Demon Moon

DEMON MOON

Cameron Dane

® www.loose-id.com

Warning This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

***** This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable.

Demon Moon Cameron Dane This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Loose Id LLC 1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924 Carson City NV 89701-1215 www.loose-id.com

Copyright © October 2007 by Cameron Dane All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59632-564-7 Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

Printed in the United States of America

Editor: C. B. Calsing Cover Artist: April Martinez

Dedication This is for B. Until I can give you Sawyer, Connor is all for you. Couldn't have done this without your support. Love you lots, CD

Prologue

She watched her boss from the door of the tack room as he put his gear away, her eyes devouring his wide, strong back, concealed from her hungry gaze by a faded blue westernyoke shirt. Her gaze drifted lower and lingered on his tight buttocks, appreciating this secret view of him while he worked. He moved with incredible agility for such a big man, and his long cowboy legs never hindered his grace. He took her very breath away, and one of these days, he was going to open his eyes and see her as a woman for the very first time. Her palms grew moist just thinking about it. “You gonna stand there all day and gawk?” his voice shot through the silence, startling her upright and away from the doorjamb. “Or are you going to get your pretty ass in here and give me a hand?” “I didn’t think you ever needed a hand with anything, Connor.” She teased him to conceal her own embarrassment at being caught staring. Unable to stop herself though, she moved into the tack room and sidled around his big body, a small smile on her lips. She sat down on the narrow cot, a necessity used by any number of the people on Hawkins’ Ranch staff when foaling season was in full force. She leaned back on her hands and turned her face

Cameron Dane

2

up to Connor’s. “You don’t really want my help, anyway. You always want to do everything on your own.” Connor’s dark gaze flashed with black fire. “Normally, I don’t, but maybe I need to make an exception with you, Cassandra. If I put you to work every time I catch you spying on me, you might be less inclined to do it so often.” Cassie felt her cheeks flood with heat as Connor’s little comment hit too close to home. Her gaze did have a terrible tendency to follow Connor whenever he was nearby. Her core usually started pulsing low and deep between her legs whenever he was around. When he called her Cassandra, her heart skittered wildly in her chest. He was the only one who ever did it. “What’s the matter, sweet girl?” Connor crossed to the wall across the small room and hung a leading leash on a curved hook embedded into the wall. He glanced back at her from over his shoulder. “Cat suddenly got your tongue?” “N-no.” Cassie swallowed convulsively as the heat in the back of the stable suddenly became thick and suffocating. Beneath the pungent, rich smells of horses and hay that permeated the stable, the air suddenly shifted to heavy with sex. Her eyes widened as she recognized it. She got trapped up in Connor’s gaze as he moved like a predator back across the room toward her. “I just finished riding fence with Hank and Cain and was elected to let you know we were finished, that’s all.” “Really?” Connor kneeled down in front of her and got right up in her space. Far closer than he’d ever been in their lives. His gaze flickered down to her breasts, lingered there for a scrutinizing, long moment, and then came back up to her eyes. “Because I think your heart is beating awful fast for someone who searched me out just to share a little bit of everyday information like that.” “Oh?” She gulped again.

Demon Moon

3

A hint of a smile tweaked Connor’s hard lips, and it was downright troublemaking. “Oh yeah,” he answered, his voice almost a licking touch across her flesh. Before Cassie could contemplate what that look could possibly mean, Connor nudged her legs apart and slid in between them on his knees. He wrapped one hand around her thigh and caressed her through her jeans, making her heart race even harder. She knew it was a damn good thing she was sitting down when his other hand slid up her stomach and covered her breast, his long, strangely elegant fingers spread wide apart. He let his hand rest there, just feeling her heart pounding, and Cassie flooded against her panties. Then he slid his fingers closed and rubbed her nipple through her shirt. Cassie’s legs automatically slammed shut against Connor’s hips. “What are you doing?” She gasped as he flicked over her sensitive flesh again. Her nipple immediately hardened under her shirt to a painful, poking point. “I’m doing what you came here wanting, baby.” Connor’s gaze found hers as he slid her first button free of its hold. “I’m gonna take that innocence you’re so eager to be rid of, and when I’m done in here, I’m gonna carry you to each and every stall in this barn and take you again.” He flicked open the front clasp of her bra and pushed the white fabric aside, baring her small breasts. They both watched, rapt, as her nipples twisted into tight little nubs, just with Connor looking at her. He growled and looked back up at her. “Christ, you want it just as much as I do, don’t you?” “Yes.” Cassie barely got the word out before Connor’s lips crushed down on hers in a fierce kiss, one of possession and claiming, one in which Cassie reveled. For five long years, she had waited for this. She cried out as she clung to Connor, her barely-there fingernails digging into his back through his shirt. The second she opened her mouth, Connor swept his tongue inside and tangled with hers, dragging her into a deep, carnal kiss that had no beginning or end, only varying degrees of raw heat. Cassie held on as Connor gave her a crash course in kissing. She learned quickly and delved into the wet

4

Cameron Dane

cavern of his mouth with her tongue too, sucking as he’d done to her. He jerked against her and grabbed her tight, fusing their torsos together as close as two people can get, and she creamed even more. Connor suddenly tore his mouth away, his breathing erratic and heavy as he slid his dark gaze along her length. “I have to see the rest, baby,” he said, his voice husky like fine, aged whiskey. He didn’t stop to regroup; he just lifted her leg and started tugging off her red cowboy boots. Boots he’d given her as a birthday present two years ago. She wore them every day. He pulled off her socks and lifted her foot to his mouth to kiss the arch. It tickled, and she pulled away. He let her go with another one of those troublesome secret smiles on his face. “Before this night is over, I’m gonna learn every damn inch of you, Cassandra.” He snagged her by the belt and tugged her right to the edge of the cot. “And most places are gonna be a damn sight more intimate and sensitive than your foot.” Connor made quick work of her belt, and in seconds had her zipper down, too. Cassie lifted her hips and let Connor slide her jeans and panties down her legs. “I know.” Her breath caught as the cool air slid over her naked body, raising goose bumps along her arms and legs. She shivered, maybe from the cold, maybe from the intensity in Connor’s eyes. Either way, she didn’t hide. “I’m ready for you, Connor.” She bit her lip before adding, “I think I have been from the day we met.” “Christ, baby,” Connor muttered, his eyes flashing, “you twist me up like no one else.” Connor snaked his hand around Cassie’s neck and pulled her face right up to his, their hot, humid breath mingling as their gazes locked and held. He slid his hand up her left leg slowly, lingering over her calf and teasing the back of her knee before moving on. His blunt fingers caressed over the sensitive skin on her inner thigh and played there, the touch so light her toes curled into the cold concrete floor beneath her feet.

Demon Moon

5

His nostrils flared as he brushed the very tips of his fingers over her mound of dark curls, the small gesture releasing her musky fragrance into the air. He barely touched her, and her pussy clenched and pulsed deep inside. When the tip of his index finger slid down the length of her slit, she keened with primal delight. “Damn it, you are so fucking excited,” Connor said, awe lacing his words as he pushed the tip of his finger just barely an inch inside her entrance and started to thrust. “You are so damn swollen and wet and open.” He pushed a little deeper, and she spread her legs to accommodate him. Her channel grabbed hold and started milking his finger. “Christ, Cassandra, you’re fucking tighter than anything I’ve ever felt” Cassie had never been a part of anything like this before, and her body screamed for everything to happen at once. Connor was hardly in deep, but she started undulating her hips to take more of his finger, moaning and bucking when he gave it to her. Every nerve ending in her sex zinged up to her belly with messages of pure pleasure, and she moved against Connor’s finger like a wanton, uncaring of how she must look to him. It was delicious, and she wanted more. Connor seemed to sense that, and his heated gaze drifted up the length of her naked body, finding hers. “Bend your legs and put your heels on the cot, baby,” he instructed, his voice low and dark. “I want to give you something you’re never gonna forget.” Cassie did as she was told, too caught up in Connor’s finger working in her cunt to have any fears now. As soon as her second heel planted down on the cot, he plunged another finger inside her body, this time without any easing of the way in. She cried out in shock, her toes curling into the thin mattress to anchor her body to earth. Connor finger-fucked her fast and deep, stretching her untutored pussy for what she knew would be coming soon. His cock. Her sex was spread open wide, pouting for more, but she was so connected to this man that she had no fear or shame at all. Her pussy lips were red and swollen, glistening with

6

Cameron Dane

moisture that Connor had brought on just by being in the same room with her. She looked down her body and could see her erect clit pushing out from the top of her sex, eager and throbbing, and begging for attention. Connor’s eyes followed where Cassie’s were focused, and he looked back up at her with complete awareness and intent. “Looks like you know exactly what to do to take care of that ache you feel between your legs late at night in the dark, doesn’t it?” He slowed his fingers inside her, and frustration welled when he slid them completely out. He rubbed the tip of his thumb over her clit, making her jump. He didn’t look down at her sex, only up at her eyes. “You play with yourself at night when no one’s watching, don’t you?” He flicked her torturously again. “Maybe in the shower sometimes, too? Am I right?” Cassie squirmed against the thin mattress beneath her as every nerve ending in her body hummed with life. She couldn’t break away from the hold of Connor’s gaze, and she found that she couldn’t lie, either. “Yeah.” “Should I take care of it this time? Just this once?” She thought for sure she’d spontaneously combust if he didn’t. “Yeah.” She bit her lip and nodded, too. “Thanks.” Connor chuckled, the sound reverberating in the small room. “I might just have a trick or two up my sleeve that will surprise you.” Before Cassie could think of why Connor was laughing at her, he flashed a fast smile and burrowed his face between her legs. He growled and licked down the length of her slit, snaking his nubby tongue into her body to thrust. The sensation was insane, and Cassandra fell back on the bed, her arms giving out as she felt a man’s tongue taking her for the first time. Connor quickly slid his fingers in to take over in her pussy, not for one minute letting up on the relentless pleasure he was wreaking in her. He buried his face in her thatch and burrowed up the length of her dripping sex, lapping and drinking of her essence along the

Demon Moon

7

way. He moaned low in his throat as he reached her clit, and his dark gaze met hers over her belly as he took her engorged clit between his lips and started to suck. Cassie howled and threw her hands back against the wall, bracing herself against the tidal wave of sensation Connor was tearing out of her sex. He had two fingers taking her pussy, and his tongue worked miracles on her clit in a way she’d only read about in books; she was very nearly about to come unglued. “Connor, I want you,” she panted. She clutched at his head and pulled him away. “I want you.” She grabbed his arms, shifting them lengthwise on the bed until he was blanketing her completely. She reached between their bodies and tugged at his belt buckle, and between the two of them, they shoved his jeans down past his hips. She looked up at him for the first time with every ounce of affection, desire, and love she felt showing in her eyes. This time, there was no fear or hiding. She delved her fingers through his thick, dark hair and pulled him down until their lips touched. She spread her legs and readied herself for him, felt his burning length nestle naturally between her nether lips, as if it was always meant to be there. “I want to come with you.” She kissed him with everything in her and murmured into his mouth, “I want to come with you inside me.” His eyes flashed, his lips pulled back viciously, baring his teeth, and then they were both crying out as one as he surged and plunged into her hard and deep, taking the last barrier of her innocence with him. “I love that you came to me,” Connor said thickly, his voice a strange combination of tender and ruthless as he dragged out, almost to the point of leaving her, and then sank back all the way in. “I love that you let me be your first.” Cassie wrapped her hands around Connor’s hard forearms and held on. “Only you, Connor.” She drew up her legs, curled her feet into the thin mattress beneath them, and started to pump her hips up, learning the rhythm of making love with Connor. “It’s always been you.”

8

Cameron Dane

Connor shuddered above her, and the muscles in his arms quivered, too. “You’ll unman me with talk like that.” He dipped down and fused their lips together, grunting a little sigh of pleasure when she opened her mouth and let him inside. The cross springs under the mattress squeaked with every drive of their thrusting bodies, and the bar at the head of the cot banged noisily into the wall each time Connor took her deep again. It was primal and elemental, and it was very nearly out of control. Cassie loved all of it, just as she knew she would. What she loved the most, though, was Connor letting this little piece of himself go, just for her. Connor’s thick length stroked Cassie’s inner walls with unbearable pleasure, each nerve in her body seemingly unaware that the one right next to it was already stretched to the limits of what it was capable of feeling. She shoved up her hips erratically, trying desperately to scratch the terrible, coiling itch that Connor created with every stroke, and touch, and kiss he gave her. He dragged primal, raw emotion out of her with every small endearment he whispered, each sentiment sweet, open, and vulnerable, unlike anything she’d ever heard him utter before. She clawed at his arm like a cat scaling a tree as it scrambled up from the ground for its very life. She dragged herself up against him and bit at his shoulder, clinging there as he continued to take her without quarter. “Please, Connor, please.” It was getting to be too much to stand, and Cassie ached to come to the point that it hurt. She knew how to take care of herself, but she craved for him to do it. “Help me. Touch me. Make me come.” She felt Connor’s hand slide down her belly and through her nest of curls. His full weight came down on her, a wonderful pressure unlike anything else in life. He whispered against her ear, “Anything, Cassandra.” His index finger touched over her protruding clit and rubbed. “Anything for you.” A second finger joined the first and squeezed, and suddenly Cassandra jerked upright, keening high as she cried into Connor’s thick shoulder, as she convulsed and came.

Demon Moon

9

An orgasm, so strong it wracked her entire body, yanked her out of sleep, thrusting her back into her bedroom, alone once again. In the darkness of the night, Cassie rolled to her side in bed, her hands still buried between her legs as she shuddered through the tail end of a tight, familiar climax -- one that she came by with the deftness of her own fingers. She quivered against her fingers as she gushed and came, the same way she always did. Not by Connor. Not by his capable fingers. And most definitely not with his cock embedded deep inside her body. It was just another frustrating, familiar, dream. It wasn’t real, even if this time it had felt so much more so than it ever had before. Deflated by how badly her mind had tricked her, Cassie craned her neck and glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand, catching the numbers that shined in the darkness. 3:48 a.m. Almost the start of another day on the ranch. Except today wasn’t the same as usual. Today was special. Today was Halloween. It figured. That was probably why the dream had been so strong and seemed so real. There had to be something paranormal working through the day, and it was already affecting her. Cursing her hopeless attraction, Cassie hugged her pillow to her chest and tried to go back to sleep.

***** Down the hallway, in his own dark bedroom, Connor cried out too, his voice muffled by his pillow as he jerked against his mattress and spilled his seed, the picture of only one woman in his mind. The only one he wanted. The one he could never have. His fierce attraction to the young woman living in his home was a curse that made today the biggest challenge he was ever going to face in his life.

10

Cameron Dane

Connor Hawkins fucking hated full moons on Halloween.

Demon Moon

11

Chapter One 8:00 a.m.

Cassie could feel him behind her, his very presence a silent strength that seemed to reach out and warm her with his life-force whenever he was near. This was no dream though; he was really there. She accepted the fluttering in her belly for what it was; complete sexual awareness and total attraction for this one man. She turned and immediately found him standing close by in the shadows of the small cemetery, quietly looking out for her. As he always did. At six foot five, with sinewy ropes of muscle from top to bottom and a hard face that couldn’t exactly be described as handsome, he was hard to miss. Connor Hawkins. He was everything Cassie wanted, but someone who possessed so much steely, protective armor, she wasn’t sure he would ever let anyone truly get to know him. “You don’t have to check up on me,” she finally said, and even gave him a small smile. She rubbed the smooth granite headstone at her back, tracing her fingers over the beloved name affectionately before turning back to Connor. “I’m okay, you know. I’ve been able to come and see him without crying for a long time now.”

