Defeated, tears stung her eyes as she turned and buried her face in the crook of his neck and inhaled. He smelled so good, smelled so much like Thomas. She slid her hand into his shirt to find warm flesh and hard muscle. “Get undressed then because I need to feel your skin on mine.” Her voice sounded gritty from lack of sleep and emotion.

Together, they stripped his clothes off until his body brushed against hers, skin-to-skin. He kissed his way over her shoulder and down her arm, urging her to her stomach. Isabelle lay facedown on the bed while Thomas ran his fingertips down her spine to the small of her back over and over, lulling her to sleep.

“Isabelle,” Thomas purred in a sleep-roughed and sex-satisfied voice, “why would Boyle kill Stefan as a favor to you?”

Her eyes shot open and she stiffened, but at least she could answer this honestly. “I don’t know.”

“Really?”

Isabelle turned onto her back and snuggled against him. She stared up into his face and brushed her fingers across his pects. “Really. I don’t understand the demon mind. I find it incredible he could long for home, too, that a creature like him would have emotion that way.” She shook her head. “I have no idea why Boyle would decide he needed to kill Stefan for me.”

“What he said right before he knocked me out at Gribben…it made it sound almost as if the two of you have a relationship.”

She raised her head and grinned, even though she hardly felt the levity. “Jealous, Thomas?”

“Hardly. Afraid for you, yes.”

She took a moment to answer, carefully phrasing her response. “It’s like I said before. I think he’s seized on me because of my sister. He imagines that because he”—she had to pause and find the right words before she could continue—“he murdered her that he and I have a connection.”

Thomas stroked his hand down her arm over and over until she sighed and her muscles let go of their tension. “That does make an odd sort of sense.”

“I don’t think demons make sense.” Her eyelids drooped.

“Go to sleep, Isabelle. I can tell you need it.”

She sighed and relaxed into him. Before she knew it exhaustion had towed her under.

ISABELLE WOKE UP FROM A DEEP SLEEP. FITTING HERSELF against Thomas’s warm body, she smiled and closed her eyes again. By his side, she would always sleep well. For a moment she knew perfect bliss, and then she remembered. It leaked like toxic waste into her mind, poisoning her.

The demon was coming. Maybe not today, but soon.

Disturbed, she rubbed her eyes and glanced at the window, where the first strains of pale gray morning light stole through. She’d only slept an hour or two at most. What had woken her?