one dropping to the spot between my legs, renewing the ache there. A new memory took front and center. The best damn orgasm I’d ever had after Rad had licked my skin in Nudra’s coffin. The sparks that had flown. The light I had seen that seemed like heaven.

  Rad moaned low in his throat and opened his eyes, the golden orbs filled with blood lust and something more. That yearning desire I’d seen earlier. That promise of heaven if we gave in and came together.

  In one agile move, he flipped me onto my back and pinned both my wrists to the floor. He kneed my legs apart and ground himself against me. “I want you, Kali. So bad. So bad, it hurts.”

  The scratches on my back screamed a silent pain, lost in the pleasure of Rad’s body on top of mine. I wanted him too. I wanted this. The demon, the human, the blood slave. Shit, at that moment, even the Noctifector. I wanted all of him pounding into me, unable to stop himself. Unable to control his feelings for me.

  I wanted it all. The good, the bad, the terrible.

  Which sucked. Even after everything he’d done to me, I couldn’t stop my lust for him. Couldn’t stop wanting him. I was sick. Sick with love and hate and desire. Sick with guilt. Every time I let him in, I paid the price. Every time I said yes to him, my life got more screwed up.

  I searched for some comeback, some argument. “It’s just the blood lust,” I reasoned, but it sounded lame to my ears. Half-hearted and meaningless.

  Must have sounded lame to him too. “No.” He released one of my wrists, wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “It’s not the blood, Kali. It’s you. I want…you. Every piece of you. Body, hear
t and soul.”

  There was a point I could argue. “I don’t have a soul.”

  His eyes burned pure gold. “Yes, you do.”

  He grabbed the dagger and sat up, his heavy weight trapping my hips. He touched the tip of the dagger to my throat through the turtleneck and I sucked in my breath. Now he was going to kill me?

  I twisted, trying to buck him off. It did no good.

  My wrist stung, bleeding less, but that arm, my strongest, was now weak. I raised my other arm and swung my fist at the blade.

  He grabbed my hand, continuing to hold the blade tip at my neck. “Trust me.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was going to die, just like I’d dreamed. Rad was going to stick that silver dagger in my heart and end it. “Never.”

  Something changed in his eyes. A sadness flashed there and then a look that said he liked a challenge. Oh, yes, he liked a challenge all right. And once again, I was it.

  He released my hand, grabbed the turtleneck’s fabric under my chin.

  And then ever so slowly, he cut it away.

  Down my chest, between my breasts and over my stomach, the ribbed cotton gave way under the sharp edge of the blade. He peeled the material back, revealing my bra and bare skin. His fingertips lightly skimmed my stomach, stroked the pulse beating wildly at the base of my throat, traced the contours of my breasts above the line of red lace they were nestled in.

  The rediscovery of something he’d once been familiar with seemed to produce a level of reverence. At the same time, the furniture in the room began vibrating. The pictures on the walls shifted on their hangars. The knickknacks on my dresser rattled against each other. “You’re beautiful.”

  While I’m as prideful as any demon, I’ve never been comfortable with intimate flattery. Not that I didn’t like hearing it, I simply never knew how to respond. So I reached for my American snarkiness, but my voice came out weak and shaky. “You probably say that to all the women you bed.”

  “Only the one I should have married.”

  My heart missed a beat, then fired off a heavy thud. He had me where he wanted me, and instead of taking advantage of my body, he was torturing my mind and heart with meaningless explanations and excuses about that day so long ago. There was a part of me that wanted to forget and forgive, but I never would. That day, that night, couldn’t be undone, and even two hundred and eighty-three years later, I grieved for my family. Grieved for what could have been with Rad. Even if I exacted revenge on him, the horror of the past could never be erased.

  I looked away, unable to respond. Sensing my distress and cooled ardor, Rad didn’t say another word. The mini-earthquake in my room didn’t subside, though. He leaned down and teased my lips with his. Softly, slowly, asking for permission to take me away from my thoughts. Asking permission to take me higher than I’d been that night in the coffin when he’d shown me heaven.

  I opened my lips, giving him access. His tongue swooped in and the kiss turned hotter, wetter, deeper. His free hand snaked up my side, released the front catch on my bra and kneaded one breast, tugging and tweaking the nipple until I moaned.

  He kissed the healing cut on my cheek, trailed kisses down my neck and over my collarbone, his mouth eventually landing on the other breast. I arched into him as his tongue and lips circled the tender flesh, sucking it into his mouth and pulling on it like he’d pulled at my wrist earlier.

  Digging my nails into his shoulders, I clung to him as he took his mouth to my other breast. His tongue and lips nearly brought me to orgasm. A minute later, I raised my hips so he could tug my pants over my hips and down my legs. He tossed them aside, grabbed the knife and started to cut off my bikini underwear against my protests.

  “Kali!” Cole’s voice in the doorway startled me, and in the next instant, Rad’s weight left my hips as Cole jerked him off and slammed him against the wall.

  Interrupting a Chaos demon in the throes of lust is never a good idea. To give Cole credit, what he saw when he walked in on us wasn’t a pretty picture. Blood from my wrist covered both of us and smeared the floor. Rad looked like he was raping me, holding me down and cutting my clothes off…and with a silver dagger no less.