12

Cameron Dane

“I’m not worried about you.” Connor cloaked himself in his familiar gruffness as he pushed his tall frame away from a giant oak tree and ambled over to Cassie’s side. He crouched down next to her, his knees cracking in the silence, and met her gaze. “But when you didn’t show up for breakfast this morning, I did begin to wonder if I was going to have to find someone else to help Caleb with the castrating today.” Cassie chuckled. “Uh huh. Right.” She raised a dark brow at Connor knowingly. “You were just selfishly wondering about ranch business because I never, ever jump at the chance to do the hard and dirty work when you offer it to me, me being so dainty and all.” She might be folded up on her knees on the ground right now, but they both knew that she stood at a very decent five foot nine inches. She glanced at him again. “You didn’t just happen to remember that it’s my dad’s birthday today and automatically know that I’d be here, and come to check on me for that reason? It’s purely business that you’re here, Connor. Is that what you’re saying?” Connor’s mouth flattened to hard and straight, the line almost grim as his gaze went from her, to the headstone, and then came back to her. “Since we’re here,” he said instead, “are you all right?” A funny little tickling flickered over Cassie’s exposed neck, making her shiver. It was the same feeling that had whispered through her insides when she’d awoken from her painfully real dream a number of hours ago. “I’m not sure,” she said, not quite knowing how else to explain what she was feeling. “There’s going to be a full moon tonight, and it feels like it’s going to be a strange day.” She caught Connor’s dark gaze and held it without flinching. “Does that make any sense? Can you feel it, too?” Connor’s focus shifted away from Cassie to the line of evergreens in the distance. “It’s Halloween,” he answered, his voice a little rough. It sounded like his usual enough common sense type answer, but Cassie was watching closely, and she saw the muscles in his

Demon Moon

13

shoulders and chest visibly tighten. “There’s bound to be a lot of crazies out to make it feel like a weird one all the way around.” He suddenly turned back to her, and the game face was back on. “You trying to tell me I’m gonna have to worry about you flaking out on me today and blaming it on the holiday?” Cassie’s smile came fast and quick. “I won’t if you won’t.” Connor’s smile was a lot tighter than Cassie’s. “No chance of that. Now” -- he unfurled his long body and got to his feet -- “how about it? You ready to get to work?” Cassie’s gaze moved back to her father’s headstone. She traced the birth date with the tips of her fingers. She kept her hand there and shifted her focus back up to Connor. “I want to hang out for a little while longer.” She watched Connor’s deep brown gaze mutate to black. He might not want to say it, but she knew that he cared. “Just to visit,” she assured him. “After all, it is his birthday.” “All right, but don’t keep Caleb waiting long.” Connor’s big hand suddenly smoothed over her head and down the length of her thick braid, and then he was tugging on the end, forcing her face up to his. The human being he didn’t like anyone to see, the one he often acted like didn’t exist, flashed open, bare for just a split second, making Cassie’s heart seize. Just as quickly as it had been there, it was gone. As he let her hair go he coolly added, “And for God’s sake, don’t brood.” Ah, there was the autocratic man to whom Cassie had become so accustomed. She didn’t mind his raw edges the way a lot of people did, though. In her mind, it was just another part of what made Connor, Connor. “Don’t worry,” she promised, “I won’t keep those poor unsuspecting bull calves waiting long. After all, someone’s got to turn them into steers.” “Music to my ears.” Connor gave Cassie his first real smile of the day as he backed away. “Music to my ears.”

14

Cameron Dane

Cassie watched Connor walk away, and the secret lightness she always felt in her heart when he was near forced a small, almost invisible smile to her lips. When she heard his truck gun to life and knew he was gone, she turned back to her dad, and for the first time in regards to Connor Hawkins, Cassie poured out her heart.

***** 11:30 a.m.

Connor sat at his desk, his head in one hand and a pen in the other. He fixated on the numbers before him, grimacing as he looked for another way to tighten the strings around the property so that he and his brothers weren’t forced to either take out a loan or let some people go. He growled to himself in the quiet room, despising both options with every fiber of his being. The house and property were paid for outright, and he’d had enough instability for most of his life that he didn’t want someone else in charge of him having a roof over his head ever again. He knew that his brothers, Caleb and Cain, felt exactly the same way. That didn’t even take into account Cassie, for whom he was doing the one acceptable thing his feelings for her allowed him to do. To provide her with a job and a place to live where she could feel secure and protected. There was only one truly doable option to come up with the necessary funds, and Connor hated it almost as much as the others. He thought about the inevitable need to sell off a couple of horses and cursed a long, steady stream of foul language at himself, knowing his brother Cain would hate like hell having to let even one of his precious animals go. “Is there someone in particular you’d like to kill with your bare hands?” a deep voice questioned from the door. “Or are you in a mood where anyone will do?” Connor glanced up and found a face that was almost as familiar to him as his own. As it damn well should be, he’d been looking at it for a lot longer than a natural human lifespan. It was his brother Cain. Great.

Demon Moon

15

“Come on in.” Connor beckoned with pen in hand. “There’s no sense in putting this off. The quicker you get pissed at me the faster you’ll get over it. I don’t see the point in delaying the inevitable.” “How about because it’s Halloween?” Cain offered as he made his way into the office and took one of the chairs at the foot of the desk. “How about because we’ve all been invited to a party tonight? How about because you know it’s an important day for Cassie, and you know it’ll make her happy --” “Don’t start in on the teasing about Cassie with me.” Christ, Connor wouldn’t be able to focus if he started thinking about her. “Please, not right now.” He held up a hand and pushed down the pain in his heart, knowing that he had to do this. “This is serious.” “All right.” Cain sobered too. “Lay it on me.” “I’m looking at the numbers, brother, and barring a few things that we swore we’d never do, I don’t see any other choice.” Connor looked up, refusing to let himself hide from Cain. “If we want to get through the winter with our shirts still on our backs, we’re going to have to sell a number of the horses.” Connor watched Cain while he processed the idea of losing some of his beloved stock. Cain’s jaw ticked and creaked; he glanced toward the window and stared out it for a long time. When he came back to Connor, his blue gaze was suspiciously bright. “Okay,” he finally said, his voice thick. “If that’s what we have to do, then that’s what we’ll do.” Connor leaned back in his chair and waited for the relief to wash over him, waited to feel the gratitude toward Cain that the man didn’t put up an emotional fight for the animals he loved so much. Neither came. The sick, out-of-control feeling simmering in Connor’s gut, in fact, got worse.

16

Cameron Dane

“You’re not going to fight me?” Connor knew he was poking, but wasn’t able to help himself. “Sometimes I think you love those horses more than you love us. You’re just going to let me sell them, like that?” He snapped his fingers. “Just because I say we need to?” Cain shifted forward in his seat. “Are you bullshitting me about our situation?” “No.” “Did you look at every other option?” “Yes.” Connor slid the papers across the desk as proof. “Christ, Cain, I swear that I did.” Cain’s gaze slid up to Connor’s and trapped it in place. “How long did you agonize over this before accepting it?” “More than two weeks. I just don’t see any other way.” “So then let it go, big brother. I don’t like it, but it’s done. We’ll sell some of the horses. No,” he corrected, “I’ll sell some of the horses.” “Maybe we can get them back in a couple of years,” Connor rushed to offer. “Keep track of them, and when we’re in a better position, we can make an offer and bring them home. We’re one good stock season away from making it, Cain, and I have a strong feeling in my gut that this is that year.” “You don’t have to sell me, Con. It’s okay. We all make sacrifices for this property. I understand that. So does Caleb. You might not want to see it, but Cassie does too. Maybe you should consider coming to one of us the next time you’re stressing yourself out trying to make a decision like this, rather than trying to do it all on your own.” Connor looked away, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. “Why make four people worry instead of one? I’m fine. I just want you to be, too.” “I’ll be all right.” Suddenly Cain’s face turned decidedly bleak. “I hate to do it to you, Con, but selling some of the horses is the least of our concerns today.” Cain dropped a bomb. “I just came from riding fence with Hank, and MacLesten is causing trouble again.” MacLesten was their closest neighbor, another cattle rancher. “He’s moving that damn fence

Demon Moon

17

on the north side of the property again, and he says if we put it back one more time, he’s going to dam up Willow Stream so that not a bit of that water trickles down to our property, as it rightly should.” “Son of a bitch, trouble-making prick.” Connor shot up from his seat and started to pace, his hands digging into his dark head of hair. “I hope you told him to go to hell and promised him that if he touches that stream, we’ll sue his ass for every penny he’s got.” “I did say something close to that.” Cain grabbed Connor’s arm when he passed by, dragging him to a stop. He looked up from his seated position and added, “He says you’re the boss, though, so he’s not going to deal with anyone but you.” “You’re a fucking equal partner!” Connor could feel his skin heating as his temper quickly rose. “So is Caleb, and that bastard knows it. I swear to God there are days when I could kill him with my bare hands.” “You’re the face of Hawkins’ Ranch, Connor,” Cain pointed out, “and you know it. You have to talk to him.” Connor stalked the length of the room in an attempt to calm down, clenching his fists with each step he took. The back of his neck grew unbearably hot, and a pain in his forehead lanced through his skull. Incredible pressure pushed against his flesh from within, burning and stretching at his cheekbones with searing white heat. The fire spread and snaked down Connor’s spine, making him stumble. He jammed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets in a desperate effort to shove the hurt back inside. Cain suddenly stood up and grabbed Connor by the shoulders, shaking him hard enough to bring him back to the present. “The face Justin MacLesten is going to see will look quite different than the one people are used to if you don’t calm down right now. Get yourself together, brother. Find a way to control your other half before we go to MacLesten, or we’re going to end up with a whole different kind of trouble.”

18

Cameron Dane

“I cannot control him!” Connor snapped. He struggled through what he was feeling to remain in his human form. “I hate him; I do not want any part of him. He is the biggest source of why I must be as I am.” Connor heard his speech regressing to his older, formal patterns as his emotions got the better of him. He threw Cain a hard look, but with deliberate intent forced himself to breathe, and focus, and regain his control. “You know this, too, Cain. I don’t want to learn to control him.” Christ, he was the very reason Connor refused to let himself feel much of anything. “I just want him gone.” Cain leaned back against the desk, crossed his arms, and didn’t let Connor turn away or hide from the probing connection. “There is a full moon tonight.” “No,” Connor breathed harshly, the word almost a curse. His eyes were as black as the finest onyx. He didn’t dare let himself even think about it. “Don’t you fucking say one more word on that subject.” “Fine.” Cain backed off, his arms up in surrender. “But you’re going to fall one day, Con. We all will. There will come a point where you can no longer hide from what you covet. Your body and soul will feel something you cannot control. Something much stronger than this anger you’re feeling for MacLesten right now.” He waved his arm up and down Connor’s body, once again a picture of calm and control. “When it does, your secret will come out. You won’t be able to stop it like you did just now.” There was only one person capable of doing that to him, and Connor had that under control. “I will never let that happen.” His voice was hard and clipped. He pulled away from Cain’s hand and headed for the door. “Now let’s go talk to that fucker MacLesten before I really lose my temper. Christ, it’s not even noon, and I already can’t wait for this day to be over.” He glanced back over his shoulder at Cain. “You’re coming with me. Let’s go.” “You’re heading for a huge break, brother,” Cain spoke softly before he followed. “And I fear for anyone caught in your way.”

Demon Moon

19

Chapter Two 4:00 p.m.

Tired from his “talk” with MacLesten that had produced a tense, temporary compromise, Connor stood back in the late afternoon shadows and watched, fascinated, as the scene in the main paddock played out before him. He’d tried to stay away, but after the day he’d had, he needed to see her. She was way too young for him, with her sun-kissed, dark-haired, natural beauty, and her enthusiasm for life. Cassandra Claire was everything Connor had never known he’d wanted until he had taken her into his home five years ago. As much as he didn’t want to feel it, the teasing that his brothers gave him in private was dead on the money. Cassandra tugged at his unused heart, confused him on practically a daily basis, and fascinated him to no end. Watching her like this while she held down young cattle that weighed almost as much as she didn’t really help Connor in his effort to remain indifferent; he knew it. It was a selfdestructive kind of torture to be in her presence, but this had been the day from hell already, and even if it was in secret, Connor needed to be near Cassandra’s light. It was damned arousing watching her knee deep in hard, ranch-life work, and that was bad enough. What

20

Cameron Dane

was worse, though, was that every time he saw her like this, it knifed a pain through his gut to know she could never be anything more to him than what she was right now. Employee, pain in his butt, and dear, dear friend. She was only twenty-three years old and must never be allowed to see him as anything other than a friend. She could never know of the base sexual desires he had for her. It would disgust her and, even if by some miracle it didn’t, there was always that one other thing about him that would prevent them from being truly intimate or close.

The demon thing -- the goddamned, fucking bane of his two hundred year existence, demon thing -- that was the other half of what Connor Hawkins was. “Shit, that gal sure is somethin’, ain’t she?” a laughing, amiable voice spoke at Connor’s ear, snapping him out of his lustful, inappropriate thoughts. Connor slid his gaze to the grizzled old man who had sidled up beside him unnoticed. It was Hank Bailey, one of the Hawkins’ Ranch’s many cowboys. The tall, gangly man was rocking back on the heels of his boots with his arms braced against his chest, and he wasn’t even pretending not to stare at Cassandra. Even with this older cowpoke who was absolutely no threat, Connor had to stifle the urge to slam him up against the barn wall and warn him in graphic detail to never look at Cassandra with open appreciation for her beauty again. Connor had to hide the animal instinct that lived just below the surface within him, the one that said Cassandra was his. “Cassandra does good work,” Connor finally answered, his tone even and low. “She never gives me any cause to complain.” “Awful easy on the eyes, too.” Hank raised a thick, white brow. “Not to mention as sweet as a honeysuckle one minute and as blazing alive like a fiery jalapeño the next. The man who ends up with her is going to be one lucky son of a bitch.” “She’s too young to be thinking like that.” Connor fairly growled the words to Hank. “She’s got a lot of living to do before she settles down with a man.”

Demon Moon

21

Hank slid a sly glance Connor’s way that made his blood run cold. “Then I guess it’s a good thing for her that all the living she wants to do can be found right here on this land. See you later, boss.” Hank slid his hands in his pockets and started to amble away in the direction of the paddock. “Wait a minute!” Connor whispered furiously as he caught up to Hank. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean? Does she have a thing for one of the hands?” Connor knew Cassie viewed Hank as a bit of a surrogate father and so might confide something important like a crush to him. “What did she say to you?” “Not a damn thing.” Hank climbed up on the paddock fence and draped his arms over the top rung. “Just got eyes in my head that can see a thing or two, boss.” Hank gave Connor not an ounce more attention, as was due a hard-nosed boss like Connor, instead shifting his focus to the young woman on her knees in the dirt. “Hey, little girlie,” Hank called out to Cassie, “I’m done working Cain’s horses for the day. You ready for a break?” Cassie glanced up from her work, turning the purest green eyes Connor had ever seen up on the both of them. Those eyes had the immediate power of sucking the air right out of his lungs, and then quickly filling up his cock with blood. He shifted against the paddock and used one of the poles to cover his rapidly thickening prick. “You always know how to read my mind, Hank.” Cassie smiled. “I’ll be ready to give it up before too much longer.” She wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her denim shirt and handed off one of the braying young steers before taking on the task of holding down one side of another calf. “After all, we’ve got a Halloween party to get dressed up for tonight.” Her gaze slid to Connor’s and held. “That is, if everyone is going?” Connor didn’t mistake the piercing stare as being for Hank. “We’ll see, Cassandra.” Christ, he couldn’t help the need that lived inside him to make her happy when he could. “I’ll think about it.”

