Demonic Temptation Read online

  Demonic Temptation

  Kim Knox

  Book three in the Demonic Liaisons series.

  Adela Tilman is a woman pursued by strange lovers she can’t see. Unseen hands, mouths, tongues tease and torment her. They hint at exquisite release…but never quite fulfill that dark promise. Worse, something about the new insanity of her life has pulled Marcus Yeats back into her world.

  Marcus is a man who has fueled her fantasies for years, a man she ran from after one mad moment of indiscretion. But here she is again. Caught by him…and wanting so much more than an illicit fumble or the hands of strangers tormenting her body for too few moments.

  Now everything is about to change. Idaeus has found them both.

  Inside Scoop: Contains steamy ménage with unseen lovers.

  An Exotika® sci-fi-futuristic erotica story from Ellora’s Cave

  DEMONIC TEMPTATION

  Kim Knox

  Chapter One

  The briefest slide of a clawed hand brushed against Adela’s ass. She bit her lip, denying a small moan.

  It wasn’t real. It was never real.

  Pushing those words around and through her thoughts, she pressed her palm to one of the numerous door-plates grafted into the building before her. The cold metal was a relief to her heated skin and she waited the few tense seconds for the mechanism to give her access to the vast titanium-and-glass structure of the central office of Yeats, Sobel and Rana. Doors flushed open before her. The hand that was not there squeezed, biting into her left cheek. Adela let out a protesting squeak, but staggered forward.

  She would not react. No one in the throng of people surrounding her would know that she was completely and utterly crazy. Because no one could see anyone touching her. She couldn’t. Nothing was there. But it was. And every day as she approached her office across the riverside plateau, it began. The sly touches, the brush of skin and fingers and mouths tormenting her. They had for days. Three to be exact. Tantalizing hints of them and it only began there. Once she entered the tube system to return home, she was alone once again. It made her doubt her own sanity.

  The nip of teeth at her hip broke her thoughts and caused her strained gait to falter on the marble flooring of the atrium. Damn it. What the hell was this? She tugged at the smooth material of her jacket and rubbed her fingertips over the quick sting in her flesh.

  But there was worse to come. Adela drew in a steadying breath. Walking through the streams of weak summer sunlight cast through the clear walls, she turned to the grav-lifts. Her colleagues flowed around her in a rush of chatter, eager to pack themselves into the cramped boxes that shot them to their floor. Adela slowed. Her heart thudded, the beat of it making her head light.

  Three days ago, the grav-lifts had become exquisite torture.

  In more than one way.

  A tide of people swept her into one of the shiny metal boxes that banked the east wall of the office building. Adela found herself pressed to the back of the lift, the heat of the warmed metal bleeding through the thin material of her suit. The doors closed on a soft rush of air and filters kicked in, the hints of grass, earth and somehow open sky pushing back the hot stink of too many bodies crowded into a box.

  Adela curled her fingers into her palms and her shoulders tensed. Waiting. Waiting for the next stage in her insanity. A new scent caught her and her pulse jumped. So brief an odor, she did doubt it…but there it was again. A bitter curl of something like burned earth. But not. It was the first sign, one she could never pick out in the vast, open space of the atrium.

  Hot breath stung the sensitive skin behind her ear, forcing her eyes to flutter shut as she fought to stay calm. No one stood behind her and to the side and the front was a tightly packed wall of unmoving bodies. Not that they would remain unmoving.

  The first brush of a real hand broke her thoughts. Adela sucked in a sharp breath and stayed absolutely still. Completely still. Any movement, any sound on her part and the touching would…stop. And as insane as her life had become with her taunting, invisible lover and the strange reality of the grav-lift, she wasn’t about to give it up. She couldn’t. Something about it was utterly addictive. And not when the other exquisite part of it was him. Marcus Yeats.

  His fingers drew a slow line over her hip, the tease of them over her skirt driving the heavy and now familiar ache deep to her core. She flicked a glance to the man pressed to her side in the cramped space. Holding a pad in his other hand, his attention fixed on the thin sheet of stiff synthetic material, he appeared unaware of the movement of his hand against her hip.

