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  Demon’s Kiss

  V.J. Devereaux

  Book 1 in the Demon Allure series.

  Gabriel Nicholas is kidnapped and dragged into a vast underground chamber. Spotlighted in the center of that room is something—someone?—quite unbelievable. He’s also, without doubt, the most magnificent specimen of masculine beauty Gabriel has ever seen. He is absolutely stunning.

  Despite the circumstances, Gabriel burns to touch all that gorgeous, gleaming skin—a living palette of shifting red and black. She wants to run her fingers through his silken ebony hair, feel those strong hands on her flesh…feel that sinuous tail twine around her body.

  He is Asmodeus, the Demon of Lust. He is legend come to life. Able to shift from demon to human form, Asmodeus must feed on sex and the blood of women to sustain his power. Gabriel has been brought here for him. To slake his every need. But she soon realizes Asmodeus is just as much a captive as she is.

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  www.ellorascave.com

  Demon’s Kiss

  ISBN 9781419931239

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Demon’s Kiss Copyright © 2011 V.J. Devereaux

  Edited by Pamela Campbell

  Cover art by Dar Albert

  Electronic book publication January 2011

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Demon’s Kiss

  V.J. Devereaux

  Dedication

  To Laura, who believed in this story from the beginning.

  And to my beloved husband, for his patience, understanding and sense of humor.

  Chapter One

  It happened so fast Gabriel had no time to react, barely enough time for her heart to sink, to feel the sting of sharp regret for all the things she had not done and bitter recrimination at having let her guard down. It was late and she was tired from a long day at work. Something had changed recently on one of her ongoing cases but she had yet to figure out what it was so she was distracted. She was also in her own apartment building where she should have been safe. None of that mattered—she should have been more alert.

  No place was safe. No place. She knew that.

  Even as she stepped out of the elevator and registered the movement, the presences, even as she dropped the groceries she held in her arms, she knew it was too late for her to draw her own weapon. A gun was already pointing at her.

  She’d made a lot of enemies over the years but few of them were brave enough, or crazy enough, to risk this.

  It was still happening though.

  Will I register the report before I die? she wondered. She heard a sharp pfft and felt a sting at her throat. A dart?

  They weren’t there to kill her, at least not right away. She had enough time for a flash of horror before darkness closed in.

  That was the last thing she remembered until men hauled her roughly to her feet and half carried, half dragged her out of an unfamiliar room. None of them said a word. There were far too many of them—those silent men, all of them armed—for her to fight alone.

  Dazed, groggy from the drug, she registered that she was somewhere other than her apartment building as she tried to regain her feet, to gain some sort of control. Her weapon and badge were missing. The gun’s familiar weight was absent at her hip, her badge was gone from her waist. She still wore the suit she had worn when they took her.

  The ceiling of the vast chamber the men dragged Gabriel into arched so high above them it disappeared into the shadows cast by the spotlights.

  Those lights speared down to an enormous circular stage. She had a vague sense of stadium-style seating that arched in a great half-circle around that stage but she couldn’t see it for the brightness of the lights. From the shadows, a voice chanted steadily and monotonously.

  Gabriel shook her head to try to clear it.

  The stage area captured her attention. She was transfixed, riveted by what she saw there. Her heart seemed to stop.

  Spotlighted in the center of that vast chamber was, without question, the most magnificent specimen of masculine beauty she had ever seen in her life.

  A rush of heat raced from her head to her toes.

  He was absolutely, stunningly gorgeous.

  And impossible.

  Tall, he had to top at least six foot six, give or take an inch or so, and every single one of those marvelous inches was beautifully muscled. The firm curves of those muscles gleamed as if they had been oiled. His chest and shoulders were broad, his pecs deeply curved and his stomach gave a new definition to washboard abs. His waist and hips were narrow, every muscle in them, including his obliques, sharply defined. Even his legs were gorgeous.

  Hair as dark and glossy as a raven’s wing streamed as smooth and straight as a ruler to his broad shoulders, framing a face that might have been carved by a master sculptor. Every line was clean, perfect, from his broad forehead to his high cheekbones with their deep hollows, from his finely bridged nose to the defined line of his square jaw. His mouth was a thing of beauty—firm, neither too thin nor too lush. There would probably be dimples if he smiled.

  Completely naked from the top of his horned head to his clawed feet, it was impossible for her to miss any part of him.

  That included the horns, short and curved, that sprang from his forehead, and the sinuous tail that twined like a restless cat’s around his body. That tail was smooth except for the end where it flared into a dull point. The motion of it was oddly hypnotic, catching the eye as it twined and swayed.

  A pair of partially folded wings arched up from his back.