22

Cameron Dane

“You would have such a good time, Connor,” Cassie promised. She grunted as she struggled to hold on to the animal in her arms, but she managed to multi-task the chore like no one he’d ever known. She kept the struggling animal steady for his other brother, Caleb, to snip off its personals, and still managed to keep her gaze trained on Connor. “I’ll make sure you don’t brood in a corner by yourself. I’ll even dance with you all night if you want me to. Just say you’ll come.” “Yeah, Con.” Caleb threw Connor a quick smirk over his shoulder. “Say you’ll come.” “Shut it, Caleb.” Connor glared at his brother, but only got his back. He dropped his attention back to Cassandra, found her gaze open and waiting for him, and muttered, “All right, I’ll probably come.” “See, Caleb, I told you he would.” Cassie broke out into a huge, infectious smile that could have lit up the whole Montana sky if only it weren’t still daylight. She turned it on Connor, and it hit him right in the groin, making him harder than he’d ever been before. He mumbled something about having work to do and got the hell out of there before at least one of his two secrets was found out. And that was how goddamned much he wanted Cassandra Claire.

***** Connor was drawn to the open window in his bedroom, unable to deny the pull Cassandra evoked in him, even with two hundred yards of land and the front wall of his home between them. Without the fear of being seen and found out, he could look at her to his heart’s content. Without having to hide from the curious gazes of others, he could drink in her rare, real beauty, something unique that didn’t require makeup or an expensive haircut to embellish it. He could admire her without the terror of anybody noticing. He could indulge in the ache Cassandra stirred in his cock without worrying that it would be seen, and his secret revealed.

Demon Moon

23

Connor was able to admit it, at least to himself. He was enthralled. It was more than Cassandra’s face and body that flamed his passions to life, although in his mind that was plenty. It was also her rich, throaty laughter that carried on the light, cool breeze up to his window and sank into his soul. It tore at his control, stirring that ages-old hunger to be fully human, something he’d done battle with his entire life. It was the fact that she was incredibly intelligent and well-spoken when she had something important to say, while at the same time completely able to loosen her vocabulary and manner in order to make the less educated men who worked on Hawkins’ Ranch feel completely comfortable around her. It was the way she took the good natured ribbing from the old-school cowboys and gave it right back with equal fervor, making them all a slave to her honest charm just as much as Connor was. There were so many things about this one young woman that made Connor dream of a possible life together, one that deep down he knew could never be. It was the fact that she just seemed to fit in to this little world he and his brothers had carved out for themselves that made him want her so damned much, in every conceivable way. Laughter erupted down by the paddock, drawing Connor’s focus back into the present. Cassandra was no longer down on her knees holding onto cattle; in fact, no one was. Everyone had gathered in a small circle just outside the corral. Cassandra had her arm around Hank’s back with her forehead buried against his shoulder. Her entire body was shaking, and she held a hand to her stomach. Connor could only think that Caleb had told one of his ridiculously raunchy rodeo stories, embellishing it with gratuitous bathroom humor in only the way Caleb could. Cassandra’s pure happiness slammed Connor right in the gut, and then moved quickly lower to his already fully erect cock. He imagined that it was him Cassandra held onto down by the paddock, that it was him she let go around without inhibitions or fear, that it was him she stroked down the small of his back until he trembled with desire, completely under her

24

Cameron Dane

power. Christ, he wanted her so fucking badly, and it was in moments like these when even his vaunted control was no match for what his body needed. It was too much. He was too hard to ignore the pain or talk himself down. He needed, just this once, to close his eyes and let go. Connor staggered to the bathroom on unsteady legs, his cock pressing so hard against the inside of his jeans he couldn’t stand up straight. He pulled at his western yoke shirt, the popping of the snaps piercingly loud in the cavern of the big, cold bathroom. He tore the fitted cotton material off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, forgotten. He fumbled with his belt buckle, his hands clumsy in his haste, and pushed his jeans and underwear down just to his hips, just enough to spring his aching cock free. His erection reared up against his stomach heavy and thick, needful of relief. He was already leaking a river of pre-cum, but he squeezed out a dollop of unscented moisturizer into his palm anyway and wrapped his fist around his prick, certain he needed to be slick for the task. He needed to come. Fast. He reached out and braced himself against the wall over the bath, stiff-arming his body over the claw-footed porcelain tub, and started to rub. Connor moaned low in his throat as the base, sinful sensations hit him full on. He dragged his hand up and down his turgid cock, working his dick to pulsating, excited life. His prick swelled painfully in his hand, and his slit wept thick tears of pleasure. A familiar tightness rolled though Connor’s muscles, and he knew he was close. He didn’t pretend ignorance as to why. Cassandra. He wanted her so desperately that his mind tricked his body into thinking it was her capable hand stroking him; that it was Cassandra down on her knees before him trying to make him come. Connor’s imagination was good. Too good. He dragged on his penis with a hard hand and let go of the wall to play with his balls, in just the way he imaged Cassandra could do. It wasn’t long before the dark sexual forces roiling within him simply became dark forces, period. The demon within Connor, the hated piece of him that was in truth a full companion to the human man he solely craved to be, clawed to get out and take over. The demon

Demon Moon

25

needed to claim the sexual release for his own, and as much as Connor never wished to see that despised part of himself, it was too powerful to control when in the throes of extreme passion and emotion, something that thinking of Cassandra while jerking off most definitely brought about. Connor fought against the changes pushing to get out of his body, willed himself to calm down, and send the demon away disappointed. Any other day, he might have had a chance of succeeding. Today his thoughts of Cassandra were too close to the surface, and the feelings she ripped up out of his very being were too powerful to suppress. He was going to lose this battle to the demon, he could feel it, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop him from getting out. Connor keened through the pain as the change happened, too lost in the throes of his need to orgasm to stamp down the hurt that sliced through his body as the demon pushed through his skin. It tore its way out, shoving the image of Connor Hawkins away into the background of his own life. Connor’s spine grew first, pushing against the flesh in his back, creating a rigid, bumpy exoskeleton from the base of his skull down to his tailbone. It all happened at once and in a matter of seconds, but Connor felt each shift to his demon body charge its way through his sensitive human flesh individually. From the defiant, exaggerated slashing cheekbones, to the protruding Neanderthal forehead that forged a deep shelf over his dark eyes, to the horns that spiked up through his skull, in the blink of an eye Connor lived through the cutting pain of the change. Until finally the image of Connor Hawkins, the man, was no more, and only the demon remained. It was excruciating to feel the demon emerge, but even with that, Connor could not break free from the throes of his need for Cassandra. He couldn’t get the picture of her wrestling a young bull down to the ground out of his head. It was heady, knowing the power she had in her lithe body. All Connor could see was Cassandra tangled up around him in bed, wrestling in an altogether different kind of way. It was so real he could actually feel the

26

Cameron Dane

muscles in her sleek thighs clamp onto his hips and hold on tight for the ride of her life. In his head, he could hear her screaming her release as he gave her exactly what she needed. The image was so acute that his cock actually experienced the pulsing of Cassandra’s tight little pussy as it fisted itself around his dick, milking him for all he was worth. It was more fantasy than Connor could handle, and with the demon’s sexual needs living right at the surface, Connor lost what little control he had. His heavy balls drew up unbearably tight between his legs, painfully so, and then it was all over. He clamped his fist around his erection, howling like a wounded animal as release took him over. Cum spewed from his dick, raining a shower of semen into the bathtub, emptying his body of all it had to give. He shuddered and moaned, imagining himself in the only place he wanted to be; deep inside of her. The picture was so real his cock jerked in his hand, and he came again, Cassandra’s name a cry of pleasure on his lips…

***** “Did you just hear that?” Cassie tilted her head to the side and perked her ear up. “I thought I heard someone say my name.” “Wishful thinking, I would imagine,” Caleb murmured under his breath. Cassie narrowed her gaze up at her surrogate brother. “What was that?” She raised a dark mahogany brow. “I don’t think I heard you.” The lopsided smile Caleb bestowed upon her was positively indulgent, and Cassie felt her cheeks slash with heat. “You know you want to go and find Connor to see if he’s really coming to the party tonight,” Caleb said. “So why don’t you just go do that and stop pretending like you’re doing it because you want to investigate some mysterious noise.” “So glad I have your blessing.” Cassie tucked her tongue firmly in her cheek. “Would you like to bestow any more wisdom upon my impressionable little mind before I go take a shower and get changed, oh-sultan-of-all-things-romantic?”

Demon Moon

27

“Not romantic.” Caleb winked. “Not me. I wouldn’t dare.” “Oh right.” Cassie planted her hand on her hip and struck an exaggerated pose. “You’re the hound dog brother. I guess if I want advice about my love life, I should talk to Cain.” “No.” Caleb shook his head, all teasing glint in his eyes suddenly gone. “Deep down, I don’t think he’s the brother you want for that either. Now go shower and change for the party.” He switched the subject just as quickly as he had started it, and even whacked her on the ass playfully. “Go on. I can’t wait to see you in your costume.” With that, Caleb wandered off in the direction of the barn, leaving Cassie standing there by the paddock, wondering if she dared to hope that Caleb might be saying what she desperately hoped he was. Could Caleb know how she felt about Connor? Even more than that, was he trying to tell her to go for it? Cassie rubbed at the back of her neck as that strange feeling washed over her again, the one that had stuck with her since waking up from that dream this morning. Sleep had eluded her after the dream. She’d needed solace and had sought the comfort of her father to pour out her secrets, and it was almost as if with every little event that had followed, he was telling her to trust her heart and go for it. Now it felt like Caleb was nudging her in that direction too. Cassie believed in trusting her gut. Right now, it was telling her it was time to take a risk with Connor.

28

Cameron Dane

Chapter Three 6:20 p.m.

Connor shook his head in disgust, hating the image of his demon self as much today as he had every other time he had been forced to see it in his life. He had never been comfortable in this body, and he had hated even more the cruelty that existed in the demon world he’d abandoned as a young teenager. He was not interested in tormenting humans or making them believe they were going insane for seeing him in this grotesque body, and he was most definitely not going to live in that dark, subversive world with his demon species and many others, right alongside individuals who reveled in the very prospect of exactly that. He hated one thing more than all of that, though. He hated that there were times in his life when he could not control and suppress the demon that lived within him. There were times, like today, when he couldn’t keep this shameful half of his being away. Unfortunately, feeling extreme, true passion was one of them. Just the thought of being with Cassandra brought forth those lustful desires in Connor like no other in his life ever had, making the demon almost impossible to keep at bay.

Demon Moon

29

He studied the ugly face before him with a sneer of contempt for its fierceness. The fact that he was staring in a mirror and the face was his own didn’t make him any more forgiving of its forbidding black eyes, exaggerated cheekbones, and nasty ridges that made his brow sit heavy over his eyes. That didn’t even take into account the two-inch black horns that couldn’t be hidden by his thick, black hair, or the bumpy spine that practically split his back in half. Put it all on a six foot five hulking body, and he knew it was an image that not even a mother could love. Then again, Connor didn’t need to worry about that. He had never had a loving mother. Connor was the spawn of a pair of lovesick Dastetier demons. It was a ridiculous fate that he fought and cursed every day of his two hundred years of life. He truly despised being a demon, and he’d dreamt his whole life of a day when he might not be one anymore. Connor had tried a lot of things in his two hundred years, but nothing had grabbed him harder or more completely than running a ranch. He loved everything about it, from the cattle, to the smells, to the long, wearing days, to the rewards that came from working yourself to the bone. Hell, Connor didn’t even mind getting lanced by the occasional ornery bull that still had his horns. He had a scar or two to show for the backbreaking work. It took almost everything a body had to give, and then it demanded more, but Connor loved it right down to his core. The only thing that could make it better would be to have Cassandra as his partner, in every way. Connor slid his jeans back on and zipped them up, but left the button undone. He sneered at himself in the bathroom mirror again, hating himself for yearning for things he could never have. His demon face twisted ugly at him in reflection, mocking him and his desire to be human. But Christ, he wished that he could. To have a chance with Cassandra, Connor would do just about anything. Almost. He stared at his ugly visage and prayed for the impossible.

30

Cameron Dane

The door was suddenly thrown open and filling its space was the reality of Connor’s prayers. Cassandra. And dear God, even all dusty and crusty from a hard day’s work, she was beautiful. “Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were in here. Oh, my God…” Cassie stumbled back into the doorjamb, her eyes widening in horror. Her gaze settled on Connor’s face. His demon face.

Shit. “I can explain,” Connor began. He grabbed his shirt up from the bathroom floor and shoved his arms through the sleeves to at least get his back covered. “What…who…” Cassie covered her mouth, her hand shaking as her fingers touched her lips. “Connor?” Her green eyes somehow rounded even bigger. Fear poured out of Cassandra’s every pore. Connor felt and saw it, even from four feet away. Fear of him. Pain sliced through Connor’s core. He reached out, and Cassandra shrank away from his touch. Her gaze shifted to the hallway, toward escape. She glanced back at him, her eyes darting back and forth. In a flash, she bolted. Connor did, too. He lunged and grabbed her. He backed her into the door, blocking her escape. She struggled against the band of his hands around her arms, but he couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t bear the trembling he felt coursing through her body. “Please.” Connor heard the roughness of his own voice, but couldn’t correct it. “Don’t be scared. Please.” A thousand ways to explain what he was raced through Connor’s mind, but he couldn’t force even one of them past his lips. He would have to say the word “demon” to Cassandra; say it out loud, when he could barely say the word to himself. He opened his mouth, but all that kept coming out was, “It’s me, I promise. It’s me.”

Demon Moon

31

Cassie’s gaze suddenly softened, and the wildness slid out of her eyes. She tilted her head to the side. “Oh, I get it. It’s makeup.” Tentatively, she reached up and feathered the tips of her fingers over his slashing cheekbones and bumpy forehead. A shudder of desire coursed through Connor’s heated body. “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s like a costume. You’ve decided to come to the Halloween party tonight, haven’t you?” Relief flooded Connor at those words. She didn’t understand that his face was real. He didn’t have to tell her anything. Thank God for Halloween. Otherwise, his absolute idiocy of not locking the door would have allowed Cassie to figure out exactly what he was. “Yes.” Connor evaded an outright lie. “I am going to the party.” Cassie’s cheeks blossomed with color. “I feel like such an idiot for not realizing that right away.” She continued to map his face with an exquisitely tender touch, and Connor slid his eyes closed so that she wouldn’t see the frightening, unnatural hunger living inside of him. Hunger for her. “You should have said something down by the paddock, Connor. You scared the hell out of me when I walked in and saw you like this. I thought you were a demon, or the devil, or God knows what. But this…this is fantastic. This makeup is amazing. You must have been planning to come to the party all along. Don’t even try to tell me that you knew how to do this all by yourself. I won’t believe you.” “No.” He practically groaned the word. Her touch was exquisite torture. “I won’t.” Cassie innocently rubbed her thumb over his mouth, and Connor knew he could take no more. He grabbed her wrists, his palms heating at merely touching her skin. He deliberately set her a pace away from him. It was the only way he’d be able to clear his head of her earthy, female scent enough to think and breathe. “So?” She pressed him. “Tell me when you came up with this.”

32

Cameron Dane

Cassie’s misassumption had given Connor a reprieve, and he wasn’t about to squander it before she started thinking about it a little bit deeper and figured out the truth. He needed her gone. Now. “Quit annoying me, Cassandra, or I’ll change my mind about going to the party. Give me five minutes to change my clothes, and the shower is yours.” “No, no. Don’t rush on my account.” Cassie backed up to the door, her eyes flashing with too much mischievous laughter for Connor’s comfort. But Christ, he would take teasing any day of the week over the fear that had been there moments ago. “You take all the time you need to get yourself all pretty and perfect for tonight. I’ll use the bathroom downstairs.” Connor felt his face flood with heat at her teasing. Pretty indeed. Thank God she couldn’t see how beet red his cheeks were under his makeup. “You’ve got a half hour. Don’t be late,” he warned. “Or we’ll leave without you.” “No you won’t.” She stepped back into the hallway. “But I’ll be ready anyway. And Connor?” He simply raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms against his chest. “Your makeup really is spectacular,” she told him again. “Whoever showed you how to do it is an artist. You are…” She cocked her head, shifting her long, mahogany braid over her shoulder. “…breathtaking. Yes, that’s the word I wanted. See you in a bit.” With that she waved and disappeared. Connor damned Cassandra and the exuberance that had allowed her to wiggle her way into every part of his life, always nudging and forcing him out of the rigid place in which he knew he needed to be. Connor didn’t know what unsettled him more. That Cassandra had seen what he really was, or that when she had, she’d said that word “breathtaking” in regards to him. For the first time in their acquaintance, Connor had detected sexual heat in her tone. What terrified him even more than Cassandra seeing his demon face was that if that attraction he had sensed in her was aimed at him, he was not at all certain he was capable of fighting it.

