Free My Forbidden Desire by Carolyn Jewel Page A

guys come, it’s not going to be as easy for me to take care of them as it was this time.” His gaze seared her. “Now,” he said, “you going to watch my back while I proof this place or not?”
    Alexandrine nodded. He didn’t answer, but after a tense silence, he nodded and headed back to her room. She waited a beat before she called out, “Stay away from my underwear.”
    He was already down the hall. “If it’s pink, baby, I’m all over it.” But he was laughing, and it was actually kind of comforting to know they could joke at a time like this.
    While he was off doing whatever the hell he was doing, she walked to her bookcase and pulled out a box hidden in the back of one of the middle shelves. She was getting jittery again, probably from whatever Xia was doing in her room.
    She opened the box she’d taken out and removed a jagged metal blade lashed to a wooden handle. Both pieces were handmade. One of the felons she used to hang with had taught her how to make a shiv. Back in her wild days, this had kept her alive, and it would again if she had anything to say about it. She was not going to be caught unarmed around a mageheld again. No way.
    She sat on the couch with her legs pulled up and one arm around her shins. The tension in her started to fall away, and what was underneath was shaky as hell. She wrapped one hand around the smooth wooden handle that was just long enough to stay hidden in her palm. For months after she’d made it, she’d polished the wood until the surface was shiny and smooth. She rested her forehead on her knees. Every few seconds, her skin goose pimpled. Her stomach was cold and empty. And on top of that, any minute she expected to hear someone breaking in or maybe just have someone grab her from behind. That was just normal twitchiness, because waiting was a bitch. This wasn’t a premonition like the one that woke her up tonight or the one that made her throw herself away from the back stairway door.
    She remembered the mageheld falling on her, but what she remembered most after the feeling of pure ice down her spine was the smell of heat and sand and the rage that vibrated from her attacker. When he’d grabbed for her amulet, something inside her had snapped. She hadn’t just been fighting for her life. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d have traded her life to keep the amulet—the talisman, or whatever the hell it was. And that, she knew, was not a normal rational response for someone being attacked.
    Xia came down the hallway and into the living room, and she jumped about a foot and a half, because, once again, she hadn’t heard him coming. She tried to cover the reaction by standing up.
    “I did the bathroom, too,” he said. He came to the front of the sofa, and the first thing he did was stare at her shiv. “What’s that?”
    “Protection.” She didn’t have to hide what she was from Xia. No pretending. No leaving out big chunks of her past because she could hardly deal with it, let alone someone she was interested in dating. If finally occurred to her as a solid fact that she wasn’t looking at a human man. He’d said himself he had been mageheld. So, what did that make him? She knew the answer. A demon of some kind. The kind of creature mages thought were too dangerous to go free.
    “You make that yourself?” he asked.
    How the hell did you tell the difference between a demon and a normal man? He looked human to her.
    “Don’t worry. I know how to use it.” She cocked her head, daring him to make a crack. Her knife might be ugly, but the blade had saved her life and kept her out of trouble. More than once. “I’ve used this before. I can do it again.”
    His eyes settled on her with unnerving intensity. “Can I see?”
    “No.” Like she wanted his ridicule.
    “What’d you use for the blade?” Hell if he didn’t look genuinely interested. Not that she trusted him. No way. He was probably faking. Most men were when they wanted to sleep with