  The stark light cut across his stern profile with a curling lock of dark hair dipping low over his forehead. Her pulse beat harder. Marcus Yeats was so very beautiful. A smile ticked at the corner of her mouth. And really it was quite strange to be felt up by one of the most senior partners in the firm. A dark, dangerous man and one she should not provoke. Yet…she didn’t remove his hand.

  It was wrong. She knew it, but whatever compulsion he had to touch her, she wasn’t going to deny. She’d worked for the firm for a month and he’d swept past her on her first day, tall, assured and more than one of the workers on her floor sent hungered looks in his wake. Her included. Though her obsession had begun years before.

  Another familiar—but rough and nonhuman—hand moved under her skirt, the light rake of claws over her inner thigh causing her breath to hitch. Something…breathed against her pussy. Her stomach hollowed, and the impossible idea of a satisfied hum resonated against her flesh. She pressed her lips together, denying her deliberate act that morning.

  Material made little difference to her invisible lover, the press of fingers or lips or tongues as real as if her clothes didn’t exist. Still, the thought, the idea of offering herself, of making her strange, silent lover very aware that she wanted, craved his touch had her neatly folding her underwear that morning and putting her bra and panties back in their drawer.

  The dual sensation of this strange lover with the promise of Marcus’ slow, inexorable touch, the slide of his fingers, stroking back the folds of her skirt to tease her aching sex forced her thoughts to flicker. Every morning. Invisible hands and Marcus driving her slowly insane.

  But the idea of him being more than a puppet at her side burned into her mind’s eye. She could almost see it, see him dropping to his knees in the crowded lift, fisting her skirt at her hips and finding her bare and wet for him…

  Marcus’ hand tightened at her hip, fingers biting before they slipped down across the smooth cloth to catch it and hook his fingers between her thighs. He wasn’t in her thoughts. He couldn’t be. But fuck, heat flooded Adela, her head falling back against the metal wall, the ache to ride his clever fingers flaring up through her body. But that wasn’t the game. She moved and it ended. And so she had to allow the torture to continue.

  It did, with the teasing stroke of a hand under her shirt. A real hand, from the man half pressed up against her as the crowd shifted to allow people to escape to their floor. Swain. His name tag gleamed against his black compliance uniform. He too had eyes only for his pad as his sure fingers drew tormenting patterns over her breast and around her nipple.

  The ache for him to squeeze, to flick, to heighten the increasing beat of pleasure from the play of Marcus’ fingers swamped her. Her nails bit into the soft flesh of her palms. She needed to move. To turn into the men pleasuring her, tunnel her fingers through Marcus’ hair and drag his sweet mouth down to hers.

  Her silent lover only added to her torment with the agonizing promise of taloned hands that gripped her thighs, pinning her legs open, and with a tongue licking the outer lips of her sex, promising hours of dark joy. Of driving her to the brink of pleasure until a wild release took her—

&nb
sp; “Floor fifty-eight.”

  The synthetic voice of the grav-lift jerked her forward and all touch fell away. Adela huffed out a breath and her trembling fingers hurriedly straightened her clothes. No, their touch never lasted. She never found the satisfaction they promised. And she ached to see something from them. To know that she wasn’t trapped all alone in her bubble of unreality as their breath quickened and she witnessed want in Marcus’ eyes.

  She pushed her way out, willing herself not to look back. Not that she could see them, him in the crush of bodies. Still, she couldn’t help herself. Marcus’ ice-blue eyes held her for a hard moment, narrowed and sharp…until the doors slid shut in front of her.

  Adela scrubbed a hand down her face. Had he known what he was doing after all? Or had her sudden movement broken whatever the hell the spell was…and he’d become aware of his actions? Fuck. Fuck.

  She willed herself forward along the glass-edged corridor to the offices set behind the bank of lifts. She shouldn’t have risked taking a job at his company. But time had passed. And it was her dream job. She’d convinced herself that Marcus didn’t know who she was, that he didn’t remember one insane, heated moment in a shadowy lecture hall. Her pressed into the wall, his hands yanking up her skirt and pulling her panties aside. Her fingers desperate at his fly. Ragged breaths, hot skin and pure, intense need—

  Adela drew in a long breath and it did nothing to ease the tight ache in her flesh.

