Such as how she liked to be touched. How she liked to be licked. And he’d shown her new things to like when she met him at a hotel the next day.
She’d never cheated on her husband, not once in their eight-year marriage. But for some reason she hadn’t been able to resist the man, who’d asked to be called Wraith.
He’d brought a money-making proposal to the table, and she’d agreed, but then, she’d have agreed to anything if he’d only give her one more orgasm.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
Startled, she opened her eyes. Darkness ringed the edges of her vision, but the pain was gone. She was bleeding out. Jagger trailed a finger down her arm. “You’re thinking about sex. With me. How it started. Your life is flashing before your eyes,” he said, and only Jagger, with his mammoth ego, would think that in her last moments she’d be thinking about him.
No, she was thinking about how she’d betrayed her husband, how sex with Wraith seemed to have triggered some sort of addictive response, and after their second encounter, she’d come home, her body pulsing, her skin hypersensitive. Any pressure at all made her womb spasm, and the tiniest vibration made her orgasm where she stood. She’d come three times on the cab ride home.
Jagger had flirted with her yet again, and in her heightened state she’d responded, had let him take her on the library floor while Kynan had been out hunting.
Guilt plagued her; she loved Kynan. But her body hadn’t felt like hers in a year, was a slave to her hormones, and although she’d craved Wraith’s touch, she couldn’t have it as often as she’d like. Hell, she’d been with him only half a dozen times. Kynan could keep up with her sex drive, but he wasn’t always around.
Jagger had been there when Kynan wasn’t.
“Don’t worry, Lori. I’ll keep the operation going. Obviously, we’ll have to move it here, unless I can take out Ky.”
“No,” she gasped.
“I have to. I can take over the cell—”
Mustering all her strength, she pulled the knife from her gut and buried it in Jagger’s.
He yelled, fell backward, and then suddenly, he was flying across the room.
Kynan.
She heard muffled grunts, bellows of rage, and the sound of fists on flesh. Her vision had dimmed to nearly nothing, so she couldn’t see, but when she heard the crack of bone, she knew someone had died.
“Lori.” Kynan’s strong hands rolled her from her side to her back. “Hold on. Please hold on.”
“No.” Weakly, she grasped his wrist. “It’s over. Just . . . know . . .” She sucked in a gurgling breath. “I did it for the cell. The money.”
“You were in league with demons for the money?”
Demons? She shook her head. “Orders came from an Elder. We caught the demons. Left them at the zoo. Money was wired into our account.”
Kynan cursed. “It wasn’t the Elders giving the orders and paying you . . . it was demons. You were taking orders from fucking demons.”
“No,” she whispered, “no.” Oh, God, to have gone through all of that, to have betrayed The Aegis, her cell, Kynan . . . for demons . . .
She shivered. “Cold . . . so . . . cold . . .”
Kynan pulled Lori into his arms as her life drained away. When he’d arrived at the house, led by the tracking signal he’d planted on Jagger at the zoo, he’d thought he hated Lori. Thought he could kill her. But when he saw her bleeding, on the verge of death, all he could think about was saving her.
As an Army medic, he’d seen it all, had breathed in the foul stench of lifeblood and bowels as he patched up guys he knew damned good and well weren’t going to make it for ten more minutes. As a Guardian, he’d sewn up wounds as horrific as any caused by IEDs. But nothing had prepared him for seeing his own wife holding in her guts with one shaking hand.
She went limp and her eyes glazed over and goddammit he wanted to cry like a fucking little girl. Instead, he set her gently on the floor. He didn’t spare a glance at Jagger’s crumpled body in the corner of the kitchen as he pulled a cell phone from his pocket. With a flick of his thumb, he popped it open.
-Thirty-nine, thirty-eight, thirty-seven . . .
He dropped the phone next to Lori and strode out of the house.
Twenty-seven
Three months later . . .
Working for Aegis demon-slayers while being a demon had, surprisingly, not caused Tayla many problems. Then again, no one but Kynan knew what she was, and she no longer hunted. Her job with the New York cell was to educate the Guardians, to teach them the difference between harmful demons and those who would rather not cause trouble.
So far, so good.