Mari wasn’t going to allow herself to think about anything, especially about sharing her tiny apartment with that great big, absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous man.

She bit back a laugh. Yes, proof that size does matter…especially when there’s something weird and threatening just outside the door.

Darius was huge, and the flowing blue robe made him seem even bigger, but big was good—at least until she figured out what that black mist really was that had slashed her arm. Even if she wasn’t quite ready to accept that they were actually demons, she realized she was a lot closer to accepting Darius.

Lemuria? It was not easy to wrap her mind around that one even though every kid in Evergreen grew up with tales of the Lemurians, and the powerful energy vortex and sense of magic that surrounded Mount Shasta. They were bedtime stories, though. Legends for the tourists. Make-believe.

Darius was definitely not make-believe.

He was much too real—so real he seemed to suck the air out of the room. It had to be something like that, because she felt light-headed when she looked at him—really looked at him—and she couldn’t blame the feeling on that stupid cut on her arm.

If Darius was telling the truth, he wasn’t even human, yet he was the most perfect man she’d ever met. Everything about him turned her on. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep up this disinterested, independent woman facade.

He certainly wasn’t making it easy!

She’d sworn she’d never need another man, not after all the crap Brad had pulled. So why did Darius make her feel so needy? She had to quit making comparisons between the two men. There was nothing at all about Darius—other than his gender—that was anything at all like Brad.

She almost giggled, imagining her ex-boyfriend protecting her from demons. Too bad she hadn’t kneed Brad in the balls when she’d had the chance.

Darius took the seat she pointed to and his massive size made the tiny table look even smaller. Mari poured a glass of red wine for each of them and set a bowl of soup in front of Darius. At least she had two of everything in the cupboards—exactly two.

Plates, forks, knives, wineglasses. This tiny apartment was the first home her parents had shared, and it was still stocked with their old stuff. She tried to imagine her mom and dad sitting here like she was with Darius, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the visual of her parents as two young adults.

They’d launched their relationship in the late sixties in a haze of marijuana smoke and regular acid trips. Over forty years later, they still hadn’t entirely moved past their hippie roots.

It was just weird, thinking of her mom and dad living here when they had been so much younger than Mari was now. They hadn’t been married then. In fact, they hadn’t married until years later, right before she was born. Her mom had told her they’d only known each other a couple of weeks before the two of them actually shared an apartment for the night.

Mari had known Darius for only a couple of hours.

No. Don’t even try to make sense of this. She took a sip of her wine and decided she’d just take it one step at a time.

She filled a plate at the stove, glanced over her shoulder at the man, back at the plate, and added more food. Darius’s eyes lit up when she put it on the table beside his bowl of soup.

She served a small plate for herself and sat down.

Darius sat perfectly still and stared at his meal.

“Go ahead.” She grabbed her spoon, inordinately pleased that he’d waited for her. Chalk up another plus in Darius’s column, another minus for Brad. She really should quit comparing them. “Don’t let it get cold.”

He smiled at her, nodded, picked up a spoon, and tasted her mother’s soup. If there was one thing she couldn’t fault dear old Mom on, it was her minestrone soup. Darius seemed to agree. He closed his eyes with a look of pure bliss.

“Amazing. This is wonderful. We have nothing like this.”

“There’s plenty more.” She smiled at him, but he wasn’t even looking at her. No, he focused entirely on the meal she’d set in front of him. It gave her the warm fuzzies, knowing the simple leftovers she’d prepared pleased him so much.

They ate quietly, but there was nothing uncomfortable about the silence. Mari took the time to observe and wonder. For a woman who had forever relished the ordinary, she felt as if she hovered on the cusp of something amazing, as if her life was about to change.

But hadn’t it already? She’d thought she would never leave San Francisco, yet here she was, back in Evergreen. When she’d lost her job, she was certain she’d never be happy again, not until she was firmly established at another bank or brokerage house. Yet she sat here smiling, pigging out on her mom’s homemade soup, happier than she’d been in years.

She’d never had a fanciful nature, yet she was sharing dinner with a man who claimed he wasn’t even human, that he’d come from the mythological world of Lemuria for the sole purpose of protecting her from demons.

In fact, he didn’t just say it—he did it. If those black misty things weren’t demons, she knew they weren’t anything good. She was certain of that. If it weren’t for the stinging cut on her arm, she might have trouble believing, but something had slashed through her flannel shirt. Something had shot out of the darkness, screamed like a banshee, and left her bleeding.

The image of fangs and scales, of strangely shaped limbs and a twisted body flashed through her mind. No, she couldn’t possibly have seen that, but whatever it was had died in a burst of blue sparks and flames and stinking black smoke. It had died because Darius of Kronus had killed it, and he’d killed it to protect Mari.

