The_Demons_Wife_ARC Read Online Free PDF

she couldn’t tell the make or model.
    As she stood
there with rain beating down on her, the tinted window slid down like a thin
sheet of dark ice, shifting aside to reveal the darker depths below. All she
could see of the driver was a dark silhouette that looked like it had been
scissored out of the night.
    “You look like
you could use a ride.”
    She hadn’t
heard him speak many words since they first met last evening at Margarita’s,
but the shock of recognition hit Claire hard. She had to catch her breath.
After a moment, she leaned closer to the car and now saw that it was, indeed, a
sleek, dark Mercedes. 
    It was the
same one she’d noticed in the restaurant’s parking lot.
    The window on
the passenger’s side slid all the way down now, and by the pale green glow of
the dashboard lights, she could easily make out Samael’s features. When he
looked at her and smiled, his teeth caught the light just right and gleamed
with a faint iridescent glow.
    It was
definitely Samael.
    Her first
impulse was to ignore him…not say a word and walk away. He’d already ditched
her once tonight. She wasn’t about to be humiliated again.
    Her second
impulse was to turn to him, let him see what a sodden, disheveled mess she was,
and tell him to go fuck himself.
    But her third
impulse—the one that gripped her with undeniable power and overwhelmed the
first two—was to smile back at him, laugh as if this was just the silliest
thing that ever happened to her, and get into the car.
    Which is
exactly what she did.
     
    ~ * ~
    “I’ll get your
car seat wet.”
    “It’s seen
worse.”
    Claire wasn’t
sure what he meant by that as she settled herself in the seat and then clicked
the seatbelt around her waist and chest. It struck her as silly to belt up with
less than a quarter mile to go, but so be it. The thought crossed her mind,
though, that she was restraining herself, and Samael could take advantage of
her if he had any bad intentions…like that man in the alley.
    “So—umm,
where’d you disappear to?” she asked.
    She figured it
was best to get it all out in the open instead of letting it fester. She told
herself that this didn’t change a damned thing. It had been unreasonable of her
to expect him to wait for her all night at the hospital, but that’s exactly
what she had done. He had to know that even though they barely knew each other,
he had let her down. Otherwise, it wasn’t a promising way to start a
relationship…
    She chided
herself for thinking so much ahead of things.
    He had been at
the hospital…and now he was driving her home…a little late, maybe, but what the
heck?
    That’s all,
though.
    There’s no
“relationship” here.
    “I got a call
I had to take,” Samael said.
    He kept his
eyes focused straight ahead on the road. The windshield wipers slapped back and
forth, scooping fans of water to the sides of the car. Claire had the momentary
sensation that they were underwater, somehow totally isolated from the rest of
the world. She noted how this wasn’t the first time Samael had created the
illusion that when she was with him, the rest of the world could slide into the
background without notice. 
    “I figured
you’d be in there a lot longer. You know how hospitals are. So I thought I
could slip out for a few minutes.”
    Claire made a
harrumphing sound and told herself she was a fool for believing anything he
said or for allowing herself to think there was anything special happening
here. What would a guy like Samael, obviously rich and successful, be doing
with a woman like her, anyway? No doubt, he had his pick of any number of
gorgeous, wealthy, stylish women to function as adornments to his lavish
lifestyle. While she acknowledged that she wasn’t particularly unattractive,
she was also realistic enough to know she was no raving beauty, either.
    Except for her
blazing red hair, so maybe he had a thing for redheads.
    “You didn’t
have any obligation to stick around,” she finally