Demon's Embrace: Book Two of the Book of Demons series

By V. J. Devereaux

When Professor Miri Reynolds spots the incredibly handsome man standing in the shadows of the lecture hall, she doesn't know he's there for a purpose.
Ash has come to seek information about the ethereal, or temporal, planes in order to recover the Book of Demons.
He's not the only one looking, a shadowy corporation called Prometheus is hunting her as well, and they're not afraid to take extreme measures.
What he doesn't expect is his attraction to Miri Reynolds, or the secret she holds. And he has his own secret as well...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valerie Douglas
• Release date: May 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476360027

V. J. Devereaux

V.J. Devereaux is a prolific writer and a genre-crosser, much to the delight of her fans. A fan of authors from almost every genre - she is the author of five star rated contemporary and paranormal erotic romance novels, including Cooking Class, Demon's Kiss and the Night Owl Reviews Top Pick, Cherry's Jubilee. As Valerie Douglas she's the writer of the Kindle bestselling fantasy novel The Coming Storm, but she writes fantasy of all kinds - classic, epic, historical and contemporary - as well as romance, suspense and horror novels. Who knows what will pop up down the road!Happily married, she's companion to two dogs, four cats and an African clawed frog named Hopper who delights in tormenting the cats from his tank.For more information on this author, please see her website www.vjdevereauxbooks.com.

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Demon’s Embrace

Book Two of the Book of Demons series

By

V. J. Devereaux

Demon’s Embrace Copyright © 2010 Valerie Douglas writing as V. J. Devereaux

Cover Art by JK Graphics

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from author.

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Erotic Romance by V. J. Devereaux

Book of Demons Series

Demon’s Kiss

Cherry’s Jubilee

Cooking Class

Special Delivery

Bound Series

Blood Bound

Magic Bound

Discover titles by Valerie Douglas

Fantasy

The Coming Storm Series

The Coming Storm

A Convocation of Kings

Not Magic Enough

Setting Boundaries

Song of the Fairy Queen

Servant of the Gods series

Servant of the Gods

Heart of the Gods

Romance

The Millersburg Quartet

Irish Fling

Dirty Politics

Directors Cut

Two Up

Romantic Suspense

Lucky Charm

Thrillers

Nike’s Wings

The Last Resort

Dedication

to Terry, fire investigator extraordinaire, for the technical assistance,

and to my beloved husband, the motorcycle safety instructor, who remains my inspiration, always, and my source for all things motorcycle

Chapter One

Looking out over the jammed lecture room, Miri Reynolds – Physics Professor Miri Reynolds, PhD, thank you very much – scanned the restless crowd as they murmured and chatted among themselves. It was a familiar, almost comfortable sound to her. Easily her most popular lecture, Physics and Metaphysics was almost guaranteed to bring out a crowd and also bring out a certain number of the more... idiosyncratic…of the University’s students.

Not that she minded. She liked their more open minds.

Although sometimes they were just a little too open, she thought with an inward smile as she scanned the eclectically dressed gathering.

Her colleagues in the Physics department hated this lecture, its topic, but especially its popularity. The Head of the Department, Martin Constantine, constantly railed about it but Miri had always had an…eclectic…and diverse mind herself.

She drove Constantine crazy.

The thought of it, picturing the look on his face whenever the subject came up, made her grin.

Given the popularity and subject matter of the lecture there was usually a lot of chatter but tonight they were unusually quiet and distracted. All of the female students, and even some of the male, kept glancing toward the back of the room at tall, broad-shouldered man who stood half in the shadows there.

To tell the truth Miri was having some problems there herself and she didn’t even try to deny it.

The man was gorgeous, absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful in that edgy, slightly dangerous way some men have about them. Just looking at him, she found she wanted to take him somewhere private and bounce on him for a while. A long while. It had been some time since she’d seen anything remotely as prime as he was.

However much he might have tried to be unobtrusive, to disappear into the shadows, he would have been difficult to miss under any circumstances. For one thing he was very tall, six foot five or six at the least. For another, the muscles in his broad shoulders, strong chest and taut abs were clearly visible beneath a simple black tee shirt. That tee shirt was tucked into snug black jeans that might have been painted onto his narrow hips and long legs. Those muscles showed, too, in his bared arms.

Now that was a gun show she could truly admire. The man was definitely well armed, she thought with a mental giggle.

