“I’m going to the bathroom,” I announced, pausing when he followed me. “I haven’t needed help since I was two.”

  “Tough. I don’t plan to let you disappear.”

  “There’s only one way out.”

  “What about these?” He indicated the French doors that led to my balcony. I had another set in the bedroom.

  “Ten floors down. Spider Woman, I’m not.”

  He almost smiled, caught himself, and scowled. “I’ll be right here.”

  “I just bet you will,” I muttered, and slammed the bathroom door.

  While I was at it, I washed my face, changed into my sweats, then grabbed my glasses. I might as well be comfortable and kidnapped.

  When I stepped into the front room, Chavez contemplated me for several ticks of the clock. I hated being stared at. Probably went back to those days in junior high, when being stared at was never a good thing.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “You wear glasses.”

  “I’m a short, dumpy, plain girl who reads books for a living. Of course I wear glasses.”

  He tilted his head. “You read books for a living?”

  Of all the things he could have focused on in my statement he chose that one? I rolled my eyes. “Never mind. You said you’d answer my questions.”

  “Sure. But first, show me all the e-mails you got from this guy.”

  “So you admit he was there? I’m not nuts.”

  Chavez slid his weapon into a holster tucked under one arm. “He was there.”

  I’d known that, but I felt better having him say it. I also felt better now that he’d put away the gun.

  “It wasn’t very nice of you to try and make me think I was crazy.”

  “I’m not nice.” He flicked a finger at the computer in the corner of my dining room. “The e-mails?”

  He’d kidnapped me to look at e-mails? Who was this guy? And who was Eric? I started to concoct all kinds of conspiracy theories.

  “Huh,” he said when he’d read all of the messages. “Nothing weird.”

  “Should there be?”

  “Considering what this guy is, yeah.”

  “Is Eric some sort of secret agent?”

  And if so, what did he want with me? Besides the obvious.

  “Agent of the devil,” Chavez murmured, still staring at the computer screen. “Not much of a secret.”

  I frowned. “Is that code for terrorist?”

  “Terrorist?” He glanced at me, amusement in his eyes, though nothing so lighthearted showed on his face. “You think I’m Homeland Security? FBI? CIA?”

  “You’re something.”

  “Got that right.”

  Considering his accent, his appearance, his innate foreignness, maybe he was the terrorist. Except we hadn’t been at war—even a cold one—with any Hispanic countries for a long, long time. Of course, pretty much everyone hated us lately.

  “DEA?” I blurted.

  “You think the guy was a drug dealer? You’ve got quite an imagination, but you’re way off base.”

  “Get me on base then.”

  “He’s a demon, and for some reason he wants you.”

  “He’s a what?”

  “Fallen angel. Spawn of Satan. Minion of hell. Soulless, evil, creepy thing.”

  For the first time tonight, I was speechless.

  I’d started to believe that maybe Chavez wasn’t crazy. Maybe he was just a gung-ho member of one of the many law enforcement agencies in a country that had gone a little overboard on security after September eleventh. Who could blame us?

  But demons?

  “If Eric’s a demon,” I said slowly, “that makes you a—”

  “Rogue demon hunter.”

  I blinked. “Lost in the Buffyverse, are we?”

  “That show was a real pain in my ass,” he muttered.

  I was not having this conversation. Except I was.

  “Not sure what kind of demon he is,” Chavez continued, as if he hadn’t just said something weirder than weird. “Salt didn’t work. Neither did a silver bullet.”

  “Maybe because there’s no such thing as demons?”

  He turned a dark, placid stare in my direction. “Then what do you call your date?”

  “A jerk. But that doesn’t mean he’s the devil in disguise.”

  “You didn’t think he was such a jerk when you were letting him stick his tongue down your throat.”

  I stiffened, even as my face flooded with heat. “You shouldn’t have been watching.”

  “If I hadn’t, you’d be dead now.” He tilted his head. “You don’t seem the kind of girl who’d let a guy screw her against the wall of an alley.”

  “Gee, thanks. I think.” I took a deep breath and admitted the truth, though I’m not sure why. “I don’t know what got into me.”

  “It was almost Eric.”

  I ignored that. “I don’t sleep with men on a first date. I just felt—”

  “What?” He leaned forward, face intense.

  I searched for the word to describe my bizarre lapse of character.

  “Consumed,” I said. “I couldn’t seem to stop what was happening. I didn’t want to.”

  Chavez jumped to his feet and began to pace. “He’s some kind of incubus.”

  “Which is?”

  He paused, surprised. “You’ve never heard of an incubus?”

  “Of course. I’m just a little rusty on my demonology. Haven’t had to use it in, oh…my entire life.”

  A slight narrowing of his eyes was the only indication that he didn’t find me half as funny as I found myself. “An incubus uses sex the way the rest of us use hamburger.”

  I got some bizarre images on that one and made a face.

  “I meant an incubus feeds on sex,” Chavez muttered. “If he goes too long without it, he dies.”

  “So actually he’s just like a regular guy?”

  “Ha, ha. An incubus can also compel people to do what they normally wouldn’t. Hence your humping him in the alley.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You were going to.”

