“Stop it.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward her. “Stop holding back.”

  “Lys—”

  “I know what you told me.” She took his face between her hands, and, hell, she was naked, and he was all wrapped up in her head, and she was in his. She knew what he saw and how he felt about it; her sleek body, her hair down around her shoulders, pale skin slick with sweat, the scent of her. She knew what he felt, what he was thinking, that he wanted her hard and rough and under his control. “You were very clear about the risks.”

  With a growl, he flipped her onto her back again, and she shouted when he slammed into her. She held him while he pumped hard and fast, and she didn’t have any trouble keeping up. She even knew when to turn her head to the side to expose her throat for him again. More blood from the nick he’d made there the first time. Hot and sweet, tangy.

  They did it hard, fast, and dirty, and she was just amazingly good. They were amazingly good together. They were so tightly linked psychically he could hardly tell whose reactions belonged to whom. One of them screamed when she came, and it rolled through him, too. His talons sliced into the bed covers and she was in his head, connected with him, and her magic pulled at him because she wasn’t blocking anything.

  He dropped into that weird mental space where he wasn’t in the present any more. He was in some kind of free fall that felt damn close to bliss.

  His magic spreads through her, changes something in her, changes him. When he comes, it’s overwhelming for her. She calls out. His name. His name and when she finishes shuddering with her climax, he’s still in his other form.

  Back in his head, hers? He had to work at controlling himself, and making sure he was aware enough to change back before it was too late. Not yet, though. Not yet. She wrapped her long legs around him, up high around his hips, meeting him thrust for thrust, and the release that had been building hit them both, blew them away in a gut-wrenching, breath-stealing orgasm that turned them inside out. He went deep into her magic and let the storm roll over them.

  When he could breathe again, her arms were tight around his shoulders, her legs wrapped tight around his hips. He had a hand on her ass, holding her against him. He was still changed. Not even remotely human. He’d come inside her. No protection, not that it would have mattered. No change back to human.

  The hell of it was, he was up for doing it again, and she knew it and wanted that astonishing, doubled, mind-bending climax as much as he did. She needed what that bastard Michael had denied her all this time. She blinked a couple of times, and arched her hips against him. More. Again.

  He shifted into another form and they did it again, missionary because he had wings in this form. Slower this time, sweeter even, so that when he knew he was perilously close, he wasn’t expecting to be annihilated the way they had been before. He expected that this time he would be able to change back before it was too late. He believed it to his core. But he didn’t change. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to. What they were doing answered something in her, gave her something she needed. She took just as much as he gave. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  Eventually, he withdrew from her and let his body return to his human form so he could lie on his back, though their psychic connection stayed in place. He was boneless with pleasure. Sated. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. “You need to move in here.”

  After a bit, when she might still have been recovering, she said, “Not a good idea.”

  “You should be here when you have my kid.”

  She turned onto her side and cupped his face before she leaned in to kiss him. “I don’t think—”

  Telos lifted his head, concentrating on the change in his proofing.

  Lys frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “You need to get dressed. Right now.”

  Apparently, Michael had a talented tracker.

  _______________________________________________________

  CHAPTER 9

  Telos stood in the center of his living room with all kinds of wrong flowing through him. His skin crawled. The silence felt wrong. Too quiet in the house, way too quiet outside. Michael was out there, no question about that. He was probably still high on copa and hyped from his earlier kill. The ritual murder of a demon would have added to the mage’s power.

  To one side of him, Lys fastened the last buttons of her blouse. She kicked her pumps under the couch. Smart. Great looking shoes, but a bitch for her if she had to run, and potentially in the way if she left them there. Deftly, she slicked back her hair and refastened it in her clip. She grabbed her purse, took out her ID, some bank cards and cash, and shoved her bag into one of the cubby holes in his entertainment center. She headed for him.

  “Hold still.” She stuffed the items from her purse into the back pocket of his jeans and gave his ass a pat. “Keep it safe, will you?”

  With a crack like ice breaking, one of the hundreds of carved wooden medallions that made up his early warning system snapped in half.

  Beside him, Lys went still. “What was that?”

  “Company.” He pointed at the cracked medallion. “They react to our kind, yours and mine, who don’t have permission to be in my house. When they break like that, it means my company isn’t waiting for an invitation to come in.”

  “Michael.”

  He grunted. Another of the medallions cracked. For about ten seconds, he considered locking Lys in the server room with a pile of blankets to keep her warm, but if he did that and Michael got to him, she wouldn’t be safe no matter where she was. If he got taken alive, she was fucked. If he got killed, they’d eventually find her, and she’d be trapped. Same result.

  “Plan?”

  He walked to the window and took a look outside. He didn’t see anyone out there but that didn’t mean much. Another of his wards cracked. He glanced at the line of medallions around the perimeter of his ceiling. Several of the carved faces were no longer smiling. One was frozen in a scream. His pulse sped up. Michael wasn’t playing around. With this proofing going off like this, there had to be more than just one or two magehelds. Plus the tracker good enough to have found them this fast.