He glanced up at her and smiled, and something inside her—something long unraveled—knit together. She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t describe it, but in that brief glance, that single moment, everything tumbled into place. Like puzzle pieces once scattered, all the separate parts of her life that had never before seemed to fit, found their match, slid into their proper position, clicked, and became whole.

She blinked, carefully wiped her lips with her napkin, and realized she couldn’t have looked away from his emerald-green gaze if her life had depended on it.

But she didn’t want to look away, because her life did depend on it. Her life, her future, her soul, all caught up, somehow, in the man sharing her little kitchen table in this dinky, dingy little apartment over her mother’s store.

Premonitions weren’t her thing. Her mother was convinced she had psychic abilities but Mari had always feared her flashes of foresight and weird hunches. She’d learned to block them—Mom made the predictions, not Mari, but this one was so clear, so powerful, she didn’t even try to fight it.

Her future opened in front of her like a tapestry woven in light. The glowing strands were tied to this man, this place, and this time. Instead of shying away from it or trying to block it, Mari let the vision take her.

And, as with all her premonitions, not a lick of it made any sense at all.

“Are you okay?”

She blinked and the vision snapped out of existence as if it had never been. Darius stared at her with a frown marring that otherwise smooth forehead, his black brows twisted and his green eyes narrowed.

Mari nodded. “I’m fine. Just tired.” She pushed herself away from the table. “You go ahead and finish eating. I’m going to take a shower.” She glanced at the gauze covering the slash on her arm. “Do you mind helping me rewrap this when I get out?”

Darius nodded. “Of course I will. Anything you want.”

Mari almost laughed. Almost. No way was she going to tell him what she really wanted. What she’d seen in that brief premonition: the two of them, naked and aroused, together.

Very close together.

With that visual planted firmly in her mind, Mari headed for the shower.

“There’s no sign of him, Sergeant Kronus.”

“Thank you, Leland. Stand down.” With worry eating a hole in his gut, Roland of Kronus checked the small tunnel leading to one of the lesser portals. He’d sealed the reopened gateway to Abyss, but damn the nine hells, it appeared he’d lost Darius.

All he had was his cousin’s frantic call for help, a warning that demonkind was pouring through a newly opened portal and headed for either Lemuria or Earth. Darius hadn’t been sure.

Since then, there’d been no word. Nothing at all.

Roland stared at the portal leading to Earth’s dimension while his two crystal-bearing soldiers waited beside him. He went over that last conversation, when he’d given Darius orders to kill the demons.

Darius wouldn’t have followed demonkind to Earth, would he? Roland groaned. Nine hells. Earth was forbidden territory. Could Darius have decided to take that risk, hunting demons on Earth when they were no longer a threat to Lemuria?

Knowing Darius, it was entirely possible. And, if what Alton of Artigos said was true, demons invading Earth were a threat to Lemuria. They were a threat to all worlds in all dimensions.

Darius would have understood that. He wouldn’t have ignored the threat. Besides, like all young men, Darius craved adventure.

Roland tightened his grasp on his crystal sword and glanced at his men. Both were armed with crystal—the only weapons known to work against the demon threat. While the aristocrats of Lemuria possessed crystal blades, they’d long ago lost the will to fight, which meant that with Darius missing, only three armed soldiers stood between Lemuria and the scourge of demonkind.

He or one of his men must stay behind while the other two attempted to rescue Darius.

Roland gazed at the portal to Earth and sighed. “Let us return to Lemuria and make our report. We’ve pulled a long night’s duty. We will rest first, and then we must launch a search in Earth’s dimension for Darius of Kronus.”

Both young men snapped to attention. Roland hid a tired grin. Lemurian curiosity about Earth appeared as powerful as ever and he was offering a rare opportunity.

“Leland of Arctus, you will remain on guard at this portal while Matthias of Strachus will accompany me to the other side. For now, though, we all need to rest and recharge.”

He ignored the elbow jab Matthias gave to Leland. With thoughts of Darius heavy on his heart but a visit to Earth raising his sense of anticipation, Roland led his men back through the portal to Lemuria.

With the sound of Darius’s shower running in the background, Mari put away the dishes he’d washed and dried while she’d taken her shower earlier. Knowing he’d cleaned up the kitchen without being asked gave her even more warm fuzzies than preparing his meal had. She really needed to find something wrong with him.

Anything. He couldn’t possibly be this perfect.

She hoped the pair of her father’s old cut-off sweatpants she’d found would fit him. First thing tomorrow she’d make a run to the feed store and see what she could buy for him to wear. There were a lot of good-sized ranchers and cowboys in the area. With luck she’d find clothing large enough.

She tried to picture Darius in blue jeans and a shirt, but she couldn’t get past the image of him without the robe. Period.

