Dark Desire After Dark

39

He'd exhausted her. Holly lay sleeping soundly beside him, her slim arm stretched over his chest as he sifted his fingers through her hair.

Cade had been merciless with her, making her come over and over. But he wanted her to remember this night for the rest of her life.

He kissed her shoulder where he'd bitten her, glad to see it was rapidly healing. Her transition was indeed complete. She was an immortal. His little immortal.

He'd claimed her. There was no going back, even if he wanted to. And he did not want to.

In the morning, he'd remember why this had been unwise, but for now, he blocked out all doubt, allowing himself this night.

Awash in satisfaction, he'd been grinning, or on the verge for the last half hour. Prim Miss Ashwin had thrown one over on him, making the ancient demon feel like a weak-kneed lad. She was a wanton, holding nothing back from him.

Even as she wore her dainty pearls.

He'd never imagined a sense of completeness like this. And what if he'd gotten a babe on her? Again, he grinned. My female and my kid.

If Holly thought that Cade could try her patience, imagine what his demon spawn would be like.

Maybe Valkyrie daughters and demon sons…

His phone rang, casting him back to his much bleaker reality. He dragged himself from the bed to answer it, knowing who it would be.

Rök had been checking in several times a day. And never with good news….

Cade asked, "What do you have?"

"Not a lot. It's like they're being tipped off, every time we get close to Néomi."

The deadline was drawing near. With every night that his crew couldn't find the vampire's Bride, Cade's hopes dwindled. Should he keep his crew scouring the city?

Or begin planning his riskiest idea ever: an assault on a sorcerer's fortress.

"We'll give it seven more nights."

"I'm…happy?" Holly said aloud, with a frown. Yes, for the last week at the cabin, that's what she'd been feeling. Contentment.

As she straightened up, waiting for her computer to charge in the car, she found it hard to concentrate on cleaning. That's a first.

And she might even be more than merely happy.

Holly's parents had had that kind of love so rare that one only read about it. Maybe it happened more often than Holly thought.

Maybe it's happening…to me.

Her demon had only been gone an hour—he was out ice fishing—and already she missed him, missed his booming voice and heavy footsteps. She craved his addictive scent—cold and pine and Cadeon.

Earlier, he'd said, "If I go through the trouble of catching, cleaning, and cooking fish, then you will go through the trouble of eating it."

For him, she was going to…try.

The last week with him had been incredible. She regularly experienced what a day was like broken up with bouts of sex. In fact, Cadeon did just find her wherever she was and take her.

He was insatiable. Even in sleep he grew aroused. His erection would stiffen against her backside, and as he softly growled in her ear, he'd rock it against her.

She'd woken him more than once for a good seeing to, which clearly delighted him to no end.

The strangest thing about sex—she didn't have any bizarre quirks with it. This was the one area in her life where she was normal.

Well, if you could call her need to be overpowered by a demon normal.

Cadeon had also continued her training, working with the sword—and with the diamond. She could break her stare three out of ten times, but only if he threatened her computer.

They played hunting games and hide-and-seek. Her night vision was nearly perfect, and she could leap twenty feet into the air with the ease of an afterthought. He'd taught her to rub pine needles over herself to mask her scent, and she'd become so stealthy that she could actually stalk him from the trees.

And she continued her own work, pushing to finish her code so that when this quest was over with, she could do nothing but enjoy her demon.

Only two things marred this time. The first was his secretive calls. Outside, she'd hear him snapping in Demonish, pacing back and forth amidst the spruce trees. Then when he returned, he was always distant with her, taking time to relax again.

The second was his attitude about the future. His full-court press across the country of Canada had…cooled.

Even after she'd been claimed, he didn't speak about the future, evading the subject if she brought it up. At first, she'd had insecurities, wondering if she'd done something to disappoint him or put him off.

But that was ridiculous. They were good together, better people than they were apart.

No, she felt confident that he wanted her as much as she did him.

Puzzling…

"Did you miss me, halfling?" he asked from the door.

She ran and leapt into his arms. "Terribly."

"I've got a surprise for you."

"Lemme guess—it's a fish?"

He nipped the tip of her ear, which always gave her shivers. "Get your gear on and meet me outside. The weather's nice."

The surprise was a burlap sack filled with snow, hanging from a limb.

"Gee, Cadeon. I didn't get you anything."

"It's for sword practice."