Demon Moon

33

Chapter Four

Cassie gave her appearance one final look in the mirror, blushing all the way down to her partially exposed, practically non-existent cleavage as she did. She wore a white Grecian goddess get-up with a neckline that plunged to her waist and a diaphanous skirt that was slit all the way up the outer length of each of her thighs. She never wore sexy outfits like this. She loved her life here on the ranch and had taken to it like a junebug to a duck’s back when she had come to live with her father. She’d lived in jeans and snap button shirts almost exclusively since that day, all the while trying her damnedest to prove to Connor Hawkins that she could fit into his world without causing so much as a hiccup to his orderly life. Because she, Cassie Claire, tomboy extraordinaire, from the very first moment she’d laid eyes on Connor, had always thought him an attractive man. That crush had turned to full-on love the day he’d d brought her into his home. Cassie’s father had been the Hawkins’ Ranch cattle foreman for five years before he died. She moved in with him when she was sixteen, after her mother was killed in an auto accident. During the two years Cassie spent with him, he taught her to love this abundant Montana land with as much passion as he did. Her dad’s soft-spoken enthusiasm for

Cameron Dane

34

Hawkins’ Ranch sank into Cassie’s bones quickly, and she had just begun to find some peace after the loss of her mother when, in the blink of an eye, her whole word imploded once again. She had been eighteen years old for all of two days when her father had dropped dead of a heart attack while out rounding up cattle, sending Cassie reeling from the devastating, debilitating pain of losing both of her parents within a two year span. Before Cassie could even think about how she was going to live and take care of herself for the rest of her life, Connor, in his gruff manner, had come and rounded her up from the little cabin where she’d lived with her father. He hadn’t said much of anything -- not that he ever did -- but instead guided her with a gentle hand under her elbow into his home. He helped her in dealing with the funeral, with the terrible choice of picking out a headstone for her father’s grave, and had paid for it all without so much as a word mentioned about it between them. The financial support and a place to live had been a generous gift, but it wasn’t why Cassie had fallen in love with Connor. She was a level-headed enough girl that she could easily have been grateful for that kind of assistance and not lost her heart to him. Instead, Connor stole her heart without even trying, in the simplest, most basic of ways. That first tumultuous year, living with him and his brothers, Cassie came to rely upon Connor’s constant, stable, drama-free presence while dealing with the pain of her loss and finding her place in a new home. When she needed to be close to another person in order to feel safe, it was always Connor who was close by, allowing Cassie her dignity by not commenting on her desperate need for human contact. He often told wonderful stories about her father. He didn’t shield her from the source of her pain, and after a time, Connor’s voice and those stories began to soothe and heal her wounded heart. Cassie probably loved Connor the most, though, because he found a place for her on Hawkins’ Ranch, and never made her feel like a charity case or a burden. From the very first week, he pulled her out of her isolation and gave her jobs on the ranch that made her feel useful and necessary. He didn’t insult her by only making them “woman’s work.” Sometimes they were, and she didn’t mind it, because

Demon Moon

35

she knew just as easily the next day or the next week he would give her a job that would tax her muscles and get her hands dirty, like castrating the cattle today. That was why Cassie loved Connor Hawkins. That was why she wanted him to stop seeing her as a teenager who needed his calm presence, and start seeing her as a woman who could stand at his side as an equal, in every way. Cassie glanced at her appearance once more and smiled. She might not be a perfect size six -- or even an eight -- but what she had was fit from hard work, and it was pretty enough in a simple, uncluttered way that she had to believe a man like Connor would appreciate. If only she could get him not only to look but also to notice. With her powerful dream from early this morning still sitting front and center in her thoughts Cassie crossed her fingers and ventured downstairs.

***** 7:10 p.m.

“So, that’s why you’re coming to the Halloween party looking like that?” Caleb asked. His guffaw of laughter grated on Connor’s last nerve. “Because Cassie thinks your demon visage is a Halloween costume? That’s rich, Con, truly rich.” “Shut up,” Connor snarled, his darkly tanned, demonic face twisting, his lips thinning down to a hard, cruel line. It was easy for Caleb to laugh, he had donned his old rodeo vest, chaps, and champion buckle, and called that a costume. Cain hadn’t bothered to don a costume at all. That had been Connor’s original plan, too. He rubbed his sweating palms on his jeans and paced. Christ, he hated feeling so exposed in his demon body. “She saw me and made assumptions. I couldn’t very well correct her, now could I? So now I have to live in this wretched face and skin for the next couple of hours, or else face questions from her about where my makeup went.”

36

Cameron Dane

“Or, my brother,” Cain spoke up from across the room, “you could have used the opportunity to tell Cassie the truth.” Connor sometimes hated having brothers. Although Cain and Caleb weren’t Connor’s actual brothers. Of course, neither were they technically human, either. Cain and Caleb were cast offs of the demon world too. Cain’s species was different than Connor’s and Caleb’s, but the isolation and solitude they experienced were the same. Cain was of the Naverto demon species, a beast of flight. Caleb, like Connor, was a Dastetier, of the original demon beast species. As three misfits who didn’t want to be what they were, they’d found each other some one hundred and fifty years ago on the poorest streets of London and had become brother and friend to each other ever since. “I cannot tell her.” Connor laid a hard stare on Cain. “Nor can you. It would make her sick. It would turn her against us.” “Maybe not,” Caleb interrupted. Connor ignored that. “She would leave the ranch, without a place to go or a way to survive.” “She would be fine,” Caleb insisted, which struck Connor like a knife in his chest. “It’s you who wouldn’t get along well without Cassie here. Admit it.” “I admit nothing.” “Admit what?” a lilting, feminine voice inquired from the doorway. Connor spun around, and as the catcalls and whistling from his brothers assaulted his ears, he assessed the vision before him. Cassandra, but at the same time, not. Pert, firm breasts peeking out from the cutout of a flowing, white dress that accentuated her golden skin. It had slits that went up both legs that, from her stance, he could see went all the way

up; he could see the smooth skin of her hip and beyond. He fleetingly wondered if she was wearing anything underneath the glorified sheet at all. All that seemed to hold the garment together was a wide gold band around her waist. Her hair was pushed away from her face

Demon Moon

37

with a headband of white baby roses, and the rest of it flowed down her back and over her shoulders in wave after wave of shiny brown glory. This was the natural result of always wearing her long hair in a braid, and it made Connor’s mouth salivate. There was only one thing he could say. “What in the hell do you think you’re wearing?” Cassie smiled, and he felt it rush all the way through his body, ending at his cock. “A Halloween costume.” There was no way. No goddamned way any other man was going to see Cassandra like this. “Not one that you’re going to be wearing out of this house tonight, sweetheart. Go change. Right now.” “Not on your life.” Connor raised an eyebrow, and with the ridges on his forehead he knew he looked menacing. He really didn’t give a damn. “You don’t do as I say, and it may well be your life.” Caleb stepped in between the two of them. “Okay.” He shot a hard look in Connor’s direction. “Let’s get going to that party before we miss all the good food. All right?” Connor stepped right up in Caleb’s face. “Not with her looking like that.” “Like what?” Caleb posed. “Beautiful? Stunning? Like at least twenty-five other women are going to look tonight, which is sexy as hell in a costume that is completely appropriate for her age and sex?” “Thank you, Caleb,” Cassie piped up from behind them. Caleb leaned in close to Connor and kept his words low. “Unless your goal is to look like a jealous husband and stake a claim on this girl for yourself -- which I have no problem with, by the way -- then you need to back off before you give yourself away.” Connor pulled back and met his brother’s gaze. He saw the truth there, felt it in his gut. He snarled again, adding, “Fine.” He pushed past Caleb and then Cassie too, hating the way his traitorous body almost turned toward her, as if she was a homing beacon shining

38

Cameron Dane

light in the darkness of his soul. He wedged past the tight space between her and the hallway. “Let’s go,” he barked over his shoulder. “You all are the ones who wanted to go to this damn party so bad. Let’s go.”

Cassie waited for Cain to follow Connor first, and then stopped Caleb with a hand to his forearm. “Thank you.” She squeezed his arm. She didn’t know what else to say. “Thank you.” Caleb’s ocean blue gaze landed on hers. “You’ve taken a big step tonight, Cassie. Don’t make me regret helping you make it. Don’t tease him if you don’t mean it. He’s not built to live through something like that. Do you understand me?” Cassie snapped her gaping mouth shut. “Yes.” She gulped, fear and inadequacy suddenly coating her exposed skin in a thin layer of sweat. “Yes.” “Good.” Caleb smiled. “Then let’s go.” Cassie was too dumbfounded to do anything other than follow.

Demon Moon

39

Chapter Five 9:15 p.m.

Connor leaned back against the living room wall in Mavis Pritchard’s home, the proprietress of the local diner. At sixty-five years old, she loved Halloween every bit as much as a five-year-old kid. She was quite a whirlwind of a woman, and she put on one hell of a party. Too bad Connor was in no frame of mind to enjoy it. “Look at that bastard flirting with her,” Connor told Caleb. His natural protective instinct made his hands curl into fists and his upper lip pull back to bare his teeth. “He’s taking liberties that I’m going to end up having to break his arms over.” Caleb’s gaze found Cassie in the darkened, crowded living room. She was dancing with a young buck that worked one of the neighboring ranches. “He’s got his hands on her waist, Connor,” Caleb said. “That is a perfectly permissible position for two people who are dancing together.” “Maybe, but he’s thinking about touching her ass, I just know it.” He scanned the wallto-wall crowd of brightly dressed, costumed partygoers, all whooping it up and having a grand old time. “He wants to touch her, damn it. Just like every other juvenile prick who has danced with her tonight has wanted to do.”

40

Cameron Dane

“Well then why don’t you ask her to dance?” Caleb suggested. He took a swig of beer before adding under his breath, “That way your slightly less juvenile prick will be the only one close enough to touch her.” “Slightly?” Connor snorted. “Try ancient, when you compare it to her. Call me crazy, but I don’t think Cassie would take to my geriatric attentions. Not if she knew the truth.” “Don’t use that as an excuse,” Caleb clipped off, his voice icier than Connor had ever heard it. “You know we don’t age in the same way that a human does. Cassie believes you to be in your mid thirties, because that is the physical age of your human body. Don’t act like you’re too old for her when the simple truth is that you’re too afraid to act on what you’re feeling. You know a cure for what we are exists. Perhaps that cure already lives within Cassie. Think about it.” “No.” “All right. Then you stand here brooding and holding up the wall all night.” Caleb slapped Connor on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. “Meanwhile, I’m going to go and have some fun. Maybe ask a pretty girl to dance. See you later.” Connor watched his brother walk across the room and lead an attractive woman dressed in emergency room scrubs to the dance floor. His gaze naturally slid back to Cassandra, though, as it always did. He watched her throw her head back and laugh at something the young stud she was dancing with said. Blood immediately fired in Connor’s veins, and he knew it was pure, unadulterated jealously. Everything felt more heightened and raw today, and having the demon right out on the surface of his very being only pushed and made his possessive feelings that much more acute. In that moment, Connor knew he needed to get away. If he had to stand around for even five more minutes watching another man touch Cassandra, to be near her while he wasn’t, Connor would end up living up to the reputation of his demon predecessors and start tearing heads off with his bare hands.

Demon Moon

41

Nobody needed to see a bloodbath like that, because once Connor got started, it was very likely that he wouldn’t be able to stop until every man who had put even one finger on Cassandra was dead.

Cassie watched Connor make his way across the crowded living room to a long hallway, and she wondered what had put such a tight, hard expression on his face. Not that she could see much under all of his makeup, but she had watched Connor enough over the years to know that when his eyes went a flat black like she’d caught just now, something was wrong. Something had upset him. Something he apparently didn’t want anyone to know about. Well, there was no time better than tonight to start getting rid of those walls between them. He’d better get ready to start sharing. “Excuse me.” She pulled away from her partner, Luke, a guy she had known in high school. He happened to be a great dancing partner because she didn’t have to worry about him getting all “handsy” with her. She was one of the few people who knew that he preferred men. “I need to go check something out.” She smiled as she leaned in and pecked his cheek. “Maybe I’ll see you later?” “I saw who you were watching.” Luke winked. “Good luck with him.” Cassie chuckled. “Thanks.” Cassie wedged her body through a throng of dancers and was able to just make out Connor’s big body as it disappeared into a room at the end of a long hallway. There were clusters of partygoers lining the hallway walls and a small line of people waiting to use the john, but Cassie worked her way past them without comment until she reached the end of the hall. Taking a deep breath for courage -- knowing that she was going to push at Connor in a way she never had before -- Cassie opened the door and stepped inside.

42

Cameron Dane

Her breath caught when she saw the shadowed image of Connor where he leaned his shoulder against a window frame, staring out at the night, brightly lit by the light of the full moon. As always, his very nearness made her tremble. “Go away, Cassandra,” his voice rumbled from the shadows, making her start. She stepped farther into the room. “How did you know it was me?” He hadn’t turned when she had come in, and he didn’t do it now either. “I always know when it’s you.” “Oh.” Her legs turned to jelly a little bit, but she managed not to sway. “I saw you slip away,” she told him instead, her voice soft in deference to the stillness that sat like another presence in the room. “I know you don’t really like parties. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” “I’m fine,” he promised, his voice hard. He turned then, and the flatness that Cassie had witnessed so briefly in his eyes was gone. In its place was black fire. “Stay here with me much longer, Cassandra, and your entourage will begin to wonder where you’ve gone. Whose cleavage will they glue their eyes to without you in the room?” “What?” Cassie’s hands automatically went to her breasts. She was far too shocked by his comment to be offended. A quick feel of her chest reminded her that everything was exactly the same. “What entourage? What cleavage?” “Don’t play the ignorant girl, Cassandra, I already know how intelligent you are.” Connor’s gaze ran down the length of her body and then back up, leaving goose bumps and hardened, jutting nipples in its hot wake. “You know damn well every man in that room is aching to push those two lines of fabric aside and reveal the charms you’ve so coyly almost shown tonight by wearing that dress. You’ve certainly been flirting with enough men to make at least a few of them wonder if he’s the one who’s going to get the shot.”

Demon Moon

43

Cassie sincerely doubted that. She had hardly any plumpness to her breasts to speak of, which was the only reason she could get away with wearing this dress. Besides, there were at least a dozen other women at this party who were not only sexier and more scantily dressed than she, but also happened to be drinking and flirting up a storm with most of the young, single men in attendance. Cassie had been doing neither of those things, but it was interesting that Connor thought she was. Cassie moved in closer. She cornered Connor between a vanity, the wall it was butted up against, and her. He’d have to knock her over if he wanted to get away. She was betting on the fact that he would never touch her with violence. She suddenly knew this was her one chance to make her dream a reality. If she couldn’t be brave now, she never would be. “Every man in the room, Connor?” she wondered. She did something she had never done with any man before, let alone this one. She tried to flirt. “Because you were in there at one point, too.” Connor’s dark gaze narrowed to slits. “Don’t tease me, little girl. I’m not one of those eager young pups out there lapping at your heels. You push me, and you’re going to get a whole lot more than the flirtatious kisses you’re angling for right now. You toy with me, and I will scare you to death with how much I want and how much I’ll take before I’m satisfied with you.” Cassie’s whole body became one raging inferno, and her pussy flooded with wetness at Connor’s hard words. Words that were supposed to scare her away, she guessed. All they did was make her eager to learn exactly what he meant. “And what if I pick you, Connor?” she questioned, her voice holding steady despite the rapid thumping going on in her chest. “What if I decide that you’re the one I want to show my breasts to tonight?”

