Page 24 of Semi-Reckless

He slid his hands down her shoulders, let his fingertips bump along each of her ribs, then gripped the bottom of her blouse like he intended to rip it in two to get at the skin beneath. Heat licked across her chest, her belly, and between her thighs.

Two point three seconds. That was about how long it’d take to drag him into the nearest dark corner and beg him to fuck her.

It was just her terrible, shitty, no-good, plain rotten luck that it only took two point two seconds for her to start overthinking everything.

Questions started to swarm her brain. If he could tell her this much about how he felt with a kiss, why couldn’t he tell her anything with his words? Was this kiss happening because he really wanted to kiss her, or because he wanted to distract her from demanding more actual communication from him? The timing of it—after years of knowing each other—certainly seemed suspect.

With more strength than she’d ever exhibited (seriously, it took supernatural strength), Haven pulled away. Breathing so hard it felt like she was fighting for her damn life, she asked, “Tell me what you’ve been hiding. Now.”

His chin dipped, and he pulled his hands off her. She felt his retreat down to the depths of her soul. He had been trying to distract her with the kiss.

“Fuck you,” she said, fighting back angry tears. “You know what? You can go. I’m going to get back to my date.”

That got his attention. His head shot up, flames rising again in his eyes. “You can’t.”

She threw her hands wide. “Try me.”

He reached for her again with a low snarl. “No.”

She poked him in the chest with her index finger. Hard. “Give me one good reason why not.”

Haven wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to do. But not even in her wildest dreams could she have anticipated his next actions.

His hand shot out and wrapped around her throat like a collar before she could so much as blink. His grip wasn’t tight. She could still breathe. He made no effort to choke her. Quite the opposite, in fact. His thumb lazily stroked the hollow at the base of her throat. But his grip was firm enough that she couldn’t break free without hurting herself.

So, while she hung in his grasp like a broken doll, he pulled her forward—by the throat—and snarled, “He can’t have you.”

“Why the hell not?” she asked as defiantly as she could manage, considering his grip on her airway.

“Because you’re my wife!”

Two things happened at once after that. There was a record scratch in her brain that ceased all her higher functions, leaving her with absolutely no way to process what he’d just said. And also…

Chaos erupted around them.

Rifts in the veil between worlds weren’t all that impressive. Just a quick sound akin to crinkling paper, or maybe the snap of a dry twig, followed by a flash of yellow light. So, when the rift tore open in the middle of the dance floor, Haven imagined it wasn’t the rift itself that caused shifters to scream, knock each other to the ground, and flee in a panic. That honor most likely belonged to the giant demon that stepped out of the rift and closed it behind him.

It was him. The same demon that had nearly killed Roan in that mine, the one she thought (or hoped) she’d gotten rid of, was right in front of them.

And he was looking at her like she was the last doughnut in the box.

Roan, of course, shoved her behind him. “I’m really missing my ability to teleport you right about now,” he grumbled.

Haven peeked around his wide shoulders to find the demon still staring at her. “Yeah…that might’ve been a miscalculation on my part.”

“I’ve been searching for you forever,” the demon rasped.

Her demon, the one who’d just made a pretty insane claim about being her husband that they would be discussing later (if they survived the night, of course), didn’t bother with pleasantries. He threw a blast of hellfire at the other demon’s head, knocking him back against the bar. “Keep searching, pal,” Roan snarled. “She’s mine.”

Aw, that was sweet. Strangely possessive, and her inner feminist should be offended, but she wasn’t. She’d spent half her life wanting to belong to Roan. She certainly wasn’t going to get precious about it now.

The demon straightened, dusting some broken glass from the bar off his chest, and started slowly toward Haven again like she was Sarah Conner and he was the fucking Terminator. He put his hand down on a table on his way, and it melted beneath his touch.

Gulp.

Roan kept his eyes on the demon and started walking them backward slowly to the exit. The demon’s eyes remained locked on hers.

There were several things that struck her as odd about this situation, other than the demon’s unnatural fascination with her, of course. The first was the fact that this was the only living creature she’d ever seen that didn’t have an aura. Nothing. He was a black hole of psychic energy.

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