Demon Moon

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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
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1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924
Carson City NV 89701-1215
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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

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 western-

yoke 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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.”

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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.

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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.

Demon Moon

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.”

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“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

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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.”

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

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“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.

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“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

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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.”

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,

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

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 self-

destructive 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

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

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.

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

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.

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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

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.”

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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

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

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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

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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.”

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

; 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

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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

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

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 wall-

to-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.”

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.

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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.

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.”

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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?”

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.”

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“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

“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

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

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

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.”

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

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.

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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

“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.”

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?

f 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.”

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“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

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.

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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

“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.

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

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

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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

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

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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

“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.

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

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.”

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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

“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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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“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.”

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“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.”

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“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.

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

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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

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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?”

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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

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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

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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

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.”

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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

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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.

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“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.

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.