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Chapter 2
Alyssa shivered as she stepped out of the tub into an impossibly cold bathroom. The small room should have been a fogged-up mess from her scalding-hot shower, but cool air drifted through the partially open door.
A door she had definitely closed before her shower.
Staring at the door, she wrapped a towel around her torso and pulled her shower cap off to free her curls. She lived alone, but anytime she used the room she still closed the door. Now she approached it silently and listened. Her pulse sped, jolted by the idea that somehow, she wasn’t alone.
Closing her eyes, she flattened her body against the door and waited for any sound. Her apartment was absolutely silent.
She took a deep breath. Obviously, she hadn’t pulled the door hard enough to latch. That had to be it. Now she was scaring herself over nothing. She opened the door wide and looked into her bedroom. It was empty—of course. No sign of anything out of place, although there was a mysterious chill in the air.
Air conditioner on the fritz? Had to be. She’d call her landlord in the morning. Convinced her imagination was playing tricks, she dried off and slid into her satin robe for a lazy night of ice cream and binge-watching in bed. It still disappointed her that her great love affair with Drastos was over before it ever officially began. Drastos. His name still made her heart flutter. Damn him.
Was there a support group for women pining after unavailable, mysterious, foreign men? At least, she thought he was foreign, with a name like Drastos. Plus, after a few drinks, a strange accent would loosen from his tongue. She’d asked himabout his unique name, accent, and where he was from, but he was impressively evasive. No matter. Curiosity be damned. She planned to purge him from her thoughts with endless rom-coms.
That plan died when she left her bedroom and found her living room window wide open. Night air blew through the screenless frame, causing her long gauzy curtains to dance like pale blue ghosts in the dark room. She took a quick step back and braced herself in the doorway, part of her trying to remember where she’d left her phone, part of her reasoning that she was on the fourth level of her apartment complex, which sat on a steep hill, no less. Intruders wouldn’t—no, theycouldn’t—use the window.
She backed up and bumped into something solid. Her blood ran cold. With a shriek, she leapt to run away, but a hand closed around her wrist and yanked her back into the bedroom. She stumbled and landed on the floor. Wasting no time, she scuttled away from the tall figure and went for her nightstand. She was ninety percent certain her phone was on it, and if not, the massive metal flashlight in the top drawer could make an impressive weapon.
Before she could reach the nightstand, powerful hands lifted her from the carpet and flung her onto the bed. She bounced in the center of the mattress, a tangle of shaking limbs and long robe as she turned over to face her intruder. It wasn’t human.
The sound of her distress echoed off the walls as she stared, horrified, at what her brain identified as a demon—and yet demons weren’t real. She wanted to deny what she saw.
Slender horns coiled up and away from the demon’s ridged brow line, which currently held an unreadable expression over glossy black eyes. His skin was a deep brick red that darkened to black at his temples, pointed ears, clawed fingers, and cloven feet. A black tail curled and swayed behind him, drawing her attention to it and the other hanging appendage in that generalvicinity. He was naked, but she was too frightened to spend more than a split-second of her attention on it.
As far as she knew, there was only one reason for a naked demon to appear in a woman’s room at night.
Words jammed in her throat, and only strangled sounds escaped her. She wanted to crab-walk backward on the bed, but her legs refused to cooperate. All she could do was sit and tremble and stare.
“I couldn’t resist,” the demon said, his voice startlingly familiar.
He approached the side of her bed and dragged one black claw along the comforter. Light from her bedside lamp caught a streak of silver hiding behind one of his horns; a glowing beacon against the rest of his sleek black hair.
It couldn’t be.
“Here I am, and I can’t take it back,” the demon said in a thoughtful tone. “After two centuries of good behavior, I suppose I’m due an act of purely foolish, selfish indulgence.”
Drastos?
Her fear still muted her and hot tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared at the demon. Her mind warred. If it was Drastos, should she be afraid? She wanted to believe he wouldn’t hurt her. Yet he’d broken into her apartment. And he was naked.
Demons with good intentions would wear clothing, right?
You’ve officially lost it.
He snarled at the bright lamp as if just noticing it, then slammed the cheap thing to the ground in a crash of metal and glass. She flinched at the sound and violence, her mind reeling.
The demon bent forward and hooked his hands behind her knees to drag her toward him. As he drew her closer, she sucked in heavy breaths. She wanted desperately to believe she was imagining things, or that he was a man in a costume, but up close, she couldn’t deny how real he was. Dark spots appearedalong the edges of her vision as she gasped again and again. She was going to hyperventilate and pass out—maybe that would be for the best.
Leaning over her, the demon inhaled slowly and released a low growl. The darkness increased her fear, and she closed her eyes as her thoughts swarmed; a cacophony of potential last-ditch efforts. All of them required her to move, however, and she’d frozen stiff with terror.
He forced her chin up with his sharp fingertip, and she sensed his intent before his mouth landed on her. She resisted the kiss, her lips tight and unresponsive, but his hand circled her throat, the gentle pressure a threat she understood. She forced herself to relax and parted her lips in surrender.
Whatever she expected, this wasn’t it. The demon’s kiss was so strange and hungry that her fear dissolved into confusion. Curiosity guided her into motion, and her tongue slid over the sharp points of his teeth. However frightening the circumstance, the kiss itself was… magical. Familiar.
The voice. The silver streak of hair. Now, this kiss.
Her memory wouldn’t fail her here—this kiss was comforting and passionate—the culmination of years of longing. The same kiss she’d had with Drastos the night of their date. But how?