  His skin was a deep red color—not copper, but red—a rich, dark scarlet, like the guy from that demon movie and yet not. There were odd patterns of black that shifted and flowed beneath the surface, reminding her of a chameleon. But, unlike a chameleon, his skin appeared to be as smooth and glossy as satin. Those patterns in his skin changed constantly, the shift of the colors beneath it apparently reflected his agitation—none of which showed on his impassive face but was echoed instead in every taut line of his incredible body.

  Beautiful, long-lashed eyes the color of rubies touched with molten gold met hers and reflected kindness, an ancient, ageless wisdom and an anger so intense it was nearly scorching. The patterns of red and gold within those eyes shifted and whirled entrancingly, enticingly and furiously.

  That rage was not directed at her.

  He had fangs, the faint white tips indenting his lower lip in a way that seemed oddly sexy. Her body responded automatically to the sight of them. She could almost feel them pierce her skin. Warmth flooded her.

  Both his hands and feet bore claws the color of polished jet. Those hands were
huge, beautiful, the fingers long but strong.

  Rough iron bracelets etched with runes encircled his wrists. Something about them said they were not decoration though.

  He also had the biggest cock she had ever seen and every rampant inch of it was fully erect.

  Despite the circumstances, despite what he was, just to look at all the magnificent masculine glory made Gabriel burning hot and wet. A part of her yearned to touch all that gorgeous, gleaming skin. Something about him made her want to run her fingers through that silken, ebony hair, to have those strong, clawed hands on her flesh and that sinuous tail twining around her body as it now twined around his— even though what she saw spotlighted in the middle of the floor was, frankly, incredible and impossible.

  Because he was, without a doubt and to all appearances, a demon—horns, forked tail and all.

  A beautiful and incredibly sexy demon.

  There was only one problem—demons didn’t exist. They weren’t real.

  But one clearly stood before her, living and breathing.

  Beautiful.

  As incredibly beautiful as the fallen angels that demons were reputed to be.

  To her stunned astonishment, she found she wanted him more than she had ever wanted any man and with an intensity she had never experienced. Her pussy throbbed, ached. Even given the daunting size of his cock, she wanted it, wanted him, inside her.

  She’d had lovers, men she had thought she’d loved, even some she had ached for, but something had always been missing.

  Not like this. It had never been like this…this…raging desire.

  A matching hunger radiated from him like heat from an oven, even at that distance.

  Embedded around him in the gleaming, black marble floor of the massive, shadowed chamber were concentric circles in iron, copper and silver. As Gabriel had learned in the course of her career, those were the metals of magic. Between and around each circle, glyphs and symbols, some of which she recognized. Some of them made her skin crawl. They were etched deeply into the marble.

  She recognized instantly, from her reading, that it was a magic circle—a cage, a trap.

  Gabriel was aware of a sense of power in the room, of the demon’s power—chained, banked. She sensed another powerful presence, or presences, outside the rings but hidden within the shadows.

  It was also clear that, demon or not, he was as captive as she. A monstrous iron chain led from a shackle around his ankle to a bolt in the floor.

  Proud as he was—that pride was visible in every line of his strong body, his stance a study in defiance even in the face of defeat—and as strong as he was, being chained, being bound to this place, had to be agony, had to be infuriating. In every line of his magnificent body she could see his rage, see how he longed to be free.

  Though he wasn’t supposed to be real, Gabriel couldn’t deny what she saw before her eyes, and her heart went out to him in his pride and his defiance. If for no other reason than that she shared it—the rage, the fury and the helplessness—as hard hands held her prisoner too, with her wrists twisted up behind her back, her shoulders screaming in agony that she would not show.

  From the darkness she sensed a signal.

  Without fanfare or warning, the men who held her threw her across the room. They shoved her so hard that she staggered across the marble floor and stumbled across those circles etched into it. Power of some kind prickled her skin as she passed over each one, like the moment before a lightning storm. Alien sounds and smells assaulted her as she passed over those rings. Her senses reeled with chaotic visions, images. An atavistic shiver of terror went over her at the thought of what might happen if she stopped between those protective rings.

  The demon reached out and caught her. His strong hands closed around her arms. He seemed to know the damage he could do with them for his touch was firm but gentle.

  Gabriel clasped her hands around powerful forearms that were like satin-covered steel as he steadied her, her own fair skin almost shockingly white against the deep red of his. In his luminous eyes she saw a flash of helpless fury and despair. She had a powerful sense of a deep hunger and sharp regret, of honor somehow violated.

  Something in those glowing eyes called to her, kindred spirit to kindred spirit. Here was strength not just of body but of spirit and character too, a nobility that was ingrained in him, etched in blood and bone and sinew.

