by Kimber Lee
To be honest, I was completely shell-shocked. This wasn’t the way I’d have ever imagined their first meeting. For starters, Daniel wasn’t chanting in Latin, or Italian. And Andrei was… naked.
“It’s fine,” I murmured. “And for Pete’s sake, put some clothes on, babe.”
An awkward silence descended upon us. Andrei’s face clouded over but he surprised me by leaving without a fight. And I didn’t realize I had spaced out with my eyes on his retreating ass until Daniel cleared his throat.
“So he’s your boyfriend?” His voice was faux casual. “What’s his name?”
“That’s none of your business, Daniel,” I muttered, gesturing for him to take a seat. Once he was in an armchair, I followed suit. “So what’s so important you had to be here at…” I glanced at the clock above the TV. “… nine a.m.?”
Daniel didn’t beat around the bush. “I know where your mother is. And her mate.”
“So you know she’s a demon?”
He cocked his head. “I could ask you the same thing.” A slow smile spread across his face. “You said you had no interest in the supernatural. Yet I’m assuming you met up with Lauren somewhere, and discovered what she is now.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is killing her, right? Isn’t that why you’re here? To let me know that you’re going to do that?”
“We,” he amended, golden eyes gleaming. “We are going to kill her.”
“My boyfriend, huh?”
Andrei was out on the balcony of my bedroom, probably giving a hundred pedestrians a private show. He turned, giving me one of his rare smiles, the kind that usually disintegrated my panties.
“It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“No, it’s just weird. I haven’t had a boyfriend since high school. And you…”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said it more to himself, as if he was in awe of the concept.
“I think we need to have a talk,” I muttered. “Put some goddamn clothes on. I can’t think when you’re saluting me like that.” I stalked back into my room and waited for him to follow.
When he appeared seconds later, he was in a pair of boxers, which still made him a health code violation.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He quirked a brow.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to fuck me and rip me apart at the same time.”
“I wasn’t aware irritation could be so wrongfully interpreted.” I rolled my eyes. “Sit down, Andrei. There’s no point in my attempt at being intimidating if you’re hulking over me like a mountain.”
“You’re right.” He was humoring me but he sat on the edge of my bed, rolling his shoulders back. “Intimidate away.”
“You know that that was Daniel, right?”
The playfulness left his face. “The big, bad English hunter? He’s a lot smaller in person. But then again, they usually are.”
“Are you seriously being this… petty?”
He gave me a strange look. “Petty?” he said, sounding the word out. “Of course.”
“Why can’t hunters sense you?”
His face hardened. “You almost sound disappointed. Is that what you wanted? Your hunter to make a move against me? To prove his worth?”
Sarcastic Andrei was proving to be ten times worse than Enraged Andrei or even Scary Andrei.
“You know exactly what I mean and he isn’t my hunter.” I folded my arms across my chest and gave him a dark look. “Myrna and I have been texting and…”
“You what?” Thunder clouded his eyes.
“And…,” I stressed. “Don’t interrupt me.” I paused, mentally daring him to berate me. He didn’t. “Myrna and I have been texting and she said nothing about your ability to… to, I don’t know, pull a Harry Potter and cloak what you really are. So you tell me…right now.”
He rose, instantly towering over me. “If you had any idea how powerful I really am, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. For fuck’s sake, Rae, I’m a king. If I don’t want anyone to know what I am, no one will know what I am.” He shrugged. “It takes a hell of a lot of energy to shroud myself but sometimes I’m just not in the mood to kill a bunch of crucifix-obsessed hunters.”
I blinked up at him. “Are you the only demon that can do that?”
“Only the extremely strong ones. Lords, queens, and other rulers like me. Rae, calm down.”
Calm down? Only when he put his arms around me did I realize that I was shivering, which was the beginnings of a massive panic attack. What if I’d gone to school with demons? What if they lived in my neighborhood? What if my damn friends were demons?! What if…
Breathe, a voice in my head commanded, and I clung to Andrei like he was the only normal thing I knew. My fingernails dug into his back, piercing his skin.
