by Мишель Роуэн
. .” She trailed off as she searched for the right words.
He crossed his arms. “Because you don’t trust me.”
She nodded. “Precisely.”
“I see. And the fact that your power over me keeps me from being able to lie to you—that wasn’t a consideration in letting me know what we were up against?”
“I don’t know how far that power goes. Or how long it will last. I couldn’t take the risk that you’d try to take the key for yourself.”
He nodded, jaw clenched. “And now you are willing to throw yourself shamelessly at that self-obsessed asshole in order to get what you’re after.”
“If I have to. Yes.”
“You’re a fool.”
Val crossed her arms and felt her face begin to flush again. Only this time it wasn’t from embrassment, it was from anger. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. I’m doing what I have to do for Barlow, okay? A good friend of mine who is also a fallen angel. He’s dying, just like Julian said. I need to use the key to send him back to Heaven before it’s too late. And even aside from that, I need the key back so Julian doesn’t have a chance to use it. The damage he’d do by gaining access to Heaven will destroy everything. Like, we’re talking major high-budget universal damage.”
He looked away, toward the sparkling swimming pool surrounded by the Mayor’s beautiful guests. “Finished?”
“Not even slightly. But on this subject I am.” She leaned against the palm tree, feeling slightly exhausted from her speech.
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Will you use the key for yourself? Send yourself back to Heaven?”
She paused. “Probably.”
Nathaniel scoffed at her. “‘Probably’, she says. You know you will.”
“That’s really none of your business.”
“You are my business, remember? If you succeed at going back to Heaven . . . I fail.”
She felt a chill at the thought. “I can’t help you there. That’s just the way it is.”
“So you’re going to all of this trouble to save the world like some comic book heroine. Save your friend. And then maybe, just maybe—if there’s time—save yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s so selfless of you.”
She stared at him for a moment, not liking his sarcastic tone. “I guess it is.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You’re fooling yourself. None of the other stuff matters to you. You’re getting the key for yourself and only yourself. So you can go back. Just like the so-called good deeds you tried to do in Niagara Falls these last couple of months. You think you were doing them because you were trying to help the greater good? No. You were doing it to earn your heavenly Brownie points so they’d forgive you and take you back. Face it, angel, you’re just as selfish as the rest of us. And just as big a liar.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How dare you say that to me!”
“Because it’s all true. You’ve been selfish in this whole thing just so you come out the winner. Even if your idea of winning is to go back up to your safe little predictable cloud and get back to your easy, perfect existence, doing whatever it is you did up there. No risk, no excitement, no rush. Just same old, same old. You have been given the chance to do something different for a while as a human, but you’re too damned scared to embrace it.” He turned away from her.
She grabbed his arm to make him look at her. “I’m too scared to embrace being a human?
You’re . . .” She glared at him. “You’re too scared to embrace a human.”
He shook his head incredulously. “What are you babbling about now?”
“Earlier, remember? You pushed me away? I get that it’s against the rules. That you can’t get too close to one of your assignments. I figured that out all by myself, even without Lloyd’s help. So don’t talk to me about being scared when you’re obviously the one who’s petrified.”
He glared back at her, his eyes stormy gray. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Val felt so frustrated, she couldn’t help what came out of her mouth next. “What is this?”
“What?”
She bit her bottom lip before continuing. “Are you just playing games with me—is all of this just to make me feel something for you so you can use it against me to save yourself and your job? Or does this mean something to you?”
He sighed but his harsh expression didn’t change. “You are driving me insane. I just called you selfish to your face and now you’re getting all psychoanalytical on me?”
“Why can’t you just answer a question without making me force you to?”
He glared at her.
She crossed her arms. Her face had become incredibly hot and it wasn’t just because of the bright Miami-like sun in the sky. “Fine. Be that way. I want to know what this means to you.
Why you haven’t tried harder to get away from me. Why you’ve sort of stopped trying to tempt me at every given opportunity. Why you’re helping me to get the key back. And what you meant when you said you burn for me. I command you to tell—”
Nathaniel pushed her up against the palm tree and covered her mouth with his hand. His eyes were full of flames, but he didn’t look angry anymore. He looked scared. “Don’t say anything else, Valerie. Just don’t. Trust me when I tell you that this is not the time or the place to get into this discussion. There’s too much at stake for both of us. He shook her a little harder than necessary and frowned. “Do you understand?”
His expression began to soften as he stared into her eyes. She nodded and he removed his hand.
He held her in his deep, bottomless gaze and the rest of the world fell away. There were only the two of them. She felt things for him that she shouldn’t have been feeling. He was a demon assigned to tempt her. She couldn’t let herself forget that. It was wrong for her to be near him, close to him, feeling this way. Big-time wrong.
But she sensed his loneliness, his pain, his desperation. Was everything Lloyd told her true?
Was Nathaniel tortured daily by his horrible duties as a demon, without even the hope of freedom, without ever being with someone he burned for?
