by Nadine Mutas
Hellishly Ever After
Nadine Mutas
Contents
Cover Copy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Also by Nadine Mutas
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Hellishly Ever After
by Nadine Mutas
Ever held a seance and accidentally trapped a demon into marriage? No takers? Just me? Crap.
Marriage is my idea of hell, at least until the day an unfairly hot demon shows up in my apartment and drags me to actual Hell—as his wife.
I’d honestly rather have a root canal without sedation than marry anyone, least of all a surly—even if damnably attractive—demon. But I’m bound to the contract stupid Teenage Me made with Azazel when I accidentally summoned and trapped him into marriage, to be consummated if I were still single at twenty-five.
I’d forgotten all about it.
He hasn’t.
And now he’s here to claim me.
Neither of us is thrilled about this marriage-of-inconvenience, but what I hate even more than the idea of being married...is being ignored. So when Azazel intends to park me out of sight and mind at the other end of his estate in Hell, I make it my newly eternal life’s mission to be as much of a real inconvenience to him as possible.
It’s all fun and games, until I find a soul that shouldn’t be in Hell, stumble smack-dab into the middle of a demon family feud…and the banter between me and Azazel turns so hot it might consume me.
To my father, who left us too soon.
I miss you, Papa.
Chapter 1
Marriage is hell—or so I thought until the night a demon popped into my living room and dragged me to actual Hell.
That’s already pretty freak-out worthy in anyone’s book, but to make matters worse—insert the voice of the man from Monty Python’s Life of Brian who’s about to be stoned to death asking, “Making it worse? How could it be worse?”—that brooding jerk of a demon forced me to marry him.
The nerve.
So, yeah, marriage in Hell. Double whammy for me.
And to think, I was bummed about celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday all by my lonesome. Ha.
If I’d known who—what—was going to show up later, I’d have lit some sage instead of a sad little candle on a cupcake.
Blissfully unaware of my impending doom, I stared into the flame of the tiny cupcake candle for a moment, focusing on my wish for the year ahead.
Health? That’s always a good thing to have. I was good on that front, but wishing for it to stay that way sure wasn’t a bad idea.
Success? Given that I’d just landed a good job at one of San Francisco’s most reputable accounting firms, I was doing great here too, but of course that was just the first step up a high-reaching ladder. Keeping what I’d worked so hard for and making sure I’d continue on that path was definitely at the top of my wish list.
Love? Eh…
I grimaced. Love and I weren’t on speaking terms. After a few spectacularly failed relationships, I’d decided to avoid further romantic entanglements for the foreseeable future. They were always so very…tangly. I shuddered.
The flame danced in front of my eyes, topping the “25” candle stuck into the frosting on the red velvet cupcake I’d grabbed at Target on the way home from work.
I swallowed past the pinch in my heart. This would be the first birthday I’d have to ring in alone, without at least one good friend to share my (cup)cake with. Sure, I’d talked on the phone with my BFF and my mom earlier in the day, and I received text messages and posts on my social media from more friends. It just wasn’t the same as actually hanging out and celebrating with someone I loved. I hadn’t realized until now how much it mattered to me.
If I’d been at this job a little longer already, I would have invited my new colleagues… As it was, I’d only just started two days ago, and I was still desperately trying to memorize everybody’s names. The only person at work who’d known it was my birthday today was my new boss. His casually dropped “By the way, Zoe—happy birthday!” almost made me drop my coffee when he popped his head inside my cubicle. I’d stammered back a cringe-worthy “You too!” and watched him retreat with an expression somewhere between confusion and concern, probably reassessing his decision to hire me.
Socially awkward, I could do. Just like replaying mortifying episodes in my head until I wanted to bang said body part against the nearest hard surface. Thank God I was better at accounting than at social interactions.
I took a deep breath. Okay then, I’d just make this part of my birthday wish.
Make new friends, don’t scare them off with my weirdness, keep my job and be great at it, stay healthy.
And definitely, most certainly, not fall in love.
Closing my eyes, I blew out the candle.
“Happy birthday to meeeeeee,” I whispered, trying not to sound pathetic and failing pathetically.
After I extinguished the smoke by squeezing the wick between thumb and index finger, I plucked the candle from the cupcake.
“The next one will be better,” I muttered, picking up the red velvet dessert. “I’ll have colleagues and friends over and throw a huge party here.”
“Yeah, about that…” a deep male voice behind me said.
I whirled around, dropped the cupcake and shrieked.
The last time I’d screamed that loud, I’d opened the shower curtain in my college dorm bathroom to find a ginormous spider right in my face. That was also the one and only time in my life I’d miraculously transformed into a kung-fu master. Alas, those martial arts moves never came to my rescue again.
They certainly deserted me now, when I faced an unknown male intruder in my home.