  “We call for help.” He pulled out his phone and brought up the contact he’d sent to Lys. He’d known for the last year or more he couldn’t stay unaffiliated much longer. This bullshit with Michael was only pushing a decision he’d already made. He was fine with that. From what he’d heard, there were worse warlords to tie himself to than Nikodemus.

  “Are you calling the police?”

  “Nikodemus.” Telos kept one eye on the window. “Get the lights. Leave that one on. In the corner there. Kill the rest.”

  Lys found the wall switch and flicked the lights off. On the other end of the call, a woman answered the phone, and that wasn’t right. He was about to disconnect when the woman said, “I represent Nikodemus.”

  Telos said, “That so?”

  “Yeah.” Short and assured.

  “Who is this?”

  “Carson Phillips.”

  “The warlord’s witch?” Not just a representative of the warlord. More like his damned other half.

  There was a brief silence. “Yes.” He didn’t give a shit if she was pissed off. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need some help here,” he said into the phone. He shifted his weight between his feet. A warlord who didn’t protect his own wouldn’t last long. The question was how diligently he’d protect someone who wasn’t sworn to him.

  “Free kin?”

  “For now.” He felt a world of understanding in the silence that followed, and that went a long way toward making him think he did have the right person on the phone.

  “Can I get a name?”

  He went back to the window as he gave Carson his name. The woman whistled softly. “Honor to hear from you.” Then she was all business. “Situation?”

  He looked out the window, and this time there were people out there who weren’t vanilla humans. He did a quick count. “There’s a mage outside here with six magehelds that I can see.” There were probably more at the back, but other than the reactions of his proofing, he had no way of knowing for sure. From the way his wards were going off, there was at least one on the roof. “He’s already tried to take me once. He had blood up to his elbows when I saw him earlier today, and two magehelds fresh out of the box.”

  “Not good.”

  “No kidding.” The rituals the magekind performed to take a demon’s power involved removing his still-beating heart. Blood was unavoidable. “He’d recently cracked open a talisman. I let him know how I felt about that. He tried to kill me, and now he’s here, and I will rip off his fucking head if I have to.”

  “His name?”

  “Michael.” He turned around and kept his eyes on Lys. She was near the couch, pale but calm enough. “I’ve got his street-witch here with me.”

  “Lys Fensic, right?”

  “Right.”

  After a pause, Carson said, “Can you trust her?”

  He held Lys’s gaze. “Can I trust her?” he said for her benefit. “Yeah. I can trust her.” He and Lys made eye contact, and he felt the nullity from her that he’d previously mistaken for vanilla. Now he knew it was the result of her iron-control over her magic. “We consummated when I was changed. She needs to stay alive.”

  She let out a breath. “Understood.”

  “Michael isn’t fucking around with this. He wants her head. If he takes me, who do you think he’ll have kill her?”

  “No half-measures. Full authorization from us.” She sounded like she gave kill authorizations every day. Maybe she did. Nikodemus had more than one assassin sworn to him. “I’m in the car now. Confirm you’re at your home?”

  “Confirmed.”

  “I have people on the way now.”

  He liked that she didn’t need to ask where he lived. That spoke volumes about Nikodemus and how he monitored his territory. “When?”

  “Twenty, thirty minutes? Depends how close my assassin is to your place. I should be hearing from him any minute.”

  More of his wards went off. “That might not be soon enough. I only counted the ones out front. There’s going to be more than six.”

  “Whoever comes will be able to sever you if you get taken.”

  He’d heard rumors about that. He didn’t believe a word. The only way to free a mageheld was to kill the mage who enslaved the poor fuck. “You better be right about that.”

  “I’ll sever you myself if that’s necessary. That’s a promise.”

  More medallions turned black. A thud shook the top floor of the house.

  “I heard that. Hold on.” He listened to dead air for a couple of seconds. “ETA, twenty minutes. Nikodemus will want to talk with you when this is over.” Her voice lightened. “Never any obligation.”

  “Good to know.”

  “If what we hear about you is true, you should be able to hold off six magehelds until our people are there.”

  “I told you, there’s more than six. Any of them get inside, I’m taking them down. That includes the mage.”

  Lys walked to the window, but she was careful and stayed out of sight of anyone out there looking in. The windows shook harder, and on the other end of the phone call Carson waited for the noise to stop.

  “If you’re under attack, do the needful.” Carson disconnected, and he was left holding his phone, staring at Lys while his house shook. She had to stay alive. At any cost.

  He walked to her and cupped the side of her head. “What happens if you stop blocking out all those other minds?”

  She leaned her shoulder against the wall. “Like I said, I see people’s futures. Or change them. Maybe. I’ve never been exactly sure how it works. All I know is that whatever I see in my head, it happens, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Except keep them out in the first place.”

  “Do you think you can get to any of his magehelds and tell me what happens?” Telos glanced out the window. “It’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  She moved to the window, then looked over her shoulder at him. “It won’t work if they’re blocking me the way you do.”

  “I’m counting on Michael’s enslavement bond making them vulnerable to someone like you.”

  “No accidents. Shield yourself.”

  He nodded.

