Dates From Hell

Quickly I threw on my sweats, grabbed my glasses, and hurried through the darkened apartment. In the kitchen I reached for the light switch, and someone grabbed my hand.

I drew a deep breath to shriek, and another hand slapped over my mouth. This was happening to me with far too much regularity lately.

“Did you think I’d let you go?”

The voice wasn’t Eric’s. Come to think of it, the guy was too tall to be Eric. His body was pressed to the length of mine and then some.

Whoever he was, he really, really liked me.

I tried to speak, but he tightened his hold, pulling my neck backward until I thought he might break it. I went silent; I had no choice.

“You’re mine now. I need what only you can give.”

He kissed my neck, scraped the throbbing vein with his teeth. A weird lethargy came over me. My blood seemed to thicken and slow; my pulse beat in my ears as if I’d been ru

I was suddenly free—to scream, to fight, to escape. I did none of those things. Instead, I turned around and flicked on the lights.

As I’d suspected, the man in my kitchen wasn’t Eric. I’d never seen him before. Taller, broader, his hair was dark blond, his eyes brown.

He shrugged out of his shirt. The garment slid down his arms and spilled onto the floor.

His skin was glaring white, like marble, the muscles shifting and bunching as he moved. I was seized with a sudden urge to lick every one of them as he rose above me, came into me, took me over and over, until I—

I shook my head, hard, tempted to slam it against the countertop until I found myself again.

“Wh-who are you?” I asked.

“You know.”

His fingers slid down his chest, caressing himself, lowering to the zipper that bulged over an erection my mouth went dry at the notion of seeing.

The sound of the zipper being opened made me start so violently my skin tingled.

“You’ll die willingly in my arms,” he whispered. “They always do.”

As if from a long way off, I heard his words, puzzled over them, discarded any unease. The sex would be amazing. I’d come screaming. I’d beg him to do me again, and he would. He’d keep at it until I was—

Chavez loomed behind him. His presence brought me back to myself, so when he snapped, “Get down!” I did, hitting the floor just as a sheet of flame streaked from his hand.

I cried out as the strange man in my kitchen, the one I’d been willing to screw seven ways from Sunday, became a burning ball of fire.

My smoke detector went off; the sprinklers rained water on us all. The man, whose name I didn’t know, stopped burning. There wasn’t a mark on him.

He stared at Chavez. “You again.”

“Me always.”

The stranger turned to me.

“We aren’t finished,” he said.

And then he disappeared.

5

“You believe me now?” Chavez asked as we dripped all over the carpet from the kitchen into the living room.

He’d turned off the alarm, which had shut down the sprinklers, while I called security and lied. “I burned some toast.”

No one asked why I was making toast at 3 A.M. One of the perks of living in a building like this—money not only got you attention, it got you left alone.

“The guy disappeared.” My voice sounded as dazed as I felt. “Poof.”

Chavez gave me a slight push, and I collapsed onto the couch. Water darkened his hair, ran down his cheekbones, dotted his eyelashes. “Towels?”

“Hall closet.”

He retrieved a stack, divided them, and sat in a chair as he began to dry his hair.

“That wasn’t Eric,” I said.

“No.”

“He also wasn’t human.”

“No. Shape-shifter most likely.”

I tried not to gape, but failed.

“Like a werewolf?”

“In a way. Demons shift into different people. Werewolves change from a man, or a woman, into a wolf, then back again.”

“You say that as if they exist.”

He lifted a brow.

I lifted my hand. “I don’t want to know.”

Chavez went silent for a moment, then said slowly, “Why did he come back?”

“I’m irresistible?”

“Sure, but…” He trailed off.

I was still stuck on sure. Was he being a smart-ass? And why did I care? Why did my chest, which had felt like a cow was sitting on it, suddenly feel like butterflies were twirling merrily inside?

Because of that damn kiss. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

But I had to. Maybe he wasn’t crazy anymore, actually he never had been, but that only meant he was a demon hunter. He was so not for me.

“He’s an incubus,” Chavez murmured, thinking out loud. I yanked my eyes and my mind from his mouth and listened. “He needs sex to live. But there are a million plus women in this city. Why not get it somewhere else?”

“Yeah, why not?”

His head tilted. “What did he say to you?”

“That we weren’t finished. He needed something only I could give.”

“What?”

“Got me.”

I was new at the whole sexual demon gig.

“If I can discover why he’s obsessed with you, I might be able to figure out exactly what kind of incubus he is.”

“There’s more than one kind?”

Chavez nodded. “The heading incubus covers a wide range of sex-feeding demons. Each one of those has its own particular method of death.”

“Terrific,” I muttered.

“As soon as I know exactly what he is, I can find out how to kill him.” His dark eyes met mine. “You’ll be safe as soon as I kill him.”

Fu

An hour later we’d cleaned up the apartment, cleaned up ourselves. I was dry and dressed. Unfortunately, so was Chavez. I’d kind of enjoyed the short period when he’d worn nothing but a towel around his waist and another looped around his neck as his clothes tumbled around the dryer with mine.

We sat in the living room, lights blaring against the remnants of the night. I’d made the promised coffee, and we both sipped from the largest travel mugs I had in my cupboard. I needed more sleep, but since I wasn’t going to get it, I’d have more coffee.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

He glanced up. “We?”

“We,” I said firmly. “I don’t plan to sit around waiting to be demon raped.”

His hands jerked, sloshing hot liquid very near the rim. “He won’t rape you; he’ll make you want him.”

“Make being the operative word. Even if I think I want him, I really don’t. Which means he’s raping my mind as well as my body.”

I set down the cup. My hands had begun to shake at the thought of what was after me, of my complete lack of control whenever it came near.

“I want him dead.” I lifted my chin. “Preferably last week.”

“Okay,” Chavez murmured, staring at me with newfound respect. “I guess it’s we.”

“What do we do now?” I repeated.

“You know where Eric lives?”

“No. And he wasn’t supposed to know where I lived, either. That’s the beauty of Internet dating.”

“Not exactly. If you know what you’re doing, an address is pretty easy to find. Can I use the computer?”

Moments later, we had Eric Leaventhall’s address on the Upper East Side.

“Let’s pay him a visit.” Chavez glanced at the window. The sun was just coming up. “We’ve got only so many hours of daylight.”

“What difference does daylight make?”

“Dark spirits arise at sunset.”

“Seems like there’s too much evil in the world all day to have demons only available at night.”

“Just because the demon is sleeping doesn’t mean it isn’t still whispering.”

Which actually explained quite a lot.

Not too long afterward, we paused on the sidewalk opposite Eric’s building. He had a doorman, too.

“Now what?” I asked, but Chavez was already cutting across the street.

I hurried after him, catching up as he slipped around the corner and headed for the service entrance.

Chavez stopped and handed me a pair of plastic gloves. After do