Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
H aven had been dreaming of kissing Roan almost since the moment she met him. He’d been in a prison cell deep in the bowels of the Section 8 basement, which made it kind of awkward.
But that was beside the point.
Haven had been kissed before. Not often. But there had been a few dates over the years that had ended in kisses. Some were better than others, but most of them were nice. Kind of vanilla on the pleasure scale. But Roan’s kiss?
Intoxicating.
Roan had always been tender with her. Careful. But not now. He took her mouth roughly, like he intended to devour her. It was wild, a little angry, and hot. Oh, holy hell, was it hot.
He tasted like cinnamon and pure, unadulterated need. She’d never tasted anything so amazing in her life.
She needed more. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d die if he stopped kissing her.
By some miracle, he seemed to understand her desperation because he chose that moment to yank her closer, letting her once again feel how much he wanted her.
While it was true that she was a virgin, she was not ignorant. She’d seen her fair share of porn and even had a few electronic, vibrating boyfriends of varying sizes that she’d taken for, ahem, many, many test drives. But what she was feeling pressed into her stomach right now?
Huge. Hard. Possibly unmanageable.
All hers if she played her cards right.
Although…would she even be able to walk afterwards? Did Section 8 offer disability pay for sex related injuries? She wasn’t sure.
But oh, was she eager to find out.
He slid his hands down her shoulders, let his fingertips bump along each of her ribs, then gripped the bottom of her blouse like he intended to rip it in two to get at the skin beneath. Heat licked across her chest, her belly, and between her thighs.
Two point three seconds. That was about how long it’d take to drag him into the nearest dark corner and beg him to fuck her.
It was just her terrible, shitty, no-good, plain rotten luck that it only took two point two seconds for her to start overthinking everything.
Questions started to swarm her brain. If he could tell her this much about how he felt with a kiss, why couldn’t he tell her anything with his words? Was this kiss happening because he really wanted to kiss her, or because he wanted to distract her from demanding more actual communication from him? The timing of it—after years of knowing each other—certainly seemed suspect.
With more strength than she’d ever exhibited (seriously, it took supernatural strength), Haven pulled away. Breathing so hard it felt like she was fighting for her damn life, she asked, “Tell me what you’ve been hiding. Now.”
His chin dipped, and he pulled his hands off her. She felt his retreat down to the depths of her soul. He had been trying to distract her with the kiss.
“Fuck you,” she said, fighting back angry tears. “You know what? You can go. I’m going to get back to my date.”
That got his attention. His head shot up, flames rising again in his eyes. “You can’t.”
She threw her hands wide. “Try me.”
He reached for her again with a low snarl. “No.”
She poked him in the chest with her index finger. Hard. “Give me one good reason why not.”
Haven wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to do. But not even in her wildest dreams could she have anticipated his next actions.
His hand shot out and wrapped around her throat like a collar before she could so much as blink. His grip wasn’t tight. She could still breathe. He made no effort to choke her. Quite the opposite, in fact. His thumb lazily stroked the hollow at the base of her throat. But his grip was firm enough that she couldn’t break free without hurting herself.
So, while she hung in his grasp like a broken doll, he pulled her forward— by the throat —and snarled, “He can’t have you.”
“Why the hell not?” she asked as defiantly as she could manage, considering his grip on her airway.
“Because you’re my wife !”
Two things happened at once after that. There was a record scratch in her brain that ceased all her higher functions, leaving her with absolutely no way to process what he’d just said. And also…
Chaos erupted around them.
Rifts in the veil between worlds weren’t all that impressive. Just a quick sound akin to crinkling paper, or maybe the snap of a dry twig, followed by a flash of yellow light. So, when the rift tore open in the middle of the dance floor, Haven imagined it wasn’t the rift itself that caused shifters to scream, knock each other to the ground, and flee in a panic. That honor most likely belonged to the giant demon that stepped out of the rift and closed it behind him.
It was him . The same demon that had nearly killed Roan in that mine, the one she thought (or hoped) she’d gotten rid of, was right in front of them.
And he was looking at her like she was the last doughnut in the box.
Roan, of course, shoved her behind him. “I’m really missing my ability to teleport you right about now,” he grumbled.
Haven peeked around his wide shoulders to find the demon still staring at her. “Yeah…that might’ve been a miscalculation on my part.”
“I’ve been searching for you forever,” the demon rasped.
Her demon, the one who’d just made a pretty insane claim about being her husband that they would be discussing later (if they survived the night, of course), didn’t bother with pleasantries. He threw a blast of hellfire at the other demon’s head, knocking him back against the bar. “Keep searching, pal,” Roan snarled. “She’s mine.”