44

Cameron Dane

Cassie watched Connor’s gaze fall to her chest, watched his jaw tick when he noticed that her nipples were already aching points of sensitivity just waiting to be touched. His gaze slid back up to hers, and she gulped. “Then you’d better be prepared to spread your legs and take the fucking of your young life, because I won’t be satisfied with just looking, Cassandra.” She swore his already black eyes went even darker. “I’m going to want to touch, and take, and brand. I won’t stop until you absolutely cannot take any more. Truthfully, I’m not sure I’d even be able to stop then.” With that raw declaration that she was sure was meant to send her running to safety, Cassie took the opening for which she had waited five years to find. She reached up, pushed the ruched fabric at her shoulders down her arms, and bared her breasts to Connor. He took a step forward but seemed to think better of it and moved back against the wall. “You torture a wild animal, sweet girl, and you will not come out of it without some of your own blood spilled.” He wouldn’t look her in the eye, and the slight stabbed equally at Cassie’s love and irritation. “Put your clothes back on, Cassandra. Go away before you regret the impulsive choices you have made this night.” Cassie left the top portion of her dress hanging down from her waist like suspenders, and then made the move forward that Connor seemed unwilling to make. She reached up and unsnapped the first button on his black shirt. With a hunger that she had never experienced before, she watched his Adam’s apple bob convulsively in his throat. She had never wanted anything as much as she wanted Connor Hawkins to make love to her and ease the constant need for him that lived between her legs. “I think it is you who have regrets,” she told him as she popped open another snap, revealing a fine smattering of hair that covered his chest. She was so close she could feel his heat pushing into her airspace and raising the temperature in the room by considerable degrees. “I think you regret admitting that you desire me.”

Demon Moon

45

“Desire you?” Connor growled. He closed the small distance between them, not stopping until their bodies were riding one another’s like a second skin. He snagged one arm around her waist, turning as he picked her up, and set her on the top of the vanity. He pushed the voluminous skirt of her dress up her thighs with his hands until it pooled around her waist, exposing barely-there white panties. He tore them in half at the crotch as if they were nothing more than paper and pushed the elastic up to her waist to bunch with the rest of the fabric there. She felt utterly wanton and completely exposed. “I am harder than I’ve ever been in my life, Cassandra.” Connor’s fingers dug into her thighs. He reached out and grabbed her hand, making her feel the thick, hot ridge in his jeans. “And I don’t know that merely coming inside of your tight little body is going to be nearly enough to make it go away.” She caressed his cock through his jeans, loving when he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned forward to brace himself against the vanity. “Connor?” she whispered huskily. He hissed when she found the head of his sex through his jeans. “Yeah?” “I really think you should have sex with me and give it a try.” Connor chuckled, but it quickly turned into a groan. He opened his eyes, and she almost couldn’t breathe at the intensity and fire she saw burning there. “Good Christ, I am absolutely certain that you are going to be the death of me,” he told her with a shake of his head. “By the same token, I absolutely cannot stop what we have started this night.” Cassie popped the rest of the snaps open on Connor’s shirt and shoved it off his shoulders. She ran her hands all over his hard, sculpted torso and stomach, the very heat of which seared her palms. She couldn’t stop touching him and went lower until her fingers hooked over the snap of his jeans.

Cameron Dane

46

“Then don’t stop,” she told him, and unzipped his fly. The metal teeth sighed in the darkness as the zipper went down. His hand covered hers, and together they pushed his jeans and underwear past his hips. His hard cock jutted out thick and red and long, and the slit at the tip already had pre-cum pearling a bead there. Connor glanced up at her then, but his gaze slid from her face to the mirror at her back, and his eyes turned flat once again. “This makeup…” His gaze left the mirror and came back to her. “It doesn’t frighten you to be so near me in it, doing what we are about to do?” She reached up and touched the sharp planes of his cheekbones and the harsh ridges that lined his brow. “I know the real you,” she told him with a gentle smile. “Nothing about you could ever frighten me. The heart that beats inside of your chest is beautiful, no matter the costume you wear.” Her legs were suddenly pushed all the way apart and hooked over the edges of the vanity. “You do not understand, but I am a selfish bastard who aches for you right now.” He yanked her body right up to the lip of the counter until her dripping cunt was almost hanging in the air. “So I am not going to correct your mistake.” “Please,” she begged. Connor fitted his cock to the pouting lips of her pussy. She reached up and pulled his face down to hers, pressing her lips to his for the first time. He clung there, and she felt his whoosh of breath catch against her mouth. Against his open mouth, she whispered, “Do it, Connor. I need you. Right now.” He bit at her lips and clutched her hips, and with a growl that reverberated through his body into hers, he shoved his cock deep inside her channel, and rent her in two. Connor stilled inside Cassandra immediately, instantly realizing the irreversible damage his foolhardy passion had done.

Demon Moon

47

Chapter Six

Connor could not believe what he’d just done. What Cassandra had allowed him to do. His throbbing cock was wrapped in the tightest, hottest, most achingly wonderful cocoon he had ever been welcomed to penetrate. His shaft shrieked at him to move, to possess, to feel, but it was all he could do not to shake the woman in front of him and demand to know what foolishness she had wreaked this night. With a control he had never exerted before, Connor did not ram Cassandra’s snug channel to the hilt and spill himself inside her body, much as the heaviness in his testicles was screaming at him to do. Instead, he clamped her head in the vice of his hands and forced her lips away from his. With a measure of space between them, he searched her grass-green gaze for trickery, or worse, pain. That would kill him. As always, the excitement of life that lived in the brightness of Cassandra’s eyes distracted him, blinded him to anything else, leaving her a mystery that he did not know how to figure out. “Why did you not tell me that you had never lain with another?” he questioned, hating that his words exposed the rawness he was feeling inside, at least to himself. He quickly regressed to his older, formal speech patterns, a sure sign that his emotions were spilling out of his control. It was a tell that he despised hearing, as he loathed nothing more than losing

48

Cameron Dane

control. Cassandra had a way of rubbing at his until it snapped, all of the time. “Why did you not tell me that --” He grunted when she moved her hips and delicious friction slid along the length of his buried cock. “Why did you not tell me that your body was untried?” “I knew you wouldn’t do it if I told you.” She slid her hands through his hair then, glossing over his horns as if they were something that she saw sprouting from his head every day. Nothing had ever felt so good or right, not even her slick, tight pussy as it housed his prick. The gentle ease of her fingers as they ran through his hair and came to rest at the nape of his neck made Connor shudder. “I didn’t want you to hold back, Connor.” She pulled his head down and pressed her lips against his again, and Connor choked back a sob that threatened to break out of his chest and expose his weakness. “I don’t want you to pull back. Yes, it is new to me, but I don’t hurt. I swear it.” She pushed against his shaft with her hips again. “Please.” Connor slid under the tide. He no longer had the strength to hold his head above the water. He grabbed her smooth ass, holding her in place as he began. His cock sang with joy as he pushed all the way inside Cassandra’s welcoming heat until his pubic hair tangled against her mound of dark curls. Silently, his ego cried out with just as much pleasure, as her channel pulsed around him, making her mouth form a little O as she gasped in response at this new sensation of being invaded by a man. He looked up from where their bodies joined and met her gaze. “Cassandra, I could not separate from you now for all the gold in the world.” Then Connor slid back in and began the dance that would slowly drive them both insane.

Cassandra was losing her sanity quickly too. Up until now, her sex had only known the pleasure of her own fingers. To have Connor inside of her, stretching her sensitive pussy, was enough to drive her slightly crazy. It was so much more personal than anything she ever could have dreamed.

Demon Moon

49

Connor pumped his cock in and out of her in deep, steady strokes, and each slide against the walls of her cunt radiated frissons of zinging awareness through every nerve ending in her body. “Connor…I never knew it could feel so good.” She braced her hands against the vanity top and lifted her hips in time with his thrusts. She squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her teeth together as he suddenly pistoned in and out of her hard and fast a half dozen times, driving the needs of her body in a thousand different directions that she didn’t know how to handle. “You don’t know the half of it yet, little girl,” he promised, his eyes so bright with lust and desire it almost frightened her. She pushed up her hips and took all of his hard cock into her body. “I’m not a little girl.” Connor stabbed back at the same time, pushing in so deep that he nudged her core. “You’re right,” he whispered, his voice raw and raspy, “you’re not.” He swooped down and latched onto her breast with his mouth, and all thoughts of being afraid flew out of Cassie’s mind in order to make room for what Connor forced her to feel. He laved and licked at her flesh like a man starved, and that was more than enough to start her keening with pleasure. He sucked her distended nipple deep into his mouth, pulling and stretching as he bit at the acutely sensitive tip. She shot right off the table top and into his arms. He molded her legs around his waist and stagger-stepped backwards, his jeans around his thighs hampering his stride. He turned then, grunting when they bumped into another piece of furniture. Before Cassie could process that it was a bed, her back hit the cool fabric of the comforter, and Connor was shoving her deep into the soft mattress with the force of his pounding. “Oh God.” She pulled at his hair frantically. “That was so good. Do it again.”

50

Cameron Dane

“Do what again?” He pulled out of her hold on his hair and moved up until his face was right above hers. He leaned down and skated his lips across hers, nudging them apart with coaxing touches until she had no choice but to open up. His tongue sank inside and then pulled back, again and again, his timing lined up perfectly with the push and pull of his cock as it invaded her nether lips below. He slowed both the fucking of her mouth and the one he was doing to her body until it finally came to a stop. He panted above her, his hot breaths tingling against her swollen mouth, keeping it alive with tactile sensation. “Give me the words, Cassandra.” The backs of his fingers skittered over her nipples, teasing them to hard life. “Tell me what you want me to do.” She leaned up and captured his mouth, pushing between the seam of his lips until she was inside. She swirled her tongue around his and sucked its nubby length, drawing forth a growl and a slam into the mattress as he jerked within her body. “You won’t intimidate me with stuff like that,” she told him boldly, feeling more powerful than she ever had in her life, even as she was pinned to a bed, being taken by a man who could crush the life out of her without even breaking a sweat. She felt in control, and every inch of her body screamed at her that she was alive. “You won’t scare me with shocking suggestions or requests.” Connor slid his hand between their bodies and rubbed over her swollen pussy lips where they were stretched to accommodate his cock, making her shiver. “Then tell me what you want me to do to you.” He took his hand away from where they were joined and brought it to his mouth. He watched her, and licked away the sheen of wetness that coated his fingers. He drank of her essence, and she had never felt more gutturally turned on by anything in her life. His gaze darkened as he sucked on his digits. “I will do nothing else until you give me the words.” “Fuck me, Connor.” Her cunt screamed back to life when he immediately complied.

Demon Moon

51

He started that insane, mind-blowing, steady rhythm in and out of her greedy channel again. “What else?” “Nothing, for the moment.” Cassie bit at her lip as a small series of shooting sensations radiated from her sex up through her stomach like a string on a pull toy. “Oh God,” she groaned as fire-hot nerve endings flayed her alive. “I never knew it could feel this good. Please, Connor, please. Don’t. Ever. Stop.” He gritted his teeth above her. “No chance of that.” He spread her legs wide apart and straight out until she almost looked like an upside down capital T. The shift in position made her pussy pulse and spasm, and her body clutched at him in a way that felt amazingly different than before. He didn’t slow down his fucking of her one bit. “What else?” She cupped her smallish breasts and made them an offering to him. “Put your mouth on me.” He dropped his head down and kissed the inner slope of her breast. “Don’t tease me, Connor. Suck my nipples. Bite me. I want to be marked by you.” “Good Christ,” he swore, almost viciously, “you turn me on like no other.” His growl reverberated through her entire body, but it tormented her nipple the most where it was held trapped in the wet heat of his mouth. He suckled on her voraciously, alternating between biting the tip of her breast and soothing it with his tongue, sending shivers of longing and need straight to her channel that quivered around his plunging penis. She was almost ready to beg him to stop, to confess that she couldn’t take any more feeling, when he moved to her other breast to do the same. His fingers latched onto her abandoned wet nipple and played, just enough to keep her right on the edge of what her body was capable of experiencing.

52

Cameron Dane

Then, he broke his rule and touched her without her guiding words. He slid his hand down her stomach and through her curls, and pushed his middle finger through to the top of her slit where her clit was sticking out proud and hard, just waiting for that one last touch. He gave it to her without her having to ask. The pad of Connor’s blunt fingertip abraded the tip of Cassie’s clit, and every chaotic sensation running throughout the length of her body pulled up so tightly that it bordered on pain. He pushed another finger through her damp nest to join the first and squeezed her engorged little nubbin of flesh between his strong fingers. The insane tightness coiling within her suddenly snapped, splintering into a million shards of searing pleasure and light. “Oh, yes…yes…Connor. I think I’m coming. Oh God, you’re inside me, and I’m coming…” Cassie clumsily bucked up against the rod impaling her flesh as the walls of her sex clamped down and released, clamped down and released. Over and over again her muscles contracted as every nerve ending within contact of Connor’s flesh exploded with life. She locked her legs around his waist and held on tight as his thrusting became erratic and disjointed. She burrowed under his arms to get at his rippling, sweat-soaked back, determined not to let him pull away when he completely lost his control.

Connor felt Cassandra’s soft fingers run along the spiny ridge that bisected his back, and her touch over those ultra sensitive nerve endings severed what little control he had left. He manhandled her pliant body and reared up on his knees, bowing her half off the bed as he manipulated her core over the aching hardness of his cock without finesse or cool. Her body was arched up in offering as her head tipped back and balanced on the bed. Her rigid nipples pointed toward the ceiling, and no other image had ever been so gut-wrenchingly carnal and innocent at the same time in all of Connor’s two hundred years of life. His balls drew painfully tight, and he knew it was all over for him.

Demon Moon

53

“Cassandra, Cassandra…” He yanked her hips against his and slammed all the way inside her tight heat one last time. He threw back his head and roared his pleasure as his orgasm jetted through his buried cock, spurting his cum in endless, convulsive jerks within Cassandra’s womb. Eventually, gently, he lowered Cassandra back to the bed, his semi-hard cock sliding from her body as he did. For long minutes afterward, it was all he could do just to breathe. He looked down at the woman lying before him, her dress still bunched around her stomach, a flat plane of smooth flesh that lifted and lowered with deep, labored breathing. He soberly surmised that she looked to be just as affected by their coupling as he had been.

Damn it all; she had been a virgin. That was all Connor’s head could process. That, and a fierce sense of possession that he could not believe was now even stronger than what he’d felt before. He’d been the only one to have her. Cassandra had given herself to him. He couldn’t let what they’d done pass as if it were nothing. It wasn’t in his DNA to walk away. Connor got to his feet and put his jeans to rights. He reached down and grabbed his shirt, sliding his arms through the sleeves. He looked over at her and declared, “There is only one thing for us to do now.” He watched her arch an eyebrow at him as she put the top of her dress back in place. It didn’t deter him. He finished his thought. “We will be married as soon as possible.”

54

Cameron Dane

Chapter Seven

“Excuse me?” Cassie squeaked as she scrambled off the bed. She’d just come down from the most mind-altering, natural high—the most glorious moment of her life—but all of a sudden she felt a tremendous weight sitting on her chest, suffocating her. “What did you just say?” “You heard me.” Connor’s eyes were trained over her shoulder as he spoke, deliberately not meeting her gaze in a way that froze her blood. A chill went through Cassie, sprouting goose bumps all down her arms. “You made a choice that bears consequences, Cassandra. We will be married. This weekend, if I can clear my schedule and arrange it.” If he could arrange it? If he could arrange it! What should have been a scene created to burst Cassie’s heart to overflowing -- that in truth, she’d dreamt of often -- in reality felt like the coldest one in her life. “Why? Because I was a virgin?” “I respected your father a great deal, Cassandra,” Connor said by way of a direct answer. “I will not couple with his untried daughter without making it right for all parties involved.”