A tall, dark, and lethally graceful intruder. He lounged against the wall, half wrapped in shadow despite the overhead lights fully turned on. His black clothes—which looked disturbingly like fighting gear—did nothing to hide the intimidating amount of muscles on him, from the broad shoulders, to the strong biceps stretching his rolled-up sleeves, to the powerful thighs.
My eyes snapped back up, focused on that piercing gaze set in a face I’d have described as achingly, sensually beautiful if I’d seen him under different circumstances. You know, as a model in an ad for the latest extravagant Italian luxury line, perhaps, or as the new Hollywood heartthrob.
As opposed to the psycho who’d just broken into my apartment.
Never mind the fact he looked like a fallen angel with whom any hot-blooded woman—and many a man—would want to explore the very meaning of sin. His standing here in my living room, uninvited, unannounced, a stranger with an unknown and likely menacing agenda, pushed him straight into creep territory.
I stumbled back a step, putting more space between us. My heart pounded so loud, my ears were ringing. Sensible questions to ask when confronting a home intruder might be “Who are you?” or “What are you doing here?”
My brain couldn’t decide between the two, so—naturally—what I ended up blurting out was, “Who are you doing here?”
Hi, I’m Zoe, and I’m verbally challenge
d.
While fires of embarrassment ate up my insides and probably painted my face an unsightly shade of red, Gorgeous Creep’s mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile.
“It’s time, Zoe.”
I froze. He knows my name. Well, duh. Any guy sociopathic enough to calmly break and sneak into a woman’s home would have done his research, right?
He pushed off the wall, and I could have sworn shadows whispered behind him in the shape of wings.
I was losing it. Clearly. This whole situation must have fried something in my brain.
“Let’s get this over with.” He waved a hand in the air, his voice a little too bored for a psycho preparing to act out his twisted fantasy.
We all like to believe we’d be brave in the face of danger, or at least…dignified and trying. So did I. Like most women, I’d mentally worked through various scenarios of being assaulted by a man, and how to best get out of it. Or to avoid it in the first place. I’d thought I had a good handle on what I’d do, a strategy, something.
In reality, as this huge guy approached me, what I did was squeak.
Like a fucking mouse stalked by a tiger.
Scrambling back until I hit the table, I managed to snap, “Stay away from me!” I reached out blindly behind me, my fingers touching my phone. Thank God. I grabbed it, my hand shaking, and unlocked it via Touch ID without taking my eyes off him. “Get out of here or I’m calling 911.”
He chuckled. “And what good would that do?”
“Umm, they’ll send an officer over to arrest you?” If the intruder is still here by that time, that is… My pulse thundered in my head, my breathing way too fast. It occurred to me that in the minutes it would take a cop to get here, this creep could do any number of things to me. Help from law enforcement would do me a fat lot of good if I were dead on the floor.
He narrowed his eyes, which were an unfairly brilliant shade of blue-gray, far too stunning for an asshole like him. “Who do you think I am?”
Was that a trick question?
My confusion must have shown on my face, because before I could venture a guess, his features hardened, making him impossibly more menacing. “You don’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
Darkness pulsed around him. Or maybe the lights flickered. It couldn’t have been real black smoke that misted about his form for a heartbeat, because that would have made me batshit insane.
And I refused to believe that.
I didn’t, however, imagine the growl coming from him, raising the hairs on my arms and neck.
“Twelve years ago,” he said through gritted teeth, his expression finally matching that of a psycho intent on inflicting pain, “you trapped me in a deal.”
My brain short-circuited. I choked on my next breath. No. Stomach dropping, I spaced out for a moment as slivers of a memory flashed up, the pieces too scattered to form a picture, yet strong enough in their implication to cause an ominous shiver to skitter down my spine.
“You summoned me,” he continued, advancing on me again while more darkness pooled around him, “and you tricked me into a contract.” A muscle feathered in his jaw. He looked murderous. “I am here to fulfill that contract.”
A memory wanted to shake itself loose, but my consciousness fought it hard, reason and logic trying desperately to prevail. This couldn’t be happening. It was impossible. He couldn’t be—
“Azazel,” I whispered, voicing the name that surfaced from the depths of my mind.
His eyes flashed as he snarled, like lightning through clouds of storm gray. “Starting to remember?” He took another sinuous step toward me. The air crackled around him. “After you conveniently forgot me?”
“I was thirteen,” I finally got out, the pieces having connected to revive a chilling memory. “It was supposed to be a joke...”
“A joke?” He appeared to choke on the word.
My throat dried up. “Well—umm—” I stammered, my voice embarrassingly creeping up to a whispered squeak. “You know, two teenagers having a fake séance kind of thing, making a ‘deal with the devil’ to not end up sad and alone...” I made air-quotes for him.
