“You’ve been watching me.” She’d stopped braiding. Reaching up, he unraveled the braid, combed it back out the way he liked it, pressing against her knees as he did so.

“Since the very first moment. There’s a girl there, along with the woman. I like it.”

She didn’t smile. “I see the boy in you as well,” she said. “The one who crushed nuts for my sundae.”

She touched his face, but it was more query than caress. “Men will do romantic things when they’re infatuated, in lust, but they don’t go out of their way on the small things. They go for the grander gestures to seal the deal faster. It’s a very primal game. But you bought peanuts because it was nice, and you thought I’d like it. You have a soft side, Mikhael, a side that likes to please a woman emotionally as well as physically.”

“I’ll deny that to maintain my reputation.”

“Doesn’t change the truth of it.”

“Also doesn’t change what I am.”

“No. It doesn’t.” Drawing a breath, she slid from the rock. Sensing the mood shift, Mikhael rose, facing her.

“Give me the truth, once and for all,” she said, a steadiness to her gaze that belied the tension he sensed in her. “What is this, Mikhael? You came here to do a job, and, after it’s done, you’re leaving. Yet you’re courting me. You’re stirring up emotions. You say I’m not a project, the way Ruby was, but what other purpose can you have for drawing me out this way? You say it’s different for you, but how am I supposed to believe that, knowing who and what you are?”

“If you’re looking for a guarantee, Raina, I can’t give you one. But I’m not playing a game.”

“I know there are no guarantees. You made it clear that your duty, your obligation, the oath you’ve taken, it comes first. So how do I fit into that plan? Or do you want me to believe you’ve become moony over a succubus, the madam of a bordello? Something so tainted that neither Hell nor Heaven claim it?”

“That’s not true.” His temper sparked, unexpectedly. “You don’t believe that about yourself.”

“I don’t believe it, but a lot of others do.”

“What I feel is what I feel. I want you.”

“Today, for a year? Forever? Or do you have a specific contractual term in mind? How long do I pencil you in for?”

Forever, if you know what’s good for you. He considered her, his brows drawing down. “You’re picking a fight for no good reason, so what’s really bugging you, Raina? This isn’t a fucking session with a client, where you orchestrate it based on their needs and hourly rate.”

She flushed, the green-gold eyes firing. “I didn’t say it was.”

“No, but you’re not defining it any more than I am. You’ve never had a male you couldn’t completely control. The bitch of it is, you’ve been looking for someone to take the reins your whole life.”

He stepped forward; she backed up, into the unyielding trunk of a live oak. When he slid a finger down her cheek, he pressed against the soft skin, made her feel that firm touch under her chin, down her throat so she raised it, swallowed, though her jaw was tight, the eyes still angry, uncertain. “That’s the real problem, isn’t it, Raina? You want someone to take control, but nothing scares you more, because you’ve been in a situation where they did all the wrong things. You can’t control how you feel about me, or how I feel about you. We’re not always going to be able to predict where that will take us. If you’ve never had that experience before, why is it so difficult to believe it might be the same for me?”

BECAUSE YOU’RE A DARK GUARDIAN. BECAUSE YOU’RE not saying it outright. Because I need to hear it and believe it. But Raina was too damn cowardly to ask him to say it. If he refused, she would feel like a cat who’d stepped out in front of a semi. If he did say it, and she heard the lie in his voice, she would feel like a whore in truth. She’d have to act like one to laugh it off, to take this back to safe footing, and that wasn’t where she wanted to be with Mikhael. She wanted to be real with him, now and always.

He was right. She was picking a fight over nothing, though it was motivated by something a lot larger. She was in a situation she didn’t know how to handle. While it had given her clarity, tranquility, for one moment, the ritual had also made her vulnerable, and reality was intruding, the ghosts of the past. It was all bubbling too close to the surface. She was going to say things, things that would give him the ability to destroy her. She was falling in love with him. She wouldn’t compound that absurdity by believing the same had happened to him.

“I need some space. I’m going back to the house.” She said it without anger, but he held her there, his voice low.

“Don’t let him keep you chained in that cage, Raina. Tell me what you want.”

Her throat ached, but she managed the words in a steady voice. “If neither of us is willing to put our feelings out there, then we’re not ready to trust one another. It’s too soon. Let’s leave it there for now. But I need…I just need to go. Let me go.”