Demon Moon

55

“Couple? Untried?” Cassie mimicked, her mind flying in a hundred different directions. Right now, none of them were forgiving of Connor Hawkins arrogant, noble plight. Her hurt was pushed aside for pride and saving face. “Well, maybe you should have run this plan by me before you fucked me. The night would have ended in a very different way if I’d known how archaic a man you’d turn out to be in the face of my virginity.” He took a step toward her. “Cassandra --” “No,” she cut him off as she backed her way to the door. “You listen to me. I am twenty-three years old. I am a full-grown woman, just as I was thirty minutes ago before I had sex with you.” Her butt hit the door, and she reached behind her to turn the knob. “I don’t need to be coddled and taken care of, and I certainly don’t need to tie myself to a man who only wants to marry me because the guilt of shoving his penis in his friend’s daughter’s vagina would eat him up inside otherwise.” Connor took a big step in her direction. “Don’t you walk away from me.” “I’ll do whatever the hell I want!” Cassie tore the door open and ran before Connor could issue another command. “Cassandra!” Connor leapt for the door as it slammed in his face. He jerked it open to the party still going at full steam outside. He pushed past groups of people crowding the hall, uncaring of how ferocious he must look right now. To all that could see him, he was blazing with fury and anger, out for blood. That’s what it looked like to everyone around him. That was the only way Connor knew to process and compartmentalize the searing rejection of his marriage proposal to Cassandra. He wanted to kill and hurt and maim because he didn’t know how to cry and wail over the hurtful fact that she had run. A hand suddenly shot out and grabbed his arm, jerking him to a stop. He spun around to deck whoever had been stupid enough to interfere, and found Caleb there with a fist pulled back ready to hit him first if necessary.

56

Cameron Dane

Connor shook his brother’s hand free. “Back off, Caleb. I’m losing her. I have to go.” “Yes, I just saw her. She blazed past me cursing up a storm, tears streaming down her face.” “Fuck,” Connor swore as a fist of pain clamped his chest. “We…something happened between us.” He felt his cheeks heat at the memory. “I told her we would marry. I perhaps did it clumsily.” “Perhaps?” Caleb parroted dryly. “Shut up. I did not mean to make her cry. I must find her before she gets away. If she is upset, I do not want her to drive.” “I sent Cain after her,” Caleb told him, his manner as calm as Connor’s was frantic. “You, my friend, need to settle yourself before you do something else that ruins the one shot you have at becoming human. We only have a few more hours, and then the opportunity will go away again for many years.” “Do not speak to me of that.” Connor shoved Caleb against the wall with a hand to his chest. “Cain already tried. I will never tell her what I am.” His stomach roiled just thinking about it. “I cannot.” “Then you intend to marry her and never tell her you’re a demon?” Caleb asked. “You intend to deceive her and let her believe that you’re human? All the while knowing that with such a lie you will never be able to give her a child? You do her a cruelty with that decision, Con, and you know it.” “I have no choice.” Connor’s voice was stripped bare. “To tell her is to risk her disgust. It is to risk losing her forever. I will not lose her, Caleb. In two hundred years of merely existing, she is the only one who has ever made me feel alive. She is the only one who has ever gotten under my skin, who has ever even made me question if it is possible for a demon to possess a heart that can feel love.”

Demon Moon

57

“It is possible, and now you know it. But Connor, I believe Cassie can give you the humanity that you crave. I believe she possesses the feelings that make it possible, but you must tell her. Otherwise, she cannot do what is necessary. She cannot drink --” Connor slapped his hand over Caleb’s mouth. “Do not even say it. Do not torment me with something that I cannot let happen.” Caleb pried Connor’s hand off of his mouth. “Will not let happen.” His blue eyes were icy chips of disappointment. “It is Halloween --” Caleb’s cell phone trilled to life in his pocket, cutting off his impending lecture. “That will be Cain.” He opened the flip phone and put it to his ear. “Yes?” Connor waited in absolute stillness as every nerve ending in his body stood at attention. Waiting. Waiting to hear about Cassandra. Caleb closed the phone and slipped it back in his pocket. “They are on their way home,” he said, and Connor started breathing again. “Luke gave them a ride.” Connor started moving toward the exit. “Luke?” he asked over his shoulder as they made their way outside. “You mean the bastard that wanted to grab her ass while they danced?” Caleb chuckled. “That is not what was happening, Con, but yes, that Luke.” Connor growled. “You do not know how to read people as I do. That is why you did not see it, but I know.” “Yes,” Caleb muttered under his breath. “Through eyes that are blinded by love there is no one who sees quite so clearly as you.” Connor didn’t miss the sarcasm. “Shut up and get in the truck,” he ordered as he slid behind the wheel, “else I will leave without you.”

Caleb decided to let Connor have the peace of the ride home before he started in on round two.

58

Cameron Dane

***** 10:30 p.m.

Connor let himself and Caleb in through the back porch. He threw open the kitchen door and found Cain drinking a cup of coffee. Solo. “Where is she?” Connor demanded as he scanned the room, as if by a miracle Cassandra would appear if he only looked hard enough. “Relax, brother.” Cain threw him an amused look. “She’s upstairs changing her clothes, and is spitting mad. I heard her bedroom door slam, and I’m pretty sure I heard the lock click, too.” Cain turned to Caleb and continued. “Since this one here is a little bit on edge as well” -- he jerked his thumb in Connor’s direction -- “that might not be a bad thing. No coffee for him while we wait to see if Cassie cools off any, huh?” “No,” Caleb agreed as he moved to block the coffeepot. “Now is time for talk.” He settled back against the counter, crossed his arms against his chest, and Connor knew the conversation he’d been dreading wasn’t going to be squashed any longer. Connor’s eyes slid closed, but he knew that his brothers watched him. He leaned forward and braced his weight against the table for stability, and within seconds the ridges on his forehead smoothed down to mere worry lines, the horns retracted into his skull, and his cheekbones, although still striking, became much less exaggerated. It couldn’t be seen under his shirt, but his spine sucked back into his body where it was supposed to be and left his back smooth with only muscle once again. A hard-chiseled, but nonetheless arresting, man remained in the demon’s wake. “Thank God that is over.” Connor began to pace the kitchen with deliberate steps. “I could not stand to wear that face and body for even five more minutes.”

Demon Moon

59

Cain grinned in Connor’s direction. “Yet you managed to live with it long enough to make love to Cassie.” Connor jerked to a halt, and was towering over Cain in two strides. “She spoke of what happened between us?” “Not hardly,” Cain answered. “But she damn well looks like someone who’s been made love to, that’s for sure.” Caleb stepped into the line of fire again. “There is still time for it to happen again, Con. Tell her you’re a demon. Tell her of the ritual that will make you human. It’s what you’ve always wanted, and Cassie can give it to you. Tell her the truth.” “No.” Connor’s dark eyes flashed fire. “Yes,” Cain insisted, his face suddenly turning hard. “You don’t know how fortunate you are to have this opportunity, Connor. Cassie is completely besotted with you, any fool can see that. Chance allowed your relationship to change tonight. Choice can change it even more. I might fall in love one day, and that someone may feel the same for me. But all the love in the world will not give me this opportunity you’ve been given.” “You do not know that,” Connor protested, his heart breaking for Cain. “Your feelings may change one day.” “No.” Cain’s gaze darkened to the deepest blue of the ocean. “That’s not going to happen. But you, you’ve been Cassie’s friend for years. There is no doubt that her heart is true. She can make the demon living inside of your body disappear forever. You only have to guide her in the right direction.” “You make it sound easy,” Connor whispered. “It is,” Cain replied. “Yes,” Connor sniped sarcastically, “it is so very simple. I should just go to her and explain that I am a two-hundred-year-old demon who hates what he is. I should tell her that I despise being a demon, but if she could spare a minute to suck me off until I come in her

60

Cameron Dane

mouth, then that would be great because then there is a chance that I might become human. Oh yes,” he finished savagely, “I should just tell her all of that, and surely she will smile and fall to her knees before me in gratitude for the opportunity. Nay, she will be honored to do it.” “It wouldn’t be that way, Con,” Caleb chided, “and you know it.” “How do you know that, Caleb?” Connor snapped. He got right up in Caleb’s face with a snarl. “Because you’ve already told her that you are a demon, too, and she just laughed and smiled and gave you a great big hug? Is that how you know?” Cain pushed his way between the two men and shoved Connor away. “Calm yourself, brother.” He placed his hand on Connor’s chest to keep him at bay. “We’re just trying to help you get what you want. You don’t have to tell Cassie the truth right away. You only need to guide her in the direction you need her to go.”

From the hallway, Cassie could barely breathe through the tumult of revelations that she had inadvertently overheard. She’d heard every bit of it too, starting with Cain’s assessment that she looked like a woman who’d been well made love to. She couldn’t care one damn bit about that right now. Instead, hearing about the Hawkins’ lies and deceptions from the moment she’d met these men hurt her deeply, like a bruise spreading on her soul. The worst of it, though, was the debilitating pain of betrayal from Connor. She moved out of the shadow and into the doorway of the kitchen. “In which direction does Connor need to guide me, Cain?” She turned her gaze to the man she thought of as a brother. The hurt vibrating through her was too great to let Connor see her eyes yet. It would show him far too much, so she focused on Cain instead. “Should he guide me down to my knees and shove my face in his crotch while he smiles down at me with victory for his success in duping me?” “Cassandra.” That came from Connor.

Demon Moon

61

He moved across the kitchen toward her, but Cassie held him off with both arms stretched in front of her like a shield. She could not believe the things she had overheard these men saying. Not men, she corrected herself as a sliver of cold rippled down her spine, demons. They were demons. Logic told her to run. From all of them, Cain and Caleb too. Absolute fury and hurt kept her feet rooted in place, trumping her confusion and fear. Every last emotion she had ever felt for Connor boiled hot within her belly, and she couldn’t hide them from him any longer. She lifted her gaze to his. “Cassandra, please.” Connor reached for her again. “No, no.” She backed up when he got within touching distance. She wouldn’t be able to stand that right now. She looked him up and down through slitted eyes, and determinedly ignored the catch that always stopped her heart when she looked upon his striking face. “Well, I see that your makeup” -- she threw her fingers up sarcastically, indicating air quotes around that word -- “has been removed. But it wasn’t makeup at all, was it?” “Cassandra, you don’t under --” “How stupid of me,” she cut him off. She blinked rapidly to hold back the tears that wanted to fall down her cheeks. “You never go to parties. Why should I have thought that you’d put on full costume makeup to go to this one? But you just let me believe it, didn’t you? You just let me stand there and make a complete fool out of myself while I marveled at it, and you never said a word to correct me.” “Please.” He reached out to touch her, but she swatted his hand away. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk it.” “No, of course you couldn’t.” Cassie wiped her nose with the back of her hand angrily. “Not with all the work you’ve put into getting me to this moment.” That was what crushed her heart. That was what reached right down into her chest and ripped out her soul. Her hands started to tremble, and she felt her lips quivering uncontrollably, but she wouldn’t stop until she got it all said. “When I think of how bothersome I must have been, coming to

Cameron Dane

62

you for all those years because…” She had to stop for a moment. Her throat was too clogged to speak through the pain. “Because…because I thought you were my light. I thought you were my comfort, my connection to wanting to be alive after my father died. I thought you even seemed to like having me close by sometimes, too. But it was just a trick.” “No, Cassandra. No.” “Yes.” The pain coalesced in her belly and almost doubled her over. She looked up at Connor through blurry, wet eyes. “You groomed me and tolerated my presence to get me to this place. Oh, God.” Her hand covered her mouth in an attempt to hold some of the debilitating pain inside. “When I think of all the time we spent together. All of us.” She turned her unfiltered gaze on the men standing further back, listening to everything. “I thought we were a family. I bragged to all my friends about the surrogate brothers that took me in and made me one of their own. But the truth is that all you ever did was lie to me. About whom you are, what you are, about everything.” “No.” “Not everything.” Cassie ignored Cain and Caleb’s words, going back to the one who had torn out her heart. “But you --” She landed a pointed finger on Connor. Her voice cracked, and she had to start again. “You held my hand when I grieved. You slept with your door open so that you could hear me when I dreamt that my father was haunting me. You were my everything, Connor. You did all the right things to make me fall completely in love with you. When I think how --” Her voice broke again, but she was determined; she would get it all said. “When I think how you must have been barely tolerating my dogged determination to be near you.” “No.”

Demon Moon

63

“You think I can believe you? Now?” Cassie’s tone screeched higher with each word. “All I can hear in my head is you laughing at my stupid, insignificant adoration of you. How you must have detested my presence even as you knew you needed it in order to achieve your goal.” “No, Cassandra.” Connor reached out and grabbed her wrist, branding her with his touch as she’d begged him to do only a short time ago. She twisted her arm and yanked it away before she succumbed once again. “No, no.” She had to cover her ears or go mad. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies. I can’t.” She lifted her gaze to his, knowing that every moment of love she’d ever felt for him was there for him to see, stripped bare for him, but she couldn’t hide it anymore. “Don’t you see?” She started walking backwards, away from him. “One more lie from you will surely kill me.” She took off at a dead run for the stairs, desperate to get away.

64

Cameron Dane

Chapter Eight

Connor didn’t waste a second with indecision; he was right on Cassandra’s heels. She’d had a head start, and he knew her hurt was pushing her forward with incredible speed. Connor was a big man, though, and the pain he’d witnessed in her eyes spurned him onward, too, so it was no time before he was within reach. “Cassandra!” he commanded, his voice as hard as he’d ever heard it. “Stop!” “No!” He scrambled up the stairs and wrapped his hand around one of her ankles before she could climb another step. She struggled to pull free, but he was determined and wouldn’t let go. He simply grabbed her other leg too. He yanked her back toward him, and she lost her footing. Connor quickly wrapped his arms around her stomach and chest and braced her fall, covering her from behind. The feel of her supple body sprawled out on the stairs beneath him was heaven, as if it was meant to be there. His cock immediately hardened to life and pressed against his jeans, seeking its counterpoint where it was nestled right beneath his groin. He moaned as he inhaled her fresh fragrance, one that, when he breathed it in, seemed to clean him, too. She’d washed up before changing into her sweats and T-shirt, but all his body wanted to do was

Demon Moon

65

mate with her and cover her with his scent again. It was sexual need at its most powerful, and the demon within struggled to show itself once again. “Cassandra.” Connor held Cassie to him as she pushed against the restraints of his arms. “Don’t fight. Listen to me. Please.” Cassie covered her face with both of her hands and dropped her forehead to the stair just above her face. “Please,” she begged, her voice muffled by her hands. “I don’t want to be lied to anymore. Just let me go.” “There are no lies between us, I swear it.” Connor struggled against a terrible urge to take Cassandra again. “I have never lied to you about us. Never.” She turned her head to the side then, and Connor was able to see the tears still filming her eyes. The sight of it rocked his very foundation and surged in him a need to do whatever it would take to make her believe the truth. “Please.” Now it was his turn to beg. He reached up and wiped the wetness from her cheek. The sheen of her tears, and the fact that he’d been the one to put it there, tore at his very soul. “Nothing between us has ever been a falsehood. Our friendship is real and true. You must believe me.” Her body heaved beneath him, and he knew she struggled to contain her silent crying. “I used to believe every word you ever spoke to me.” The corner of Cassie’s mouth seemed to turn up a little bit at that, and Connor’s chest expanded with renewed hope. “Even when you were teasing me, and Caleb and Cain told me not to be so blindly devoted, I believed that your fibs were a special bond between the two of us.” “They were. They are. Nobody brings out that part of me as you do. It is special. You draw out many sides of me that nobody else can, Cassandra. The demon exists, yes, and I never wanted you to know about him, but the rest of what we share, none of that is a lie.”

