1
KATE
I’d told myself it wouldn’t happen again. For that matter, I’d told Eric it wouldn’t happen again. And yet there I was in a cemetery, pinned against a tomb at two in the morning with my dead husband’s hands pressing me back against the stone, his lips dangerously close to mine—and my living husband’s ring still on my finger.
To be fair, the situation wasn’t quite as scandalous as it sounds. For one, Eric isn’t actually dead anymore. Well, technically, his body is dead and buried, but his soul has taken up residence in the very alive body of David Long, a former high school chemistry teacher turned fellow Demon Hunter.
So while the man currently pinning my wrists above my head might not look like my first husband, he’s not a rotting corpse. Far from it, actually, since David’s the kind of dreamy teacher who’d been the subject of many a student crush.
For another, this isn’t a romantic encounter. This is work. Or it had started that way. We’d gone out just before midnight to follow up on a lead about a nest of demons set up in an apartment complex near the beach. We’d found the nest. And, yes, it was full of demons. To be precise, the nest had beencomprised of six demons who—as the self-described leader told us—weren’t interested in that “whole rampagey scene.” On the contrary, these demons wanted only to chill.
More specifically, they wanted to chill with gummies and old episodes of SpongeBob.
We could have killed them just for being useless, but when you got right down to it, who among us had never gotten sucked into the dramatic allure of Bikini Bottom? So, much like a benevolent cop, we’d given them a pass, then decided to take advantage of being out to do some training.
That’s how we’d ended up in the cemetery behind the Greatwater Mansion. As for how I’d ended up with Eric pinning me tight? Well, that’s my own damn fault. We’d been running scenarios, with me playing the role of hunter and Eric playing the somewhat ironic role of demon. I’d sworn I wouldn’t let him catch me, but I screwed up and ended up trapped. And the fact that my heart was now pounding, and my breath was becoming more and more shallow had absolutely nothing to do with forbidden desire and everything to do with these impromptu training exercises.
Really.
My name is Kate Connor, and I’m a newly promoted Level 7 Demon Hunter with Forza Scura, a secret arm of the Vatican tasked with hunting demons and other nasties. I used to be a stay-at-home mom to my teenager and my preschooler, but that life went haywire several years ago after a demon burst through my kitchen window and pulled me back in from retirement.
I’m still Mom, and I still stay at home, but now I’m the headmistress at Forza’s California-based, first not-on-site-at-the-Vatican school for Demon Hunters in Training, and home is the spooky old mansion overlooking a cemetery that serves as Forza West.
Eric and I had met and grown up together in the original Forza training center hidden deep under the Vatican, and it’s both an honor and a still somewhat terrifying reality that I’m now in charge of training the next generation.
That, however, is not my immediate problem.
“Yield,” Eric said, his warm breath tickling my ear.
I tilted my head back to meet his eyes, then pushed forward. I saw raw heat light his expression and felt that familiar wave of delicious tension cut through me.
“Kate,” he murmured.
“Eric,” I whispered at the same time as I hooked my ankle behind his knee and twisted hard to the left, an action that broke his grip and sent us both tumbling onto the damp grass between the Whitmore family plot and a crumbling angel who’d seen better days. We rolled twice before I ended up on top, my forearm pressed against his throat.
“You were saying?”
He grinned up at me, not even slightly concerned about his compromised position. “I was saying that you fight dirty. I like it.”
I smirked. “I fight to win. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” His eyes searched my face in the moonlight. “I guess that depends on what you’re trying to win.”
I pressed harder against his windpipe. “We’re sparring, David. Not philosophizing.” I used his new name as a reminder—to both of us—that we are no longer a couple. His whole dying thing—and my second marriage—had firmly put the kibosh on that. Well, except for that one little fall off the wagon...
In one quick move, he grabbed my hips and easily flipped me, reversing our positions with the kind of move that would’ve made Marcus—the head trainer at the school—assign me hours of extra defensive practice. Because now Eric was the one ontop, his body aligned with mine in a way that felt victorious on a number of disturbing levels.
“Definitely not philosophizing,” he said in a soft murmur. “This is something else entirely.” His lips were so close to my ear I felt the tickle of his breath all through me.
“Get off me,” I said, my voice shakier than I wanted.
“Make me.”
I could have. We both knew I could have. A sharp knee to the groin, an elbow to the temple, a strategic bite if things got desperate. But I didn’t move, and that was the problem, wasn’t it? That was the whole damn problem.
“Eric.” His name came out half-warning, half-plea. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He lowered his head, his lips brushing my ear. “Don’t tell you the truth? Don’t remind you of how good it felt being together last year?”
