It’s that time again and look, I’m early today!!!! Yay Me!  Will wonders never cease!

Today’s theme is Fight. Well, I don’t do a lot of physical fighting in my books. I think maybe twice, so, it wasn’t difficult to find a snippet for this theme.

I am pulling from The Demon is an Angel. It’s rare that I pull anything from this book, even though I like it a lot.

It’s a bar fight scene…

Snippet:

Angel walked through the front doors of The Iron Spike and was assailed by the scents of leather, beer, sweat and sex. Lots of sex. And lots of beer. Actually, lots of everything. A few heads turned in her direction and then a few more until most of the men and all of the women were looking at her. She simply smiled. They could smell the sex on her just as she could smell it on them, though the kind of scent she put out was ten times as powerful. Hers was more than lust, it was primal and more animalistic than any of them had ever experienced.

We shouldn’t be here.

Taking a deep breath Angel fought the urge to openly communicate with her other half. The humans wouldn’t take well to her talking to herself. She stopped in the center of the dance floor, scanning the crowd for a partner, or two, or three. A few came forward at the blatant invitation in her eyes, and with a throaty, very sexy laugh, she started to move.

“You here alone?”

Angel looked over her shoulder. “I don’t seem to be at the moment, do I?”

Idiot Number One laughed. “Wanna dance with me?”

“No.”

He pressed against her back and bucked his hips. “C’mon, honey. I’ll treat you right.”

She spun, her hair whipping across his face, the ends leaving scorch marks on his skin. “No, I don’t think you will.”

“Bitch! What the hell?” His hands flew to his cheeks.

“I told you no. Next time you should listen.”

“What did you do to me?”

Angel just smiled, loving the streaks she’d marked him with.

You’re drawing attention to us.

“Shut up,” she muttered under her breath.

“What did you do to him?”

Angel looked down at the hand wrapped around her arm and then up into the drunken eyes of Idiot Number Two. She shook off his hold. “I gave him a permanent reminder that when a woman says no it means no.”

“You a witch?”

“Worse. I’m the devil.”

His alcohol breath gagged her when he laughed. Obviously he didn’t believe her. She would just have to s—

“Let her alone, pal.”

Delan. Shit.

Delan. Yes.

“She said she’s the devil. You believe that? The devil.”

With each word, his voice and laughter grew in volume and the other patrons were beginning to take notice of them. Angel was starting to see that she might have made a slight mistake in hurting Number One, but at the same time, she knew she could handle herself and Number Two.

What about Delan?

“Maybe we should take this off the dance floor,” Delan whispered in her ear.

“Maybe you should mind your own damn business.”

“You are my business.”

“Go away, Delan.”

“Yeah, Delan, why don’t you go away? She don’t want you here.”

Tense silence filled the small space until she felt Delan back away, the heat of his body gone. She tried not to care. Really she did.

You do care. We need him.

“Fine. But before I go…”

The arm that whizzed by her head caught her off guard when nothing ever did. The fist at the end of that arm smacked into the face of Number Two, throwing him off balance and sending him to the floor.

Angel stood there dumbfounded, and then rounded on Delan, only he wasn’t there. At least not in her face as she’d expected him to be. She scanned the crowd, looking for him, and when she didn’t find him, she ignored the ache in her stomach and the man still on the floor behind her, and went to the bar in search of a drink.

“Here, have a seat, pretty girl.”

She smiled benignly at the man who stood up from his stool. Idiot Number Three. “Thanks.”

“Seems you were having some trouble out there.”

“It was taken care of. Nothing I couldn’t have handled on my own.”

“Is there anything you can’t handle?”

Angel slid him a sideways glance and wondered if he was serious. She highly doubted it. “No.” To the barkeep, she said, “Rum and Coke, heavy on the rum. Actually, make it all rum.”

“Think you can handle me?”

If he’d keep his mouth shut, she might consider taking him outside. He was good-looking, a little rough around the edges, nice ass in leather, but…

But he isn’t Delan.

“Yes, I could, but I’m not in the mood.”

His hand settled on her shoulder, his fingers beginning to trace the edge of her top. “What are you in the mood for?”

She sighed. Why did they all have to be assholes? She downed the contents of the glass that had been set in front of her and nodded for another before looking to her left. “Look, I appreciate the seat you offered me, but you don’t have anything else that I want.”

“She’s telling the truth. You don’t have anything she wants. I do.”

Well shit. First Delan and now Riko.

Angel watched in amusement as the man backed away, fairly tripping over his own two feet in his haste. She picked up her glass and swirled the liquid around with her finger. “What do you want, Riko? I’m just out trying to have a little fun.”

“I need you to come outside, little sister.”

“No. I’m not done with my evening yet.”

“And you may return once we speak. Outside.”

“It’s too chilly outside. I would rather stay right here. Why not pull up a stool and have a drink with me? Oh wait, there are no vacant stools. I guess you’ll have to leave.”

The booming laughter of her brother echoed off the walls. He wasn’t going to leave without her and she doubted he was going to let her return to the disaster that was her night.

She downed the alcohol and after a few seconds, slid off the stool. Riko threw a few bills on the bar, more than enough to cover her drink, and motioned for her to precede him out the doors.

“What is so important, Riko? I haven’t done anything. Not really. Not yet.”

“No, Angel, you haven’t. I have.”

“What?”

“I sent the human to you, and I see now that I was mistaken to do so. You do not wish to see our kind survive.”

Guilt trip. Great. “What are you talking about? And it’s not ‘our’ kind, Riko. It’s your kind. I am only half demon.”

“I am still your blood.”

“I’m not out to destroy you and your fellow demons. I just do not want to fall prey to weakness as my mother did. Things are going along fine. So a few demons die once in a while, it’s not like there aren’t more to take their place. What does this have to do with Delan?”

“I realized that you care more about fighting who you are than you do in the purpose of who you are.”

Angel laughed. “There is no purpose, Riko. And all I care about is protecting me, you’re right about that.”

“Against what?”

She whirled at the voice. Delan stood, or rather was being held up between two of Riko’s demons. “What’s going on?” She looked back at her brother. “Riko?”

“He cannot reach you. You will not let him. I told him if he failed, that he would die.”

“You can’t do that. I’ve known him like what? One day? A few hours? You consider that failure? And you’re going to kill him? Human time and demon time is different. To him, it’s only been a day. You can’t expect him to have achieved what you want in so short a time.”

“You have shown no interest in trying, no care for how your actions affect others, so I do not see why we should all waste what’s left of our precious time anymore. He is not immortal, you are right. He can only use what time I have given him. To you and to me, it is more than just hours. It is more than night and day. It is as though a lifetime has gone by. We are not like the humans. We know when we have met our destiny.”

You can’t let them kill him.

Angel looked from Riko to Delan. Were they in on this together? The uncertainty, the fear, the…regret in Delan’s eyes spoke to the fact that they likely weren’t, but… “Come on, Riko. You aren’t really going to kill him. You don’t ever kill anyone.”

End snippet

Don’t forget to check out the Fight snippets from the authors below…

Leah Braemel
Mari Carr
McKenna Jeffries
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
Eliza Gayle
Shelli Stevens
TJ Michaels
Lauren Dane
Jody Wallace
Sasha White

~lissa