Ill Wind

As I hunted around for clues, I discovered he'd left me a present. There was a bikini laid out neatly on the bed. Turquoise, teeny, outrageously daring. I stared at it, baffled; the hotel gift shop was long-ago closed, and I hadn't rescued any clothes of my own; surely David wasn't in the habit of carrying around a thing like that in his pocket.

I remembered the beautiful blue jewel of the pool below and the quietly bubbling hot tub. Ah. Of course. The invitation was silent, but it was there. I could either accept or crawl in bed and go to sleep.

I dropped the towel and put the two tiny pieces on. It fit like it had been made for me. Which, I knew, it had been. It had that aura about it, that warmth of David's skin.

I checked it in the mirror.

It was… the perfect bikini.

I grabbed a hotel towel and the key card, and went to find him.

David was sitting in the hot tub. Bare-chested, eyes like shimmering copper that got brighter when he saw me. I laid my towel and key on a nearby table. He held out his hand to help me down the steps into the hot, silken water. I eased in slowly, one inch at a time; it felt like I was dissolving, all my worries and cares bubbling away. The kindest acid in the world. I sank down to my neck, then back up, slowly, gliding closer to him.

"Ground rules," I said. "Don't you ever threaten me again, or I'll bind you all right, I'll bind you into a bottle of drain cleaner and bury you at the bottom of a landfill. If you're lucky, some archeologist might dig you up in a few thousand years."

His hair was damp at the ends, dark and curling. I lifted my hand and touched it, trying to comb the curls back under control, but my fingers weren't interested in his hair, not really; they glided down to the smooth, hot landscape of his skin. Down the column of his throat, to that sexy bird's-wing sweep of his pectoral muscles, and I felt him tensing in a slow, pleasurable way.

"I'm going to die," I said. The tension turned dark. "No, it's okay. If I can die and take this bastard thing with me, I'm doing the world a favor."

"No." His eyes burned, shimmered, not human and not concealing it. Somehow, that made the absolute humanity of his body that much more powerful. He was human because… because he wanted to be human. Because of me. "You can't."

I put a damp finger on his lips. "Ground rules, David. You don't tell me what I can and can't do. If you like me even a little bit, you'll let me have this freedom, okay?"

His hand came out of the water and traced the line of my bare shoulder. Where he touched, shivers followed. God, such a touch… caramel warmth, spreading through me like a slow orgasm. Maybe it wasn't magic, but it felt that way. Felt… bewitching.

I felt him surrender to it, too.

"I don't like you," he said. "Like has no pulse. No fever. No fire." His right hand came out of the water now, joined the left in gliding up my shoulders, my neck. I could feel my pulse pounding wildly. Both my hands on his chest now, mapping the golden territory of his body. "Like isn't what I feel for you. It never was."

Our lips met, slowly. Damp, hot, hungry. He tasted darkly exotic, like a fruit from deep in an undiscovered jungle. Jets from the tub pushed us closer together, closer, until all that was separating us was the practically nonexistent fabric of my bikini and whatever he might have been wearing under the bubbles. It felt deeply right, utterly wrong. Forbidden. Natural. Perfect.

He'd been so careful to stay in control, but now I could feel the fire in him, wild and raging like a nuclear core. His hands touched my breasts and traced the hard outlines of my nipples under the water, and the bikini might as well have been imaginary, the way my nerves caught fire. I didn't want to ever stop kissing him, but I had to breathe; when I pulled back for a gasp of air, he let me do it, and a necessary rush of sanity came between us.

"A little too public," I managed to say, between deep breaths. His hands were still on my breasts under the water, thumbs gently caressing thickened, aching nipples under thin turquoise fabric. His eyes weren't anything like human now; they were glorious, alien, beautiful beyond anything I'd ever imagined. I couldn't fathom how I'd ever mistaken him for just a guy, no matter what kind of magic he'd worked.

"Don't worry," he murmured. His voice was deeper now, richer, almost a purr. He drifted closer again, put his lips right next to my ear. "They can't see us."

There were jacketed hotel employees at the desk right beyond the windows, chatting among themselves. Nobody looked in our direction. A grumpy-looking businessman wheeled his suitcase past and didn't spare us so much as a glance.

David put one finger under the stretch turquoise fabric of my top and pulled me right up against him. I couldn't stop touching him, tracing the hard, yielding planes of his chest, the flat ridges of his stomach. My hand slid down, and I felt a thin layer of waterlogged fabric gathered at his waist.

"If they can't see us," I breathed into his mouth, "get rid of the bathing suit."

Before the words left my lips, there was nothing under my fingers but wet skin. Nothing to hold me back.

David braced himself on the ledge, watching me with those unbelievable eyes the color of burning pe

"Is this against the rules?" I asked. I grabbed the edge of the hot tub, one hand on either side of him, and straddled his lap. "Tell me this is against the rules. It feels too good to be legal."

His voice was a hot, breathless growl. "You refused to bind me—I don't have to tell you anything. Ah!…"

He was hard as steel, hot as fire, and he felt so good going in that I shuddered and collapsed against him, holding him in me and feeling life pulsing between us. "Tell me," I whispered. His breath was fast and hot against my neck.

"It's forbidden," he said. "And it's stupid. I need to—to stay—don't—"

"Don't what?" I moved my hips slowly, a liquid circle, and felt him tense against me. "Don't do this?"

His hands came up, gliding up over my breasts, my neck, to hold my face like something precious and fragile. No more words. No more anger. We lost ourselves, fire and water dissolving into each other in a perfect union of opposites, and when I cried out, it was into his mouth, and all his strength, all his magic didn't keep him from joining me.

At the very second that I was completely alive, completely alight, I felt the Demon Mark make its move, like a taloned hand clenching around my heart. I came crashing back to reality with a jolt like electrocution, and the sensation of being violated, being ripped away from him, was so real that I panicked. Lost control. Lost myself. I felt it pushing deeper in me, pulsing like some terrible child, and on the outside David's strength kept me from going under the water, but I was convulsing, crying out, and all the fire in the world couldn't melt the ice forming in me, forming in sharp angles and ridges and forming into…

"No!" I heard him say, and there was helpless pain and fury in it. Not just flesh, not just fire—passion. "Stay with me. Don't let go!"

My body was going limp, shutting down, all my resources turned inward against the invader. Was this how it had been for Bad Bob? Had it really hurt this much? God, I didn't want to hurt. I wanted to go back to that warm, sweet place in heaven, go back to David's arms.