by Nina Bangs
Kim bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Show some enthusiasm for her interests, and she’ll come around.”
She watched him turn that idea over in his mind. “May as well give it a try. So how’s Brynn doing?” Ganymede poked his head around the corner of the still-open door.
“I took care of the welts.” She wasn’t about to discuss Brynn’s coping skills with this shape-shifter friend of Sparkle’s.
“He’s not too happy with what he is.” Ganymede sounded like his interest in Brynn’s happiness ran a little deeper than mere curiosity.
Interesting. Which reminded her: “When I came out of the meeting room and told you where I was going, you didn’t sound confused like Asima did. Any reason for that?”
The cat’s eyes shifted away from her. He twitched his ears. “Sparkle filled me in on Brynn’s problem. And since I’m a sensitive, caring kind of guy, I wanted to help.”
Yeah, right. Most demons were dirty low-down liars. So part of Kim’s training had involved spotting a lie. Ganymede’s eyes, body language, and voice all screamed that he’d just told her a big fat one. But why? She watched the cat slip into Brynn’s room just before she quietly closed the door.
Shrugging away the question that was Ganymede, Kim pulled Fo from her pocket as she headed for the elevator. First she’d go down to pick up her stuff from the meeting room, and then she’d wait for Lynsay and the mysterious Uncle Dirk.
“Look at it this way, you have the best of all worlds. You have a new furry buddy—someone smart, funny, and lovable. Someone to share your worries with. Someone who can offer you great advice when—”
“Get out of my fridge, cat.” Brynn glanced up from where he was spreading a sheet over the couch. No way was he sleeping on that bed again. He’d buy a new bed tomorrow. Maybe he’d take Kim with him to help him choose. Bad idea, pal.
“Got any ice cream in this freezer?” Ganymede stared at the freezer door until it swung open.
Damned cat wasn’t going to leave him alone until he fed it. Brynn abandoned the couch to go into his kitchenette. Grabbing a bowl and spoon from the dishwasher, he pulled an ice cream carton from the freezer and then pushed the door closed. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. You can probably get your own ice cream without my help.”
“Yeah, but it’s so much more fun when I can irritate someone into doing it for me. It’s all about the power trip.” He watched with greedy eyes as Brynn started to spoon ice cream into the bowl. “Whoa, big fella. Just put the carton on the floor. I’m going to eat the whole thing anyway.”
“So what are you when you’re not being a pain in the butt?” Brynn really didn’t care, but caution demanded that he know something about his furry roommate. Then he’d find a way to get rid of him.
“I’m a cosmic troublemaker like Sparkle. We go back a long way. I’m in cat form because I like to, you know, get a feeling for the place and the people.” Ganymede frowned at the ice cream carton still in Brynn’s hand.
“You like to spy on people.” Why here and why now?
“Yeah, so?” He was still staring at the ice cream. “Why here? Here is where my hot candy mama is. Why now? She lured me with promises of hot sex.” Ganymede glanced up at Brynn from eyes that said, I’m sneaky and proud of it. “But see, she got sort of pissed at me—you noticed the pink ribbon—and thought she’d pawn me off on Kim for a while. Hey, I don’t pawn. So I decided I’d bunk down with you until she got over her mad. Oh, and when I’m not being a lovable cat, I’m the best lookin’ guy in the world.”
“You were in my head.” Brynn rubbed his hand across his face. Jeez, he was tired. Normally, he would’ve made it harder for the cat to get into his thoughts.
Ganymede didn’t deny it. “Uh, the ice cream carton? I don’t see it in front of my face yet.” He tracked the carton with lust-filled eyes as Brynn leaned over to set it on the floor.
“This isn’t Ben & Jerry’s. You’ve got zero ice cream taste, demon. I’ll upgrade your frozen dessert choices tomorrow.” Ganymede’s disdain for Brynn’s ice cream didn’t stop him from burying his furry face in the carton once it was on the floor.
As Brynn grabbed his pillow from the bed and threw it onto the couch, he thought about the instant gratification he’d get from tossing the cat out the door. Two things stopped him. He didn’t have to take a second look into Ganymede’s eyes to recognize the power there. Kicking the cat out when he didn’t want to leave might take more effort than he was willing to expend tonight. Besides, he had a gut feeling Ganymede had an agenda. No one could look at that shifty amber gaze and think differently. So he might be wise to keep the cat close until he found out how that agenda would impact him.
