Embraced (The Eternal Balance #2)(4)
Her voice dropped. She shifted, rubbing against me, and I clenched my jaw tight. “But we’re supposed to be partners, correct?”
“Correct,” I confirmed tightly.
“And we live together. So, us spending time together obviously isn’t against the rules.” She wrapped an arm around my neck and pulled my head down so that our foreheads touched. “That’s all we’re doing here. Spending time…”
Something inside me cracked. I brought my lips to her earlobe, skimming the smooth skin. “Do you get off on pushing me?” I growled. My own colors swirled, a maelstrom of deep red and orange that mingled with hers. “Testing the limits of my restraint?”
My arms encircled her, hands sliding down to her ass. I gripped hard, pulling her into me, and a shock of sensation hit like lightning. Pain roared to life in my muscles. When I was close to Sam, I was happy. Azi didn’t do happy. It caused the demon pain, which also caused me pain. It wasn’t as bad as it used to be, but it was still there. I didn’t care, though. Neither did the demon. We both wanted nothing more than to be close to her.
She shimmied and a soft laugh escaped her lips. “What would you do if I said ye—”
I crushed my lips to hers. The demon rumbled, triumphant. I’d never been one to welsh on a deal, but I just didn’t give a shit. It would have been easy to blame my lack of restraint on Azi. Since the night Sam and I had sex, it had been pushing for more, making me desperate to a point that I found myself watching her move across a room, counting the ways I could take her, all the things I could do.
Sam moaned into my mouth. The sound was like ten thousand jolts of electricity hitting at once, and it pushed me over the edge. I thrust myself against her, sending waves of current pulsating through my body. I pulled away for a second, mouth lingering at her ear again. With a dark laugh, I whispered, “I’d say it was a good way to get yourself fu—”
A rushing sensation filled my head. The link Sam had unwittingly created between us flared to life, bringing about a moment—what we’d started calling the visions that sometimes came from our contact. She stood at the window of her old room in her Aunt Kelly’s house. She stared at the house next door, the window across from hers dark and silent. Tears slid down her cheeks. The sadness she felt was overwhelming, strong enough to make me cringe.
Reality came crashing back, and I made a move to pull away. I didn’t get the chance.
The stairs creaked, followed by the steady echo of footsteps. Sam jerked away and gasped. “Oh my God.”
“Not quite,” said an ominously familiar voice.
Chapter Two
Sam
I stumbled away from Jax, who’d thrown a protective arm in front of me.
“But that’s probably a good thing.” Chase, Jax’s mirror image, stood by the door with his arms folded. He wiggled a finger between us and winked—a comfortable, familiar gesture that almost made me forget he was the enemy. “I heard this was a no-no.”
I swallowed the newly formed lump in my throat. A part of me wanted to reach out and pinch him to see if he was real. Because he couldn’t be, right? Lies, attempted murder, and all-around chaos… He’d have to be a special kind of moron to show his face here after what he’d done.
Or, be packing a serious advantage.
Jax wasn’t the only Flynn sporting a dark side. His twin brother Chase’s demon, Zenak, was Azi’s sworn enemy. A pair of demon royals, their pissing contest went a little too far once, and they’d been exiled to spend eternity trapped in a continuous string of human bodies.
The Flynn boys had fought a battle of apocalyptic proportions, but Chase, the sneaky bastard, linked himself to me—a parasitic and creeptastic bond that made him untouchable. I’d had to essentially commit suicide in order for Jax to defeat him.
Backing away, I tried not to flinch. I’d known the two boys since I was six. Chase was every inch the predator Jax was. He could smell weakness from a mile away. “Why ever you’re here, just forget it…”
“Let me guess.” Chase unfolded his arms and waggled his finger at the floor. “He was helping you find your contact lens, right?”
From the look on Jax’s face, he was about to reach critical mass. If it’d been anyone else, he might have ripped into flesh and asked questions later, but he had a bit more restraint when it came to his brother. Not because of some sappy fraternal bond, but because Chase’s death—or his own—would herald a demonic apocalypse. The standoff—hell, the whole demonic war—defined a no-win situation. Not that either brother would back down.
Jax made a noise low in his throat and dragged me behind him. “Chase—”
He threw his hands in the air and shook his head. “Peace, brother. I’m not here to make trouble.”
“Kind of hard to believe,” I mumbled.
“So is the fact that you’re here.” Chase folded his arms, cocky grin still in place. It was hard to reconcile that this was the enemy standing in front of me and not one of my closest friends. When Jax left home, Chase had been my rock, the shoulder I cried on and the support that made it possible for me to move forward with my life. But mind control and attempted murder tended to ruin a friendship. “Pretty sure the last time I saw you, you were dead.”