He did not look impressed.
“You called on me,” he growled, “as a joke?”
“I didn’t think you were real!”
Darkness exploded from him.
There’s no other way to describe it—shadows shot out from his form as if his very core were made of pitiless black that devoured all light. It snuffed out the lamps in the room, plunging everything into unrelenting darkness. Not even the streetlights penetrated the stygian veil that suffocated me.
As fast as he’d thrown the shadows out, he pulled them back into himself—only now two enormous black wings rose behind him. A faint shimmer of fire danced upon the glossy onyx of their feathers.
“Is this real enough for you?” he snapped.
“Shouldn’t your wings be leathery?” I covered my mouth with both hands, but it was too late. My verbal filter had successfully failed again.
He curled his lip. “We’re not bats.”
“But the pictures—”
“Are wrong. Monks and prophets and saints.” He scoffed. “There is little they got right. Now.” He stretched his wings, knocking a glass off the coffee table. Those things sure were solid. “Pack your things and come.”
“What the—what?”
“It’s time.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “We need to be gone by midnight, but I’d rather not spend the next two hours watching you pack. So grab your essentials and let’s go.” He paused, tilting his head as he studied me. “I’m letting you pack your stuff as a courtesy. Don’t make me regret my indulgence.”
I stood there, giving him the most pathetic imitation of a fish out of water while my brain desperately tried to keep up.
“What are you talking about?” I finally managed.
He stared at me. The carpet beneath him started smoldering. “Do you need this spelled out?” His voice was deceptively calm. “Maybe in a slide show presentation?” Fine tendrils of smoke rose up from his boots. “Or drawn with crayons?”
His sarcasm raised my hackles, but for once my sense of self-preservation kicked in and made me bite back my scathing response.
Instead I carefully asked, “Why should I need to pack my things?”
“Because,” he replied in a measured tone generally used on morons, “you’re coming to Hell with me.”
My heart skipped a beat. The smoke detector chose that moment to go off, and I jumped and clutched my chest. I’d have a cardiac arrest before this night was over.
The demon’s gaze cut to the beeping menace on the ceiling, and the next second the smoke detector exploded.
I shrieked and ducked under the table.
Yep, cardiac arrest coming right up.
“So,” the demon said into the oppressive silence, “you forgot me and the terms of the contract you tricked me into.”
From my vantage point under the table, I could only see his legs and boots...and the burn marks on the carpet where he stood. I swallowed. “I didn’t trick you into anything. I didn’t even know what I was doing!”
The lights flickered. A pulse of...something shuddered through the room, raising goosebumps on my skin.
“I’ll refresh your memory.” His voice was velvety soft with the kind of rumbling undertone that would usually make my knees weak. Good thing I was already kneeling on the floor. Going spaghetti-legged right in front of this guy would be worse than hiding under a table.
“The covenant you forced me into stipulates that should you be unwed by your twenty-fifth birthday, I am to...” He made a pause, and when he spoke again, he sounded as if he were chewing on a lemon “…marry you.”
His words echoed in my mind, merging with the revived memory of one stupid night twelve years ago. And I knew them to be true, with nauseating certainty.
I cowered back, further under the table, and wrapped my arms around my drawn-u
p legs. Reality was slipping away from me, one shallow, too-fast breath at a time.
“I’m getting tired of talking to a table top.” His feathers rustled. The air filled with pressure. “Come out from under there or I’ll drag you out.” The pressure increased. “You won’t like that,” he added in a low voice.
His energy, I realized. The thing suffusing the air and raising the tiny hairs on my nape was his power.
I looked around me, panic beating under my skin. A way out. There had to be a way out. But the space under the table offered no escape route. Two sides were open to the room, where the nutcase demon loomed. The other two sides backed up against the wall and the fridge. I was trapped in the tiny kitchen of my newly rented, “efficiency-sized” one-bedroom apartment.
“Can we, like, talk about this?” I ventured, my stomach in knots. “I mean, I know I somehow summoned you and we ended up with this farce of a deal, but—I was a teenager! A minor. I couldn’t even legally buy a car, let alone enter any other contract. Shouldn’t that apply to your kind of deals too? Given that I was a child, this pact should be—”
An invisible force grabbed hold of me and pulled me out from under the table so abruptly that I didn’t even manage to scream. I slid over the carpet as if dragged by a rope, coming to a halt right next to the demon. My head was level with his boots.
“—null and void,” I finished numbly, my gaze traveling up his long legs, over his lean hips, all the way up to that face of angelic masculine beauty.
He really shouldn’t be that stunning as a demon. Or maybe he should? I wasn’t so naive to believe that external beauty equalled inherent goodness, or the opposite. And in a way, it made perfect sense that tempters of humankind would dazzle with aesthetics.