“You don’t have to be scared, little one,” he murmured into the top of my head. “How many times have I said that you are mine? Nothing will ever happen to you.”
“I’m supposed to be in Greece now… or Italy. Someone somewhere is cheating on his wife and I’m supposed to be there,” I babbled, inhaling the scent of sweaty sex on Andrei’s chest. “I have my Nikon and everything. Don’t you think I should’ve been a photographer? Candid snaps, that’s what I’d do. And maybe even family photos. As long as the parents are, you know, really nice to their kids and it shows.”
He was stroking my back with one hand and toying with my hair in the other. I raised my head and he swooped in to claim my lips. I let him. I let him because I needed it.
It took me a few seconds to realize that he’d lifted me up, carried me inside, and set me down on the bed. A hyperventilating female certainly brought out the gentleman in the guy. And I was ashamed to admit it, but sometimes a little part of me yearned to yell, “Screw equality!” and let a man take care of me.
But just a little part.
“Breathe,” Andrei gently commanded, sitting awkwardly in front of my feet. He had one leg hanging over the edge of the bed and the other crossed over it at the ankle.
“I am breathing,” I hissed, shivering when he took my feet in his hands. They were awfully big and warm, those hands of his, and his fingers were incredibly gentle as they tickled the arch of each foot. “What are you doing?” I asked as my foot tingled where he touched.
“Just relax.”
“Said the demon to the woman,” I muttered, punctuating my wisecrack with an involuntary little moan. My eyes widened. “What was that? It felt so good.”
Andrei was giving me a foot massage. Andrei, the freaking king of horny supernatural creatures, was sitting half-naked in my bed rubbing my feet. And he was good.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he said gruffly, his fingers seemingly making the balls of my feet sing hymns.
“On my mind?” I echoed, rolling my head back onto the pillows against the headboard. Aside from “Oh, God!” and “Wow!” there was nothing else on my mind, nothing at all. “I thought you could—oh, that feels good—read my mind.”
Andrei ran his hands up my legs, slowly and gently kneading my calf muscles. “You know I can’t,” he murmured. “But I wish I could.” He brought my foot up and kissed all five toes before switching to my other foot and doing the same. “I can sense how you feel but I can’t hear your thoughts. So you have to tell me, Rae.”
Sanity, however, was slowly creeping back in. “It feels weird telling you that I want to kill another demon,” I said honestly, wiggling my toes to make sure they were still there. I looked him in the eye. “Won’t you try to stop me?”
He disregarded my question. “You’re really going to follow that fucking hunter?” His grip on my ankles tightened. “Do you realize what a fool he is? You go after Lauren, you go after Vitaly. He’s an old demon, and he won’t just let you and your little hunter buddies waltz in, all holy-watered up, and kill his succubus.”
“I knew you were listening to us!” I hissed. “You’re protecting her.” I wriggled, t
rying to get him to release me. I kicked with one foot, lashing out at him. No dice. Breathing heavily, I spat, “This is why we can’t discuss these things. I’m Alien and you’re Predator. We can’t fucking join forces. Andrei, let me go.”
“I’m not protecting her,” he calmly replied, rubbing the pads of his thumbs along my skin. “I’m protecting you. You yourself said you know nothing about the supernatural. You’ll only get yourself killed and I’ll be damned if I just stand back and watch that happen.”
“Then, kill her for me.”
The idea was so simple, I felt like an idiot for not thinking about it before. Daniel thought he was doing me a solid by helping me kill the woman that had almost sold me to the devil, literally. But at the end of the day, did it matter who killed her as long as she was killed?
Andrei’s fingers stilled. “I can’t do that.”
“You can’t?”
His brow furrowed. “Fine. I can, but I won’t.”
“Get out.”
His grip on one leg loosened and I was able to kick my foot free, hitting him right in the middle of his perfectly sculpted chest. He barely flinched, which was most probably due to the orgasm I’d given him last night.