  Yeah, I was. That Eric had been a demon capable of influencing me to have sex with him explained a lot. If I could only get past the demon part.

  But I couldn’t.

  “I don’t believe any of this.”

  “You’d rather believe you were so overcome with lust for a guy you’d just met that you were not only going to bring him back to your apartment after an hour in his company, but you were perfectly willing to do him in an alley with me watching?”

  When he put it like that…

  I still didn’t believe Eric was an incubus.

  “Why did you?” I blurted.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why did you think Eric was a demon? He seemed normal to me. Does he have a tail I’m not aware of?”

  “That’s a myth. Tails on demons. Some have them, true. But not all. And not Eric.”

  “Then why him?”

  He turned away. “Trade secret.”

  I stared at his back as he studied my collection of books on ancient civilizations. Most guys took one look at them and headed for the door. I hoped he’d do the same, but no such luck.

  “Trade secret?” I repeated. “That’s convincing. Shouldn’t there be nice men in white coats searching for you somewhere?”

  He faced me again. “Are you a librarian?”

  My back stiffened as if I’d been slapped on the butt. “What?”

  I wasn’t even sure why I was insulted, except that I’d spent the better part of my afternoon off getting ready for the date from hell.

  Literally, according to Chavez.

  “You said you read books for a living.”

  “I’m an agent. I sell books to publishers.”

  “Oh.”

  Yeah, I kind of felt that way about it, too.

  “I don’t suppose you have any books on demons?”

  “What do you need a book for?”

  “Unless I know exactly what’s necessary to kill a particular type of demon, they won’t die.”

  A convenient excuse to explain why his methods didn’t produce results. I recalled reading somewhere that the insane often constructed elaborate delusions with rules that actually made sense to the not so crazy.

  “You’re the demon hunter, why don’t you have a book?”

  “There are way too many demons to fit in a single book, and I can’t exactly carry twenty or thirty books with me everywhere I go, nor memorize all the types and the methods.”

  “What are the chances that the demon you’re searching for would be listed in a book I might have?”

  “Good point.”

  “You kidnapped me because you thought I was a librarian?”

  “I kidnapped you because you had info from the demon.”

  “Now that you’ve seen it, you can leave.”

  “The book?” He gestured at the case.

  “I don’t have anything on demons. Never studied them. Wasn’t interested.”

  Disappointment trickled over his face like water down a windowpane. “You can’t help me then.”

  “You need a different kind of help than I can give you.”

  “You think I’m insane.”

  “Big time.”

  His smile was as sad as his eyes. “I hope you never have a reason to change your mind.

  He left without any further attempt to convince me that there were demons in the world. He also left without a good-bye, going straight to the front door, then closing it quietly behind him.

  After that, the night got boring.

  I certainly couldn’t sleep. So I made myself some tea and settled down to work. I had a stack of manuscripts with my name on them. I always did.

  Reading was how I spent my free time, and that wasn’t so bad. I loved books; I just hated selling them.

  I’d been an agent for two years, and I was beginning to get the drift that I wasn’t any good at it. Another depressing tidbit to add to a long list of them. What was I going to do if I didn’t do this?

  I’d come to believe that selling books was like selling a sunset or a lake or the bluest blue sky. How do you put a price on perfection?

  Whenever I found a really great story, all I wanted to do was share it with the world—at any price. Which made me a shitty agent.

  I was no good at my chosen profession. I felt as if I were letting my mother down. The only time I was happy was when I lost myself in another reality, one of adventure and romance, a life I craved but would never have.

  I turned to the stack of manuscripts I’d brought home from work. Unfortunately, the first one was more boring than peeling paint with my fingernails and did nothing to get my mind off Chavez. Interesting that I found myself unable to stop thinking about him instead of Eric.

  “Tattooed homicidal maniacs are always more fascinating than slim, blond surgeons,” I muttered.

  And why was that?

  I forced myself back to the book. One good thing, it made me sleepy. Just after midnight I gave up and went to bed.

  All the excitement had revved me up, and now I was crashing hard. Everything went black not more than an instant after my head hit the pillow.

  I had a doozy of a dream.

  The French doors opened. A breeze fluttered the curtains. The quilt waved like wind across water as it slithered off my bed. The sheets soon followed.

  My body was hot, almost feverish. I yanked off my sweat suit and lay naked to the night.

  A shadow slid from the balcony and into my room; like a spreading stain the gray darkness crept across the carpet, up the side of the bed, and spilled over me.

  I was no longer hot, but pleasantly cool, the rapidly chilling sweat causing goose bumps to rise on my skin.

  My sigh was arousal, desperation, need. Writhing, I cried out, and the shadow took the shape of a man. No more than a shade really, impossible to see who he was, or even if he was.

  The wind was a whisper all around me, a language I didn’t understand, yet words that encouraged me nonetheless. The air touched me everywhere, a caress that I welcomed.

  I’d been waiting for this all of my life. Did I mention that I was a virgin?