  Of course, Cole had barged into my bedroom, which was rude, but he was my bodyguard and he took the job seriously. Unfortunately, he’d now interrupted Rad twice, and the Chaos demon’s anger flared—I felt it flash through me lightning quick—with the same intensity of his passionate lovemaking. The knife, still in Rad’s hand swiped at Cole’s neck, while at the same time, the other hand laid an uppercut to Cole’s diaphragm.

  Cole hadn’t survived the Roman Empire’s gladiator games by being slow or unskilled. He ducked, swiveled and punched, and the dagger hit the floor and skidded to a stop at my feet.

  “Stop it,” I yelled, knowing one or both of them would end up hurt beyond repair, but they continued to kick, punch and slam each other into the walls and my furniture. I scrambled up, realized I was naked, and grabbed the comforter off my bed to wrap around me.

  The fighting continued for another minute, the demons equally matched until Rad snapped his fingers and the lamp on my nightstand sailed across the room and crashed into Cole’s head.

  Now that was dirty pool. The warrior staggered and Rad landed a kick to the back of his knee. But even as Rad’s foot connected, Cole grabbed Rad’s leg and flipped him onto the ground.

  “Fermati!” I yelled, and this time they stopped. Both looked at me and blinked as if they’d forgotten I was even there.

  That’s demons for you. Fighting or fucking, they give one-hundred-and-ten percent.

  “Both of you stop it this instant. I’m fine, Cole. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. I’m going to take a shower now.” A very, very cold shower. I shook my head at both of them and padded toward the bathroom. “Do not kill each other.”

  Realizing his errore colossale, Cole rubbed the growing bump on his head and glared at Rad. “I thought he was trying to kill you.”

  Another snap of Rad’s fingers and the dagger flew into his hand. “Interrupt us again, and giuro davanti a Dio, you’ll be the one I take this knife to.”

  Thank the hell fires, Rad’s shirt was still on, covering his Noctifector tattoo, or Cole would have fought him to the death regardless of my yelling. I left the two of them bickering, shutting out their voices behind the heavy wooden bathroom door, and had a quiet, sad laugh.

  I’d been alone for so long, it freaked me out having not one, but two men in my house, and both of them trying to look out for me. I’d been taking care of myself since I was seventeen, and doing a damned good job of it, but on some level, it was nice to know I wasn’t facing Lilith, Toel, and the whole vamp thing alone.

  The cold shower didn’t cool my sexual hunger. In fact, it seemed to do the opposite. After a few minutes, I switched the water to hot and scrubbed vigorously from head to toe, avoiding my cuts, and letting the steam and water relax all the tight muscles. My back stung but the pain distracted my thoughts. I’d wrapped my wrist before getting in and the bandage was soaked but it’d kept the soap and shampoo out. The cut didn’t smart so much as buzz with the phantom memory of Rad’s lips.

  How many times would I have to bleed myself for my slaves? How many places on my body would I have to scar for them? How could I stand the feel of Vicky and Arman’s mouths on me again?

  At the unpleasant thought, goose flesh rose on my skin in the shower’s steam.

  I’d have to talk to Chloe and figure out a more civilized way to bank my blood. Rad drinking directly from my body turned me on. Vicky and Arman putting their mouths on me made me sick to my stomach.

  Some vamp queen I’m going to make.

  I shut off the shower, dried off, and applied my favorite skin lotion. I hadn’t brought clothes with me, but the bathroom was connected to the walk-in closet I’d spent six months building to a precise layout. Beautiful clothes and killer shoes were one of my indulgences.

  I dropped the towel on the
tiled floor and had just started for the closet when the bathroom door opened and Rad walked in. He closed the door behind him, looked me over from head to toe and flipped the lock.

  No one was going to interrupt us this time.

  His hands skimmed my naked skin and he danced me backwards, pressing me against the stone wall. One hand at the nape of my neck, the other at the small of my back, he lowered his lips to mine. I sunk my hands into his hair, tilting my head so I could kiss him deeper. Then I pushed the shirt off his shoulders and undid his jeans.

  He was as ready as I was, his erection popping out as I shoved the pants down his hips. He’d never been one for underwear, and for once I was glad. Taking him in hand, I stroked him hard, over and over, enjoying his murmurs and deep-throated groans, even as he massaged and pinched my nipples and drew the same noises from me.

  Two-hundred-and-eighty years ago, when he’d taken my virginity, he’d been a considerate lover. He’d tasted and teased and taught me all about pleasure in slow, highly-erotic and very romantic lessons. That had been so long ago, I felt as if I was offering him my virginity all over again. But there was nothing tender or remotely romantic about this coupling.

  Lifting me by the ass to position me so our bodies fit together, he rammed me against the stones, impaling me from the front as he did so. I arched and cried out, wrapping my legs tight around his waist, and meeting every one of his thrusts with my own.

  Sparks, like before, lit the dim room, our bodies somehow electrified. The bottle of lotion flew off the shelf, along with other toiletries. Towels left their places and danced in the air. The shower curtain fluttered and the stones at my back vibrated with the intense magic.

  An explosion of sensations rocked me, skittering under my skin and heightening my lust. I closed my eyes, finding Rad’s rhythm and matching it, the sharp edges of the stones reopening the wounds on my back. Pleasure and pain, taking me higher.