She’d had crappy luck with people throughout her life, but it had all been worth it to find him.
Without warning, they were tearing at each other’s clothes. She grabbed his basketball-style sweats, easy to rip off if he needed to shift, and yanked. Buttons broke free and the fabric came away. He already had her jeans over her hips, reaching between her thighs and kneading her just right. She moaned against his lips, wrapping her fingers around his velvety shaft, desperate to have him inside of her.
“Alpha,” Steve yelled down the hall.
Charity barely heard him as Devon pushed aside the crotch of her panties and stroked his fingers up her slit.
“Alpha, we got company, and it ain’t human.”
Devon shoved forward, trapping Charity against the wall, his kisses wild and desperate. His fingers worked inside her before he stepped back and ripped her around. She braced her palms against the wall and bent, giving him access.
“I want you so bad,” she said, her sex swollen and her body on fire. “Devon, please.”
“Devon, you back there?” Urgency crept into Steve’s voice.
Devon’s hand tightened on Charity’s shoulder as he held her put. The tip of his cock parted her folds before he paused, breathing heavily.
“Fuck!” he yelled as he stepped back, misery and regret ringing through that one word. The next moment, his fist went through the wall. He pulled back and punched it again before slamming his palm against it a couple of times.
“We can’t do this now, Charity,” he said in a strangled voice. “I love you more than words can say. I will always do what’s best for you. But damn it, as much as I want to, I cannot fuck you right now.”
Another wave of heat ripped through her core, and she moaned, still braced against the wall. It took all of her effort not to say the thing she knew would break his resolve: Please, Devon, please fuck me.
“Boss, you all right?” Steve called. “We got a lower-level demon ambling up the street. We need some direction out here. This old drunk dude is waking up, too. Not sure what you want to do with him. I’d be happy to pull his arms off, if you want.”
“Tell them to hold. And leave Walt for now. I’ll be right there,” Devon yelled, sweat beading on his forehead and his chest heaving. He bent and grabbed up his sweats, his eyes snagging on her nudity. “Being an alpha has never been as hard as it is at this moment,” he murmured, turning away.
It was that comment that dragged her out of the fog. That comment that grounded her.
She smiled through the pain of her mother’s abandonment, running a finger over the package in her pocket. She’d gotten through this once, and she’d get through it again. This time, though, she had a man by her side who was every bit as strong as she was.
“We can handle a demon in our sleep,” she said, pulling up her pants as Devon secured the buttons on his sweats.
“Each of the three new wol—shifters could, too. This is going to be a play for authority.” He gritted his teeth and glanced around the room. “We should head out. How much longer do you need?”
She shook her head. “I’ll just check my desk and under my bed. That’s it. There’s nothing here.”
He stepped into the hall and glanced around. “Is there a back door?” He glanced at her window. “Will you be okay if I go to the front of the house?”
“I’ll be fine. These windows have bars, if you hadn’t noticed, and the back door has been swelled shut since before I left. I’m good.”
He nodded and took a step before pausing. He put his hand on the frame of the door and grinned. “Don’t be too long. I might need a heavy hitter to subdue these new shifters. I’d fight them myself, but I just got my nails polished.”
She laughed as she strode over to the bed. A couple of pieces of torn paper lay on the orange carpet under the edge of the mattress. Upon closer inspection, they were from a torn-up photograph. She could make out the leg of a man in one piece, and half a baby’s body in the other. Her as a baby and Walt, maybe? She certainly would have left such a picture behind, and she could even understand him ripping it up, but why were two fragments in her room? If he’d