Page 3 of Grabbed By the Guard

But she is here. I sense her. Somewhere in this strange den is my mate. I have no need for the grimoire now, or to confront my fellow demon and demand its whereabouts. Most importantly, I’d rather not confront Dagon at all. He is a hunter. It won’t be long until he senses there is another Sombra male near his mate, and whether he is bonded or not, he will be fiercely protective of his female.

I haven’t even laid eyes on mine yet and my phantom horns itch to ram against any male that might come between her and I.

Will I challenge Dagon? It is unseemly, especially for a member of Duke Haures’s guard. For centuries, I told myself just that when I wondered why I never challenged Apollyon. But as my cock continues to stir against my shadows, pulsing, thickening, growing hard as I sense my mate and ready myself for her… let all the hunters in Sombra stand in my way and I would cast them aside to reach the one my essence calls out for.

It belongs to her. It always has, and though I might have been hasty in trying to give it away over my long existence, I am grateful that I have it to offer to her now.

I have no doubt that she will accept it eventually. That is what human females do. Unlike a demoness, who will recognize a demon as her one true mate and eagerly take both his essence and his cock, the mortals need to be coaxed into understanding their fate. I will have to woo her. To show her how she will want for nothing with Glaine as her mate. To pleasure her and mate her and make her mine.

And I will do that in Sombra while hoping that, this time, she will not deny me…

There is no other option. I belong in my realm. My mate belongs with me. Though I am not a hunter like Dagon, I will join the other shadows in this room and when the opportunity presents itself, I will take it.

If I have to?

I will take her.

CHAPTER 1

WORST NIGHT EVER

BILLIE

As I take a wrong step on my way out of the Central Park West Garage and the three-inch heel on my stiletto catches in a crack in the pavement, I can’t help but think that tonight can’t get any worse.

Even the heel buckling under my weight does little more than have me sighing under my breath. I don’t really curse—I leave that to Sierra—but if anything called for a ‘damn it’, tonight ranks near the top of the list. I’m tired, though. The last time I glanced at my phone before tossing it in my bag and trudging out of the garage, I saw it was already after two in the morning. I should be fast asleep.

Instead I’ve just spent a nerve-wracking two hours driving my rental back to Manhattan from my disaster of a weekend getaway in Connecticut.

I don’t like to drive. I can if I have to, but when I’m used to traveling on tour buses and private planes when I’m not living in the capital of public transportation, New York City, it’s a miracle I got a license in the first place. Since I spent my seventeenth birthday on stage in Amsterdam, singing “Ooh-bop-bop” with Sierra and Tandy, it’s not like I was in any rush like most girls that age. Our next top-ten single was my goal, not cruising around my hometown in a beater my parents would’ve got from some shady guy for three hundred bucks.

I loved them, but I wanted more than that. I still do. So I got my license after Thr33peat broke up, but before I finished getting my MBA and starting up Bickles Management. So I can drive… but it takes a lot of grit and nerve to get me to agree to anything longer than a fifteen-minute ride.

In this case, a mixture of spite and heartbreak got me to the only late-night rental service I could find at the last minute, and three blonde espressos downed one after another was the stimulant I needed to put my heel to the pedal. The nerves would’ve been enough to keep my eyes open—the memory of Trevor’s ‘apology’ running through my head doing the same thing—but I ordered the coffee anyway because, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Going to Connecticut with that weasel seemed like a good idea at the time.

Leaving Sierra alone with Three in the apartment when I could sense how much she needed me to stay… yeah, I knew that was a bad idea. Especially since I’d put down my fifteen percent for Sierra’s last film contract that she called up Jared the second I was out the door, I knew it was a really bad idea.

And, if I’m being honest, I have to admit that, going on that weekend getaway out of the city with Trevor Daniels when I was working up the nerve to dump him… that was a terrible idea.

Our relationship had run its course. A year after we hit it off and started dating, my sixth sense started tingling. It wasn’t anything he said or did. At first, I tried to talk myself into accepting that I was overreacting. That just because he was the first long-term relationship I’ve ever had that didn’t get complicated because of my position as the Whiskey Rose’s manager, it didn’t mean anything was suspicious.

Oh, but it was. And I’m the idiot who didn’t pick up on the—obvious in hindsight—clues that Trevor wasn’t just secretly in love with my best friend, he’s another one of those obsessed fans that currently have poor Sierra on house arrest in the Dorado.

Crap. How am I going to tell her that, if Trevor’s reaction to me immediately breaking things off and warning him away from Sierra is anything to go by, we might have another Patrick Ridgefield on our hands?

Damn it. Damn, damn, damn.

Exhausted and wired, thanks to the espressos, I force myself to stop thinking about that. Ridgefield isn’t worth it. Trevor definitely isn’t. And if he thinks I’m going to let this go and not tell Sierra… I just hope that she decided to ignore my suggestion from the other day when I mentioned she might want to go through her fan mail.

Trevor wrote her love letters. Seriously. Not realizing that a pop star as famous as Whiskey Rose might not handle each piece of fan mail personally, he spent months waiting for her reply. When he didn’t get one? That crackpot decided that I’d finally figured out that he was only dating me so that, eventually, Whiskey Rose would notice him.

Because who would ever choose Billie Bickles when the long-reigning princess of pop was right there?

Story of my life.

Snap.

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