Add to all that, though, was a harshly beautiful, almost cruel face that would have looked right at home carved in granite on some ancient temple wall or on a statue in some exotic faraway land. His sharp, stern features were the visage of an ancient God King or temple guardian – definitely a warrior of some kind.

All that was missing from her flight of fantasy was a magic sword in his strong hands, a sword carved with runes, those powerful muscles flexing as he brought it to bear.

It was far too easy to picture herself with her body pressed against his well-muscled form like some romance novel heroine – her hands beneath his tight t-shirt to touch the warm skin and firm muscle beneath it.

A rush of heat went through her. Her nipples went taut and her pussy flexed, becoming damp at the thought of that magnificent body wrapped around her.

She sighed as she finished setting up. The smallest of the university’s lecture halls, it had already become uncomfortably warm. She was glad she’d dressed lightly. It might be fall up north, but it was still warm here. Or it might have been the man.

Something about him radiated sex to the point Miri had to suck in a breath and resist the urge to fan herself.

As the girls in her classes would have said, the man was a hottie, absolutely and exotically beautiful.

Their eyes met and the charge between them was nearly instantaneous. The jolt of pure heat in that simple glance shot straight to her core to dampen her panties and harden her nipples even further. She also caught the sense of an awareness of her attention at some deep level and his knowledge of her appreciation for the view he offered her, which was impossible.

Then there was that sculpted face, that incredible body. Her body seemed to go white-hot in an instant.

Ridiculous. A man like him wouldn’t give a thought to a musty academic like me, she thought.

She was popular enough among the academics but not the kind of women that man would attract.

With a soft private chuckle, Miri scanned the room, waiting for the last of the stragglers to find their seats while she tried to keep her eyes from drifting to the back and the handsome, impossibly sexy stranger who stood there.

Her amusement and good humor evaporated the instant she caught sight of the man who stood just to the side below the stage.

Jonathan Hargrove. She didn’t find him either attractive or funny at all.

She remembered the day he’d appeared at the door of the tiny closet the University liked to call her office.

A tall man – although the man at the back of the room would have made him seem small – Hargrove was balding, thin almost to the point of emaciation, with hawk-like features and black eyes as flat and dull as pieces of coal.

Dr. Reynolds? he’d said, his voice surprisingly high.

Yes? she’d replied, a little puzzled to find a stranger at her door. She rarely had visitors who weren’t staff or students. May I help you?

Actually, perhaps I can help you, he’d said, as if conferring a major favor on her, offering her not his hand but his card. My name is Jonathan Hargrove. I represent Prometheus Corporation and we would like to make you an offer.

Startled and already a little put off by his presumption and his superior attitude, unsure how to handle it, him, or what it was he really wanted, Miri had just gestured him to go on.

As the up and coming expert in your fields of physics, my company, Prometheus Corporation, would like to hire you, starting immediately, to come work for us. The contract would be for one year. The pay is one million dollars.

Her eyebrows had shot up.

Sitting back in her chair, Miri had folded her hands on her desk and looked at him.

It was a lot of money, no doubt.

There was no need to consider it. She’d graduated at the very top of her class, Summa Cum Laude, and her research had had more than a few corporations hammering at her door, offering exorbitant salaries. Some equal to this one.

No, Mr. Hargrove. I chose to teach so as not to work in the corporate world. Too many of the best leave the academic world for the ‘real’ world and the students suffer for it. The University also offers me a great deal of latitude for my research. A lot of latitude to tell the truth, despite Constantine. I chose not to have my work directed along some corporate pathway. Please tell your boss or bosses, thank you, but no thanks.

You’re turning down a million dollars? he’d said, incredulously.

Miri had looked at him. I am. What in the world would I do with it? I have everything I need and I’m doing what I love. I’ve found that the more money you have, the more you tend to waste it on things you don’t need.

You have substantial student debt, he said.

Far less than a million dollars, she replied, and manageable, not enough to make me want to enter the corporate world.

She’d watched that world chew up her father as casually and carelessly as a lawnmower and then spit him out at age fifty-five, taking away his reason for being, his existence, his definition of himself. He’d been a brilliant man and some essential part of him had died that day although he’d lived for a many more years. Him and the bottle.

It still pained her.

You’re young yet, Hargrove had said, still building your reputation. Working for us would gain you prestige, some degree of presence, even respectability, in your chosen field.

