The Devil Inside

She couldn’t look away. He had her wrists pinned beside her head and his eyes peered deep into her soul. He thrust his hips slowly and slid gently into her body. Her heart swelled, and her legs wrapped around his waist holding him tight to her. His rhythm picked up speed and she whimpered, her insides tightening around him, her body trembling with the strength of her approaching orgasm. Her eyelids got heavy but she couldn’t let them fall, couldn’t look away from the well of emotions overflowing from his eyes.

“I love you, Gina.” He whispered.

She cried out in joy, every muscle in her body taut, and squeezed him between her thighs. She squeezed harder and thrust her hips again. And felt nothing but emptiness.

A loud groan of frustration echoed in her empty bedroom as Gina opened her eyes. She pressed a hand against her heated forehead. Another dream. Another faceless lover with eyes that looked deep into her soul and filled her heart while he filled her body. Flopping onto her back in the queen sized bed she kicked at the tangled sheets and let the cool air dance across her overheated skin.

She was used to having dreams wake her up. When she was a little girl all her premonitions had come in the form of dreams. But as she grew, so did her skill at manipulating and controlling her gift. Now she could use her other senses to bring forth a vision when needed. Like touch, or scent. Even though she could block them with equal ease, she still chose to keep herself pretty isolated emotionally. People just didn’t understand that her gift didn’t make her weird, but special. She’d learned how to block random vibrations. She would’ve never been able to live a normal life if she hadn’t. But at night, when she sought peace in sleep, the dreams still came.

Closing her eyes once more she trailed a hand over her belly and past the small patch of tight curls. Trying to forget the familiar ache of loneliness in her heart, she concentrated on easing the ache of emptiness between her thighs.

Caleb Mann strode through the heavy glass doors of the coffee shop and straight to the counter. A mug full of strong, black coffee in hand he stepped to the side and scanned the room. He ignored the twenty something guy engrossed in a novel ten feet away from him and briefly considered the woman behind him. Well-dressed, with long dark hair, she sat primly by the window. Unsure, he let his gaze slide away. Then he saw her.

Slipping his sunglasses off he gave the woman a slow perusal. She’d isolated herself by sitting at a small corner table, head bent over a notepad of some kind. She was dressed in a short camouflage skirt and a tight black tank top that made it impossible to ignore her pert breasts. She was the one.

Caleb had expected nothing less from his little brother than to set him up with a real looker. What he hadn’t expected was his own instant, and primal, reaction to her. The way his blood heated and his gut clenched when he looked at her. Or the way her inky black hair, full of vivid red streaks, skimmed across her pale shoulders and made his fingers itch with the urge to brush it aside just so he could nibble on her tender flesh.

His reaction surprised him, but he didn’t try to contain, or control, it. After all, she was a bad girl, a party girl. The total opposite of what he normally looked for in the fairer sex, and exactly what he needed.

He leaned against the counter and took in the details of her. The skimpy clothes and the bare limbs, the bright purple of her fingenails, the silver jewelry, the tattoo on the inside of her wrist. He willed her to lift her head so he could see her face clearly only to have his breath catch in his throat when she did. Flawless skin smoothed over high cheekbones, tiny white teeth nibbled on a full pink lip, dark eyebrows flared over almond shaped eyes. He couldn’t see the color from where he was, but it didn’t matter. Her untamed beauty called to him unlike anything, or anyone ever had.

Shrugging his suddenly tense shoulders, Caleb pushed off from the counter. He wasn’t here to find his soul mate, he reminded himself. Just someone to let loose with.

Caleb was tired of everyone ragging on him for being a workaholic. Hell, if he hadn’t worked so hard for the past decade Gabriel wouldn’t have been able to go to college. Plus, his work was satisfying in a way his player of a brother would never understand, so the nagging hadn’t bothered him. Until his last girlfriend dumped him because he was too “˜old and settled’ for her. He was only thirty-three for God’s sake! Even then her comments hadn’t really hurt him. Until she’d turned the sting of them into a downright festering burn by adding that his good looks couldn’t compensate for his lack of imagination in the romance department, let alone the bedroom.

Anger, and a twist of uncertainty, scorched a hole in his gut. That had been hitting below the belt, literally. Lack of imagination? He had plenty of imagination. And the wild child girl his little brother had set him up with was going to help him prove it.
Halting next to her table he pasted a winning smile on his face and opened his mouth. “Excuse me, Christina?”

When Gina Devlin realized the question was directed at her she huffed out a grateful breath and tossed aside her charcoal pencil. Normally she didn’t welcome interruptions when she was working, but her muse had deserted her, taking any semblance of artistic talent along with it. So she was grateful for the distraction.

She leaned back in her chair, looked over the wall of muscle standing next to her table with a big grin on his gorgeous face, and immediately felt her skin begin to itch from the inside out. Very grateful. He was her favorite type of distraction . . .male.

His buttoned up shirt and pressed jeans did nothing to detract from the wide shoulders and slim hips they covered. However, in her mind they labeled him a stickler for the rules, and totally not her type. Only a real stick in the mud would press his jeans.

The fact that he wasn’t her type didn’t stop her eyes from continuing to skim appreciatively over his trim hips, the impressive package between them, and down his muscled thighs before rising back up to meet his steady gaze. A gaze that was vaguely familiar.

Shaking off that thought she realized he thought she was someone else. Christina, he’d said when he’d approached. The little devil residing on her left shoulder strained at the leash she’d kept him on for the last six months and poked her with his pointy tail screaming, “Do it! Do it!” and before she could think twice her lips parted, and the words tumbled out.

“I prefer Tina.”