  The feather-light stroke of lips to the pulse at my throat, a tongue trailing over one breast, then the other, teeth grazing my nipple, then my stomach, then my thigh. Heated breath brushed the curls between my legs as a clever tongue did things that made me both limp and tense, tantalized and tortured.

  I came awake, panting and gasping, my dream orgasm still rocketing through my body. I glanced around my room and stifled a scream.

  The balcony doors were open, and a man stood on the other side.

  4

  I fumbled for the phone, knowing it was too late for 911, but I had to try. Unfortunately, at the first press of a button, the first tiny beep, the man on the balcony walked into my room.

  I dropped the phone.

  “You!”

  Chavez bent and picked up the bedspread from the floor, then calmly flipped it around my shoulders and turned away. I hadn’t gone to bed naked, but I was now. How much of that dream had been real?

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought—”

  “We’ve been over this. There aren’t any demons, Chavez. Go away.”

  “I couldn’t just let him come back and murder you.”

  I nearly dropped the bedspread. “Murder me? Since when does he want to murder me?”

  “What part of incubus didn’t you understand?”

  “The part where he kills me.”

  “He feeds off of sex.”

  “Still not hearing death anywhere in that explanation.”

  “After he’s through with the women he’s chosen, they…” He paused, stuck his fingers into his pockets, and shrugged. “They’re sucked dry.”

  “Which means?”

  “He has sex with them until they turn to dust.”

  Chavez had an answer to everything. I still wasn’t buying any of it.

  “Thanks for the info,” I said, “but you don’t need to stay. I’ll be extra careful. Besides, I’ve got great locks and an even better security system.”

  “I got in.”

  That stopped me.

  “How?”

  “Breaking and entering. The demon will have an even easier time.”

  “Because…?”

  “They can teleport.”

  “That’s it!” I pointed to the door. “I’m sick of your fairy tales.”

  “Fairies aren’t my department.”

  “Out!” I shouted.

  Chavez was unimpressed with my theatrics. His gaze wandered over the room, over me. I pulled the bedspread tighter across my breasts.

  “I wanted to watch for a while, just in case he was nearby. Then I saw someone moving around in your apartment.”

  “You mean someone like me?”

  His dark, serious eyes met mine. “Definitely not you.”

  Despite my brave words, I glanced toward the bedroom door.

  Chavez laid a hand on my arm. “I searched the place. No one’s here.”

  His touch, in my bedroom, in the night, with me wearing nothing but a blanket, should have been unnerving. Instead I found it comforting. My reactions to men tonight were nothing short of bizarre.

  “No one except you,” I muttered.

  The room was dark, his figure shadowy. I was reminded of the dream, and my skin suddenly felt too small for my body. I shifted, and he stepped back quickly, as if he didn’t want to get too close to me, almost as if he were afraid.

  I glanced up, and his eyes glittered in the small amount of light from the half moon that spilled through the open French doors. What time was it? How long had I been asleep?

  I was so confused—going from unconscious to conscious, from fear to safety, from arousal to…arousal all over again. With Chavez looming over me while I was still naked, my body humming from an orgasm that had seemed pretty real, my head spun. I swayed and he grabbed me by the shoulders.

  “Chica?”

  That voice trilled along my flesh like warm water in winter. Both familiar and foreign, I could listen to him all night.

  “Did you touch me while I was sleeping?”

  I hadn’t meant to ask that, but now that I had, I wondered.

  Instead of an answer, he kissed me, and I forgot the question.

  He was so tall my neck crackled as I leaned back, so good at kissing I automatically went onto my tiptoes to get more.

  His mouth was soft, sweet. Now that I was closer I caught the tang of the cigarette he’d no doubt been smoking on my balcony. He must have chewed gum to get rid of the taste.

  I shuddered as his tongue tested my lips. Opening, I let him all the way in. I wound my arms around his neck, and the quilt slid to the floor.

  I’d never been kissed the way Chavez kissed me, as if I were the only woman in the world, the only woman he’d ever wanted. Foolish, I know, but that’s how he made me feel, and I began to wonder, in a far corner of my mind, exactly who was the sexual demon.

  Even though my naked body was pressed against him, he did nothing but kiss me. He didn’t slide those big, hard hands over my skin, no matter how much I might want him to. In fact, when I ran my fingers across his shoulders, down his arms, I discovered he was clasping those hands behind his back as if to keep them under control.

  I don’t know how long the embrace would have continued, how far we would have gone. I was certainly in no hurry to end it. But Chavez stepped back, shook his head when I would have followed, then snatched the blanket again and covered me.

  “Lo siento,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I—”

  He glanced away, and the movement pulled the collar of his shirt in a different direction. He did have a tattoo on his breastbone, but I still couldn’t see what it was.

  My fingers touched my lips; they felt swollen, sensitive, needy. I craved the taste of his mouth.

  Was not having had sex, ever, turning me into a nymphomaniac? Although I had to say that what I’d felt while kissing Chavez had been far and away better than what I’d felt with Eric. Then I’d been out of control; this time Chavez had been.

  I liked that he had been fighting the lust. I was not the kind of girl who inspired it. When we weren’t talking incubus demon anyway.