  It was clear to her that he struggled with himself. It was there in the swirling patterns of his eyes, in the shadows that moved beneath his smooth, smooth skin, and in the tightness of his muscles.

  He hungered. It was apparent in every line of him, in that tension.

  Even so, looking up into his preternaturally beautiful face as her hands closed over the strength of his arms, as she inhaled the intensely masculine scent of him, the truth of him struck her with a visceral punch that echoed through every atom of her body in a surge of desire so intense it nearly made her cry out. Her pussy clenched, went hot and tight.

  Their eyes met and it felt to Gabriel as if the world shifted, tilted, a sudden tectonic shift of the soul, before it righted itself and everything fell into place once again as their gazes locked.

  All Asmodeus had seen from the moment the newcomers entered the room was the woman, her silver hair so bright against the shadows and the black armor of the men. Shock reverberated through him and with it came a sharp flare of recognition. Desire and need came suddenly, powerfully. At that short distance, the brilliant lights around him made details difficult but he could tell she was lovely, he could sense she was strong in body, mind and spirit. His empathy echoed with her warrior’s soul. Her features were too youthful for the streaming silver waves of her hair, her body too limber, her lush breasts still high and full.

  His hunger spiked and raged within him, nearly too strong to deny as she collided against him, all that lovely pale skin glowing beneath the lights, her bright spirit piquant to his senses. The scent of her instinctive arousal at the sight of him was a goad that gave spur to his hunger, set it against his will to drown it. Her skin was so soft—as soft as rose petals—beneath his hands.

  He had not touched any woman, much less one such as she, for millennia.

  The chant battered him.

  His will had been weakened by starvation, by the torment and isolation. It was all tangled up inside him. He hated this but he could not fight both the compulsion of his hunger and the compulsion that those who held them had set on him. Or the desire, the need, that sparked instantly at the sight of her, at the sense of her. And now at the scent of her as it rose to overwhelm him.

  He needed and she was the answer to that need, to all his needs. If she had protested…struggled…he would have fought, tried to deny himself, to find a way, somehow, to fight his need, his hunger, but she did not. Eyes as blue as the sky of this plane darkened instead with a like desire as they met his, her fine mouth softened as she swayed involuntarily toward him. His hunger surged almost uncontrollably.

  He hated it, hated the circumstances but he could give her and himself that much. Those around them would not watch as he answered his raging hunger. He would take his punishment as it came—and come it would, he knew—with no regrets. A master of fire, even the iron bracelets they put on him could not thwart him completely and he had just energy enough for the magic to do it.

  Firepots appeared and smoke spiraled as it and the sharp scent swirled around them.

  Need raged within him, nearly overwhelmed him. His fangs dropped, extended.

  In one motion he turned her, clasped her against his body, his erection pressed hard against her bottom and lower back. One arm went across her chest. His hand automatically curled around one sweetly full breast and tightened there. The other hand caught a handful of her hair and drew her head swiftly to one side.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I cannot… I must…” As quick as a cobra, he struck, his sharp fangs sinking deep into the curve of her shoulder and throat.

  He
r blood filled his mouth.

  Asmodeus shuddered with pleasure as she trembled in his arms. His own need surged as his venom spurted into her, as his tongue flicked over her. The venom that would prepare her body for him, to allow him to feed from her, and then all thought vanished.

  That first taste of her, of her soft, fragrant skin, nearly destroyed him.

  And in that first taste he knew. He knew what she would be to him, what she was to him. Mate, companion, the one he had waited so long to claim but could not. The one who, in the long exile of his people, he’d never thought to find.

  Hope, impossibly, filled him.

  He longed to touch. He needed her soft skin beneath his hands. When she quivered, his battered control nearly snapped, conscious thought was all but gone. All that existed was her, the sweet scent of her, her warm body in his arms.

  Those few short words were all the warning Gabriel had, his voice a deep basso rumble that echoed in her bones and in it a deep, abiding sorrow that resonated in her soul. There was a brief moment of apprehension, surprise. For all her training, it happened so fast she had no chance to protest or struggle and a traitorous part of her didn’t want to. She didn’t resist, didn’t even try, as an unexpected anticipation sent a surge of heat through her.

  Pain, as bright and piercing as an arrow, speared through her as his teeth pierced her skin to sink into muscle. A brief flash of fear, then fear and pain were gone like vapor and in their place was the astonishingly brilliant heat that flamed beneath her skin. It seared through her bloodstream to set her afire as it raced through her body from her head to her toes. She arched as the heat of it scorched through her. Had his bite injected something into her body?

  Gabriel ached, she burned, she needed desperately to be touched and to have him touch her.