“You’re Hunter. The Hunter. Fallen angel, spent time in Hell thousands of years ago, and is now an assassin.” She held up one hand and ticked points off with the other.
“Yes.”
Some hot, sweaty sex with a willing woman, one he didn’t have to hide his identity with, wasn’t too much to ask.
Be careful what you wish for.
It always changed things.
“I want to eat.” With sex off the table, he might as well feed another hunger. He left the room, somewhat surprised when she scrambled after him without bothering to grab her weapons. It also showed her innate intelligence. Weapons would only put him even more on edge, and she couldn’t kill him with the limited ones she had at her disposal.
There was plenty of food in the refrigerator, but nothing appealed. Sitting on one of the stools at the counter, she watched him, her gaze drifting from him to the symbols on the walls and back again.
Since there was nothing that appealed to him, he grabbed his phone. “You like Italian?”
“I do, but you do realize it is early morning. No Italian restaurant is going to be open.”
Shit, she was right. He tossed the phone down in disgust. It hit the contract Gabriel had left with him, making it spin toward her.
Her eyes widened when she got a good look at it. Could she read the angelic language? Not many could outside angelkind.
“This has my name on it.” Horror filled her gaze, but she was smart enough not to touch it. “This has my name on it,” she repeated, her voice getting louder.
Good a time as any to go on the offensive. “It does.”
“What is it?” she demanded as she slipped off the stool.
“It’s a contract on your life.” Curiosity forced him to push harder. “What have you done to give an angel a hard-on for you?”
Her entire face went pale, and she staggered back a step. So she hadn’t known. Interesting. And still, their paths had crossed.
Why?
Morrigan straightened her shoulders. There was no fear in her gaze. No, there was only acceptance. And that bothered him—a hell of a lot more than it should.
She licked her bottom lip, drawing his gaze. Fuck, he wanted to kiss her again.
“What have you done to give Lucifer such a hard-on for you?”
Now, this was a surprise, and not at all what he’d been expecting. “What do you mean?”
She motioned to the document. “Some angel has contracted you to kill me, and Lucifer ordered me to kill you. What’s going on?”
He studied her, using every skill at his command to assess her. She didn’t flinch from his perusal. Her breathing remained normal, and so did her pupils. He sniffed the air but scented no deception. She wasn’t lying. That was even more curious.
“I have no fucking idea. But whatever it is, I plan to find out.”
…
I’m still alive. Go me.
Best not to get too excited. A bloody angel had put out a contract on her. An angel! And he’d hired the most dangerous assassin in the world.
“I’m nobody,” she told Maccus, at a total loss. “I’m a low-level demon bounty hunter.”
“Who were you before?” He came closer, and this time she didn’t back away. It was pointless. And she had a sinking feeling the tattoos inked on his skin were more than just mere decorations. She remembered the daggers sticking out of the demon she’d captured and how they’d vanished into thin air.
“I was an ordinary woman, living an ordinary life.” She went to the window and stared out at the beautiful skyline. The sun was rising, giving the city an ethereal glow, but it couldn’t drive back the darkness filling her. “My mother died when I was eighteen, leaving me to raise my younger sister.”
“Your father?”
“Not in the picture. I don’t remember him. He got her pregnant with me and then left. Came back a few years later, stayed long enough to get her pregnant with Kayley, and then split again. My mother didn’t have the best taste in men.” She turned away from the view.
With his bare feet spread wide, his jeans zipped but not buttoned, his chest gleaming, and a scowl on his face, Maccus was the poster child for a pissed-off god.
Yup, in the dictionary under the word “screwed” was her photo.
“What did you do for a living?” This was turning into an interrogation. Since there was no dining table and chairs, she sat on the floor and leaned against the wall.
“I worked two jobs—a janitor in the evening and a waitress during the day. I’d planned to go to college once I had Kayley raised and through school.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
He prowled toward her until he stood over her. Since she hated being at such a disadvantage, she pushed to her feet. “No, it didn’t happen.” She’d never been able to figure out what had gone wrong. “Maybe it was her being on her own so much, or not having either of her parents, or she fell in with the wrong crowd.”
Morrigan would never forget the night she’d come home from her last cleaning job, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to get a shower and climb into bed, only to find Kayley and several of her “friends” conducting some sort of ritual in their living room.
She dragged her fingers through her hair. Sometimes it still surprised her to discover it was short. Her long auburn hair had been her one claim to beauty. And the first thing Lucifer had done was to hack it off. Keeping it short was a reminder of what she’d become. Plus, it was easier to take care of and couldn’t be used against her in a fight.
“The wrong crowd,” he prompted.
“Yeah, they were conducting a ritual in our living room when I got home from work.”
Maccus swore under his breath.
“Yeah, that about covers it.”
“They summoned a demon?”
“Oh no, they went straight for the big guy himself.”
“Your little sister summoned Lucifer?” He seemed so incredulous, she almost smiled.
“No second-best for Kayley. She was too smart for her own good. Told me after it was just a lark. They’d never expect it to work or anything to come from it.” Kayley’s tear-stained face would haunt her for eternity. “They were just kids, experimenting.”
“I don’t think so.”
His quiet statement made her bristle. He had no right to criticize Kayley. He didn’t know her. “What do you mean by that?”
He gripped her shoulders and dragged her closer. “I mean that you don’t get to summon Lucifer on the first try. That’s not how it works. You have to be adept and accomplished. You have to have several years of practice behind you, have successfully summoned lesser demons. You have to be fully into the lifestyle before you can even attempt to summon Lucifer, let alone get him to appear.”