He gritted his teeth and tried not to react when Ganymede finished his ice cream, leaped onto the coffee table, and plunked his paw onto the TV remote.
Ganymede burped noisily and then stretched out on the table next to the remote. It looked like Brynn was in for another viewing of Men in Black.
Brynn glanced at his watch. Too early for the fantasies to be over, but he needed to warn everyone about the Vaughns. Reaching for the phone, he called Holgarth’s cell phone and passed on the bad news. Holgarth would tell everyone.
Then he called the desk and had them ring Wade’s room. Luckily, he caught the demon in. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up. Kim’s sister and Uncle Dirk will arrive sometime tonight. They’re loaded for demons. You might want to move to another hotel.”
“Uncle Dirk?” Something about Wade’s voice didn’t sound right.
“You know him?”
“Dirk Vaughn? Sure, I know who he is. We both like to fish. Made sure I never met him face-to-face, for obvious reasons. Guess he’s here for the fishing tournament on Saturday. Thanks for the warning.”
“Kim has never met him either, but evidently he got a tip that the castle was crawling with demons. I’ll be keeping a low profile until they’re gone.” He was a fool for staying, but something in him didn’t want Kim to see him running away from her relatives. And why he gave a damn what Kim thought of him was an unsettling mystery.
It wasn’t until he’d hung up that he realized Ganymede had turned off the TV. Trying to ignore the cat’s interested stare, he sank onto the couch. “Won’t be able to sleep on my back until tomorrow night.” He’d drape the towel across his hips, but that’s about all that would touch him tonight.
The trigger words touch and night pulled up the memory of Kim’s smooth fingers sliding across his flesh—comforting, undemanding, and incredibly arousing. And when he’d turned around to find her fingers poised above his cock, the impact had been more erotic than all the practiced sensuality of the endless stream of women who’d touched his body in passion.
“So what’s it like being a sex demon?”
Brynn waited for the expected leer, but it didn’t come. He shrugged. “You like ice cream, but what if you ate it every day for centuries?”
“I have.” Ganymede blinked. “Your point is?”
“Okay, wrong example.” Brynn raked his fingers through his hair. “What happens to anyone who tries to force you to do something?”
The cat narrowed his amber gaze on Brynn. His tail whipped from side to side. “The world gets one more stupid dead person.”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Brynn was growing tired of this. He wanted to lie down and lose tonight in sleep.
“Well, can’t you just make sure you spend your time with great-looking chicks who aren’t pushy like Liz? You know, sweet and submissive babes?” He looked hopeful.
Then Ganymede’s hopeful expression faded to wistful. “Sweet and submissive sounds good right now. Guess they’re a little hard to find, though. Personally, fiery and kick-ass does it for me. But sometimes those kinds of women are a little harder to manipulate. I didn’t get to spend even a half hour with Asima. I mean, Sparkle’s my main squeeze, but sometimes it’s nice to be around a different face, get another woman’s perspective.” His cat s
cowl said that Asima’s “perspective” wasn’t even on his radar. “You don’t know when you have it good, demon. You can spend all your time picking those ripe cherries off the tree.”
Brynn wanted to shake Ganymede’s chubby black body until he rattled. “You just don’t get it, do you? You think my life is all great sex with beautiful women? Most of the time I don’t get to choose, cat. Want an example? A few hundred years ago I was ordered to guard the eighty-year-old mother of an important official. I had to stay with her for a whole day, couldn’t leave her out of my sight.” He winced at the memory. “When the first hour was up I did my thing—ripped off my clothes, offered her my body, the usual.”
Ganymede stared at him with avid interest. “Bet she was pissed. Did her old heart give out? Did her feeble old legs fold from the shock?”
Brynn reached over to turn off the lamp. “No, she ripped off her clothes and then used her feeble old legs to jump me. And her feeble old heart was beating just fine after a full day of sex. Lesson learned, mature women have a hell of a sex drive.”
“Ouch. Bummer.” Ganymede remained silent in the darkened room. “How do you feel about Kim?”