“I said, get out!”
“Rae…”
“This is crazy! I’m crazy!” I rolled off the bed, shoving him down when he tried to get up. “Listen to me,” I said as I sucked in air, surprised that he actually let me push him. “The sex is great—explosive even! But I feel guilty about plotting with hunters one moment and fucking you, a demon king, the next. Daniel… he’s a good guy. And once upon a time, I tried to be good. Being with you, Andrei, is not just pretty fucking bad. It’s a treachery.”
Andrei eyed me for a long moment before squeezing his eyes shut. Long lashes kissed his cheeks and because of that stupid distraction, I didn’t really notice that he was putting some clothes until… well, until he was fully clothed.
“I’m not going to apologize for what I am.” His voice was roughened by barely controlled rage as he rose to his full height. Cold blue eyes stared down at me, practically piercing through the flimsy satin of my robe. “Causing dissention in my ranks for nothing? That’s what I’d be doing if I went after your mother. Have your little sulk.” In one fluid motion he was breathing in my ear, “But if you go near that hunter again, I will slit his throat. I will not be made a fool of… by a human, no less.”
“I’ll do whatever the hell I please.” I made a noise in my throat when he pecked my earlobe. “Get out. I mean it.” I closed my eyes, mentally counting to ten.
“That’s the thing, Rae,” he said, almost regretfully. “You don’t.”
When I got to ten, Andrei was gone and a thought popped in my head.
Since Daniel was still in Paris, maybe he could help me out with Damien’s demons. Maybe I could finally be a real Erickson. That being said, I now realized that thwarting my father’s attempts at getting me into the family business was one of the dumbest things I’d ever done in my life.
But only second to falling for a demon king, of course.
Chapter 14
I needed him.
No, I mentally rephrased. I don’t need him. I just want him.
There was a huge difference between the two words. But either way, as I had kept telling myself every day for the past five freaking days, Andrei wasn’t going to come back to me, no matter how much I needed and/or wanted him. I was well aware that I had pissed him off. And much to my surprise, it hurt.
It hurt like hell that I couldn’t see him. It hurt like hell that I couldn’t touch him. It hurt like hell that I couldn’t hear his stupidly sexy and rare laughs, the ones that I distinctly felt were reserved for me. It hurt that I couldn’t have him inside me, turning my whole world upside down. He told me to have my “little sulk”, but I would never have anticipated that it could turn into a big one… and would result in me wanting him even more.
If this was what love felt like, I didn’t need it in my life. No, what I needed was a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, a dirty martini and my favorite movie, Kill Bill: Volume One, playing on TV. That was the best way to get over… whatever the hell this was. How stupid did a person have to be to go and fall for a demon, one who was using her?
“Pretty stupid,” I huffed at myself, looking down at my stained sweatpants and baggy T-shirt. I looked like shit and felt like it, too.
My phone rang, like it always did at this time. And as always, I rejected the call. Daniel could go to hell for all I cared. He’d been phoning me incessantly. And when that didn’t work, he resorted to banging on my door. He was way too eager to be the Jackie Chan to my Jaden Smith, in my opinion, and that had my guard up.
I had plenty of time to mull over my anger at Lauren and had decided that she wasn’t worth risking my life for. Now I just felt plain stupid knowing I was beating a dead horse. There really wasn’t any need for me to mix with the supernatural world anyway. I had bigger things to worry about, things I’d put on the backburner to deal with my own crazy shit—things like Ana Fontaine’s brother and a posse of demon-possessed virgins.
I am an idiot and I know it.
So, after sitting cross-legged for hours on the couch with a tub of Rocky Road in my lap, I decided to dial the one person that could probably help me fix my fucked-up mental state.
Myrna answered on the first ring.
“Rainelle? What a pleasant surprise, hon!” she chirped, sounding a billion times more positive than I did.
I decided not to beat around the bush. “Do you know where he is?”
