Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
“We’re supposed to be in there with everybody else,” I muttered, still shivering with aftershocks, my body settling from the high of the give-and-take of sex.
“Stay out here. I’ll run to the car and grab your change of clothes.”
We were supposed to go to dinner with a friend of mine, Gene, who had just gotten engaged, but we were going to have to cancel. I had packed chinos, a long-sleeved shirt, and a cardigan in the car to change into before meeting his fiancée.
“I’ll freeze out here without you,” I assured him as he gently eased free of my body. I gasped at the emptiness, and his smug grunt made me growl.
“You didn’t want me to pull out,” he whispered, his hot breath on my ear and down the side of my neck causing a tremble I couldn’t hide. “Your muscles were holding on pretty damn tight.”
“Go to the car,” I snapped at him.
He rubbed his cheek and chin along my jaw, kissed my ear, my temple, and then turned my head to kiss me.
Impossible to be annoyed at a man who couldn’t keep his mouth and hands off me.
Of course he was cackling as he jumped up on the railing before vaulting up on the roof to walk to the front without anyone seeing. I pulled up my pants, uncomfortable with cum leaking from my ass and slowly dripping down the back of my thighs. I was so classy.
Settling with my back against the wall, I’d just put a finger through the hole in my suit jacket on my left shoulder, when there was throat clearing. Marcus.
“Just don’t,” I grumbled at him.
He scoffed. “You’re a classy guy, you know that?”
I groaned loudly, because Jesus, had I not just been thinking the same exact thing?
“We figured out some other stuff, so we need you two back—where is the other half of the wonder twins?”
“Here,” Raphael said, stepping off the edge of the roof and falling the twelve feet to the patio, landing, as he always did, on straight legs. No crouching necessary.
“That’s impressive,” Marcus said with a nod.
I made a gagging noise that time.
“We’ll be right in,” Raphael informed Marcus. “I just need to make him presentable.”
There was a moment of silence.
“That bite on the side of his neck,” Marcus said, gesturing to his own, “do you chew on him when you take his blood?”
“I suck,” Raphael answered with a leer, “really, really hard.”
“Oh God,” I moaned, hoping I was struck with a bolt of lightning and fried right there. Raphael and I would go out together and not have to face any more humiliation.
Marcus snorted. “I’ll see you two inside,” he said, chuckling, then added, “Shortly.”
“Yes,” Raphael agreed.
“Really?” I whined, pulling off my suit jacket, dropping it on the ground, and starting on the buttons of my shirt.
“What?” He shoved the bag at me, so I had to grab it as he stepped in close and took over the task of unbuttoning. “I think it’s important he knows my hunger for every part of you is boundless.”
I shook my head as he leaned in and kissed me. In moments, his hands were on my neck, holding on as I opened for him, and he ground his mouth over mine, the kiss becoming much more than it should have outside on the back deck of my sentinel’s home.
TWO
When we made it back inside, Jael informed us that the assault on Dylan, trying to outright kill him, had been the first of many attacks.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It seems that a spell or a curse has been used on Julian. He’s contracted a parasitic infection that’s poisoning his blood, turning his body against him.”
My head swiveled to Ryan, who was trembling as Julian held him.
“And it’s not a normal infection?”
“No,” Julian replied softly, and I noticed then, now that I was really looking, how pale he was and how exhausted he appeared. I waited. “We heard from the doctor today after weeks of tests. At the rate the infection is progressing, he’s conservatively given me no more than a couple of months to live.”
“We have to track her down and kill her,” Raphael told him. “I can find her now that I know she’s alive.”
Ryan nodded. “We have to determine who will help you.”
“What else have you discovered?” I asked Jael. “Who else has been afflicted?”
“You know,” Raphael interrupted, crossing the room to Julian and Ryan and sinking down in front of them, “in Limbo, all curses conjured on the mortal plane are nullified.”
Ryan lifted his head and took a shuddering breath. “I don’t understand.”
“It would be hard for Julian,” Raphael said, his eyes flicking to the midnight-blue eyes of Ryan’s hearth. “The climate is harsh, the creatures too—the demons and wraiths and others—but the disease wouldn’t progress because it’s magical and not physical.”