Mr. Hargrove, she’d said, quietly, what part of ‘No’ do you not understand, the N or the O? You can keep talking but the answer will still be the same. Or I can call security and have you escorted out.

Hargrove had left but had tried to go over her head to the Dean, offering him a substantial amount of money for the University to ‘convince’ her to agree.

It had fallen to Miri to tell the Dean what she’d told Hargrove, to threaten to quit and go elsewhere if he pushed it, denying them the money either way. Considering the prestige the University stood to gain from her research if she stayed, it hadn’t been a hard decision for him to make.

Contrary by nature, when pushed she tended to dig in her heels. She didn’t like being pushed.

Unfortunately, it was a public lecture so she couldn’t have Hargrove kicked out but the man’s presence unsettled her.

She turned away from him, returned to setting up the projection, light, and sound equipment as she talked with the students who waited on the floor just below the raised stage. Now and then she glanced to the back of the room and the preternaturally handsome man who stood there as a balm to her agitation.

He certainly improved the view.

At first when Ashtoreth walked into the small lecture hall he’d thought the young woman on the stage who chatted and laughed with the students standing around was a graduate student there to help the professor.

For one thing, she was quite young and for the other she was pretty.

To his pleasure, she wasn’t one of the skinny bloodless women he’d seen so much of, their eyes vacuous, dis-interested and un-interested in anything of value. Women who had beauty and body, but no thoughts, no emotions, nothing behind their powdered mask-like faces, flawless in a way nothing human should be, their smiles stiff and unnatural. It had stunned him to discover some had breasts made of plastic while others injected chemicals into their faces to keep away what character and emotion imprinted there. Women who gave in to the demands this society put on them to conform, to starve themselves. There was no passion, no joy in them.

Such women sought him out in droves, drawn by the attraction that he and all his brothers possessed but they were so cold, so calculated, they disturbed him on some intrinsic level. In a way they reminded him too much of the mannequins he saw in store windows.

Then the woman on the stage looked up, her gaze scanned the hall and Ash froze.

She was lovely, true, beautiful in a purely natural way, in the way only intelligent women were beautiful. It was there in her alertness, in the curiosity in her striking eyes.

It was her eyes that caught him, though. Although such women were long gone they were the eyes of a seer, a mystical, magical green, long-lashed and lovely.

His breath caught to look at her.

She had unfashionable curves for this time and brilliant, abundant curling red-gold hair that fell nearly to her waist. Her breasts were high, rounded, beautifully displayed in the crossed neckline of the light green dress she wore. The pretty dress highlighted those glorious eyes while also making the most of a pair of truly spectacular legs. She was also just a little thing and that brought out the possessive, protective side of him in an instant.

Something about her eyes, her face and her lovely body called to him.

His own tightened instinctively.

To his astonishment, he found he had to fight the instinct to approach her, knowing the risk even such simple contact offered. Just the sight of her though had a surprisingly strong effect on him. If his mission hadn’t been so imperative Ash might have persuaded himself to stay for a few days to explore a little more.

But it was important, even vital that he learn what he could here or else he would have stayed for more reasons than just this sudden, strong attraction to the woman on the stage.

There was so much to learn here, so much he’d missed over the years. He loved a good debate. Not that his brothers couldn’t offer the same, but he knew them. Here there were different voices, different minds, new perspectives. That was something he hadn’t known for years.

Then the pretty girl stepped up to the podium with authority, a sense of self-possession, and he realized with a shock who she was, who she must be – Dr. M. Reynolds, the very woman he’d come to see.

Here was no dowdy intellectual as he’d expected from reading her work but a beautiful, shapely and surprisingly young woman. A very attractive woman who somehow called to him, drew him in a way no other had.

Given the subject matter, Ash had expected an academician as he’d known from his youth, tall, thin and gawky or short and portly from days spent sitting behind a desk. He certainly hadn’t expected her to be lovely and engaging. He had expected her to be serious and she was, but he hadn’t expected the glints of humor that brightened her pale green eyes and curved her pretty mouth.

Nor had he expected the jolt that went through him each time he looked at her.

His entire body seemed aware of her – every inch of her – and not just sexually, although he definitely responded to her in that manner. He felt it on every level, heart, soul, mind, body, and spirit.

Even less did he expect that her voice when she spoke would be a sexy, throaty contralto that sent shivers through him. His cock stood at sharp attention, taking immediate notice, making his jeans uncomfortably tight. Surreptitiously he adjusted himself so his twitching member was less constricted.

