Chapter 3
Chapter three
He hadn’t intended to bring Mira here.
The plan had been to drive her around the city while he slowly pressed her for information. But one look at her standing over a demon’s body, nursing rum as she tried to hold herself together, and Dominic had found himself taking her straight to his sanctuary in Hyde Park.
His official residence was downtown, close to the Chicago Council’s headquarters. A two-story condo befitting his comfortable salary after ten years as a Counter-Terrorism field agent.
Each one of those years had only added weight to the human mask he donned every day. But in this simple, one-bedroom apartment, he could let that heavy mask fall, and just be .
But not last night. And keeping his human mask in place for Mira had been just as trying.
Dominic studied the door she’d just walked through. He looked around, trying to envision the place as she might have seen it. In the sudden silence, it seemed strangely unfamiliar. He frowned, puzzling out what had changed.
It felt empty.
The realization felt strange, being as he’d always valued his solitude. With a last glance at the front door, he rose and headed for the shower.
He lingered under the scalding water, letting it pelt his skin while he stared at a stray strand of Mira’s black hair in the corner of the tub. His blood rushed south at the memory of her sweet, damp skin, and her hard nipples outlined against his thin t-shirt.
Dominic squeezed his hard length, fighting for calm as he felt a few drops of his clear nectar flow out. He could still feel a bit of the madness that had possessed him last night when Mira had stood before him in his clothing.
She couldn’t have looked more like his if she’d presented herself naked and wrapped up with a bow.
A lifetime of rigorous discipline and self-restraint had proven to be a farce. None of it had prepared him for how his demon instincts had nearly eclipsed all rational thought in that moment. And again later, when she’d retired to his bedroom.
To his bed.
Wide awake in his recliner, he’d stared down the dark hall, his brain looping through how the night should have ended. He’d seen the awareness in her eyes. It was there, though she might not have consciously known it. Yet, one soft kiss would have drawn it to the surface.
He’d pull her close. Caress the skin it was killing him not to touch. Coax her mouth wide with his lips while his hands explored her delicious nakedness underneath his clothes. Then, carry her to bed.
After which he’d strip those clothes away, bury his face between Mira’s legs, and drive the memory of the last twenty-four hours out of her mind with his long demon tongue.
Instead, he’d listened to her sleeping in his bed. Every sound she made in her sleep stoked the fire in him higher, even the soft whimpers from her nightmares.
Because he knew her whimpers of pleasure would sound much the same.
Dominic shuddered under the now-cold shower water as he climaxed, his nectar flowing over his fist. Without the claiming frenzy of a demon mating, the heaviness of his unused seed remained in his sac, taunting him.
The mating he would likely never have. Not with how he needed to live, in the shadows.
Dominic inhaled deeply, pulling in Mira’s scent that still hovered in the bathroom. His demon eyes, briefly freed from their contact lenses, responded immediately by glowing silver in the fogged mirror.
Shaking his head, he reached for his contact lenses case in the medicine cabinet. His hand shifted to smoke to better unclasp the cabinet’s latch.
He yanked his hand back, his heart racing.
It’d been quite a long time since he’d slipped up, like that. The key to maintaining a human facade was to never behave on smoke demon instincts. Ever.
If his more recent training hadn’t hammered that point home enough, his childhood most certainly had. The whisper of those memories rose like an itch under his skin, leaving him uncomfortable and restless. A restlessness with only one cure.
A thorough cleaning.
He started in the same corner as usual, dividing his apartment into an imaginary grid to break the cleaning up into quick, manageable tasks.
The kitchen was mostly clean, but the gun he’d confiscated off Mira was stashed in a kitchen drawer. Dominic carried it to the dining room table, along with his cleaning kit. After thoroughly wiping it down, he began to take it apart.
He didn’t know how she’d gotten ahold of it, but it was a step in the wrong fucking direction. He hated the idea of her carrying the weapon, and he hated even more that she’d had to use it.
An hour later, the apartment was once more immaculate. All except one area, at least.
Mira had only drawn back one corner of his blanket to slide into bed, likely because he kept it tucked down so tightly. The clothes he’d lent her were draped over a chair. Her scent clung to them, the sheets, and the entire bedroom.
His eyes lost focus as he drew in more of her smell. He should have been stripping the bed, and carrying it all to the wash. But he was unable to look away, mesmerized by the anomaly of the rumpled bed in his world of order.
Dominic reached to tug away the sheets, but paused, hesitating.
His phone’s alarm for work jingled discordantly out in the living room. He dropped his hand and turned away to get dressed for work.
He’d just eased into rush hour traffic when his car’s display lit up with an encrypted call.
“Hey, Bastian.”
His friend’s sigh was tinged with wry amusement. “You always leave me the best gifts.”
Dominic grinned. “I’m saving you from a life of upper-class boredom. How’s our body?”
