She had no idea how hard I was working to concentrate on her words and not the beautiful mouth that spoke them. So much of my life made sense now. It was an eternal fight between the needs of a demon and the ambitions of a man. With Helena, the need seemed even sharper. She’s mine, I thought. I’m going to make her mine. It wasn’t sensible, and it didn’t have to be.
“I see. And this fight has been going on for…?”
“Ever.”
“Does anyone ever get ahead?”
She paused. “Sometimes, I guess. When the Fixed Plane is more chaotic, like during world wars, Sinistral gets ahead.”
“But the pendulum always swings,” I said. “Just like in politics. So no one ever gains more power for long.”
“That’s pretty much true.”
“Pandora’s Box unleashed sickness and death on the world. Chaos. So maybe this thing would give Sinistral an edge.”
“If that’s true, I wonder why we’re protecting it,” Helena said. “In theory, the council would just want to keep it safe.” She seemed uncertain. “The council doesn’t seem as good as they used to be.” Then she yawned. “I’m sorry, Graham. I don’t know anything.”
“Did Byron give you any clues in his dreams?”
“Um…the dreams were just…” She bit her lip.
“What has he done to you?” I asked, unable to stand it anymore. “With all those extra appendages of his?”
“Graham!” She slapped the table. “I don’t have to tell you anything. You and I are not dating, and even if we did, I’m not going to ask you what you’ve done with the women you’ve slept with, so for you to get possessive because I had sex with a demon in a dream is really something.”
“If we were dating, would you stop dreaming about him?”
“They’re dreams,” she said. “And he’s dead anyway. So no. I don’t think I would.”
“If we were married?”
Her eyes widened.
I snapped to my senses a little bit, but it was dangerously easy to imagine making this girl my wife. Coming home to her every day… But then, where would she be? Working on a house across the country while I was tied to my career. At least the ghost would be out of the picture. “That was too far,” I said.
“It’s the incubus in you talking,” she said, like nothing about me was a mystery to her now, now that she knew I was just horny all the time and said the same lines to all the girls.
She was wrong.
“It’s true, I am not short on experience,” I said. “But I’ve never met a witch before, and I still get the feeling you’re not like other witches. I wouldn’t have bought Deveraux’s house in Louisiana if I wasn’t thinking, deep down, that I could lure you to work on it with me.”
“Huhn.” She didn’t look as impressed as most girls probably would. “What about your career?”
“Maybe I’m meant for something else.”
“Okay, you are thinking with your demon dong and I’m gonna stop you right there. You’ve clearly worked hard and you told me you’re a proud civil servant and blah blah, so you’d better not even think of giving it up just to get with me. I’m not that great.”
She was right. The reality usually came the morning after, not before, but she was right. Was it just that? She was also afraid of getting too close, I thought. Her walls went up as soon as I started turning on the charm.
“What I mean is that I’m open to the world turning in ways I didn’t expect,” I said. “I didn’t think magic was real either. Obviously that’s going to affect some of my life plans. If fate ends up pointing me to you, I won’t fight that.”
Her eyes grew a little softer, more willing, and my loins ached with need. I slipped my hands over hers, engulfing them, dirty fingernails and all. “I want to see where it takes us. I want to help you find out all the mysteries of the Sons of Pandora.”
Attuned to the slightest hitch of her breath, the slightest yielding of her hands to my grip, I moved in closer. I kissed her, gently, my lips barely grazing hers.
Her mouth was like a door—shut one moment and then opening a crack. Enough to let me know that her words could be tough, but her body was gentle and it wanted me like I wanted her.
I kissed her again. Now my cock was swelling, throbbing with urgency. Soon it would get what it wanted. But I had to be patient first. I had to prove to her that I wasn’t just a demon. Or as I used to think of it, an asshole.
My tongue slipped into her soft mouth, my knees spread around her legs as I sat on the very edge of my chair to get close to her. Her mouth opened wider for me, her tongue silken and hungry. After the initial exploration, she pulled back just a little, as if to breathe. After a beat, I captured her mouth against mine. I took one of her messy braids and wrapped it around my hand, a leash that bound her to me.
Her breath came quicker, her body leaning closer.
Damn, this was good.
Soon I would have her. All of her. The panting breaths, the pleading, the caresses, the sweet tight intimate places…
Abruptly, her hands slapped on my chest and pushed me an inch back.
“Damnit. Your chest is so hard and yummy,” she said. “But you know what? No.”
“No?”
“You haven’t proved yourself worthy of getting into this,” she said. “You’re an incubus. You love ‘em and leave ‘em.”
“I’m not going to do that to you.”
“I’m not convinced yet.”
“You prefer a ghost to me.” I suppose I’d never had to compete against another incubus before. Not that I would know. Usually I didn’t have much competition out in the real world, though, no denying that.
“It’s not that I prefer him, but I have to be more careful with you. I could have a future with you, but I suspect that I don’t. It’s probably not in your nature. So let’s keep it professional and figure all of this out first, and see how that goes.”