Damn it, girl. Focus! Boots. Boots were good. She’d shop for boots, too. He couldn’t very well continue running around Evergreen in a monk’s robe and sandals.

She tried not to pay attention, but the sound of the shower running gave her an explicit visual of that huge man, naked in her shower with all that long dark hair streaming beneath the spray. When the shower shut off, she pictured him drying off, rubbing the soft white towel across his chest, over his long legs, drying his hair.

Then she giggled. Damn. Did she have a previously unknown hair fetish? What was it about all that long, black hair of his?

By the time the bathroom door opened, Mari was trembling like a leaf…and it wasn’t from fear.

Damn it! Where was her focus! Forcing a calm she was far from feeling, Mari turned around and almost dropped the pan she was holding.

He stood in the doorway, his big body framed in a cloud of steam. Without that flowing robe, he was even more impressive than she’d imagined. Sexier, bigger, more commanding. He’d taken out the braids. Now all that wet hair was combed straight back from his face. Slicked back this way, it emphasized the slight widow’s peak, his high cheekbones, the harsh cut of his square chin, and his long, straight nose. His hair fell like a curtain of black silk shimmering over his shoulders, caressing his powerful arms, hanging all the way to his butt.

Her dad’s old sweats clung to his body, riding low on his narrow hips, fitting closely around the most perfectly muscled thighs she’d ever seen on any man. The cut-offs had probably hung below her dad’s knees. On Darius they barely covered his thighs.

He had it all, from the dusting of black hair running across his broad chest and trailing down his middle to disappear beneath the waistband of the sweats, to the rippling six-pack of muscle defining his taut belly. There was more of the same dark hair on his thighs—not a lot, but enough to scream out his masculinity and beg her fingers to travel through it. There was even more on his muscular calves and a bit on the tops of his long, narrow feet. She’d never seen such sexy feet on a man before, but it was more than obvious there wasn’t anything about Darius that wasn’t sexy.

His hands, his face, his body…his broad smile. Damn.

“Are you laughing at me?” Suddenly defensive, she folded her arms across her chest, well aware of the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her camisole top. She tried her best to glare at him, but it was hard to keep her lips from twitching.

He’d studied her the same way when she’d stepped out of the bathroom after bathing.

It seemed only fair.

“I am,” he said, laughing. He leaned against the door frame and folded his arms across his chest, mimicking her stance. “You’re looking at me the same way I looked at you when you walked out of this little room, all warm and damp from your shower. With interest.”

Well. Okay. She hadn’t expected him to actually say it out loud, but…“I see. Well, I guess fair’s fair.”

He nodded, but he still had that big, sexy grin on his face. “I left my robe hanging on the hook behind the door, if that’s okay.”

“That’s fine.” She rubbed suddenly sweaty palms along her thighs. “I need to get you something else to wear so you won’t stand out so much if you go into town.”

“Will there be clothing large enough to fit me? Humans are not quite as big as Lemurians.”

He walked across the room, all long legs and strong arms and bare, sexy feet…and long, long black hair.

Brazenly she looked him slowly up and then down. “I hope so,” she said, reluctantly parking her gaze on his smile. “A few are. You can’t run around town dressed like a monk.”

He laughed. “Or naked. I don’t think that would work, either.”

Oh, Lordy… The images that conjured up made her mouth go dry. “So…” Frantically she searched for subject matter.

“So?” He raised one perfect black eyebrow.

“Tell me about Lemuria.”

He chuckled. “I can do that,” he said, grinning broadly. “It’s probably a safer discussion than talk of running around your town naked.”

She wondered if he heard her squeak. He certainly didn’t mince words, but she wasn’t sure if he was flirting or if this was just the way he was. She didn’t know him. Not at all, and yet she’d allowed him into her home, into her life.

How the hell had this happened so quickly?

Demons. Oh. Yeah.

Somehow she had to get the image of his gloriously naked body out of her head. Maybe then her brain would work the way she expected it to—as if she were still an intelligent, thinking human being.

Darius solved her problem when he walked away from her, sat on the couch, rested his elbows on his knees, and in that deep, rolling voice of his with the slightest accent—one she couldn’t describe if she’d tried—proceeded to spin a tale of a world Mari knew only as legend.

He described Lemuria’s history, how an entire continent had sunk beneath the sea over twelve thousand years ago. He told her about a civilization with technology advanced enough to move everyone to safety within another dimension. His people now lived deep within the confines of the dormant volcano of Mount Shasta—yet in a dimension parallel to Earth’s.

His were people who never saw the sun, who had forgotten what a real blue sky looked like, who ate manufactured foods, and, when the need for trade existed, bought goods with diamonds mined from deep within the earth.

They’d once been warriors but now were philosophers. An entire race that had forgotten how to fight, who had lost the voices within their sentient crystal swords. A people who had lost their courage at a time when they faced their biggest threat in millennia—an invasion by demonkind that could end everything as all worlds knew it.

