Demon's Embrace Read online

  They had the microphone set up a few minutes later, and of course that was when the annoying little assassin decided to shut up. Angry enough to shake the jar, but sensible enough not to, Ronan turned to Alex for help. Nothing he’d learned about interrogation techniques had included a course on how to make a three-inch pixie spill all.

  * * * *

  “Why did you come after me?” Kali asked their captive.

  The pixie rolled her eyes and tapped her foot. Even in miniature that thing was a bitch.

  “Fine. Okay, I get it. Assassin for hire. Go where the money takes you. Kill whatever or whoever you’re told to kill.” She turned to Alex and Ronan. “She’s just a pawn. She doesn’t know anything.”

  “Do, too,” the pixie said, sounding smug.

  “Uh-huh,” Kali said in a voice that she hoped very clearly conveyed her disbelief. “Why would they tell you anything? You’re obviously a very small part of a much bigger plot.” She turned her back on the pixie, dismissing the creature’s existence.

  “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Not a clue,” Kali said over her shoulder. “Can’t say I much care, either.”

  “I am Connistanterina Elizabeth DeKardoin, fourth-born daughter of the Pixie King. I am royalty, and you will treat me as such.”

  “Well, Conni,” Kali said, hoping the shortening of her name would infuriate the woman enough for her to spill some useful information. “As royalty in the enemy camp, perhaps you should consider human history. I’m pretty sure we beheaded captured royals.”

  “Human barbarians. No sense of honor.”

  “Says the miniature assassin caught in a glass jar. You’re pathetic. You talk of honor like you understand what it means.”

  “Of course I know what it means. The Oracle broke the rules. She intended to pass her information onto humans.” The pixie spat the word “humans” like it was some despicable contagious disease. “I killed her to protect my people. If I had known the traitor was capable of passing her information to human babies, I would have killed them all that day.”

  “So you’re not a hired assassin.”

  “I was not hired. I was chosen.” The pixie stuck her nose in the air, her eyes shining with what could only be described as a fanatical light. It didn’t matter what reasonable argument they made, this pixie had no intention of listening, ever. Considering she’d just announced she was willing to kill newborn babies, it took all of Kali’s sense of humanity not to grab the jar and start shaking until the callous bitch cried.

  “Why you?” Kali asked, trying to inject a mocking tone into her voice instead of the rage she felt. “What’s so special about you? You don’t look up to the job from where I’m standing.”

  “I am the best,” the miniature pixie said with an arrogant sniff. “I grabbed the Oracle, transported her to a place with no paranormal creatures, and silenced her.”

  “But you failed, because she passed her knowledge on to humans.” Kali tilted her head, lifting the jar to look more closely at the pixie. She could see the annoyance even on such a tiny face, but a theory was starting to solidify in her mind, and she decided to try and get confirmation. “You’re cleaning up your own mess. Nobody even knows you’re doing this. That’s why the assassinations weren’t simultaneous. You’ve been doing this on your own.”

  The pixie didn’t say anything, but Kali could see the woman’s fear now. It seemed pretty obvious that she had no backup. It was likely that no one would even notice that the pixie was missing—at least not for a while.

  “Can pixies starve to death?”

  “No,” the pixie said with a half laugh that didn’t quite hide her terror. “Unlike humans, we are not fragile creatures.”

  “Good to know,” Kali said as she turned to her men. “How long will the wards stay in place?”

  “Indefinitely,” Alex said with a grim smile. Kali could sense the anger both her men were feeling toward the conscienceless assassin.

  “Good,” Kali said. She lifted the microphone away from the jar, glanced around the room, and finally settled on the cupboard under the kitchen sink. She found an old ceramic sugar container large enough to place the glass jar inside. The pixie was doing some sort of tantrum, but without the amplified sound Kali could barely hear a thing. “Maybe a few years of solitary confinement will help you to see the error of your ways. Good-bye, Conni.”