“Already prepped at his residence as the victim of an unfortunate, drunken fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. His remains are awaiting discovery by his household staff, if not already on their way to the morgue.”
“Nice touch. But will it hold up under a postmortem toxicology lab?”
“I very much doubt he’ll be sticking around the morgue long enough to go under the knife. His hidden masters will want to reclaim their pawn, before he can be identified as a demon.”
The last of Dominic’s humor faded. One day, that would be his own fate, as well.
Just like the air demon had been, he was secretly embedded within the government. Even his small authority as a Counter-Terrorism agent was expressly forbidden for demons, by federal law.
When he died, his body would also disappear from the morgue on Bastian’s order, or by whoever succeeded Bastian as a confidential coordinator.
That is, if Dominic ever made it to the morgue, at all.
He rubbed his chin as he crept along through morning traffic, his fingers tracing the beginnings of a beard along his jaw. “When I saw him dead in the bookstore, I was surprised. Not because he was an air demon masquerading as a human in the Council. If we’ve penetrated the Council, surely so have they.”
Bastian hummed in agreement.
“It was surprising, since he held such a low position in the Council’s leadership. If air demons are filling such insignificant positions…”
“It’s because they’ve fully saturated the upper power structure already,” Bastian finished. “Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, this is a political war where smoke demons are very much playing catchup.”
Dominic frowned uneasily as he gazed down the congested boulevard.
“Did your little human anarchist give you any new details?”
“Mira confirmed that the Councilman’s target was a smoke demon. His name’s Nikhiv, by the way, and he’s dying. Possibly dead already, in the bookshop owner’s apartment.”
“What a shame. I was hoping he could fill in some gaps in the story. Perhaps even give us some clues on why he was targeted by an air demon.”
Dominic gripped the steering wheel. His jaw flexed. “From Mira’s accounts, the air demon appeared to be physically controlling Nikhiv.”
Heavy silence reigned. “Interesting,” Bastian murmured.
The soft, displeased word conveyed the numerous shades of rage Dominic himself felt whenever he thought about it. That he’d been listening to Mira’s raw, vulnerable retelling of the attack at the bookstore was all that had kept him from putting a fist through the wall.
He couldn’t dwell on it, now. Not minutes before reaching the Council headquarters for work. Staying in that building as a hidden demon demanded most of his energy and attention.
“It gets even more complicated,” Dominic added. “Mira’s friend Phoebe might have formed an emotional attachment with Nikhiv.”
“Did Nikhiv claim her as his mate?” Bastian’s voice rose in sharp surprise.
“I’m not sure. It wasn’t something Mira would know, either way.”
Most humans remained clueless about demon matings. They were viewed as nothing more than crude, animalistic breeding and possessiveness in an inferior species. Even if Dominic had explained it to Mira last night, she’d unlikely have noticed the subtle signs of a demon’s claiming on Phoebe.
Perhaps he should have tried explaining it to her, anyway. Seeing Mira’s reaction to every filthy detail of the demon mating ritual would have been very enjoyable, indeed.
The car behind him honked, and he blinked the distracting thought away. He adjusted himself in his jeans, and sped through the green light.
“We might as well check for signs of a mating bond ourselves, being as we’ll have another body to collect, anyway.” Dominic frowned as another thought occurred to him. “If they were truly mated, what do you think Phoebe’s odds are of surviving his death?”
“That’s difficult to say, and depends on the depth of their bond. It’s also a question ultimately answered by time, unfortunately.”
If just for Mira’s sake, Dominic hoped there’d been no mating between the two. Her life force would be linked to Nikhiv’s, for better or worse. The possibility of losing Phoebe would devastate Mira.
After listening to her story last night, it’d become exceedingly clear she was willing to put everything on the line for her childhood friend. The two might not be as close as they once were, but Mira had still set aside all else to be at Phoebe’s side. To protect her.
Hell, Mira’s DFC friends were likely wondering where she’d disappeared.
Bastian hummed thoughtfully. “There’s an old theory that surfaces occasionally in my circle. If there’s any truth to it, Nikhiv may have a chance to survive.”
Dominic snorted as he drove into the heart of downtown. “Which rich people circle would that be? The art dealers, the conspiracy theorists, or the occultists?”
“Firmly within the last.”
The fetishists then, as Dominic had secretly named them. A human group of demon enthusiasts who chased not only the seductive high of a demon’s thrall as one would a designer drug, but who also indulged in the romanticized, heavily objectified mysticism of demons and demon history.
They had no issue keeping their occult parties stocked with willing demons. Especially since the two species mingled openly in the echelons of the upper class, far out of the Council’s reach, or concern.
The same rules just didn’t apply to the rich. As always.
Dominic shrugged as he turned into the adjacent parking garage. “I’ll leave the lore to the occultists. Meet you at the bookstore in four hours?”
“I’ll be there.”