“She’s okay.” He closed his eyes, remembering his red-haired warrior charging into battle against Liz. Brynn smiled into the darkness. She’d embarrassed the hell out of him, but she was the first person in five hundred years who’d braved his wrath to save him. “Yeah, she’s really okay.”
“What’re you going to do about her?”
Brynn thought about trying to keep track of the time every minute he was with her. About seeing her expression if he miscalculated and had to go off with another woman while she was watching. About her knowing how many women he’d been with and would be with in the future.
“Nothing. I’m not going to do a damned thing about her.”
9
So far, today felt like a normal day. Of course, she’d only been up for an hour. And what constituted “normal” had grown a little fuzzy since she’d arrived at the Castle of Dark Dreams.
Kim had showered and then pulled on her jeans and an old Dallas Mavericks T-shirt. Lynsay had called a few minutes ago. She’d gotten in late and wanted Kim to meet her for breakfast. Kim glanced at her watch. She still had a half hour to kill.
“Are we going somewhere today, Kimmie?” Fo didn’t sound like she’d suffered any ill effects from her accident. “Maybe Brynn will go with us if he feels okay. I’m glad you used me against the vampire bitch. When I saw what she’d done to Brynn I wished she was a demon so I could turn her into a pile of ash.”
Kim frowned. Fo’s evolution from machine to sentient being was taking a few turns Kim wasn’t sure she liked. “After breakfast I’ll probably just come back here and work on the ideas everyone contributed last night.”
“I think this castle should have an oubliette, you know, one of those deep holes you can dump a Liz into and forget about her forever.” Fo the fiendish.
“Bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you?”
Fo’s eyes looked happy. “I’m becoming more human.”
“Uh-huh. And where did you learn about oubliettes? More to the point, where are you learning words like bitch and slut?” Fo’s learning curve was upwardly mobile, and Kim wasn’t too comfortable with that. What happened when Fo became human enough to resent what she was?
“I have access to many online sources.” Fo blinked. “And I learned those words by listening very carefully to what people were saying around me. Is that wrong?”
“Uh, no.” Nothing Kim could say to that. She sure couldn’t go around warning people to watch their language in front of her cell phone.
For the moment, Kim pushed the problem of Fo from her mind. Instead, she pulled up a visual from last night. Not the one of Brynn stretched out on the bed. Thinking about that made Kim want to sit right down and design an oubliette.
No, the particular mental picture guaranteed to rev her up until she got her first shot of caffeine was the one of Brynn standing facing her, all broad, muscular shoulders, sculpted pecs, six-pack abs, and strong thighs roped with muscle. A weaker woman wouldn’t venture further, because the heart could only take so much excitement this early in the morning. But Kim believed in finishing what she’d started, so she remembered . . . everything. The length, the breadth, the exact degree of arousal . . .
“Yo, Kimmie, you’re getting all red like Deimos.”
Kim exhaled sharply, releasing her visual, just as someone knocked on her door. Before opening it, she picked up Fo. Who knew what might be on the other side of any door in the Castle of Dark Dreams?
A smiling Wade waited for her on the other side this time. He stepped inside as soon as she swung the door open. “How you doing this morning, little lady?” His gaze narrowed on Fo. “I came over to see what I could do to replace your cell phone, but I see it’s just fine.” His expression said he didn’t understand how the hell it could be fine after he’d stomped all over it.
Kim smiled up at him. “Lucky for me, Brynn was able to put it back together again.” Since Wade seemed to be an ordinary person in a castle where ordinariness was at a premium, Kim set Fo back on the bureau.
Without warning, the object of her lustful mental pictures strode into the room. Kim could almost hear the air crackling and sizzling from all that awesome sensual energy Brynn brought with him. Her hair had to be standing on end. She resisted the urge to touch it. And could anyone in the universe look that good in worn jeans and a plain white T-shirt? She didn’t think so.
Kim gave her lust some downtime while she wondered how much pain he was in with the cloth rubbing against his back and buttocks.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.” Brynn cast a guarded look at Wade.
Guarded? Nah. “Wade just stopped over to talk about replacing my cell phone. I told him not to worry because you put the old one back together again.”