My body was in shock. This girl was giving me blue balls with a smile. This never happened to me. She knew it, too. That was why she was doing it. It was plain on her face.
Fuck. Now I wanted her even more.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Helena
Turning Graham down after a kiss like that had to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but—go me!—I had some sense left. We had a job to do together, but I also had a job to do alone. I still needed to flip this house. If I got tangled up with him now, I would lose focus, and then I would lose money, and then I wouldn’t have anything for the next house. Unacceptable.
Even if it left my lips tingling with a need that coiled down through my entire body. I thought maybe I would be satisfied if I experienced incubus sex just once, but it seemed like it might be addictive.
Well, it was nearly worth it for the look on Graham’s face when I said no.
No one’s ever turned him down before, have they? Whatever happens, he’ll remember me forever.
That was my last thought before things got deeply awkward.
There was a knock on the door.
I stiffened, thinking it might be a visit from the council law enforcement. If they couldn’t get the Thing by theft, they could always try to just take it. I tried to remain calm. Maybe one of my workers decided to get some weekend hours in.
When I got to the door, Graham was just behind me. I saw Jake Sullivan peering in the window.
“Wasn’t that guy at the auction? Are they with the council?” Graham asked, sounding tense himself. He obviously thought they might be trouble.
They were. Just not in the way he was thinking.
“No. They’re werewolves,” I said. “They’re definitely not with the council. Ethereal witches don’t think much of werewolves.”
“So you know them?”
“They’re contractors. They flip a lot of houses.” I opened the door. I couldn’t just leave them out there peering in at me. “Hey, guys.”
Jake and Jasper looked at Graham, both of them bristling i
n the same way the moment they noted the tall, muscular man who undoubtedly smelled of somewhat aroused demon standing just behind me. I’m sure they also noticed I had been feeling a little—ahem—frisky myself.
A lot of magical folk have a great sense of smell. It’s extremely annoying.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did we interrupt something?” Jake said.
“Excuse me?” Graham crossed his arms, meeting Jake’s heat with iciness. “What are you implying?”
“Didn’t I see you at the auction? You have the BMW?” Jake said. “You were the seller, right? Was this your house? Was this some kind of a fix, Hel? Were you just messing with us at the bowling alley?”
I gestured frantically. Did he have to mention the bowling alley?
“Is that the tone you take with a lady?” Now Graham was getting more heated himself.
It occurred to me that kissing an Irish werewolf from Boston and an Italian demon from Philadelphia was like, a triple-decker rivalry. Wars were probably launched on less.
“What went down at the bowling alley?” Graham asked me.
“Gah!” I unleashed a wail of frustration to the ceiling. “Don’t fight, don’t fight. It’s possible I’ve made some bad decisions lately. No one should ever fight based on me. I’m not even worth it.”
“Of course you are,” Graham said.
“I’m not here for you,” Jake said, backpedaling. He was clearly pissed that Graham was here.
Jasper, meanwhile, just had the tiniest look of hurt on his face like…you know how wolves are like dogs with more ferocious independence? But they still have these soulful eyes?
“Graham is here because his grandfather was a warlock, but he was raised as a human. But he sensed something was up. So I’m informing him about all the things he’s missed.”
“Helena,” Jasper said. “We just came to check on you because we had a strange encounter with a seer.” He glanced at Graham reluctantly. “Is he cool?” Like this was a drug deal. I didn’t like hearing about a seer. Just think about it, has a seer in a story ever been anything but trouble? Yeah, seers never just come to tell you your life is going to be awesome.
I nodded.
“There’s some object in this house—“
“Oh, yeah. I know.” I sighed. “Come in, I guess. We were just talking about it.” I told Graham, “They drove all the way from Boston.”
“No kidding,” Graham said dryly. I didn’t think their accents were that thick, at least, but—ohmigod, for a second I actually tuned out Jake’s baseball cap.
If I thought the tension was thick when Byron and Graham met, I hadn’t seen nothing yet. Jake and Jasper were assessing every inch of Graham as he walked into the house like he owned the place, his stride always self-assured. Graham tried to play it cool, but he glanced back at them a couple of times. I was caught in the crossfire between their eyes, but I tried to strut along like I didn’t care. Going on two dates wasn’t a crime.
“You didn’t open up the kitchen?” Jake said.
My head whipped toward him. He was still hung up on tearing down that wall? “I told you I wasn’t going to tear down the painted wallpaper!”
“You said you would see if it was in the budget.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You didn’t even try.”
“Nah. I didn’t. The wallpaper is too historic to get rid of just for the sake of some trend in kitchens. I’m going to sell this to traditionalists.”
Jake shook his head. “Well, it’s your house…”
“Yes. My house.” I spread my hands toward the dining room table. “Have a seat. Tell me what the seer said.”
Graham sat back down with his notes and picked up the pen. He still looked like he would rather battle the Sullivan brothers for the right to woo me than take more notes, but he was thorough in his job.
