Free Unearthed by Lauren Stewart Page A

the blade dented the skin of her neck, down…
    Their bodies fit together in a very pleasant, very unhealthy way.
    Fuck . This was as stupid as it was dangerous. The harder his cock got, the hotter his entire body got. He geared himself up to get away from her. Her chest lifted with every shallow breath.
    Hotter.
    Just another second and he would get off her.
    In a second.
    She pressed her hips up against his.
    Even hotter.
    Thirty maybe.
    “Another hot flash?” she asked.
    He shot to his feet, tossing the knife at the wall, shattering it. “I could’ve fucking killed you.” Not with the knife or even on purpose. He’d lost control of his heat to a degree that should have made her boil.
    “Thanks for the tip, Captain Obvious.” After she’d gotten to her feet, she touched the side of her neck where the blade had almost punctured her skin, her other arm across her breasts to hide them, instead just making it harder to look away.
    “I wasn’t talking about the blade. Didn’t I—” He looked at the remnants of her pants, then at his. Holes melted into almost everywhere they’d been touching. “Didn’t I burn you?”
    “Oh please, you’re not that hot.” She looked down at her arms and chest. They were red, but not as much as they should’ve been. If she’d been entirely human. “Mind giving me my jacket?”
    He grabbed it off the ground and tossed it to her, his breath coming faster, his mind a blur. He’d been right about how dangerous she was, and it had nothing to do with how well she fought.
    It was way more than that. She could take his heat. Sure, if he turned himself all the way up, she would burn just like everything else he touched, but if he held back, just a little…
    He wiped his mouth to hide the beginnings of a smile. Fuck, what if he could use her body to dispel his heat, vent through her? Nothing would catch fire or melt, and no one would even notice. It’d be almost as if he was free from hell, not tied to that horrible heat.
    He looked at her. Just looked.
    Three tours above the crust, constantly having to go into people’s minds, picking through their stupid thoughts to find a temptation he could use to relieve his goddamn heat. But he didn’t need to do that with her. He could just…touch her, and she could take it. Take him. Her damage could be his freedom.
    But nothing in their world came without danger, and he didn’t have to think too hard to figure out what it could be with her.
    She shifted onto her other hip. “Are we going to fight, or are you going to stand there staring at me?”
    “We’re done here,” he said shakily. “But if you try to use salt on me again, I won’t be as forgiving.”
    “Got it—no balls, no salt. Congratulations on your big win.”
    This fight, sure. But every other way? Fuck no. He hadn’t won— she had.

Six

    Keira was one of the oldest living members of the Rising—emphasis on ‘living,’ because not surprisingly, after the massacre not many seers volunteered to join up. Even before then it had been too dangerous for more than a couple of them to be in one place at the same time. Probably made things a lot harder on the folks trying to organize the rebellion, but it was much safer for each member to know as few others and as little as possible, just in case an enemy got through one of their shields.
    Case in point, the look on the demon’s face when he’d been on top of her. She didn’t feel him go into her mind, but somehow he knew what she was thinking. Just like she knew what he was thinking. Mostly because men had appendages that made it pretty obvious, and from what she’d felt pressed between her thighs, he was thinking really…hard.
    None of this was going the way it was supposed to. That demon was screwing everything up, including her job and her mind, and losing focus could easily get her killed. Plus, it was truly annoying to be called ‘puppet.’ She needed to come up with something even more derogatory than that