tightening on his cock, letting her breath out in a soft, plaintive moan. After sliding the strap of the shirt down her arm until he’d drawn the collar below her breast, Dev closed his mouth once more over the black lace of the bra and sucked her in, thrusting involuntarily into her hand at the taste of her skin through the rough lace. Kylie’s legs wrapped around his hips as she moaned and squirmed, pressing herself up into his mouth, her tight grip sliding against the head of his cock.
Dev groaned, rocking into her hand. The damn bra had to go. He prodded at the lace, higher brain function completely gone, and tore it open, freeing the sodden nipple so he could get his mouth around it without interference. The high-pitched noise Kylie made, along with the rapid motions of her hand, brought him dangerously close to the edge.
He put a hand on her wrist, pulling his mouth from her breast with a slick pop. “You have to stop,” he gasped. “I’m going to come.”
Kylie’s fingers unclenched. “Have you got a condom?”
“Condom?” Dev tried to make his brain work. “I don’t think so.” He needed his mouth on her skin.
Kylie made a growling noise of frustration in her throat. Tightening her legs around his hips, she swiveled suddenly, flipping him onto his back on the seat cushion.
Dev reached for her damp nipple, but she shoved him back and shimmied downward, swallowing his cock before he could do more than groan in surprise. Surprise was quickly supplanted by even deeper groans of pleasure as he rocked into her mouth, feeling the slippery heat of her lips and tongue sliding over him, and he came swiftly, gripping the seatback beside him with a shout as she swallowed it all.
As he lay back, his entire body going limp with release, Kylie zipped up her jacket, swinging her feet through the door he realized he hadn’t even latched, and climbed out.
Dev struggled to sit up, hampered by his state of undress and the fuzzy post-ejaculatory brain cloud. “Kylie?” The door swung shut. Dev scrambled to put himself together and crawled across the seat to open it just in time to see her fasten her helmet and swing her leg over the Nighthawk, kick-start the engine and drive away.
* * *
Halfway down Highway 89A, Ione realized she hadn’t taken the sobriety elixir. She pulled off to the side of the road and took the little vial out of her pocket, popping the cork and downing it swiftly. As soon as she had, the postmagical hangover kicked in, along with a dose of mortifying reality. Mother of God. Ione groaned into her gloved hands. What had she been thinking? At least he was only passing through and there was no chance she’d run into him again around town. Not that he’d know her if she did, but it would be awkward enough even if she was the only one aware of what they’d done together.
Mortification aside, she was no closer to exposing Carter’s sick friends. If Dev was in town to hook up with a call girl—even one of the nonmetaphysical variety—he hadn’t acted like it. She should have ignored her out-of-control hormones and stuck to the script she’d written for herself, keeping her eye out for one of the club patrons who fit the bill.
She shook off the glamour as soon as she got home, anxious to get out of her sweaty clothes and into a hot bath. Undressing while the tub filled, she paused for a moment at the sight of the ruined bra in the mirror as she drew the top over her head. The memory of how it had gotten that way sent that frisson of vibration through her once more. The touch of his mouth on hers had been like a narcotic rush, but when she’d felt his tongue on her breast, she’d nearly climaxed. And, God, what a climax that would have been. She could feel it just out of reach even now and she moaned involuntarily.
Ione touched her fingertips to her lipstick-smeared lips. She wasn’t used to seeing herself like this. Usually she cleaned up before dismissing the glamour, because it was a bit unsettling to see the remnants of another face on her actual face. It was dishonest and a sort of dissociative game she wasn’t proud of, but it was a defense mechanism she’d learned long before she’d started hunting Carter’s accomplices. Sometimes she needed the freedom to be someone else. Because Ione Carlisle did not behave like this. Couldn’t behave like this. She had to keep things together. So she’d split herself apart.
After washing off the makeup, she tossed the bra in the trash with a little growl of disappointment. It had been her favorite. Do not think about how it got that way again. But she was already thinking it as she wound her hair up into a loose bun and stepped into the fragrant, foaming bath. The water was a bit too hot, but the sting of it felt good. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the built-in headrest, Dev’s charming accent murmuring in her head. Her fingers slipped down between her legs and she indulged in a little mental replay, the stroke of her own hand making up for what he’d neglected, while hot water and patchouli-rose bubbles sloshed against her nipples as a stand-in for Dev’s sensuous mouth.
The climax made her cry out and she nearly swallowed a mouthful of bathwater and bubble bath as she slipped down the edge of the tub with the release of the tension she’d been holding in her legs. Not nearly as satisfying as actually having that sweet cock inside her, but still one heck of an orgasm.
Ione opened her eyes with a sigh and made a mental note to always carry her own condoms when she went out on a glamour bender. Even if she wasn’t planning on having sex, it was only smart.
The bath and the orgasm had made her nicely sleepy, and Ione fell into bed later without bothering to dress, snuggling under the down comforter while the light patter of autumn rain played against the roof. She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow and, for the first time in weeks, managed not to have a single nightmare about Carter Hamilton.
The chime of her calendar notification in the morning reminding her of the Covent summonses brought her temporarily forgotten troubles crashing back. Time to face the music.
She tried to tell herself she was just being paranoid as she stroked her razor over her legs a bit aggressively as a proxy for the source of her frustration. Though it wasn’t really paranoia when a necromancer had gone to such elaborate lengths to inveigle his way into the Covent’s midst. Carter had spent years on his deception, becoming a respected member of the Phoenix branch of the Covent. He’d come to Sedona as part of a convention of the Regional Conclave to deal with the sudden rash of lingering shades of the recent dead in the area—shades, it turned out, that Carter himself had been trapping here.
Ione let out a sharp exclamation as the razor bit into the tender flesh at her ankle. Blood dripped onto the white marble tile like garnet beads scattering from a broken rosary—blood from the veins of a demon.
That was the crux of it. Carter had targeted her because of something she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had been the last to know and the last to believe that she was a descendant of the most ancient of demons. She was a daughter of Lilith. And the Lilith blood was what Carter had coveted, the magic ingredient that would give him the power to command the dead. Phoebe had been his ultimate target, but he’d used Ione to set her up.
Despite the way they’d found out about it, Phoebe had seemed to take the news of their heritage in stride. Unlike Ione, she hadn’t spent years struggling to reconcile the practice of magic with a belief in God. But everything was easy for Phoebe. She’d walked away from the church and embraced her gift years ago without a backward glance. If you could call being a way station for the recently deceased a gift.
Ione touched her finger to one of the drops of blood on her ankle, holding the tiny red orb on her fingertip under the cool white glow of the LED