  “I need a promotion,” she muttered, palming her way into her little office and she wished she could slam the door behind her. But it slid, as always, with a slow silence into its frame. A promotion would get her suite upgraded and put her on a much higher floor. A wry smile pulled at her mouth. Maybe floor eighty-two would give her enough time for an orgasm.

  She should talk to someone. But how did she bring up the fact that Marcus Yeats had his hand very happily between her legs every morning…and still keep her job?

  Adela crossed the narrow space, skirting the desk with the flashing red of incoming messages on the closed light-screen. She ignored them with a twist of guilt. There was still ten minutes before she had to begin another hectic day and she needed the quiet moment to herself.

  She pushed her way into the little washroom and let the door close behind her. The hollow, unsatisfied ache gripping her forced her to slump against the door. She let her head fall back and blew out a slow breath.

  Light from the small window revealed London’s hazy blue sky and the silvered points of orbiting stations. She could take a day and sate the insanity by paying for a gene-grafted man—perhaps two—all beauty and muscles, who would fuck her. Hard.

  Her skin itched. Yes, she would insist on at least one having dark, tumbled hair and piercing blue eyes. Two birds. One fuck. Her invisible lover and the delicious and forbidden Marcus. She would drive them both out of her system.

  “As if you could…”

  Adela stilled, her heart thudding at the smooth, deep chorus of voices that seemed to dip into her thoughts. The scent of earth—no of coal—slid into her lungs. She closed her eyes. She had lost it. Completely. Now she was hearing things too.

  “We are Idaeus.” The taunt of a hot, wet tongue curled around her breast. Her breath caught. Never in her office. Never. Another tongue licked a slow, slow line down the curve of her belly to tease her aching clit. The anticipation that gripped her made her head light and her blood fizz. She couldn’t stop the breaking moan. “We have waited. We have been patient.” Strong, taloned hands took her thighs, parting them and Adela swayed. More hands gripped her waist, firm and hot against her skin. “You have finally offered yourself. And we now accept your gift.”

  “Wha—” Adela slapped a hand to her mouth. They’d trained her, trained her to be still and silent if she wanted the reward of their touch. And she did. More than anything.

  She swallowed, the familiar tight ache in her flesh already rising as the tongue flickered in quick, delicious darts against her too-sensitive clit. “Who— What are you?” She pushed the thought out, relieved her question didn’t stop whatever the hell they were. Instead another tongue, hot and firm, dipped into her sex, sparking light under her crushed eyelids. “Please…”

  “You are perfect flesh. Ours. Always.”

  The tongue stroked into her sex, hard, and Adela’s hips bucked, the sudden, fierce invasion throwing her body into orgasm almost against her will. She mewled into her own hand, her fingers biting into her jaw to deny further noise as a rush of heated bliss enveloped her body. But all too soon it was gone and only firm hands on her hips, waist and breasts kept her upright on trembling legs.

  Her hand fell away and she licked dried lips, the aftershocks of her sudden and too-short orgasm flickering under her skin. She fought to breathe, but Idaeus hadn’t finished with her as rough, clawed hands pushed their way up her thighs, to let the sharp prick of talons chase across her mons.

  “Ours.” The strange voice—as if a multitude of voices spoke at once—reverberated across her mind. “To love and to fuck.”

  “Why?”

  A squeak escaped her as unseen hands unfastened her skirt and let it pool at her feet. And she stared—fascinated—as the buttons of her shirt slipped through unaided. More unseen fingers—too many to count—gave sly strokes over her skin, forcing her to bite her lip as they tugged her jacket and shirt from her back. She ached to cover herself, but sure hands pinned her own behind her back.