Cameron Dane

66

Her eyes slid closed, and without that life shining through her green gaze at him, his world became dark again. “I can’t believe you,” she whispered. She suddenly began to struggle to get away again. “I don’t know how. You lied to me about such an important part of yourself that I don’t know what is real about you anymore. Without trust and security between us, we don’t have anything.” That triggered the desperation living within Connor as nothing else could. He would not accept defeat over the only thing he’d ever wanted in his life. “We have nothing between us anymore, you say?” He reached down between their bodies and pushed the elastic waistband of her sweats down over the smooth globes of her ass, just enough to expose her to his touch. He slid his blunt finger between the seam, making her gasp and buck up against him. He pushed further between her thighs until he fingered the moist plumpness of her folds. “I would say the fact that you are soaking wet means that we have something between us. Something that your body cannot deny, even if your head wants to.” He pushed into her pussy then, all the way to the second knuckle, and she flooded for him even more. “Yes, we have something between us, my Cassandra. Something that will not be denied.” She gasped and worked her body against his buried finger. “You want to fuck me again?” “Yes,” he confessed, the word almost a sacrament. He added another finger, stretching her snug, damp channel as he mimicked the sex act that he wanted to do with her until neither one of them could walk. “I ache for you. I am so hard that it hurts.” “Then do it.” She planted her elbows on one step and her head on another, and thrust her ass in the air as best she could with her sweatpants bunched at her thighs trapping her legs almost completely together. “Do it, Connor. Fuck me. You’ll like it. I’ll like it, but it won’t change anything.”

Demon Moon

67

“Yes…” He unzipped his jeans and released his raging cock. “…it will.” He spread her open and pushed his cock inside, sliding through her tight heat inch by slow, desperate inch, stretching her in almost immeasurable increments, making her feel it all until he was encased by the fist of her pussy all the way to the root. She whimpered beneath him, but rolled her hips back against him in the smallest circle, so he knew she loved having him back inside her body again. He rested his lips against the shell of her ear and started bombarding her with his soul. “We are not a lie, Cassandra.” He curled his hands around the soft flesh of her hips and held her in place while he took her body with exquisitely tender thrusts. “I don’t care if you believe nothing else, but you will believe that I cherish every moment I’ve ever had in your presence. Please.” He choked on the word as a flood of fear overwhelmed him. He bit at her ear and slid his tongue inside, needing to mate with her body in every way that he could. “Please, say that you believe me.” She reached back and touched his face, and he almost spilled himself right on the spot. “I want to,” she whispered brokenly. She worked her hips back against his cock in jerky spurts, her motions hampered, as were his. “God, how I want to.” “Then do,” he pleaded. “Please…” Words fell away as Cassandra’s cunt squeezed Connor’s dick with agonizing tightness, milking at his length in a way that begged for a faster, deeper penetration that he fought to suppress. The demon wanted out; he couldn’t be held back in the throws of complete sexual conquest. “No.” Connor cursed as this twin who was not a twin, but rather a part of himself, demanded freedom. “Not right now. Please.” He gritted his teeth as the need to possess took over, overpowering his will to deny once again, as it always did. He did not know what insanity had taken hold of him and made him think he would be able to hide this part of himself from Cassandra throughout the length of a marriage. He did not know what kind of fanciful dreaming had allowed him to

68

Cameron Dane

imagine that he could control the demon when they were so closely linked together in every way. Sweat soaked Connor’s shirt as his spine stretched the flesh on his back and pushed the demon body out from within. A mountain of shifting cartilage took over his face, and his horns burst through the top of his skull at the same time, outing him as a demon once again. He barely noted the burning hot pain searing through his body that was a natural part of the shift, as fear of Cassandra’s revulsion took over his mind. The demon emerged quickly and demanded control. Cassie jerked beneath him and clutched the step above her, crying out as his cock dug deep into her tight pussy, jamming her tender flesh into the stairs. Connor fisted her hair and tugged her head back, torturing himself when he saw a flash of panic and fear darken her eyes. The demon frightened her, he could tell, but even with that, he couldn’t stop. He smoothed a trembling hand down her hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered against her temple as his pace picked up in accordance with his new body’s needs. He took her hard in a way that made her gasp and grunt beneath him. “Sexual passion forces the demon out. I’m sorry. I thought I’d be able to control him, but I can’t keep him locked in. I feel too much when I am with you.” His hips pounded his cock in and out of her wet, sucking channel again and again. He took her like an animal in heat. He hated that he couldn’t stop it, even as his prick grew so hard that it hurt. His balls drew up tighter than they ever had before, proving to him that his body liked it, even if his mind was ashamed. “It’s rough, I know. I’m sorry.” He swore he heard her whisper, “It’s okay, Connor, it’s okay,” and that decimated what was left of his control, what was left of his soul that didn’t already belong to her. “Please forgive me,” he said, his voice guttural as release became everything to him. He plowed into her one final time, grinding her into the stairs, pleading desperately, “Forgive me for everything, please.” His orgasm ripped from his body with a blinding white light that

Demon Moon

69

almost let him touch heaven. Hot streams of semen emptied from his body into hers, endless ropes of cum that seized his muscles and jerked his body over hers as he found his release. He shoved his hands under her body and found the top of her slit. He spread her open and unearthed her clit, swollen so big that he was sure she must be in pain. He wet his fingers with the moisture that was all over the inside of her legs, and with the first soft figure eight she was bucking back against him as the first tremors of orgasm took her over too. “That’s it, that’s it. Don’t fight it, sweetheart.” He held her stomach with the flat of his hand as she tried to pull away from what she was feeling. “No…no…Oh, God…” She reached back and grabbed at his ass, digging her nails into the muscles there, tying him to her while her cunt clenched his cock with the power of her orgasm. She clawed at his flesh, screaming, “Connor!” and with dark satisfaction, Connor knew he’d bear the marks of her passionate release. Cassie’s pussy grabbed at his buried cock in rippling waves that wouldn’t stop, and Connor grunted, shocked when his penis jerked within the tight glove of her folds and spurted another shot of scorching cum deep into her body. Eventually, Connor regained his breathing and equilibrium, and pulled out. He was determined not to look down at his penis covered in Cassandra’s slick moisture, but he couldn’t help it. It was a glorious sight, and he reveled in it, even reached down and wrapped his hand around himself to feel it before stuffing his cock back in his jeans. He looked down at Cassandra’s swollen pink pussy where it peeked out from between thighs that were smeared with his ejaculate. He committed the beauty of her raw sexuality to memory, because for all he knew it would be the last time it ever happened. Connor shimmied Cassie’s sweats back up over her beautiful, plump ass and covered her up. He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her to her feet. He turned her around, taking two steps down himself so that they were almost at eye level with each other.

70

Cameron Dane

When she seemed to be steady, he released her and moved even further down the stairs. He needed the distance, else he might not be able to say what he needed to say. “What we just did” -- he glanced at the stairs where he’d just taken her, and then met her wary gaze head on -- “and everything I said while we did it, that was the truth of what I feel for you. I feel it when I am like this.” He pointed at his face, still in full-on demon landscape. Then, for the first time without hiding, he closed his eyes and concentrated. Within less than a minute, he was back to the face she’d always known. “And I feel it when I am like this.” He pointed at his face again. “That does not change. That will not change. Ever. No matter what. Do not come to me until you believe it, for I cannot abide the look in your eyes when you do not trust me. Not when I have had your trust for so long.” Connor’s throat closed up, and his words were forced out over the sandpaper of his tongue, but he was going to say the rest if it was the very last thing he ever did. “Not when your friendship and trust has become the very thing that feeds my soul.” He pulled back to the shadows then, but he was very afraid that even with darkness there was no longer any place to hide. “Not when, in my two hundred years of existence, I have never loved another as I love you. Don’t come to me again until you know in your heart that that is the truth.”

Connor disappeared down the darkness of the long, wide hallway until he was out of sight. Thirty seconds later Cassie heard the front door slam. Cassie stood there, her feet a pair of cement blocks that wouldn’t allow her to chase after Connor. Her jaw hung slack, wide enough to let flies in. She couldn’t make her body function, but her brain was an oval racetrack in her mind with a half dozen cars racing around trying to be the idea that took root first. It was quite a list. She had given Connor her virginity. Connor had proposed. Connor wasn’t human. He was a demon. She had the ability to make Connor human, if she was willing to do it.

Demon Moon

71

The question was, could she trust that his motive went deeper than ridding himself of a piece of his DNA that he so clearly abhorred? Cassie’s mind fought a battle that tore her thoughts from one end of the spectrum to the other. On the one hand, Connor had withheld from her vital information about whom and what he was. On the other hand, he had chased her down and made love to her again. He’d invaded her in a way that she could still feel between her legs, and had a suspicion she would be feeling for the rest of her life. If not physically, than in the memory of how desperate he’d seemed to make her believe in him. In how apologetic he’d been for getting a little bit rough with her body, when in fact she’d quite reveled in it. It had been right then when she’d felt the sincerity of his words and needs washing over her in droves, pushing her to unimagined heights of intimacy that she’d wished for with Connor ever since she’d realized she was in love with him. That was the thing that had rooted her in place on the stairs like a plaster garden statue. He’d told her he loved her. The brightness in his eyes that he’d tried to hide from her as he’d confessed his love could not be faked either. She knew that one thing about him in a way that nobody else did. She had always known that whatever his mouth was saying, or whatever his body language was withholding, she could always read what he was really trying to say in those dark eyes of his. She knew Connor Hawkins better than she knew herself. She’d always believed that. She’d always known she could be the woman to ease his solitude and reticent heart, if he would just let her in. Well, now he had. The only thing that was different was that there was more inside of him than she could have ever imagined. Apparently, a lot more. Only, her heart didn’t really seem to care about that. All she seemed able to focus on was that Connor had told her he loved her. When had that happened? Why hadn’t she seen it in him when she could always see everything else so clearly? Most important of all, though, was she brave enough to have blind faith in its truth?

72

Cameron Dane

“There’s still time you know,” a voice spoke to her from the shadows. The body came into the muted light. One she knew well. Caleb. “I can tell you what you need to do to make him human, if you’d like to hear it.” Cassie raised a sardonic eyebrow his way. “I believe I already got the gist of that, thank you.” She was still quite a bit pissed off at this man, and his other brother, too, for lying to her for all of this time. “I believe it went something like ‘I am to drink his seed and he will become human.’ Am I remembering that right?” “Yes.” Caleb nodded. He leaned his shoulder against the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. “It has to be done under a full Halloween moon.” “Right.” Cassie rolled her eyes. “I suppose it wouldn’t be a proper demon ritual if it wasn’t.” “Fair enough. You have a right to your sarcasm and righteous anger,” Caleb conceded. “But while you are feeling it, did you pause to consider how rarely we get this opportunity? Did you stop and think about how often we get a full moon on Halloween?” Cassie’s heart seized in her chest with sudden fear. “How often?” “Once roughly every twenty years. Before tonight, though, it has been over forty five years since the last.” Cassie’s legs went out from under her, and she landed on the step with a thud. “Oh, God.” “Yes,” Caleb agreed. “Oh, God is right. Not very often, is it? To be lucky enough to discover that you are newly in love during one of these cycles; well, that is even rarer still. To have a man like Connor -- and he is a man, for that is what he has always wanted to be -sacrifice that rather than lose you, that is the rarest thing in a demon of all. For in truth, he doesn’t have to be in love with the woman for it to work. She just has to be desperately in love with him.”

Demon Moon

73

“You’re saying that most of you would not think twice about using a woman to get you this humanity that you desire?” “Not many demons want to be human. But of those that do, not many would care.” “Not even you?” Caleb shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know that I would deliberately deceive a woman, but if it came to a cycle, and I was dating a woman whom I knew with just a little extra push would become besotted with me, I’d have to think real hard about not doing it.” “I want to believe in him,” Cassie confessed. She dropped the weight of her head into her hands. “I want to believe that these years we’ve spent becoming such good friends weren’t a lie.” “They weren’t,” Caleb assured her, “but before you decide whether or not you can do this, you should know a few more things.” Cassie rolled her head until she was looking at Caleb through a space between her widespread fingers. “What else can there be?” “If you are going to perform this ritual, then you’d better be damn sure you love him with every fiber of your being. Because what Connor didn’t tell you -- what he would never tell you -- is that he only gets one shot at this. If you take his seed, and you are merely infatuated with him, then his chance of becoming human ceases to exist. There is no second chance in twenty years, or forty years, if a woman who really loves him happens to come along and wants to make a life with him. He is putting everything in his faith of what you feel for him. Another thing --” “Another thing?” Cassie shrieked. “What else can there be?” “If you want a life with him -- a family,” Caleb clarified, “then this is the only way. He cannot give you a child while he is a demon. He must be human, or you must be demon, that is the only way.” “Right. I’m not a demon.”

74

Cameron Dane

“No.” Caleb’s smile faded completely. “And trust me; it is much harder and incredibly more degrading for you to do what it takes to become a demon than it is for him to become human. You don’t even want to know what the first entails. Not that it matters; Connor wouldn’t be able to let go of the possessiveness he feels for you in order to do it.” Caleb suddenly leaned down and pecked Cassie’s cheek gently. “So, Cassie girl, now you have all the information. It is up to you to decide. See you later.” Caleb sauntered off just as easily as he’d arrived.

Well, great. There was nothing like the fear of holding another person’s very life in one’s hands to render one paralyzed. If she were wrong about her feelings for Connor, then she wiped out the one dream he’d apparently had since his inception. The very idea of hurting him in that way pressed on Cassie’s chest and made it difficult to breathe. The fact that she was so terrified of taking away this chance for him to become human must mean that her love for him was real. Didn’t it? There was also the fact that learning he was a demon had barely registered on the scale of things she’d thought twice about. His demon-ness wasn’t the thing she’d overheard that had crushed her earlier tonight. What had attacked her entire being like a debilitating disease was learning that Connor had hidden a vital part of himself from her, and that perhaps everything special she’d always believed existed between them had been fabricated for a selfish end. That had been what had heated her anger back in the kitchen. Only he had chased her down and made passionate love to her. Again. Then he’d opened up his heart and told her that he loved her. And probably the most compelling of all, the thing that made Cassie sit up straight because she’d only just realized it, was that Connor had never once asked her to perform this act that would make him human. She’d overheard his brothers trying to convince him to do it, but he’d not once ever mentioned it to her himself. Had, in fact, told her not to speak to him again unless she had complete faith that his love for her was real.

Demon Moon

75

That was not a man -- or a demon, she supposed -- who had sinister plans to lull a naïve young woman into making him human. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Cassandra gained her feet quickly, suddenly without any doubts about what she had to do. The question now became: where was her demon hiding, and could she find him in time?

76

Cameron Dane

Chapter Nine 11:35 p.m.