“Thanks for saving me money.” Wade didn’t look grateful.
Kim could’ve sworn what he wanted to say was, “What a stupid thing to do.” Alert. Alert. Imagination overload. The castle was messing with her, suggesting undercurrents where none existed.
The two men stood staring at each other. No one said anything, not even Fo. Kim prepared to leap into the breach and loose a full-blown babble attack, but just as she opened her mouth, Sparkle rushed into the room.
“Oh, goody. You haven’t left yet.” Dressed in a short black leather skirt, a black silk camisole, and teetering on metallic silver stilettos, Sparkle was enough to warm the heart of any man who yearned for the ultimate mistress of pain.
Kim wondered where she’d left her whip. Then Kim noticed the clothes draped over Sparkle’s arm along with the shoes dangling from her fingers. Uh-oh.
“Hi, guys.” Sparkle’s whole persona changed as she turned to greet the men. Her mouth became poutier, and she slid her tongue across her lower lip to call attention to its lusciousness. Her amber eyes shone with appreciation for all things male. She blinked, just in case the males in question had missed her message. Ha, as though any man could miss Sparkle’s invite to all things sexual.
Okay, no need to morph into Super Bitch. It wasn’t as though she was jealous of Sparkle. Kim glanced at Brynn, whose attention was riveted on Sparkle. Okay, maybe just a twinge. Not enough to even mention. Definitely not mentioning it.
“So what brings you here, Sparkle?” Kim noted that Wade’s stare was fixed on Sparkle, too. “Oh, I don’t think you know Wade. He’s here for some fishing. Wade, meet Sparkle Stardust. She owns Sweet Indulgence, a candy store right outside the park.”
“Well, well.” Sparkle the Sexy had a new dimension. She was now Sparkle the Sexy Hunter. “I never knew they made fishermen so big and beautiful.” She moved closer to him, every motion a sensual shimmy of swaying hips and bouncing boobs.
Kim frowned. Give me a break. Wade wouldn’t fall for that, would he? She glanced at Wade’s rapt expression. He would. Better say something before Sp
arkle sucked Wade dry and then turned to Brynn. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Uh . . .” Sparkle visibly forced her attention from Wade, sort of like hearing the pop when you yank a suction cup off the wall. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” She offered Kim her brightest smile. “I had to run right up here to tell you that you won!”
“Won?” Kim pictured Sparkle running up the steps in those four-inch slut-queen heels. Ouch. But if anyone could run in them, Sparkle could.
Sparkle raised one brow. “My contest. The prize is the loan of some ultracool clothes guaranteed to turn any man—or a reasonable facsimile of such—into a hungry male animal. You get one outfit a day for a week.”
“When did I enter your contest?” Confused here.
“When you bought that pitiful bag of lemon drops. Anyone who buys my candy gets his or her name entered in the weekly contest. The prizes change from week to week, but lucky you, this week the winner gets to wear some awesome clothes. I have to say that no one more worthy entered. Anyone who’d pass on chocolate for lemon drops is in deep need of my help, sister.” Sparkle’s expression said everything should be perfectly clear now.
Brynn was staring at the clothes draped over Sparkle’s arm.
Don’t ask. Kim wanted to reach out and clap her hand over Brynn’s mouth.
He asked. “So what do you have there?”
Rats. So much for Kim’s ordinary day.
“Glad you asked.” Sparkle’s expression said it was really unusual to find an incredibly hot stud smart enough to ask a meaningful question.
“I think that’s Monday’s outfit.” Kim eyed the shoes still dangling from Sparkle’s fingers. The heels weren’t as extreme as Sparkle’s, but they were still major owies.
Sparkle beamed at Kim. “This is your first day’s prize. Each day for a week I’ll bring you an outfit that’ll burn Galveston to the ground.”
“And I need these why?”
“Because what you’re wearing is pitiful.” Sparkle was all business now. “The Dallas Mavericks? Using one of your most sensual assets, your chest, to promote a sports team? Do the Dallas Mavericks say sexy? I don’t think so. Really sad, girlfriend.” She handed Kim the first piece of clothing. “A sexy Versace beaded halter top. The beads are a Sparkle Stardust modification. One hundred twenty-eight dollars.”