  Lys pushed aside the blinds. The moment she lowered her blocks her magic hit him like a wave. Michael and his magehelds weren’t going to miss what she was doing. Cycling out of control like that, it was setting him off, too. Eyes closed, she rocked on her feet. She slapped a palm on the wall beside her and moaned. Her knees buckled, but when he moved to steady her, her eyes snapped open. She held out a hand to stop him. “Do not. Do not touch me.”

  A few more wards popped, most likely the result of the magehelds reacting to her. She put her blocks back in place. Still looking out the window, she said, “You were right. I could get to them.”

  “And?”

  “You kill two of them.”

  “Only two?”

  She turned, pressing her back to the wall. She was paler than when he’d met her outside her office building all those hours ago. Her arms were clasped tight beneath her breasts in an attempt to hide her shiver. He could see it, though, and feel, too, the psychic cost of opening herself like that. “The others”—she gestured at the window—“something’s going to happen to them, too.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “They won’t die.” Her mouth thinned. “I don’t understand what I see. I don’t always. It’s been a while since I’ve seen so many at once. It’s hard to keep it all straight. Sorry.”

  He touched her cheek. Her skin was cool. The need to protect her lived in his bones, his blood, and his magic. If she survived this, in a couple of months, less probably, they’d know if she was pregnant. “Thanks, Fensic.”

  She nodded.

  Telos took a quick look out the window. Of the magehelds he could see, two weren’t going to be any trouble for him. The other four were big, also not a problem. In the case of the demonkind, size and perfection of the human form tended to be an indication of magical power. If he had to go up against all six at once, his margin for error was going to be small but not unsurmountable. Unless there were more, and he was certain there were.

  “Which ones?” he asked. She looked at him with a soul that had lived with more pain than anyone should have to endure. “Which ones do I kill?”

  “It never works. Trying to change things. Something always happens.” Her eyes were desolate, her pupils huge.

  “Which ones, Lys?”

  She pointed. “The one by the car there. And him. Across the street. Those two.”

  One of the smaller ones. One of the big ones. His still-forming plan had included going after the biggest ones first, so he wasn’t exactly comforted to know he’d only take down one of the more dangerous ones. Did that mean he was going to screw up and get taken? “How? Do you know how it happens?”

  “Not an accident. And here. In this room. A lot of blood. They’re what you said. Slaves. They hate Michael. It consumes them.”

  “When?” It would be nice to know how much time they had before his house was breached.

  She thought about that. “I’m not sure. Soon. That’s a guess.”

  He leaned the side of his shoulder against the wall and tried to figure the most likely scenario. He might have to let himself get taken to give Nikodemus’s people time to get here. After that, Lys’s survival depended on how soon he got a kill order and whether Carson could do what she promised. The windows at the back of the house started shaking. He reached for her. After a hesitation, she moved into his arms. He kissed the top of her head. “I don’t want to go into this blind if I don’t have to.”

  “No.” She grabbed his hand and kissed each of his fingers. “Don’t leave me.”

  He set her back a step and set both hands on her shoulders. He waited until she was looking at him. “If I know whether I die or end up taken, I’ll know how to keep you away from Michael.” He moved a hand to her belly. “You have to be safe. You have to be where Nikodemus and Carson can keep you safe.”

  She closed her eyes, and her power burned down his spine again. He opened himself to her. It was as intense—more intense—than their blood bond had been upstairs. Her eyes were open, but she stared at nothing, unseeing. He cupped her elbow, keeping her upright. Slowly, her eyes opened. The desolation about killed him.

  “There has to be a way to stop this.” She spread her fingers over his chest. The windows rattled again and somewhere in the house, glass broke. “I don’t want you to die.”

  “Listen to me.” He brought his mouth close to hers, and she lifted her head, and well, he kissed her instead of telling her they’d done the right thing. Hungry, demanding, a full on kiss with his tongue in her mouth, his hands touching her curves, and she kissed him back as if she’d die if they ever stopped. He drew back, breathing hard. “I’d rather be dead than mageheld, you understand me? I won’t be anyone’s slave. It’s better if I die.”

  Her eyes glittered with tears. “No.”

  “Not your choice, Fensic.”

  She had herself under control. Completely shut down. Vanilla as anything. He still had his link with her, though not to her magic. “I’m never wrong about what happens. I’m going to lose you, and it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.”

  He put one hand on the wall above her shoulder, then took her hand, turning her wrist up so he was looking at the blue veins on the tender underside of her arm, thinking things he shouldn’t be. “I’m going to change the proofing to kill once his magehelds are in. That should slow them down some. When Michael gets here, he’ll have to take me first because he knows if I take down his magehelds, he’s fucked. There’ll be a fight. We know that because I’m going to kill two of his magehelds. While that’s happening, you get the hell out.”

  “And leave you?”

  “Michael wants you dead. He brought along enough magehelds to be sure that happens.” He let go of her arm and put a hand on her hip. Not a grope; he just set his hand to the curve of her body. When she didn’t avoid the contact, he pulled her closer. He put his other hand on her opposite hip. His heart thudded against his ribs while she slid a palm up the side of his arm.