“Yes,” I demanded.
Angel tugged us both up against the headboard until I was bent in half and stretched nearly to my limit, then he began a grueling pace, fucking into me with a frenzy. Every thrust renewed his claim, even as he gnawed at my lips and I clung to him, my body clenching to hold him deep. It didn’t matter that we were both sweaty, or how his abs caressed my dick until I saw stars and the world vanished beneath the rising pleasure, heat, and him.
I came with his name on my lips, his cock buried deep, and his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise. He drove himself home twice more before emptying his release in me. Tiny tremors racked my body as the heat cooled and he slid my legs off his shoulders. I’d probably ache tomorrow, but that was okay. Sex with Angel surpassed anything I’d ever experienced in my life. Because of our mate bond or something else? I didn’t care. He never came before I did. Even when I initiated by trying to give him a blow job or something. Perfect man? Maybe. All that mattered was that he was mine.
I sighed as he slipped out of me and darted into the bathroom to grab a washcloth. He wiped me down as I sank into the mattress, sleep tugging at me. He knew I hated sleeping naked, mostly because I worried about Ivan or having to jump to a case in the middle of the night. But I barely felt him tug a pair of boxer briefs on me. And the last hesitation to rest vanished as Angel curled himself at my back and hauled the blanket over us. There was no safer place than asleep in Angel’s arms, and for a long minute between that last edge of sleep and wakefulness, I debated uttering the wordsI love you, but left them unspoken as sleep took me.
6
The soundof a scratch roused me from sleep, and I wondered vaguely if Angel had forgotten to leave my bedroom door open a crack before falling into bed. Peanut Butter hated being denied the choice of whose bed he’d sleep in, and more than once in my life he’d woken me by scratching at the door.
Angel’s arm was wrapped around me, his steady breath against my neck, making me hesitate to get up, but as it hadn’t woken him, maybe I could let the cat in before he roused us both. I climbed out of Angel’s touch, headed to my bedroom door, and found it open halfway.
Not Peanut Butter, then.
I frowned, scanning the dark apartment. Both cats, Peanut Butter and Nox, sat hunched a few feet from the apartment door, both on alert.
“What?” I whispered, hoping not to wake anyone, and that Nox wasn’t trying to convince Peanut Butter to escape. Peanut Butter had been an indoor cat his entire life. Used to the luxury of food twice a day, temperature control, and no predators, he wouldn’t survive a minute in the wild, even if it was just to run the halls of the apartment building.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
I froze, half-crouched near the cats as they both rose as if ready to pounce, tails puffing up. Nox glanced at me; his purple eyes glowing in the dim light.
Scraaatch.
The sound made my skin crawl, like nails on a chalkboard. Not at all like Peanut Butter’s little toe beans rubbing on the door to beg for entry. This was claws digging into the wood of the exterior door. What the fuck?
I held my breath, the whittling of wood on the other side of the door burning through the last of my sleep-addled brain like a match had been lit. Then the scratching stopped.
Three heartbeats passed and the apartment sat in perfect silence. I let out a long breath. The vacuum of sound was unnerving as the cats waited with bristled fur beside me.
The usual light that glowed through the peephole was gone, and it took me a half-heartbeat to realize that meant the hall was dark, the lights having gone out. I sucked in air as a chill crept under the door with shadow-like spider legs, stretching to fit through the eighth-of-an-inch gap. Holy fuck, it was coming in.
I freaked out, glancing back at the counter and trying to recall the basic warding spells Remi had marked for me. The stack of books still sat there, untouched. I raced over, surprised the dark book on necromancy was gone, and in its place was a thick, cloth-bound book with a title stamped in silver.Thresholds, Barriers, and Wards: A General Guide.
I reached for the book, desperate to stop the darkness from crawling under the door, and the book flipped open to a spell.Reinforcing Interior Thresholds. A note scribbled in the margins statedfor personal dwellings only. I scanned the ingredients—tears of the earth, sky-kissed flowers, and breath of the cleansed.
What?
The words morphed before my eyes, changing on the page tosalt, lavender, and sage. Okay, I could do all that. I ripped open the cupboard, never having been so grateful for Nikki’s insistence on alphabetizing the spices, and grabbed the first and the last before snatching up the container of dry tea lavender and racing back to the door.
Nox slashed at the shadows, his claws making the writhing tendrils of darkness yank back under the door.
BANG!
The door jumped in the frame.
Angel appeared a half second later, gun in one hand, Taser in the other. “Jude!” He pointed the weapons at the door. I didn’t think they were going to help. “What the fuck?”
“Darkness came calling,” I said, balancing the book with my stack of supplies.
Bang! Bang! BANG!
Each hit sent a shower of dust cascading over us from the doorframe. A few more strikes and the whole damn door would pop out. Angel cursed and shoved his shoulder against the door, trying to hold it in place even as every bang reverberated through the front wall of the apartment.
“Now is not the time to cook,” Angel said as he braced his feet on the hardwood of the entry and pressed his back against the door, muscles straining.
Nox snarled and swiped at any shadows reaching for Angel. Peanut Butter hissed, his back up as he jolted back toward Ivan’s room, my brother appearing wide-eyed in his bedroom doorway as a blur of orange vanished into his room.