Aw, that was sweet. Strangely possessive, and her inner feminist should be offended, but she wasn’t. She’d spent half her life wanting to belong to Roan. She certainly wasn’t going to get precious about it now.
The demon straightened, dusting some broken glass from the bar off his chest, and started slowly toward Haven again like she was Sarah Conner and he was the fucking Terminator . He put his hand down on a table on his way, and it melted beneath his touch.
Gulp .
Roan kept his eyes on the demon and started walking them backward slowly to the exit. The demon’s eyes remained locked on hers.
There were several things that struck her as odd about this situation, other than the demon’s unnatural fascination with her, of course. The first was the fact that this was the only living creature she’d ever seen that didn’t have an aura. Nothing. He was a black hole of psychic energy.
Then there was the way he was looking at her. His focus was terrifying, but the look in his eyes wasn’t necessarily threatening. It was more like…reverence. Which begged the question, why the hell did the flesh-melting demon revere her ?
Oh, Lord. She hoped he didn’t think she was his fated mate or anything. That’d be awkward. But…no, he wasn’t looking at her in a lustful way, either. Which meant she’d probably just read too many fated mates romance novels lately.
He held his hand out to her. “Come. You must leave this dimension with me…”
Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by the blade Roan hurled at him. The one that lodged in his throat.
Haven threw her hands wide. “Jesus, Roan, you don’t think that whatever he was going to say next might’ve been good info to have?”
He gave her an incredulous look over his shoulder. “I was more concerned with the whole ‘leave this dimension’ thing, Haven. I assumed you didn’t want to leave the dimension with him?”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean, of course I don’t want to leave the dimension with him. But I kind of want to know what the hell is going on.”
Levi popped up behind her. “Guys, think you might want to stop bantering and do something about the giant demon that looks pretty pissed right now?”
They both shifted their eyes to the demon. Yeah. He did look pretty pissed as he ripped the mostly melted knife out of his throat and tossed it to the ground.
“What a waste of a good knife,” Haven said, shaking her head.
“Take her out of here, Levi,” Roan snarled, letting his hands fill with balls of hellfire.
Levi snorted. “Have you met her, man? She’s not going anywhere unless she wants to.”
“He’s right. I’m not,” Haven agreed.
Roan let out a roar like a pissed off bear and tossed both handfuls of hellfire at the demon. It was enough to knock the bastard down, but not enough to stop him. “Fuck this,” he muttered. Flinging his arm out, he tore a rift open.
Haven grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt. “What the hell are you doing, Roan?”
He looked back at her over his shoulder as the demon climbed to his feet and started toward them again. “I can’t get you out of this dimension, but I can get him out. Drop him somewhere where I might have more of an advantage.”
Her eyes got so wide she probably looked like an anime character. “Where does that rift go?”
He swallowed hard. “The worst place I can think of.”
Nexxus. He was talking about his home dimension. The one with fire pits and hellhounds that were way meaner than Fluffy and giant man-eating worms and hundreds of his dead father’s soldiers who were probably still pissed at him. Sure, the practically poisonous air there might kill or disable the demon, but Roan would be in just as much—if not more—danger. And that was assuming he could get the demon through the rift without getting his skin melted off in the process.
“You can’t,” she whispered.
“I don’t have a choice. You know I love you, right?”
She fought the urge to nut-punch him. “ Now you tell me? Now ?”
That’s when another blast of hellfire, two knives, and a crossbow bolt hit the demon squarely in the chest.
Haven had never been more relieved (or terrified) to see her family in her life.
“You good, kid?” Gabriel asked, eyes on the demon who was once again down on the ground, but not defeated.
Haven nodded and glanced past Gabriel to her aunt Seven and…oh, Jesus. Her very angry-looking mother and father.
Harper had her crossbow aimed at the demon’s head. Seven and her father had obviously thrown the knives. Her father jerked his chin in the demon’s direction. “What’s the plan? Knock him into the rift or detain him?”
Either option would’ve been great...if the demon didn’t give her one last longing look before opening his own rift and diving into it.
“Well…shit,” Riddick muttered when the rift closed.
Harper wasn’t a demon, but Haven could’ve sworn she saw fire in her mother’s eyes. “We need to talk, young lady. Right fucking now. ”
The cartoonish gulp that escaped her was embarrassing. But something told her that gulp was only a preview of the humiliations to come in her life. Because if the look on her mother’s face was any indication, she was either going to be demoted to the janitorial staff or fired altogether.
Not for the first time in her life, her father’s words seemed appropriate. “Well…shit.”