Suddenly this adventure, however desperate and necessary, had become much less of a trial.

With a smile, Miri tapped on the microphone to get everyone’s attention. After a moment, the room went silent and everyone turned to face her.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. For those of you who don’t already know me, I’m Professor Miri Reynolds, she said as she looked out over the small lecture hall. I’ll be presenting this lecture on Physics and Metaphysics – two topics generally considered to be polar opposites to and from each other. But not by me. To answer the obvious questions first, though… Yes, I’m young to be a full professor…

In fact, she was very young for it. She’d graduated high school at fifteen by taking advanced placement courses, received her bachelor’s degree at seventeen, her Masters at eighteen and her doctorate at nineteen. Seventeen had been a remarkable year in many ways. To her astonishment, she’d also turned from ugly duckling with untamable hair to graceful swan.

And no, you can’t have a date.

She’d been asked often enough during the question and answer period for it to have become embarrassing.

There were disappointed groans from some and chuckles from others.

On cue music, uplifting and inspiring, swelled softly in the background.

Here is the heart of this lecture in a nutshell…and I’m paraphrasing Shakespeare for you Philistines who don’t know it…, she said with a grin, ‘There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than exist in your philosophy’.

Two more quotes and then I’m done.

‘Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine’. And… ‘Once we used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding out we must learn a very great deal more about ‘and’.

Her wry delivery evoked a few appreciative chuckles from the audience.

Miri smiled. As some of you may know, in physics we’ve discovered there are particles so small that the very act of observing them changes their behavior.

The physics students nodded.

Yet there is also a theory that psychics are all charlatans because the very act of describing what they see changes the behavior of the organism they address. Or because they cannot predict random chance, the fall of the die or the numbers of the lottery, any better than a physicist – who, by the way, can’t predict them either.

People sat up and began to pay attention. As did Ash.

This was turning out to be more than just a little bit of a surprise.

Hearing her now heartened him. Maybe he was on the right track. He hadn’t been certain that this Professor Reynolds could help him in his quest.

Which is the charlatan? she continued, We can’t describe how a psychic works so we dismiss them, nor can we describe how or why the Big Bang occurred and yet we don’t dismiss that… Or at least most of us sane, rational people don’t.

She looked out over the audience with a mischievous, engaging grin and Ash’s heart shifted a little. Which was ridiculous, those were thoughts best left to his brothers.

That’s what this lecture is about – thinking differently about accepted truths or learning to think in new ways. That’s the definition of metaphysics.

Behind her, the images on the screen shifted and changed.

For example… A few years ago a young girl needed a science experiment for a school project. She went to her father – a highly respected scientist – for a suggestion. He suggested one most of them struggled with, a simple way to remove the carbon we humans pour into the atmosphere every day. Unhampered by complicated notions she conceived an experiment that consisted of an air pump purchased from a pet store, a test tube and a single chemical. Where all the big scientists failed, she succeeded.

She paused, smiled wryly. How simple.

We can conceive of the idea of string theory or the notion time is simply a series of interrelated plates, each unique and individual, layered one over another and already laid out. Another equally valid theory that says time consists of multiple possibilities or branches. Each of those possibilities hares off in their own direction, the only constant being the sentience who experiences that as their reality while thousands of our other ‘selves’ branch off to experience those others. Given that, why is it so hard to believe there might be individuals who can ‘see’ or ‘experience’ those branches, the particular path you are on, and some who might actually be able to step through into those alternate ‘planes of existence’? What was it Arthur C. Clarke said – although he’d probably be very annoyed with me for the comparison – ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’?

And what is magic after all?

With a smile, Miri ignited the magician’s flash paper in her hand and gestured.

Fire burst from her palm to gasps from the audience.

Something we can’t explain. Let’s explore the boundaries of myth and magic together and try to show you new ways to think, to experience the world around you.

Ashtoreth straightened. This was the reason why he’d come. Suddenly he had more than a little hope, he had a great deal of it.

She was making magic logical.

Knowing this culture and what this society believed about such things, he’d expected this to be a diatribe, a dissertation decrying anything remotely connected to ‘magic’. Yet he’d come because it was said that Dr. M. Reynolds was the leading expert on what his people called the ethereal planes and what physics described as time and space theory.

Given the importance of his quest, he needed whatever encouragement he could find.

Over the next two hours, his spirit lifted more and more. He was almost sorry when