  She placed the lid on the pottery jar, placed the pottery under the sink, and closed the cupboard door. She turned to her men.

  “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Eight

  Kali glanced around her kitchen and wondered how everything that had happened in the past few days could suddenly feel like a dream. With Ronan and Alex in another room it almost felt like none of it had happened.

  “You okay, sis?” Dave asked as he stepped into the small area.

  “I think so,” she said honestly.

  “I want you to move in with Ronan.” It was obvious that her brother had been beside himself with worry, and so she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wanted her to move in with Ronan so that he could protect her. This wasn’t another of Dave’s lousy matchmaking moves. Although, considering that the last guy he’d set her up with was one of the two guys she was hopelessly in love with now, maybe his instincts hadn’t been so lousy after all. “Even with the pixie locked away, there is no guarantee that you’ll be safe. Alex says the wards will hold her, but he and Ronan don’t want to alert anyone else to her whereabouts. The fewer people who know what happened to her or where she is the less likely she is to escape.” He crossed his arms and gave her his worried-big-brother look. “But it’s probably only a matter of time before someone else connects the dots and decides to finish what she started.”

  “I know all of that,” she said quietly, trying not to convey her annoyance. Dave was just being her big brother and trying to protect her. He probably had no way of knowing how unbalanced she felt.

  “Or would you rather move in with Alex?” Dave asked with a sympathetic smile. Hell, maybe he did know. She’d never really been able to hide anything from the brother who’d protected her all her life.

  Smiling softly, she tried to find words to reassure him without quite confessing that she loved both Ronan and Alex. But again her big brother proved how well he knew her.

  “Go talk to them.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “And know that whatever way you choose to live your life you will always have my love and support.” Tears blurred her vision, and she hugged her brother fiercely. After a few moments he laughed quietly. “If nothing else, it will make Thanksgiving rather interesting this year.” She nodded, gave him a watery smile, and watched as he let himself out the front door.

  “Dave heading home?” Ronan asked. She nodded. “Good, Alex and I want to run a few decisions by you.”

  “Decisions? Like what?”

  “Like where we’re going to live, beautiful,” Alex said from the doorway of the living area. Her heart did a strange little tap dance before she could remind herself that they were only talking about protecting her long term. The three of them would probably have wild monkey sex to pass the time, but it was just fun. It wasn’t the true relationship her heart wanted.

  “We have a few choices,” Ronan said, studying her face as if he could sense something was wrong but had no clue how to deal with it. “I have a number of safe houses dotted across several different countries.”

  “Or we could hide you in another realm,” Alex added.

  “Another realm? As in not on Earth?” It was probably stupid considering what she’d experienced in the past few days, but she’d never really considered the possibility of different planes of existence.

  “Technically it is on Earth, but a place that exists in the same space yet in a different dimension.”

  “Huh?” Okay, maybe she should have read more paranormal or science fiction stories, but almost everything that Alex had just said seemed to be in a foreign lan
guage.

  “Think of it as moving to another country with a different culture.”

  “Can’t I just stay here?” Yes, as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she knew how stupid the request was. She was vulnerable here, that much was a given, but her life had changed so quickly there was a part of her that didn’t want to let go. “I mean, what will I do? How will I survive? I can’t live off you two for the rest of my life.”

  “Why not?” Ronan asked with genuine confusion. Hell, didn’t he understand anything about her?

  And then the most frightening thought of all finally sat up and smacked her in the face. No, he didn’t know her. Neither did Alex. Hell, her life had been so far away from normal the past few days that she wasn’t sure she even knew who she was. Fuck!

  “I just can’t. I need…my independence…my…my space.” She stumbled over the words, regretting them the moment she glanced at Ronan’s face. His expression didn’t change, but he paled considerably. Alex looked ready to say something, but Ronan went into professional-soldier mode, and it suddenly felt like nothing they’d shared had been real.