Cassie didn’t end up having to go very far. She stepped out the front door and found Connor sitting in a chair on the porch. She drank him in with her eyes, so stoic and chiseled that he stole her breath away and left her too tongue-tied to speak her heart. She walked over, paused at his side, and reached out to touch his stubbled jaw with the tips of her fingers. She did it in place of the words that seemed trapped in her throat. He jerked at her touch and pulled away, turning to look up at her. The uncertainty that filled his black eyes erased just about every fear Cassie had. He loved her, and for however long he had successfully hidden it from her, those days were gone. She slid her hand down his arm and entwined her fingers in his. “Come.” She tugged him out of his seat. “We have very little time left. Let’s do this.” “Cassandra.” Connor’s feet dragged as they made their way across the porch and down into the moonlit yard. “You do not have to do this.” “Yes, I do.” She looked up at him with what she hoped was a gentling smile. She pulled at the snaps on his shirt and pushed it off his arms. His chest was magnificently sculpted

Demon Moon

77

from daily ranch work, and she allowed herself to touch him, to feel the hard muscles under his heated flesh, as she’d always wanted to do. She leaned in and planted a soft kiss over his heart, smiling against his skin when she felt the rapid staccato of it beating against her lips. “I have to, Connor. I have to, for us.” She slid across the plane of his chest to his nipple and darted her tongue to touch the very tip, and his breath hissed out from above her. His hands pushed through her hair until he was cupping her neck. He moved her a step back until there was a measure of distance between them. “You have never done this before, sweetheart.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “How do you know I haven’t?” Connor’s hands curled into fists against her nape. “Please do not tell me that you have, for then I will have to kill this individual in the most painful of ways.” “Relax.” Cassie closed the distance between them pecked his cheek. “I haven’t.” “Good.” He took her mouth in a deep, carnal kiss that left her unsteady on her feet. Then he had the audacity to smile and kiss her nose. “I was not in the mood to go killing tonight.” “No,” she agreed. Her hands went to the snap on his jeans and popped it open, and then she pushed the zipper down past the bulge she could already feel pushing to get free. “You are in the mood to have your cock sucked by me until it is drained of your seed.” She rubbed him through his underwear, could feel the dampness of pre-cum already dotting the fabric. “Even if you are too stubborn to say so yourself.” “Not stubborn,” he corrected as she dropped to her knees to help him take off his boots. He didn’t have to be naked for this, but they’d already done it twice without getting out of their clothes first, and Cassie was ready to see Connor in his full glory. She’d been dreaming about it for so long that her hands shook. Connor lifted his foot and aided her in his disrobing, even as he continued to lecture her. “It is just that you are not prepared, Cassandra. A demon releases a large amount of seed

78

Cameron Dane

when he ejaculates, and you have never even taken the small amount that a human male produces.” “I can handle it.” Fear of the unknown sat like a sickness in Cassie’s stomach, though. It wasn’t that she didn’t think she could do it, but she didn’t want to merely do it; she wanted to do it well. She wanted to please Connor with her mouth, not just milk his seed in a clinical way to produce the desired results. “I am stronger than you think I am.” “I do not doubt your strength,” he told her. All of his clothing except for his underwear was on the ground now, but his hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist before Cassie could push that final piece of fabric down his legs to join the rest. “It is an obscene amount of seed, Cassandra, and due to the volume of meat I must eat to keep my demon body strong; it makes my semen very bitter.” His tone was so sober that Cassie paused to listen. “It will burn your throat like acid, and when you do not think you can take anymore, it will continue to come. You are required to drink it all in order for this to be successful.” “Wait a minute.” She looked up at him from her position on her knees. “How do you know what demon seed tastes like?” She couldn’t believe it, but Connor’s cheeks flamed red with heat above her. “Sometimes…there will be times… Damn it, there will be times when I taste you more than once, and you taste me more than once before we’ve washed, and we will taste each other in our mouths, on our flesh, in our bodies. That is how I know how I taste.” That gave her pause. “Is my taste still on your cock?” He nodded. His hand slid through her tresses and caressed the back of her head. “I did not want to wash you from my body. I wanted your scent with me for as long as possible in case I never got the chance to know you again.” The vulnerability of that nearly broke Cassie’s heart. “How can you say something so beautiful to me and still think that I wouldn’t want to do this for you?”

Demon Moon

79

Connor’s jaw started ticking and his eyelids slid to half-mast. “I just don’t want you to regret it.” “Do you want a life with me, Connor?” Cassie twisted her wrist out of his hold and pushed his underwear down his legs, freeing his enormous, jutting cock from its prison. It stood erect and proud, only inches from her face, and she’d never been so scared, yet completely certain of her course, in her life. “Do you want a life that includes marriage, and children, and growing old together?” The body in front of her shuddered, and the hand buried in her hair twisted and pulled, stinging her skull. “It is the only thing I’ve ever prayed for in my life. I have had dreams of you round with my child, and have awoken to sheets sticky with my seed because of them. That is how much I want a life with you.” Cassie blinked back tears before they could fall. She lifted her hand to Connor’s cock and encircled it with her fingers, testing the velvety hardness with a gentle touch. “Then let me do what I must so that we can have it,” she told him, and then licked the pearly bead of wetness from the head of his rearing penis with the flat of her tongue. “Good Christ.” Connor’s haunches flexed as she opened her lips and took the bulbous head of his cock into her mouth, twirling her tongue around it. “Your mouth is heaven on my flesh. Oh, Cassandra.” He groaned, and his hand fisted in her hair when she widened her jaw and took more of his salty, smooth penis into the wetness of her mouth. “I am too excited by your touch. I feel him coming…I’m sorry…” Cassie looked up and watched the pain flash in Connor’s dark gaze as his face altered before her very eyes, and the demon appeared. He seemed to hate it so much, be ashamed of it even. So much so that he looked off to the side in the direction of a paddock instead of down on her. Cassie reached around behind Connor and felt the ridge of his mountainous spine where it protruded from the base of his back. She flitted her fingers over the spiky flesh

80

Cameron Dane

there. His entire body jerked, and she pulled back, letting his penis slide from between her lips with a wet little pop as she looked up at his forlorn profile. “Look at me.” Cassie must have sounded sufficiently in charge because Connor immediately complied. The shame she saw in his features broke her heart. “I am not afraid of you,” she told him in no uncertain terms. “I am not afraid to touch you when you are in demon form.” She settled for trailing her fingers along his spine again to prove this, simply because his face was too far away. His cock jumped in front of her, and his hips jutted forward. Cassie suddenly realized that every inch of him was acutely sensitive to her touch. She caressed him again, and then leaned in to lick the drop of pre-ejaculate that immediately seeped out of his tiny slit. “I am not afraid of the passion that lives inside the demon. You have already shown him to me twice. I would walk to town proudly on the arm of this demon that you are now, if not for a fear of your safety. I am not ashamed to love a demon, as I am not ashamed to love you. I would accept you -- like this -- if not for the fact that with our differences we can’t have babies and grow old together.” Cassie almost swore she saw the moonlight reflecting off the brightness of tears shining in Connor’s eyes. “Let yourself go, Connor.” Cassie knew that was the only way this was going to work. “Trust that I will still love you when we come out on the other end, just as I trusted that you never meant to hurt me by withholding half of what you are.” The demon finally looked down at her, truly looked down at her, and she could see the real Connor clearly as he lived behind the primal passion, front and center on the demon’s face and in his blazing gaze. “Take me in your mouth,” Connor said, his voice guttural and uncensored. He wrapped his own hand around his root and guided himself between her lips, pausing only long enough to hiss before pushing forward, until his knob reached the back of her throat. He pulled back before she could gag, and then pushed the smooth-as-silk length of his rod back in again. “I

Demon Moon

81

want to fuck your tight cunt again.” His tone changed as he took her advice and let himself be free. “But the hot, wet cave of your mouth is what I need to ravish tonight, and you are doing such a good job that I have no doubt my cock will be residing there often in the future.” He tangled his hands in her hair and took charge, guiding his hips back and forth, back and forth, as he filled her mouth with the thick length of his cock, so hot with passion that it pulsed and throbbed as if it had its own heart. Cassie licked and sucked every time he pushed in, and swirled her tongue around the tip, licking away the little deposit that built up there between each stroke. He was excited. She could tell by the way his entire body vibrated, and in the deep, low-grade hum he chanted under his breath as he fucked her mouth without fear of rejection. “Suck it, Cassandra.” Connor’s thrusting started to change and grow more erratic. “Take it as deep as you can, sweetheart…Oh, good Christ, I’m so close.” He untangled his hand from her hair and grabbed her hand. “Squeeze my balls.” He shoved her fingers between his legs and wrapped them around the heavy, furry weight of his testicles, showing her what he wanted. She caught on quickly, emboldened by the rapid increase in his heavy breathing. “That’s it…that’s it. Oh, Christ, your little hands are perfect. Don’t stop sucking my cock.” His words trailed off as she sucked in her cheeks and gave him as much suction as he could handle. That was all Connor needed. His testicles drew up tight, pulling out of her hands. His cock seemed to grow immeasurably bigger in her mouth, almost stretching her jaw beyond bearing. “Ready yourself, Cassandra.” Connor’s body reared backward. He growled like an animal, “I’m coming…I’m coming!” Almost immediately, steaming hot jets of semen assaulted the back of Cassie’s throat, setting the sensitive flesh on fire. She swallowed the bitter, acrid ropes of seed as quickly as they came, but before she could take a breath, another shot of it was filling her mouth, each

82

Cameron Dane

stream more bitter tasting and longer lasting than the previous one. Cassie had to grab onto Connor’s hips and hold on tight, lest her instincts to pull away overtake her and break the bond she needed to maintain. “Oh…oh…Christ,” Connor grunted as he thrust his hips up, shoving his cock even deeper into Cassie’s mouth as another long spurt of cum emptied from his penis straight down her throat. “There’s more…there’s more.” Another shot singed her mouth, and Cassie tried to relax her throat and let it slide down. “Never this much before…” He moaned deep in his throat as he held her head, helping her stay connected. “Can’t…” He almost seemed to loose his legs as a particularly hard jerk wracked his body and released more seed. “…make it stop.” Cassie grabbed the length of Connor’s cock in her fist and started milking it, forcing just the head of his penis to settle on her tongue behind the ring of her lips. The motion seemed to settle him. Maybe it was her taking charge, or maybe it was how she manipulated him with her hand, but his seed lessened to a thinner, constant stream that, although bitter and acrid to the point of making her eyes tear up, was much easier to swallow than the scorching, steaming jets of before. Connor’s legs did finally collapse. He fell to his knees, then onto his back. Cassie quickly stretched out onto her stomach to keep attached to his cock that was still leaking fluid, although it was only extremely small dribbles now. Eventually, he wrapped his hand around the base of her neck and pulled her up until she was lying on top of him. “There is no more,” he told her. He leaned up and kissed her. He licked inside her mouth, tasting himself, she was sure. She knew he did it to share in the event of what she’d done. He bussed a kiss to the corner of her mouth and laid his head down on the grassy ground. “You have sucked me dry. And I swear to the heavens, Cassandra, even I did not imagine it would be that much.”

Demon Moon

83

Cassie climbed up and rested her elbows on Connor’s shoulders so that she could see his face. He was clearly exhausted and spent, and she watched the demon slide away from his face as quickly as it had appeared. “How do you feel?” she asked. She touched his smooth human forehead again. “Is he gone?”

Connor didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t have the ability to just make the demon appear when he wanted. The demon broke through in extreme passion and primal acts of sex or violence. He could push him away as quickly or as slowly as he wanted after the bout of heightened emotion had passed, but he couldn’t just conjure him up again on command. Connor knew, with conditioning and training, it was possible to bring forth the demon upon will, but he had never wanted the demon to be with him when it wasn’t absolutely necessary, so he’d never learned how. Connor searched his body and mind for signs, changes, a new or unfamiliar feeling of peace that hadn’t been there before. “I don’t know,” he finally answered honestly, as he didn’t see the point in lying now. “Physically, I feel the same as I always have.” Cassie’s face crumbled before him, and Connor quickly added, “No matter what happens, I do not regret what happened tonight. We have found each other, and now that I have had you, I do not intend to let you go.” “I will not go anywhere,” Cassie vowed, looking downright cantankerous. “I just don’t want you doubting my love for you if this did not work. I love you, Connor Hawkins.” She poked his chest very deliberately with each word she spoke. “I will not have some demon curse that might not work make you question that for even one second.” Cassie was fiery above him, and Connor had never felt so fully alive in all of his life. “Come here, my love.” He pulled her head down and kissed her soundly. When she was sufficiently trembling above him, he said, “I will never second-guess how you feel for

84

Cameron Dane

me. Not after what you did tonight. Christ…” An image of her mouth wrapped around his cock filled his mind. He shifted her hips over his prick and rubbed. “…you make me think that I have never had a woman before. I cannot recall a single female face that existed before yours.” He expelled a heavy breath as the eraser points of her nipples abraded his chest through her thin T-shirt. “I swear that no flesh has ever responded to my body the way yours seems to do so naturally to mine.” “Connor!” Cassie squirmed around all over him, making him groan. His body swelled with desire once again. Her jaw dropped to his chest in shock. “Connor Hawkins!” she scolded, even as she rubbed the V of her thighs over his rapidly hardening prick. “There is no way I’m feeling what I think I’m feeling.” “But there is.” He smiled wickedly as he shifted her legs straight atop his. He pushed her sweats down her sleek thighs and off of her body. She immediately folded her legs up and squeezed his hips with her work-firm muscles. The vise of her thighs was heavenly. Cassie rose up above Connor, and he couldn’t tear his gaze away. She lifted her arms and slid her T-shirt from her body, revealing her little breasts that he thought were delectable and perfect. She looked down at him with a dreamy expression that was so beautiful he went stock-still for a moment, just so that he could concentrate and sear it into his memory forever. Her shoulders rolled provocatively as she braced her hands against his chest. Her tangled mess of wavy, mahogany hair spilled over her breasts, giving Connor a whole new picture of beauty to admire and love. He pressed his widespread palms against her soft, bare stomach, and then up under the curtain of her tresses until the small mounds of her breasts were covered by his hands. He petted, and teased, and flicked until she was moaning and squirming. Her legs clamped against his hips rhythmically, searching for what only he was going to be giving her for the rest of her life. He spread her thighs until the entrance to her excited pussy was poised just out of reach of the head of his cock.

Demon Moon

85

“I am hard for you again already.” Connor reached between her legs and spread her nether lips apart with one hand, and lowered her down onto his raging penis with the other. She was wet and willing, open and grasping for him as she’d been so many times already in just this one short night. He slid inside her welcoming sheath to the hilt. “I want to make love to you under the Halloween moon, with complete honesty between us.” He glanced up at the shining orb in the dark, starry night sky. With a rueful grin, he added, “If it indeed still is Halloween.” Cassie grabbed Connor’s wrist and glanced at his watch. It was the only item he had on his body, other than her, anyway. He was infinitely more interested in one than the other. “It is,” she informed with a secret smile that tugged his heart. “11:58 p.m. Just barely got it done.” Cassandra stole Connor’s breath and thoughts away as she rose up and came down, riding his embedded cock without prompting. She fisted his member with her exquisitely tight heat, and Connor was quickly swept under the tide of frantic passion once again. He was a prisoner to this woman and the feelings that only she could drag out of him. He was her slave, and he didn’t care. Only he did care. Connor stilled completely as it hit him, grunting with the need to keep moving as he grabbed Cassie’s hips to stop her. He reached up and pulled her down, taking her mouth with just as much fierce desire as his cock had taken it moments ago. He whispered against her swollen lips, “My sweet Cassandra, you are driving me insane with your loving of me.” “Good,” she said back. “That is my goal.” She rocked against his rigid length with deliberate intent. He growled and knifed up into her in response, for the first time in his life not fighting the passion that consumed him whole.

86

Cameron Dane

He smiled against her mouth and said something that he never thought in his life to be able to say to this woman. He whispered heatedly, “If we do not stop this, my love, I may put a life in your belly this night.” That was when his Cassandra understood. She pulled up and braced herself against his chest, digging her small nails in hard enough to leave a bunch of little crescent moon marks in his flesh. Connor didn’t care. He wanted everything, branding and all. He held his tongue as the truth finally hit her too, and then sank in completely. “You mean it?” she croaked, and started dragging over his throbbing cock again. “The demon is gone?” “Yes.” Connor rolled Cassie over and began to take her in earnest. “There is only a man now. One that loves you desperately.” “Oh, well.” She smiled up at him, and he lost his heart all over again. “I think I’d rather like for him to come out and play.” “Good.” Connor braced Cassie’s head in his hands and held her gaze. “Because he’s here for good, and you aren’t ever getting away.” And then Connor Hawkins, human male, took Cassandra Claire, love of his life, as he’d dreamed of doing for five years. He never once looked back. Cassandra was his. He was finally human, and he was in heaven.

Cameron Dane I am an air force brat and spent most of my growing up years living overseas in Italy and England, as well as Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia while we were stateside. I now live in Florida once again with my big, wonderfully pushy family and my three-legged cat, Harry. I have been reading romance novels since I was twelve years old, and twenty years later I still adore them. Currently, I have an unexplainable obsession with hockey goaltenders, and an unabashed affection for ‘The Daily Show’ with Jon Stewart.