  “We are energy. Unity.” The rough pads of numerous fingers traced over her bare skin, finding her, knowing her. The rush of it rioted in her blood, increasing her need to twist and turn against their relentless exploration. But they allowed no movement and the tightness to her flesh ramped. “We are the race known as the Yalene. We seek pleasure and must tie our strength, our love to particular flesh.” The brush of a body, hot and bitter-spiced pushed against her nakedness, lips ghosting over hers in the tease of a kiss and pulling a moan from her. “For us that is you.”

  “You’re alien.” But there was no such thing. The Academy of Sciences had declared it. They were alone in the universe…

  “Perhaps that is true. But then we are not from your universe.”

  Adela spluttered a laugh. “Is any of this real?”

  Hands gripped her ass and she gasped, jerking forward against the hardness of a male body. Impossibly, hands cupped her breasts, sharp thumbs flicking her nipples and forcing sweet pain to chase deep into her flesh. A growl skittered across her thoughts, animalistic and…possessive. Her skin pricked. Wherever they came from, she didn’t care. Fuck, they wanted her. And they would have her.

  “In every way you can possibly imagine.” A tongue teased along the cleft of her ass and Adela shivered. “And more.”

  She closed her eyes, the sensations of so many hands, of tongues, of strange flesh pressed to her own flooded her senses. Heat and the bitter hints of spice and coal wrapped around her and her heart drummed. “Yes. Every way.”

  Her feet lifted from the floor and she flailed, her released hands grabbing for strong shoulders. She couldn’t open her eyes. If she did, the impossibility of what was happening to her would overwhelm her. And not in a good way.

  Idaeus’ laughter wrapped her thoughts as easily as the muscled arms that held her. “Trust us.” The warm whisper slipped under her flesh and she pressed her face to the hot column of a male throat. Her heart tightened as smooth lips brushed her forehead. “Our pleasure will be shared. And beautiful.”

  “How are you doing this?”

  “We become whatever you need. Whatever we need. And the more we touch you, love you, fuck you, the more those needs…mesh.” A tongue tasted her, a slow slide across her clit to her pussy, the shock of it jerking her against the hard flesh that held her. Want ignited in her body. A desire for Idaeus to fulfill every dark promise… “And you will crave us as much as we hunger for you.”

  Adela drew in a hot breath, the scent of skin burning against her tongue. She didn
’t fight her urge to lick, to taste, to graze her teeth against hard muscle. Idaeus’ swift hiss deepened her bite. “But the…others. Those men.” She tried to keep Marcus from her thoughts, dwelling on the two other men who had shared her morning ride in the lift. Swain and an officer called Nevin the day before. “Why them?” But still the thought leaked. Why him?

  “The strength of each of the Yalene is different. We needed them.”

  “Why?”

  “So we could do this.”

  Idaeus filled her. Her ass, her pussy, the pained pleasure of it rocketing through her flesh, blistering heat and light and a state of joy that ripped a scream from her. And they stroked deep again, chasing ripples of her release and building more.

  Adela clung to the hard body that held her, lost in the wild pleasure of Idaeus’ fucking. Of having mouths, fingers and tongues seeking every sensitive place on her body, licking and stroking and sucking, pushing her beyond her control—

  “Yes…” The word was a low growl that whipped the frenzy in her flesh. “Lose yourself in us. Belong to us.”

  She would have this. Always. Always. And the thought of it coiled pleasure hard in her belly, driving out all other thought. She couldn’t fight the utter pleasure spiraling through every inch of her flesh and bone and blood, taking her mind, binding her soul to Idaeus. She didn’t want to. Not as they thrust into her again and again. She arched, a cry breaking from her, her flesh not her own as her body snapped at the white-hot joy that consumed her.

  Idaeus joined her in her release, echoing cries mixing, swirling with her own… Their touch faded, the addictive hints of spice and coal ebbing away and she staggered back against the cool wall.

  Adela pressed her hands to her face and fought to breathe, a wild smile fierce on her mouth. Fuck. Fuck. That had been good.

  Her bliss broke under the sharp rap of knuckles on the door. Adela caught her trembling fingers in her hair and tried to think. Dressed. She had to get dressed and look halfway presentable.