  “Okay, pack what you’ll need. We move out in twenty minutes. I’ll get the guys to set up a secure Internet link at the safe house in Texas. We’ll make sure you’re able to work while you’re protected.”

  He left the room without looking at her once, his manner completely professional, but it was obvious that she’d hurt him deeply.

  “I…I didn’t…” She turned to Alex, unsure what expression she would find on his face. She’d likely hurt him with her poorly chosen words as well. What she found was the man with a wide grin, shaking his head in mock disappointment. Confused and maybe a little angry with his reaction, Kali crossed her arms and waited for him to say something.

  “It’s a complete mystery to me how you two even made it into the same car on your first date. I think it’s quite a lucky thing you’ll have me around to sort out the misunderstandings. Hell, once the children come along, it’s liable to get worse.”

  “What?” Kali asked, shaking her head, utterly confused. “What children?”

  “Yours and Ronan’s of course. You know you’re perfect for each other. He knows it, too, but somehow you two keep going all human and messing things up. At least with me around you’ll be able to sort through the issues before they become insurmountable.” She shook her head as the tears fell down her cheeks even as she cursed herself for letting her ragged emotions show. Alex pulled her into his embrace, hugging her tight as he became very serious. “Kali, you love him. You know you do.”

  “I know,” she whispered, “but I love you, too.”

  “Good to know,” he said with a quick squeeze. “So now all we have to do is convince the stubborn soldier that we can be a family.”

  “I need to go talk to him, don’t I?”

  “I’ve always found talking a very effective way of communicating,” he said with a smile in his voice.

  She sighed, hugged Alex closer, and whispered, “I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

  “I know, beautiful, but Ronan hates being vulnerable.” She leaned back to see Alex’s face. Ronan was a bossy, confident, well-trained soldier. Everything in his life was about maximizing his client’s safety and minimizing vulnerability. But love wasn’t a job. It wasn’t even predictable. It was raw and messy and, in Kali and Ronan’s case, filled with misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

  Kali was still wondering how to deal with Ronan’s reaction—and, yes, maybe even wondering how to protect herself from being vulnerable to him—when he came back into the room. His expression was quickly hidden, but the hurt in his eyes had been unmistakable.

  “Ronan,” Kali said, trying to shore up her courage and say what Ronan needed to hear. “I love you.”

  “It’s okay, Kali,” Ronan said, sounding like the soldier he was—professional, polite, and distant. “We’ll make sure you’re safe. You don’t need to pretend.”

  The man was infuriating. “I’m not pretending.” She wanted to stamp her foot like a five-year-old, but it probably wouldn’t help convince him that she knew her own mind. The silly man had probably decided that what they’d shared at the cabin had simply been stress relief.

  But as angry as she was feeling, that flash of hurt crossed his features again, and she wanted to grab him and shake him, and maybe kiss him all over, until he understood what she’d meant earlier.

  “Ronan, I phrased it badly.” She stood right in front of him and waited until he finally looked down at her. “I love you, and I love Alex, and while I might be stubborn enough to want to contribute to the family income, I want to do it as part of our family. Our family—yours, mine, and Alex’s.”

  “You want to marry me?” His reaction seemed so shocked that Kali suddenly wondered if Alex had any clue what he was talking about. Maybe Ronan’s reaction to her carelessly chosen words was him taking the opportunity to end things before they got too complicated. Pain, like a knife plunged through her chest, had her gasping for air. “Kali,” Ronan said, sounding very serious once more. He lifted a hand to either side of her face, caressing her cheeks softly as a tear escaped her control and slid down her cheek. “Please marry me and Alex. Please have our babies. Please let us spend the rest of our lives sorting out the misunderstandings.”

  Alex moved to stand behind her, pressed a kiss to her shoulder, and repeated Ronan’s words in a voice thick with emotion. “We both love you, Kali. Marry us, please.”

  Relief flooded through her as she fell more deeply in love with both her men. And then Kali nodded and said the only word zipping through her mind. “Yes.”

