heard him curse, too. Then he spat. She felt him glaring at her through the blurry existence, so she was shocked when he laughed softly.
“Nasty little thing,” he accused her.
Suddenly she was given a real lesson in how strong her phantom adversary was. He grabbed her by both arms, jerking her clear off her feet. He found her unwilling mouth with ridiculous precision. She was shocked to realize her fantasy even went so far as to provide the tang of his blood as he took his kiss with possessiveness and a headstrong determination. Had he truly been real, it would have had the potential to brand her, the power to mark her as his.
Only his.
Suddenly the scent of strung sugar spun away, as if sucked out of the room by a vortex, and Noah opened his eyes with the shock. He found himself staring into wide green eyes, separated by a wending coil of cinnamon-colored hair. Hair he felt against his lips, trapped by his mouth and hers.
Noah choked, thrust Corrine away in horrified shock, and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth as he looked frantically around the sanctum for any hint of her jealous husband’s arrival.
“Noah, it’s okay,” she said quickly, soothingly. “It happens. When I take on the spirit of the Druid you seek, it is a complete possession, as far as your soul is concerned.”
“Corrine…”
“Noah, listen to me. It is just a side effect of the process. It was never me in this room with you. Not unless I pulled myself aside. I am a medium. A channel. I bring the message only. I take no part in how it is delivered or”—she smiled soothingly as she reached to touch his bloodied lip—“or received.”
She turned over her hand, shaking out her fingers, one of which was surely off-center from normal.
“Corrine,” Noah said, his horrified tone reflecting his expression with perfection, “you broke your finger!”
“Actually, Kestra did when she borrowed me to pop you one. And I don’t think it stops at a finger,” she confessed, gingerly touching the bones on the back of her hand, which had already begun to swell. “Noah, has she always been so hot tempered? So angry?”
“Let us just say,” he admitted, “that this was one of her more impressive nights. What we lack in words, she often makes up for in body language.”
“You should have warned me she would be so…”
“Intractable?” Noah gave her a crooked little grin. “I tend to look on it as one of her charms. It has grown on me.”
“The difference is she doesn’t think you’re really going to show up at her doorstep one day. You know otherwise. Maybe you should discuss the matter with Magdelegna first. Your sister seems to have a knack with unwilling people.”
“Perhaps.”
It was not lost on Corrine that the Demon King was going to, in great part, relish this particular expedition into dangerous waters.
There’s something about these Demon men, she mused.
The more you fought them, the more it seemed to encourage them. Intellectually even more than physically. But Corrine couldn’t help but feel a little trepidation. For a short while, she’d become a part of this Kestra. There was something not entirely copacetic about her. However, Corrine didn’t have enough information to quite place her finger on it. Hopefully, when they worked on their next and final session the following week, after they were rested from this night’s exertions, she would better be able to make sense of the matter.
“Come,” the King said abruptly, taking the Druid by her uninjured hand and rising to help her to her feet. “We should get you to a medic.”
“Is it true you don’t take contracts on people?”
Kestra turned slightly from her study of a lovely oil painting, looking over her shoulder to examine the dapper man who sat behind her in a double-breasted silk suit, wiping a handkerchief repeatedly between his hands.
Sweaty palms, she mused.
“I’m a businesswoman, Mr. Sands, not a murderer.” Kestra finally turned from her perusal of the expensive piece of artwork, tossing her long white braid back over her shoulder with habitual emphasis. “And I’m not here to discuss options on future endeavors. We do that on my terms, at a place and time I choose.” She smiled softly, walking with practiced grace across the thick carpet covering the penthouse’s floor. “We’re here to fulfill payment. Nothing more, nothing less.”
She laughed cordially when he did, coming to stand on the opposite side of the coffee table that sat before him. She looked quite refined in her simple silk dress with single-roped pearls around her throat. But as she braced her legs apart and cocked one hip ever so slightly, Sands could see the tight pull of well-honed muscle flexing up her calves and thighs. There was no mistaking what lay beneath the feminine glamour.
“Well, Ms. Irons, that’s what you’re here for, after all,” he agreed affably.
Sands leaned forward to place a small box on the glass coffee table, using two fingers to slide it across to her. She waited until he sat back again before she reached down with a single fingertip to lift the cover of the box, revealing the money within it. She closed it immediately.
“You don’t count?” Sands asked.
She glanced up at him from beneath lashes as white as her hair, her almost translucent blue eyes training on him.
“Do I need to?”
“Of course not.”
“Why not?” she asked casually.
Sands laughed. “Are you kidding? Anyone who would try to cheat you would have to be insane.”
“And that’s why I never have to count,” she rejoined, picking up the box and tucking it into her purse. She shouldered the leather accessory with ease, as if all it had within it was a comb and lipstick, not nearly a quarter million dollars in cash.
“We’ll be calling you again,” Sands said cordially.
“I would imagine so.”
Sands stood up, wiped his palm on his kerchief, and extended the hand to her. Kestra merely smiled politely and kept both her hands on her purse strap.
Jim had always accused her of having a sixth sense so uncanny that it gave him the willies. The shiver that suddenly walked up her spine, resting with a sharp tingle at the base of her hairline as it was doing right now, had never failed to alert her that something wasn’t quite right. She preferred to think of it as her subconscious putting together telltale clues that her conscious mind didn’t take direct note of.
She lowered her thick white lashes until they all but obscured the blue diamond irises of her eyes. She glanced around the room yet again, as she had been doing since stepping into the unknown territory. This time she caught the slightest shadow of movement in the hallway behind Sands’s back.
She sighed, long and regretfully, flicking open her icy eyes so she could give him a cold glare. “Whatever you’re planning,” she hissed chillingly, “let me warn you it isn’t a good idea.”