Myrna didn’t need to make five guesses to know which “he” I was referring to.
“You sound terrible,” she remarked, her voice heavy with concern. “What’s up?”
I had a strong suspicion that she knew “what was up”. I was pretty sure that pissing off a demon king would become public knowledge in supernatural circles seconds after it happens.
“I don’t know,” I sniffled into my phone, trailing my fingers down my cheek and horrified to find them wet. “Do you think that maybe… maybe I’m not one of those untouchable beings? That maybe I’m… normal?”
A long, uncomfortable silence elapsed. I was about to end the call when Myrna spoke up, “Have you taken a pregnancy test?”
She had some fucking nerve!
“I’m not pregnant,” I snapped, my grip on the phone tightening. “What would make you say that? Did Andrei say anything to you?”
She let out one of her annoyingly joyful, tinkling laughs. “No, honey. I haven’t seen the man since you came in with him a week ago. I was just curious, is all.”
“I’m not pregnant,” I repeated. “I just feel like shit because he stormed off in a rage five days ago and I haven’t seen him since. He’s mad at me.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I’d rather not,” I said carefully, chewing on my lower lip thoughtfully. I took a deep breath. “I think I’m attached… to him.”
Silence stretched once again before I heard an encouraging “Go on.” from Myrna.
“We’re not even technically in a relationship but the last time I saw him, he called himself my boyfriend,” I babbled.
But Myrna didn’t need to know the extent of that situation.
“Can demons date? Is that done? Can they honestly remember romantic stuff like anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, and all that cliché shit? I’ve never really even had a boyfriend and it’s just my luck that the first guy who claims that position is the lord of sex demons!”
Myrna made little noncommittal replies to get me to continue.
“Then again, he acts so freaking human sometimes and I get fooled into thinking he is human. Maybe I want him to be human, but then he wouldn’t be Andrei if he was, you know? What am I saying? Of course you don’t know.” I sighed heavily. “I really am my mother’s child, aren’t I? Because, Myrna, I think I might be in…”
“In love with him?” she put in.
I let out another sigh, relieved that I didn’t have to say the words myself. “It will never work. He’ll be forever young while I’ll age. And he’ll watch me die. This is so screwed up.” I was seriously starting to hyperventilate.
“I think you should know a few things, though,” Myrna said quietly. She waited for me to calm down. “One, Andrei is not using you. Tell me, were there times when he didn’t have sex with you? Just hung out and enjoyed your company?”
I thought back to the first time that had happened. He found me watching Shaun of the Dead and I’d pissed him off so much that he let me have bloody, gory sex with him. If we hadn’t fought, he would’ve simply been content to finish the movie with me. There had been subsequent times when he just hung around, watched me do my own thing… and just gave me a chaste kiss when I went to bed—much to my disappointment.
“Yeah,” I reluctantly replied.
“Two, his kind craves sex on the most primal of levels—with whomever,” Myrna went on, as if I didn’t know. “Male or female, it doesn’t matter to them. Sex is sex and the variety is just as exciting as the act. But for Andrei, there is only you. Haven’t you wondered about that?” She didn’t wait for my response. “I’ve known him for centuries and he’s never been monogamous before. He’s never been bonded to a human, too. And the fact that he’s, well, faithful when it comes to you… without the ceremony. He cares about you and I never thought something like that would ever be possible in his case.”
“I have to go, Myrna. I shouldn’t have called you,” I added, although speaking to her had weirdly been as reassuring as speaking to my best friend, Renée, who I missed way too much these days.
“Call me any time, mea domina,” she said, and judging from her tone, I knew that she was smiling.
Resisting the urge to chastise her for using that cursed title, I ended the call and flung my phone to the coffee table along with the half-eaten tub of ice cream. My appetite had vanished. First, there was the persistent dull ache in my gut that had something to do with a certain six foot six giant’s disappearance. And then there was the repulsive idea floating in my head about a baby growing inside me that was just too horrible to even contemplate.