She collected his sword with a long-suffering sigh, though she secretly enjoyed this training.

As he cleaned his catch, he instructed her. "Thrust, parry, counterthrust, twisting block, strike. Nice. That's it, halfling."

Even in the dry, arctic air, she was working up a sweat. Her sparring was improving. He'd even said that she was better than some warriors he'd faced on the battlefield.

Holly didn't know if that was true, but she knew she wasn't laughable anymore.

"Underhanded sword fighting techniques," he said. "Give me two."

As she continued working on slashing attacks, she said, "Obscure my enemy's vision by throwing something like my jacket over his face or sand in his eyes. And second, I could wound my opponent's advancing leg."

"Why?"

"To take blood any way I can—because blood equals strength."

"Very good. Here's a new one. Sometimes you can take a hit in order to see what your opponent's got, or to let them think you're weak," he continued. "They'll get overconfident, 'specially with a tiny chit like yourself."

She nodded.

"Or you can fake an injury. Like dragging your leg to lull a predator. So you give a little to get a lot."

She froze, her mind whirring. "Oh, my God, that's it!"

"What's it?"

"My code—how to identify foes from friendlies. Give a little! In quantum cryptography no measurement or detection can be done to a two-party dialogue without disturbing the system, thereby giving the outsider away…."

"Uh, yeah?"

"If you know the hacker's there, you let him in! You let him take information! He'll get more aggressive, then come with BFC, and you shut them all down. You don't have to have an unbreakable code. You just have to infect your own data, designing it so that when it leaves your system's environment, it can't survive. It will wipe itself out, along with everything around it."

"Go!" he ordered. "Stop gabbing and get it into your computer then."

With a laugh she ran for her laptop.

"But remember," he called, "clearly, sex helps math. Ergo…"

Later that night, they lay bundled up in the small bed together. Running her fingers up and down his chest, she said, "You're dragging your feet to get to Groot's."

"I was rushing for your sake before. We've got days before the full moon deadline. And it'll only take a day of hard driving to get there. Now that you want to stay a Valkyrie, we have time."

"Then talk to me. Tell me more about yourself, such as why you would think you'd lost your brother's crown."

He liked how she worded that—as if she didn't believe it. "I was supposed to go to Tornin, Rothkalina's capital, to stand as head of state until Rydstrom returned from war with the Vampire Horde. I didn't. I was content with my foster family, and they needed me."

"That's why you got blamed?" she asked in disbelief.

"Omort saw this as a sign of weakness and attacked." Cade had tried to shed the guilt, telling himself that there had been a thousand factors in play. Yet over these long years, he continually saw examples of catastrophes caused by the smallest choice or action.

"Wait, you said your foster family? Did you have foster brothers and sisters?"

"I did." He swallowed. "But they were all murdered by Omort's army."

"Oh, God, Cadeon, I'm so sorry."

"Revenants attacked our farmstead."

"I read about them. A sorcerer reanimates a corpse, raising it from the dead, right?"

He nodded. "Since the creature's already dead, it can't be killed."

"How do you fight them?"

"Only when you kill the sorcerer can they be destroyed. Which is a problem since Omort can't be killed by beheading or unnatural heat."

She asked, "Do you blame yourself for your foster family's deaths as well?"

He gave her a grim nod.

Her eyes were sad when she said, "You've been carrying around all this guilt for nine hundred years? What about the saying time heals all wounds?"

He met her gaze. "That one's a lie."

"I want to fight," he told Rök after she'd fallen asleep. "Get mobilized."

"Are you sure? Think of how many ways this attack can get botched up. You'd be risking your brother's life and your kingdom's freedom for a woman."

"Not just a woman. My woman." He'd realized tonight that if Holly got hurt on his watch, then he would have done the same thing he'd blamed himself for a thousand times—failing his own.

"Give me one more night," Rök said. "We can get to your coordinates in fourteen hours if we have to."

Continue to search for the mortal, or go forward? "No, we're out of time," Cade said. "I can't chance it. We're going to war."

After he hung up, Cade joined Holly in bed once more, gazing down at her, sleeping peacefully.

What was going on in that incredible mind of hers as she turned to him so trustingly? Was she dreaming about warrior codes and formulas?

Could she be dreaming about him?

Holly slept deeply, assured he would keep her safe. Stroking the backs of his claws over her arm, he murmured, "I'm going to fight for you."