If Byron was at the table, I thought, it would be the perfect scene of wolves versus demons. The incubi were well-dressed and refined; the wolves were scruffy with faded work clothes. And they were all Sinistrals, and not the sort of guys I should be hanging around with, but clearly it was too late for that. What if I do end up choosing between them? What is my type, anyway?
Jasper looked at the papers full of scribblings. “What’s all that? You two working on something?”
“Yes…”
“Looks like an investigation. We should swap stories,” Jasper said. “The seer said you would know what this treasure was, but I’m guessing she was wrong on that one.”
I wondered if I could trust them. I wondered if it was already too late. If this seer told them there was a treasure here, and they drove all the way back down, it seemed unlikely I could shake them off.
Maybe I needed their help.
I’d been alone since the day I left home for good, but right now I was sitting at a table with three gorgeous men, and it felt like anything could happen. Fate seemed to be trying to tell me something.
I just hoped fate was kind.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jasper
“I hardly know where to begin,” my brother said. “But I feel like you might be in deep. I don’t know what you’re in deep with, but…it’s something.”
After heading out early that morning, we reached Helena’s house around three. At this point, we had talked well past sunset. The candles Helena lit were already working their way down. The table was stacked with three very old books, and in the middle of the story, an incubus ghost had materialized and pulled up a chair.
There were a lot of things I didn’t like about this.
Wolves didn’t mess with spell books. Few wolf shifters were even literate until the late 1800s, when some charitable Ethereal witches got inspired by their human brethren to school some heathens and ‘enrolled’ wolf children into school with some bribes to their parents, who were generally poor.
It didn’t work out very well, for the usual reasons. Propaganda in the textbooks, cultural tensions flaring, a nasty incident where a teacher was killed. But at least my great-grandparents did learn to read and they were proud of it. When the witches left, the wolves started their own clan schools.
More concerning, perhaps, than the spell books? The fact that I was looking across the table at two incubi. They were both gorgeous by any measure. I wasn’t one to say other men were gorgeous, but I was also fair. They were both imposingly muscular with features like classical statues except better, and they also were genuinely beautiful. I kept catching myself looking at them with a twinge of awe.
Of course, this was just the magic that came with the sex demon territory. If I wasn’t immune, Helena was smitten. They were sitting on either side of her and I swear their chairs inched closer as the hours went by. I wouldn’t be surprised if their knees pressed on her thighs now and then.
The only bright side, I guess, was that they clearly didn’t like each other and were too busy competing with each other to bother with Jake and me.
Actually, that wasn’t a bright side, was it? They didn’t even consider us competition? What the fuck?
Jake was paging through the books, looking at the tiny pictures painted on the pages. One reason Jake was more hot-tempered than I was probably had something to do with the fact that reading had always been a struggle for him. He did terribly in school. I quietly helped him with a lot of his schoolwork so he could cover for it. So he was just moving from picture to picture, trying to piece together something, which is what he always did as a kid anyway. I’m sure he was dreading that someone might suggest heading to a library to find out more about these books. He would absolutely hate to admit to Helena that he couldn’t read well.
“So you said there’s a treasure upstairs?” Jake said. “And it’s shaped like a triangle?”
“Yes. I would bring it but it glows and stuff when you take it out,” Helena said.
“I’m just curious, does it look sort of like this?” Jake spun the book around to face her. There was a painting of some strange half-ethereal
, half-demon being with one demon horn and dark demon wing, and one light feathered wing, holding a triangular shaped box of sorts in one hand.
“Yeah! It is like that, except that looks like a three-dimensional object and this is just one side,” Helena said.
“Well, a few pages later, this happens,” Jake said. The next picture showed the demon/angel creature laying on the ground with a sword stuck in its side and blood trickling out of it, and some Medieval wizards holding up three flat triangles. “Looks like they killed this dude who owned the box and broke it into three pieces.”
Byron, the ghost demon who couldn’t tell us anything helpful, tapped his hand on the table rapidly.
“Byron, is that it?” Helena said. “Graham, write that down!”
“I did,” Graham said. “All right, so there are three pieces that go together. And that forms Pandora’s Box? So the other three pieces…”
“Are with the Sons of Pandora?” Helena turned to look at Byron again. “Yes? Yes!” Byron was giving her a mysterious smile. “So maybe we can find another piece in Deveraux’s house? And you already made an offer on it! Graham, you’re a genius! Or—your gut is a genius, at least. And Jake—“ I could see her trying to calm down her excitement when she realized Jake and I did not want to hear about the genius of some guy who didn’t know magic existed a few weeks ago. “You are a genius for noticing these pictures.”
Jake gave a little head-shake. “Nah. You would’ve found it soon enough.” Oh, damn. Jakey getting modest. He really was into her despite the protests.
But how could we run these demons out of town?
“We still need to find Byron’s body, though,” Graham said. “And we don’t know what the box does.”
“And I can’t sell the house with Byron trapped here.”
Fair enough. Byron clearly wasn’t a wandering ghost. I guess the problem would take care of itself.
Demons in the Bedroom (Paranormal House Flippers Book 1) Page 15