  Epilogue

  “Okay,” Alex said as he came through the front door. “Everything at the fortress is ready.”

  Kali smiled at the nickname he’d given the heavily protected home they were moving into. It was basically a house in the middle of a ghost town in the middle of nowhere, but it would be perfect for raising a family. Of course that was as long as they made her “death” believable. Between the three of them, they’d decided that she needed a new identity. Since nobody, other than the pixie who’d attacked her, knew what Kali looked like, they’d felt safe enough hiding her in plain sight but had decided that setting up a home in the tiny, deserted town of Sugarvale would offer added protection.

  Alex’s mission report had listed his protection detail as a complete failure. Kali had hated that he’d needed to blot his flawless work history, but as Alex had pointed out over and over, it was the report his supervisors had expected anyway. Nobody had ever managed to survive a pixie assassination once they’d been targeted. Only Kali’s brother and Alex’s PUP squad knew that she’d survived. Officially, even in human records, Kali had been one of the pixie’s victims. The only person who could tell them otherwise was currently residing in a glass jar stored under a kitchen sink.

  But it was very chilling to realize just how lucky she’d been—especially since they still hadn’t been able to find the others. So far, Alex’s PUP squad had only found one of the women on the list, and she’d already been targeted by the pixie. Hopefully Nathan and Brody would be able to explain the situation to Ava without scaring her to death. Then they somehow had to convince her to leave her old life behind just as Kali had done. Even if Kali was the Oracle’s receptacle, Ava and the others would still be targets if anyone else noticed the pattern of the pixie’s human murders and discovered the reason behind them.

  “Ready to go?” Alex asked with a wicked smile.

  “I guess so.” Kali already felt green from the nausea the slip travel would cause. It had been a hectic twenty-four hours packing and getting ready to go and, other than a couple of unintentional catnaps, Kali hadn’t slept. She was fairly certain that neither Alex nor Ronan had slept at all.

  Alex leaned over and kissed her passionately, the breath-stealing kiss almost distracting her from the fact that Ronan had pressed up behind her, wrapped an arm around her middle, and pushe
d his hand down inside her jeans. The immediate arousal was surprising but definitely not unwelcome.

  Ronan’s thick fingers rubbed over her clit as Alex’s tongue explored her mouth, and a hand squeezed her nipple so hard she’d swear she saw stars.

  “Come for us,” Ronan ordered. A moment later she wholeheartedly obeyed, the orgasm shockingly intense despite the rapid buildup, the rolling, shivering, rippling of ecstasy somehow magnified by the slip travel.

  Shaking all over, Kali would have buckled at the knees if Alex and Ronan hadn’t been holding her up.

  “Bedtime,” Ronan said, sounding quite tired. She felt pretty good, the nausea absent thanks to her orgasm, but it was obvious by the hard cock pressed against her ass that Ronan hadn’t joined her in bliss.

  “Good idea,” Kali said. “A quick nap and then wild monkey sex.”

  “I’d prefer you had wild demon sex,” Alex said with a wide grin. “But you primates can do whatever it takes.”

  They hadn’t been able to track down any paranormal ancestors in Kali’s line. Of course, the confirmation that she was fully human didn’t quite explain the telekinesis or the “knowing” stuff that she probably shouldn’t. Maybe she really was the Oracle’s receptacle. Until they found the others, they had no idea if Kali was unique or not. Alex planned to speak to Brody and ask if Ava had any unusual skills, but with everything else going on it would be a few days more at least before her men were confident enough of their precautions to leave her with only one of them. They would figure out who or what she was eventually, but for now she wanted to concentrate on her men.

  Alex smiled wickedly and pulled her from Ronan’s arms. He caressed her breast as he whispered in a conspiratorial voice, “I want you two to practice baby making as often as possible so that when we decide to have a family, you’ll know exactly what to do.”

  Kali laughed, glanced at Ronan, and noticed he didn’t seem at all disturbed by the talk of babies this early in their relationship.