He continued to work himself against her, the sweatpants offering no resistance, her jeans more the problem. When he finally had to pause, because he was about to come, damn it, he loved the way her hair had tangled around her flushed face.
Fucking hell, the scent of her arousal was in his brain, in his blood.
“How far do you want this to go,” he asked roughly.
Because he was very close to the point of no return. And he needed to be sure.
She murmured something like this is crazy. Or it could have been I want you like crazy.
Shit, he thought. Maybe she was going to be the voice of reason and put a stop to this.
Which would be proof positive that she was as smart as she was beautiful—
Instead Erika’s hands went to the fly on her jeans. “I don’t want to stop. And I don’t care that this is crazy.”
Guess he could almost read lips correctly, he thought. Something else to put on his résumé.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said as he caressed her face.
“Yes, you are.” When he frowned, she talked over the protest he was going to make. “Your world’s stayed hidden for how long? You’re going to have to go back there.”
“You could come with me. I could keep you safe—”
“I have my own life.”
“You could bring it with you.”
“A homicide detective’s job? Really? How’s that going to work.”
Balthazar opened his mouth. Closed it.
“It’s okay.” She smiled in a sad way. “I have only one thing to ask.”
“Anything. Whatever you want.”
Her eyes traveled all around his face, and then went lower, to his chest, to his straining arousal.
“Before you leave me,” she said, “let me know you. Let me know… all of you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Back in Devina’s lair, the demon refocused on the door her supposed true love had just waltzed out of, and her first instinct was to shrew her way after him and demand an accounting for exactly why he wasn’t falling in line like the good little love soldier he was supposed to be. Fuck the Omega shit. She didn’t care who he was. Civilian vampire, dumbass human, seat of all evil in the universe? His lineage wasn’t her slowdown.
She was owed him. It was like a transaction where she’d ponied up the money, but the merchandise hadn’t arrived.
Unable to curb her anger, determined to go out into Caldwell and drag him back here by all that Cali-surfer hair of his, she extended her Louboutin forward through the door…
Something in her snapped and she stopped.
It was such a defining moment, such an abrupt shift, that she could have sworn she heard the sound of a tree limb cracking off its trunk. And in the immediate aftermath, her vengeance instantly rebounded, her impulse to take what was hers resurging—
Except it happened again. As she put her foot out for a second time, she heard that weird noise and couldn’t proceed.
Looking over her shoulder, she glared at the Book. It remained open, although for once, it wasn’t acting up. It was just mounted on its invisi-stand, floating at the wall, still and silent.
Devina ran her fingers through her hair and pulled the two halves of her blouse back together. When that didn’t feel like enough of a glow-up, she went over to her three-sided, floor-to-ceiling mirror and pulled an all-angle pivot, checking herself out.
All she saw was perfection: Perfect body, perfect face, perfect hair, perfect smile.
“Have some dignity,” she told her reflection. “Enough with the chasing.”
When she finally turned away from the gorgeous brunette in all the glass, she was calmer, her pot off the boil, even if it was still next to the stove. With a calm, deliberate stride, she headed back over to the Book.
Her therapist had always preached, Breathe and relax. Just breathe and relax when things got dramatic. The woman had maintained it was because emotion changed, but reality didn’t, and to the extent to which one could frame emotions, both positive and negative, one could remain in control even when the world was spinning in ways that screwed you.
Back during Devina’s fifty-minutes-once-a-week era, she’d disregarded the advice. Now? After Jim Heron, the man she’d been obsessed with, had picked a goddamn virgin over her… after a string of losers had passed on her… after she’d pity-fucked countless humans… it was time to find her spine. No more fury surges, no more stamping around and begging for attention.
“I’ve started this,” she said to the open pages of the Book. “And I’m going to finish it. What am I missing.”