In the Company of Witches by Joey W. Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

wearing a dark pair of jeans that rode low on his bare hips. He made the most of the look, leaning against the banister to the stairwell, arms crossed.
    Gina, an avid reader, had once spent a whole week studying a medical text and teaching them all about male and female anatomy. Because of that, Raina knew the delicious diagonal lines of a man’s lower abdomen that pointed the way to his cock were actually ligaments, the inguinal ligaments. The set of those jeans revealed those ligaments, tapering down from impressive external obliques. Nothing covered his chest except the casually crossed arms, which of course emphasized the swell of biceps. Everything about him said virile, badass male. If he brought out the wings, she was a goner.
    Oh, get a grip. She was around sex all the time. She embraced its many forms, because she was a woman, a witch and a succubus, and all of those incarnations enjoyed earthy pleasures. But she had a line she couldn’t cross. It didn’t matter that he’d offered her the chance to step over it tonight, unleash her deepest level of sexual energy and have the chance that others did, to be swept away by her release.
    Release, surrender…Hazardous, mesmerizing words.
    She arched an indifferent brow. “You’re trespassing. I didn’t invite you here.”
    He lifted a shoulder. “Trespassing rules? Coming from a woman who regularly flouts authority?”
    “I don’t flout authority. I just politely ask it to stay the hell out of my business.”
    His expression was dismissively Slavic. “So…you wouldn’t trust any woman with a pulse around me? You have a pulse.”
    “Don’t let it go to your head. Either one of them.” She affected a bored look. “Mikhael, as often as you worked Ruby over, I know Dark Guardians have an insatiable libido. We can find you something to fuck, without you sniffing around my bed.”
    His face closed down, which she found interesting. Ruby had made it clear that feelings weren’t involved in her volatile encounters with the Dark Guardian, at least not from his side, but Raina read something different in that reaction.
    “You started this business by doing this kind of business, right?” he said curtly. “The hard-to-get routine rings a little false.”
    Using a sharp tongue on an opponent brought consequences. From someone being casually cruel, who didn’t understand certain things about her, she would have dismissed it, treated him with stoic disdain. But he’d already gotten under her skin, gotten too close. Even so, she hadn’t expected the return cut to slice so deep. Like a cat, a succubus had a higher metabolism and body temperature, which meant she was always warm. Except now, when the coldness blasted through the cut he’d just made, an arctic freeze that affected her vital organs, swept over her skin, raising all the small hairs.
    He straightened, hands dropping to his sides, his brow creasing. “Raina.”
    She rose from the bed, drew herself up to her full five-two height, knowing that blue sparks were flickering off her skin. If he’d been human, she’d have reined them back, because they were toxic, but now she hoped a few jumped on him like lice and ate him alive.
    “I told you you’re welcome to use the services of the others here for a reasonable rate. I’m not part of those services. If you’re a sick bastard who enjoys rape, you might have the ability to overpower me, but you’ll be fucking a corpse, because that’s the only way you’ll take me down.” She’d be damned before she admitted her voice cracked.
    Mikhael’s reaction wasn’t to become more soothing or gentle. Not that she would have expected that from him. But she didn’t anticipate his barbed humor transforming into something that filled the room with deadly purpose, his voice the steady steel of an executioner’s ax.
    “I’ve hunted those who’ve committed that crime. By the time I deliver them to Hell, they’re begging for the mercy of the fire.”
    He