Demon's Kiss by MAGGIE SHAYNE Read Free Book Online Page A

Say it.”
    â€œI’ll n-never hurt you.”
    â€œTell me I can trust you.”
    â€œYou can. You can trust me, I swear.”
    â€œTell me you love me. Call me baby.”
    â€œI love you, baby.”
    â€œYou fucking liar.” She jerked him to her, and sank her teeth into his throat so deeply she scraped bone. She didn’t drink, she gorged. She feasted. She tore his flesh, and she enjoyed every minute of it.
    As she drank she saw them, the women he’d raped in the past few years. There were dozens. Most of them alive. But he’d killed the last three—no, two. Only two. The one tonight was supposed to have been number three.
    Well, no more.
    When she’d drained him, and his warm blood was flowing through her, soothing her, easing her rage, she felt every tense muscle in her body uncoil. She felt release. Relief. And it was good.
    She flung his considerably lighter corpse over her shoulder, anchored him there with one arm and swiped her lips with the back of her other hand. Then she climbed out the window with him, jumped easily to the ground and headed back toward where she’d left her car. If anyone saw, they didn’t speak. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people were likely to butt in, and she was moving so fast it was unlikely mortal eyes would be able to tell what she was carrying.
    She flicked the button on her key ring, and her trunk popped open. Then she tossed the body inside and slammed it closed. She knew a nice swamp where he would sink out of sight and probably not emerge for a good century or two—if ever.
    Topaz got behind the wheel, started the engine and said, “That could only have been better if it had really been you, Jack.” She tried really hard to visualize herself ripping into his jugular and sucking him dry.
    But instead she imagined sinking her teeth into him in passion, not anger, and sipping from him while he slid his cock into her and drove her wild. God, it had been so good with him. It had never been that good before. She didn’t imagine it ever would be again.
    And instead of feeling better, she just felt more pain. Oh, the rage was gone. She’d sated that. Temporarily. But not the hurt. Nothing could ease the hurt. How could she still want him, even while wanting to kill him?
    â€œMaybe I’ll just have to kill him, then. Thanks to that gossipy bitch, I have a pretty good idea where he is.” Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for traveling tonight. It would be daylight by the time she dumped the body in the swamp and made her way to the safety of her home.
    She put the car into gear, spun the tires a little as she pulled away from the curb and cranked the volume on the MP3, choosing the playlist she’d named Madder than Hell. The first song to come on was Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughtta Know.” Fitting.
    â€¦you told me you’d hold me until you died—till you died—but you’re still alive!
    She was going to do it, she thought. She was going to find him, hunt him down and make him pay. Make him suffer the way he’d made her suffer. Sure, she’d been too devastated at first to think of vengeance. But that part was over. Now she was just fucking angry.
    She was going to kill the bastard, and while she was at it, she was going to get her money back. Tonight, just as soon as the sun set and darkness fell, she was going on the hunt for Jack Heart, to make him pay for what he’d done to her. No one treated her that way and lived to tell the tale.
    No one.

4
    R oxanne O’Mally was twisted into what a nonpractitioner would have called a human pretzel when the broomstick standing beside the front door tipped over. Well, tipped over wasn’t really what it did. It hurled itself to the floor as if bent on suicide.
    She frowned, then slowly untwisted, rose from her yoga mat and padded barefoot, not to mention stark naked, to the broomstick, bent and picked