The Demon's Song - By Kendra Leigh Castle Page 0,29

been of anything.

She had to get a handle on it. Now, before she lost herself in a beautiful immortal who would never belong to anyone. Especially not to some inconsequential human.

Slowly, and with what appeared to be great effort, Phenex straightened and pulled himself together, though his eyes still burned and his breathing remained uneven. It was all Sofia could do not to close the distance between them and wrap herself back around him. Instead, she held back, her own breathing shallow, hoping her knees wouldn’t give out on her. She could still feel his mouth, his hands on her skin.

“Phenex,” she said, her voice uneven. She felt that she ought to try to explain why she’d stopped him. “I—”

“Get dressed.”

Sofia blinked, taken aback by the steel in his voice. “What?”

“Get dressed. I need a minute,” he said, and she realized that his control was only marginally better than her own at this moment. Slowly, Sofia nodded, and managed to get her feet moving without falling on her face, though it was a close call at first. Just before she vanished into her bedroom, though, he said her name in a way that made every hair on the back of her neck stand up.

“Sofia.”

She turned to see him watching her with raw desire, looking like some debauched god. For an instant, all of her synapses fried, refusing to work properly. Why was she walking away, again? And then the dark music of his voice reminded her, soft as silk, sexy as sin.

“Next time you touch me, you’d better be sure.”

The promise in those words had heat curling through her, and she could feel her cheeks flushing. Sofia nodded, afraid to speak in case the truth came out. She’d never known want like this, had never been wanted like this. She just didn’t know if she could get entangled without risking more than she was willing to lose. And until she did, they both needed to keep their hands to themselves.

Unsteady on her feet but determined, Sofia walked into her bedroom and shut the door.

Chapter Ten

Phenex managed to make it to sunset without trying to get Sofia out of her clothes, but it was hard to feel all that triumphant about it when the self-denial left him nothing but pissed off. He didn’t usually wish for a horde of demons to kill, but for once a gang of the smelly bastards would have been a welcome distraction. Cleaning up the cold bacon grease in the kitchen sure didn’t do much for him. Not when he could hear the shower going, and all he could think of was Sofia, naked.

Really, really naked. And wet.

That image had gotten him through several hours of skulking along behind her while she ran some of the world’s most boring errands. Not like she was in serious danger of a vamp attack in broad daylight at Shopmart, but Phenex couldn’t think of anything better to do. Besides, tailing her afforded him ample opportunity to stare at her ass, which so far had proven to be a pastime that never got old.

He needed something to do while she was busy being too nervous or shy or whatever her problem was to say more than three words at a time to him.

Currently, that something was sitting on the roof of Sofia’s apartment building in a shabby little seating area, playing his guitar, and trying to figure out how he was managing to screw this up so fast and so completely. So far, he hadn’t maimed or killed anyone, and his pants hadn’t burst into flames. How was that not a win?

Phenex lounged in an old plastic chair, strumming his guitar as the sky turned to fire and wondering why, exactly, he’d felt that dragging along after Sofia Rivera was a good use of his time. He’d given up toying with humans centuries ago—they were too emotional, too needy, too breakable, too everything. And yet here he was.

Letting her see how hungry he was for her had been a mistake. Phenex could see that now. He should have tried to hold back a little, at least right off the bat. The woman had only barely accepted him being around. Showing off his claws and fangs could have waited. The problem was, he hadn’t been able to control it. Before today, he’d thought that all his centuries of life had dulled his capacity for experiencing true need, intense pleasure. For fully experiencing anything, really, except the feeling his music gave him.