Five-Fucking-O. Book ’em, Danno.
“This is nuts. I bet you don’t even know how to arrest someone properly.”
“Sure I do.”
“It’s not as easy as it looks. You have to know what to do, what to say, how to keep a criminal from—”
“I do.”
“Oh?” I wave him over to the mat. “This I gotta see. Show me.”
He raises a brow. When I only stand waiting patiently, he shrugs and gets up, going over to the counter. He picks up a pair of handcuffs.
Handcuffs he was practicing with or ones he had here just for fun?
He walks toward me.
God, he even walks different. His gait is loose and confident, laid-back, and incredibly sexy.
“You’re gonna have to work for this,” I say.
“What?”
I turn and take off toward his bed across the room.
“Police,” he calls out in a startlingly perfect, resonant voice. “Stop. Right. There.”
I halt without even thinking.
He comes up right behind me. “Hands in the air,” he purrs in my ear.
Oh, this is kinda hot. I can’t help myself. I spin around, throwing a punch at his chest with a loud “kiai” that would scare most men.
Arcayos’ hand shoots up, catches my arm. I kick out, and he trips me with a sweep of his leg across my knees.
I fall to the mat. He easily straddles me, turning me onto my stomach. I shout in surprise, and he captures one wrist, then the other, pulling them behind me. The cuffs clap onto my wrists, and he clicks them shut.
Breathless and panting, I’m lying there with his large frame pinning me down, his hands on my wrists, my cheek to the cool mat. This is hot as fuck.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in bed.”
I splutter a laugh.
“You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you, sweet thing?”
He sounds so convincing, it’s insane. And I love the adlib he threw in.
“Okay, I get the point,” I huff. “Take these things off now, please.”
He gives my ass a good, hearty clap and gets up.
“Arcayos, get back here! Take them off!”
“I should fuck you like that, right here.”
Oh my god. My eyes close, my whole body raging hot. “Arcayos….”
He straddles me again, unlocking the cuffs. Relief streaks through me. And disappointment.
“When I fuck you like that,” he says in my ear, “we will both need it that way. And it’s Haakon.” He swings off me.
“Hawken?” I roll over and vault to my feet.
He nods. “We’ll spell it H-A-A-K-O-N on the IDs, but it’s pronounced Hawk-en. Or Hawk.”
“It’s a good cop name, I’ll give you that. Norwegian, right?”
He nods.
“It fits you. Er, this you.”
Here and now, it hits me. He knows. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Except for the occasional slipup in his speech patterns and the use of slang, he’s not only slipped into this disguise as if he’s been using it for years, but the disguise fits him like a glove. I don’t just see it. I feel it. This is Arcayos, but he is also Haakon.
“Oh my god.” I roll my eyes. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“Done what before?”
“You’ve been undercover before.”
He smiles, showing perfect, straight white teeth, absent of fangs. The smile is so… him, and yet so human it’s baffling. His eyes sparkle.
“In a manner of speaking,” he says. “When demons are sent to Earth, they often remain in the same persona for months or even years. I never had to do that, but as the Champion of Va’halzoret, it’s part of the job. I have to behave like one of those undercover agents. Different face, different mannerisms. I have to be very good at it, or the demons I’m there to hunt would have discovered me.”
I follow him to the couches, floored. “How did you learn all that police stuff so fast?”
“There are certain powers that were granted to me when Va’halzoret knighted me. One of them is an ability to assimilate information extremely fast.”
“Like a computer?”
“Exactly.”
“But I don’t get this. If you’ve played roles like this before, how come you still talk like you’re from another time?” I take a seat in the chair. “How could you not know who Superman is? How is it you’d never seen a remote control before a few days ago?”
“We can talk about that later. More important things to cover.”
“Right.” I sigh. “This Gidan Hudar thing. Tell me how it