Her heart swelled, which, considering the size of her glamourized breasts, was no small feat.
“Just try to trust me if you can, my angel,” he murmured and leaned closer to her, until their lips were nearly touching.
“Val!”
She heard the shriek and turned to look over by the pool.
Reggie had wedged himself under a lounge chair and there was a large leopard-spotted cat crouched next to him reaching out a paw in an attempt to grab him.
Val pushed Nathaniel away and ran over to the pool. The cat hissed and swiped at her as she moved between it and Reggie. She knelt down and offered a hand to her bespelled friend. He climbed up, quivering with fear.
“My life flashed before my eyes again,” he said with chattering teeth. “It was the extended, unrated DVD version this time. Not good. Not good at all.”
“Sorry to hear that. But it’s okay now. You’re safe. Well, as safe as we’re going to get around here.”
Val glared at the cat and followed the thin gold-chained leash up a pair of long, long . . . looonnnggg tanned legs.
“Your familiar talks,” the legs said in a low, sexy, accented voice. Val looked up even higher.
The speaker was actually the gorgeous woman attached to them.
She had waist-length black hair, golden skin, and amber-colored eyes. She wore a leopard print bikini to match her cat that could have fit in a small, overnight delivery envelope. The bikini, not the cat.
“Yes, he can,” Val replied. “He’s like that singing and dancing frog in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.” She placed Reggie on her left shoulder where he found a chunk of red hair to hide behind. “I don’t appreciate your cat almost having him for lunch.”
She smiled. “Perhaps you should keep a better eye
on the things you cherish.” Then she all but dismissed Val as Nathaniel approached. “Nathaniel. I was told you were here. I’m so pleased.”
“Yasmeen,” he said evenly.
And then she walked right up along the edge of the swimming pool to Nathaniel and kissed him on the mouth. Val blinked. French-kissed. With tongue and everything. “Have you missed me, darling?” It sounded more like dah-link. Like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Val decided. Only more evil.
Nathaniel glanced at Val then back to her. “Very much.”
“Yasmeen has missed you, too. Yasmeen is worried about you, dah-link. She hopes you will follow through on your latest assignment as soon as possible. She may be able to help you get a promotion, if you do.”
“Excuse me,” Val said.
Her amber eyes tracked to Val as if she’d just noticed a fruit fly buzzing nearby. “Who are you?”
“I’m Nathaniel’s evil witch girlfriend. Got it?”
Her thinly arched eyebrows slid up. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, it’s so.”
A bemused smile twisted on her full red lips. “And what did you wish to ask Yasmeen?”
“Do you always talk about yourself that way?”
“What way?”
“In the third person. It’s rather distracting. Well, that and sticking your tongue down
Nathaniel’s throat a moment ago. Don’t do that.”
Yasmeen cocked her head to the side and studied her for a moment, her gaze raking down
Val’s glamourized body, taking in every inch.
“You are human.” She turned to the demon. “Nathaniel, dah-link, I knew things were dire, but
I had no idea you’d gotten so desperate. You should have contacted me and I could have taken care of you much better than any human can. As you well know.”
“After Lucifer promoted you, you’ve been at the head office for so long, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again.”
She smiled. “Yet here I am. I always am looking for new challenges, new excitement.”
“New risks?” Nathaniel said, and his gaze flicked to Val.
“Most certainly. Existence is boring without a certain level of unpredictability and risk.”
“I absolutely agree.”
Val frowned at him, but was ignored.
“We will spend much time together being . . . spontaneous.” Then she eyed Val. “He is mine, human. Always has been. And as soon as he once and for all accepts what he is without reserve, and the power that I can bring him, he always will be.”
“Bitch!” That was from Reggie.
Val forced her expression to stay blank and bored despite the heavy fist that just pulled out her heart and pounded it into the ground. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll go see what Julian’s up to.
You see one hot demon you’ve seen them all.”
She laughed. “Silly one, be my guest. Julian is hopelessly insane, power-hungry, and rumor is that he’s as impotent as a garden hose.”
“Then how is he any different from Nathaniel?”
That got his full attention. His lips twitched and he almost smiled, but managed to stop himself. “I’m not insane.”
Val shrugged. “Two out of three, then.”
Yasmeen turned her gaze back to Nathaniel. Honestly, Val thought, the woman looked at him like she should be wearing a I’M NATHANIEL’S NUMBER ONE FAN T-shirt or something. It was really pathetic. Well, it would be pathetic if she wasn’t as gorgeous as a
European supermodel from Hell. As well as practically naked.
“Yasmeen must go take care of some business,” she purred. “But let us have large amounts of sex later. When you have rid yourself of the short, disproportioned human.”
Val adjusted her glamourized boobs. “You’re just jealous. You’re lucky I can’t use my evil witch powers around here.”
She fixed Val with an icy gaze. “And you as well.”
Then she walked away showing them that her leopard print bikini was, in fact, a thong.
“I’ve never been so scared,” Reggie said. “Or so incredibly turned on in my entire life.”