It was not an uplifting tale, at least not as Darius told it, and his story left her feeling chilled and frightened. Unsure of a world she’d thought of as safe and whole.

“But you carry a crystal sword, right? You’re a warrior, aren’t you?”

He smiled and nodded his head. “I do and I am, but I am one of very few and my sword is not yet sentient. Until I prove myself in battle, it will remain silent. Now it is merely a weapon. A powerful weapon, but still just a sword. Once it achieves sentience, it will become my partner.”

He slipped the sword from the tooled-leather sheath. The blade glowed but remained silent. “I know it’s alive, but until I’m considered worthy, I’ll not hear its voice. I’ll not know its story.” His hands swept lovingly along the blade.

Mari imagined those same strong hands sweeping over her body and her nipples puckered in response. She couldn’t very well cover her breasts without drawing attention, but there was no way he could miss the visible sign of her arousal.

In fact, he seemed aware even before Mari’d figured it out. Darius raised his head and his gaze focused on her chest, and that made her nipples pucker and ache even more. For the first time, an uncomfortable silence fell between them. Then Darius cleared his throat. He leaned over and picked up the book she’d brought with her from the shop.

He looked at the cover. Then he opened it, glanced over the pages and raised his head. “Is this a diary? Much of it is handwritten. I expected to see only printed pages.”

Thankful for a new topic—even this topic—Mari shook her head. “Part of it’s a published book, but the notes are my mother’s. It’s her book of spells. She’s a witch.”

Darius’s head shot up and he blinked. “A witch? Really?”

Mari laughed. At least here she was on safe ground. Sort of. “If you ask my mother she’ll say yes, she’s a real witch. My father will agree. Me? I’m not so sure I believe in witchcraft. Or witches.”

Grinning, Darius tapped the pages of the book. “You don’t believe in Lemurians, either. Or demons.”

Mari leaned back against the kitchen counter and folded her arms across her chest. Finally, a chance to cover up her damned nipples without looking obvious. “True,” she said. “But now that I’ve got you sitting in my apartment, I’m willing to be a bit more open-minded about the whole Lemurian thing. Witches? The jury’s still out on witches.”

He flipped the pages, stopped, and flipped back. Raised his head and frowned. “There are spells in here to counteract demonkind. Have you looked at them?”

Mari pushed herself away from the counter and joined him on the couch. She looked over his shoulder at the page he’d found. Her mother’s precise handwriting covered both pages. “Where? No. I didn’t see those.” She tapped the word “demon” about halfway down. “Wow. Looks like a bunch of spells. I had no idea demons were something in my mother’s repertoire. I was looking for a spell that would help me get my job back.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in witchcraft?”

Laughing, she shrugged. “Hey, I’m unemployed and desperate. I can’t stay in Evergreen forever. I’d go nuts! If witchcraft will help, I’m there.”

“Did you find a spell? One to help you find a job?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Plenty of spells for finding your heart’s desire or making your enemy break out in boils, but nothing that’ll help me find a job with a good, healthy Fortune 500 company.”

He tapped the page again with his forefinger. Right over the word “demon,” spelled out in block letters. “Well, until you find that job spell, why don’t we take a look at some of these?”

She glanced at the page, at her mother’s familiar writing, and then shot Darius a flirtatious look. “What? You’re not interested in finding your heart’s desire? Making your enemy break out in boils?”

He tilted his head and studied her, but she didn’t notice a bit of laughter in his eyes. None at all.

“I doubt demons, who already suffer the life of the damned, would notice a boil or two.” He shrugged, but his gaze never left her face. “As far as the other? I may be a fool damned forever, but I think I’ve already found my heart’s desire.”

Mari had no idea where the conversation might have gone from there if her phone hadn’t suddenly blasted the first bars of “Jailhouse Rock.” She jumped, scurried across the room, and dug the cell phone out of her purse.

She’d never been so happy for her mother’s interruption in her entire life, though as she briefly updated Spirit on the day’s business, Mari realized she was keeping the most important part of the day to herself.

She didn’t mention demons or the broken window or the fact she’d been injured by a creature that shouldn’t exist. Nor did she mention the man sitting just across the room from her—the one who’d be spending the night with her in this tiny apartment.

No. There were some things a girl didn’t share with her mother, no matter how grown-up the girl was. At thirty-three, Mari was plenty old enough to make her own choices and follow her own path, but even Spirit, for all her open-minded, free-spirit, and free-love philosophy might have a bit of trouble with the idea of her only child spending the night with a Lemurian warrior.

One who’d just looked her in the eye and as much as admitted he wanted her.

Which wouldn’t be so dangerous if Mari didn’t want him every bit as much.