She pulled free and did what she swore no man would ever make her do. She ran from him.

18

IT DIDN’T MATTER WHAT MIKHAEL MADE HER FEEL, how he unleashed those deep cravings in her to trust, to surrender, to submit. She depended on herself, remained in control, and that was how it was going to stay.

Despite the manic pep talk, she was shaking when she came in the house. Li was doing his yoga, his chest flat on the floor in a way that made her hip joints ache just looking at him. Straightening to his elbows, he sent her a thumbs-up. “Good timing. Bachelor party just pulled out.” Then he frowned, looking at her face. “You okay?”

She wanted to say yes, because she was the one who could handle anything. They never needed to worry she was going to fall apart or let them down. Damn it, it was just an infatuation. One that had gone beyond skin deep into the bones, such that they were rattling like a skeleton in its grave on a desolate, windy night.

A chill swept through her. Li snapped upright, his eyes narrowing, alarm spreading over his features. Raina turned toward the closed door, felt the vibration.

“Get down!” She spun, launched herself at Li and took them both back to the floor. The front windows exploded inward as she leaped, a million projectiles she warded with a fast shield that caught most of them. The rest buried into her flesh like tiny arrowheads, tearing holes in her robe, damn it. Her favorite ritual garment, blessed by more than a thousand full-moon ceremonies.

She sprang to her feet, yanking the athame out of one of the deep pockets. “Stay here,” she ordered Li. “Keep the rest of them inside.”

The ground was still quivering as she ran to the door. The stained glass transom, an original piece more than a century old, was in pieces on the floor. She was going to have someone’s hide. Then she caught a glimpse of what was happening on the lawn, and none of that mattered.

“Raina, wait!” She heard someone at the top of the second-level steps, perhaps Marisa, call her name. Yanking open the door, she flew down the stairs and went to Mikhael, lying motionless by the destroyed fountain. Nearly half a ton of exploding concrete had hit him. His skull was a bloody mess, likely caved in, and he was covered by enough of the debris she knew his spine had to be snapped, bones broken. He was sprawled on his stomach, all that strength and beauty limp and lifeless. She wanted to roll him over, wanted to see what she could do, but there was too much to move and no time to do it.

He was a Dark Guardian, damn it. Nothing could kill him, right? He was just knocked out. She had to buy him space and vital time for his supersonic healing powers to kick in, that was all. Taking a stance over him, she gripped the athame and channeled all the power she had into it, preparing herself for what was coming up her driveway now.

How the hell had that gotten through the protections around her place, her own and Mikhael’s?

It looked like a human female, followed by four mutated creatures unmistakably part of the demon ranks. Thugs to do the things the female didn’t have the patience or time to do for herself. Of course, from the power Raina felt emanating from her, she could do pretty much any damn thing she wanted to do. She was looking at the harrowing evidence of it at her feet.

Reversing the channel of power in the athame, Raina brought it down around herself and Mikhael, beefed it up to the highest power setting possible. Just in time.

The female disappeared. A blink later, she phased in front of Raina, no more than an inch outside that protection. The phasing looked like the snow of a television coming back into focus, all the atoms reassembling themselves, and pushed against Raina’s shields like a fucking ton of bricks.

Holy shit. A phase demon. They were extinct, ancient beings long gone from the world, like the Titans. Apparently not. Some twisted god must have unearthed one, just like Zeus unleashing the kraken. Or worse, this demon had unleashed herself, gone completely off the reservation.

The she-demon touched the edge of the protection, watched it sizzle along her fingertip. Raina cinched it in closer to both her and Mikhael, because though a phase demon could phase through any protection field, hence their name, they couldn’t occupy the same space as the one they were attacking. Unfortunately, that limited Raina’s options. She was all too aware her succubi and incubi were now entirely vulnerable because the net of their protection was a perimeter, not a cloak, and there was no time or energy to spare to change that.

As the finger phased out of existence, then came back into focus, the female cocked her head. She had the large gold eyes of a rabid tiger and fangs just like one, which elongated now until they curved under her chin. Her nails likewise lengthened.

“You need a manicure,” Raina said evenly. “If you’re trying to scare me, I’ve had clients with scarier appendages than that.”

The female smiled, and it was the stuff of nightmares, like a clown doll in a child’s room. The toy with a harmless grin that looked entirely different when the child woke in the middle of the night and stared at it through the dark.