Nathaniel looked at Val and shrugged. “She’s a demon.”
“No kidding.” She watched Yasmeen disappear into the mansion, and then started to laugh.
Nathaniel frowned. “What’s so funny?”
Val shook her head. “I’m so unbelievably naïve that it’s ridiculous.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was feeling all sorry for you before. I thought that you . . . that whole thing about not being able to ‘be with’ anyone or you’ll break the rules and be punished. I thought . . . forget it. I’m such an idiot.”
His frown deepened and he crossed his arms. “There is a rule that a Tempter cannot be with his assigned fallen angel.”
“It really doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, Valerie”—he grabbed her arm—“it does.”
“I command you to let go of me.”
He did and then stared at her. “I don’t care what she made it sound like, Yasmeen and I—”
“I command you to stop talking about this.”
He shut his mouth. “Very well. But you just need to know that she means—”
Val pushed him into the pool with a big, loud splash and turned away to go in search of a fruity drink with an umbrella in it.
Chapter Sixteen
“I don’t know how mature that was, Val,” Reggie said as he gnawed at the piece of pineapple that decorated her third piña colada. “But it sure was funny.”
They sat on a lounge chair a short distance away from the noisy party. The Underworld was currently experiencing a planned dark-time—Val had been told by a passing waiter that it was only to last for ten minutes—and patio lanterns were out, lighting up the pool area. Several large, demony men had shotguns and were taking target practice at the few Nightflyers that had dared to come too close. Val found it extremely disturbing to watch, knowing that the creatures had once been demons like Nathaniel. But the alcoholic beverage was helping her cope. A bit.
She’d searched around for Julian so she could continue working on him. All she needed was for him to let her hold on to the key for a while. Then as soon as she got out of his sight she would simply escape with it in her possession. But he was nowhere to be found, at least at the moment. As each minute passed she got more and more nervous that her plan was so flimsy it would fail miserably.
Maybe I shouldn’t have had that third drink, she thought.
Nathaniel had called her selfish before. Was he right? Did she only want the key for herself?
To go back to Heaven and back to her predictable, risk-free existence? She’d always thought that would be the pleasant side effect after she’d helped Barlow and saved the world. But as far as it being her main reason for going through everything she’d gone through . . .
Was she being selfish? The thought made her feel ill. Maybe she was a horrible person deep down and all of the poison was now coming to the surface.
Like the “pride” thing. She’d never known that was one of her flaws. It hadn’t even occurred to her that there had been a real reason for her expulsion from Heaven until it had been pointed out to her. Even then, it seemed like an unlikely reason.
But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she didn’t deserve to be an angel at all.
She had committed the deadly sin of pride. She was selfish. And now she feared for her own safety if Julian caught her trying to take the key.
I am a wimp, she thought dejectedly as she slurped at the bottom of her drink. A selfish wimp.
With incredibly large breasts.
Reggie poked her with his paw. “Don’t look so glum. Have another drink.”
She pushed the glass away. “No. I think I’ve had enough. Of all of this. I just want to go home now.”
“Hey, remember when I said that when you’re not looking, Nate’s always s
taring at you like a little lost puppy dog?”
“I don’t remember you putting it quite like that, but yeah, I guess so.”
“He’s doing it right now. Over by the mayor.”
Val looked over just in time to see Nathaniel turn his gaze away. His clothes were still damp from his unplanned swim in the pool. He hadn’t spoken to her since, or come near her.
A band had set up on the other side of the pool and they were playing music that reminded
Val of the Gipsy Kings CD Barlow sometimes played in the manager’s office. Flamenco-sounding, only these performers all looked like short, fleshy green Muppets. Short Muppet monsters that could shake a mean maraca. She kept her eyes on the mansion, through the darkness, waiting for Julian to make another appearance.
The band stopped playing after their most recent song—“She Bangs” by Ricky Martin—and Yasmeen approached the microphone.
“Welcome, dah-links,” she said. There was still that hint of an accent Val couldn’t place in her voice.
Bitchylvania, she thought. Or maybe Bitchachussets. Yeah, that’s it.
She felt like she was dealing with her dislike for Yasmeen quite well. In a seething, unpleasant, eating-away-at-her-insides kind of way. Why didn’t Val like her? Was it because she knew she had carnal knowledge of Nathaniel? But that would be ridiculous and completely petty.
Also, terribly, terribly accurate.
“I know you’re all wondering what our big announcement will be, what the mayor has in store for all of us, don’t you?” Yasmeen breathed into the microphone. She’d slipped a cover-up over her teeny bikini. A see-through cover-up.
Was that an oxymoron? Val wondered.
Speaking of morons, Nathaniel had begun to move closer to where Val was sitting. She didn’t look at him.
“Well,” Yasmeen continued, “you’re going to have to wait just a bit longer for the big announcement. But it won’t be long now.”
Julian seemed to appear from nowhere to join Yasmeen on the stage. Val sat up in her chair as he grabbed the microphone.
