I sent him a what-the-fuck glare.
“You said you wanted to get started on your training,” Baz said. “We can spare you for the day. Run along now and have fun. See you back here in a few hours.”
I was afraid to look at her. My heart was almost jumping out of my chest. Would she drink my blood? Suck out my entrails? I sneaked a sidelong glance.
She was beautiful. Just as I remembered. Tall and strong and fair, like the angel I had taken her for last night. She wore some thin, fluttery garment printed faintly with flowers. It made her garment last night seem to have been a heavy cloak. I could see everything, the curve of her hips, the curves under her breasts.
“I’ll send him home by nightfall,” she said, still not looking at me.
I set my teeth.
“Great, great. Oh, ah, Mutt, this is Mella. You two kids enjoy yourselves,” Baz said cheerily, waving his barbecue fork.
I couldn’t believe I went meekly with her.
“Wait!” Baz called when we were halfway to the door. He loped after us. “You need a key, buddy.”
I took the opportunity to step away from my captor and tell him, in a bitter undervoice, what I thought of him. “You betrayed me! You let her in here—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he whispered. “All kidding aside, you need to watch your step. This is a great opportunity to practice your sex-demon skills. But—”
“What skills? I’ve been here eighteen hours, and I’ve done nothing but clean things and fix things.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “She can crush you like a bug.”
In the sudden silence, I heard a train go by on the raised embankment outside.
I swallowed. “Seriously.”
“Seriously. That love charm put you in her power. Plus, she has your name.”
“Jeff let it out right in front of her last night,” I whispered bitterly.
Baz shook his head. “Tch. Remember, never show fear. Just try not to piss her off for a few hours. When you get back, report, and we’ll go over your next moves.”
My nerves were sticking out a foot. “That does not reassure me.”
He thumped me on the back. “Go to it, buddy. And if all else fails, grovel. They can’t resist that.”
I stiffened. “Thanks.”
“Smile, you idiot,” he hissed after me.
I stalked to the door, zipping the key he handed me into the side pocket of my borrowed cargo shorts.
Mella watched me approach. We stood eye to eye a moment. She was only an inch or two shorter than I. That flowery scent wafted off her, mingling with the smell of Baz’s shrimp hissing as they hit the hot grill and making me dizzy. I could feel my heart stutter. My body tightened all over.
Her eyes were blue and bright.
I found I couldn’t look away.
I forced a smile.
She smiled, too, and I was relieved to see that her teeth were, at least by daylight, not black, but clean and white. Maybe they only turned black when she was about to bite someone.
“I won’t bite,” she said.
Great. She could crush me like a bug and read my mind.
I had my demon, I guess. My inner Mella, the one who hates all my dates, demanded, Now what are you going to do with him?
We walked in silence for blocks and blocks. I felt like an idiot. Kids rushed past us on their bikes. Up ahead, the ice cream truck tinkled. I had to step around a parking meter. That made me swing close to my demon for a moment. The hairs stood up on my arms, as if I was a cat and he’d been stroking me.
I breathed a little quicker.
Be gentle with him. He’s scared shitless. He knows you can destroy him, the guy with the pale dreadlocks had whispered when he answered the door. But make sure you keep the upper hand. He’s a demon, after all. Once he figures out you’re the boss, he’ll be just a big ol’ soppy, you’ll see.
I sneaked a glance at him, scowling beside me. His shoulders bulged out of his flimsy white tank top like boxer’s shoulders. Anything less soppy was hard to imagine.
I hadn’t thought this far ahead.
He stalked beside me up Ravenswood Avenue, his rugged face stiff with demonic pride, his body all fluid muscle and stifled rage and…and fear.
My blood sang in me, He’s here, he’s mine, I think I love him.
On the other hand, he was being very annoying.
I guess I’d imagined that we would fall into each other’s arms like Keek and her angel.
I hadn’t expected all this resistance.
What on earth was I supposed to do with him now?
Everything! sang my libido.
My body felt like one long, red carpet leading straight into my heart.
This man was mine. Mother Nature had sent him raining out of the sky just for me. Or something.
An unpleasant worry arose. What if he just didn’t want me?
I turned abruptly and faced him. Linden tree perfume and cottonwood tree fluff drifted around us.
“Look, you don’t have to be here,” I began, feeling my heart slam and slam.
I thought of his roommate’s advice, whispered hurriedly as he led me across their makeshift basketball court.
He thinks you have magical power over him. Say his name three times and he’ll be forced to come to you—or vanish.
There was no reason why I should trust the roommate.
But Mutt was afraid of me. I could feel tension radiating off him. His wide, puckish mouth was pressed tightly shut.
“I mean,” I said, gesturing behind us. “You can return to your lair if this is an inconvenient moment.”
Our gazes locked. Oh, those big black eyes. His wings and horns were hidden, but nothing could hide the molten lava in the depths of those big, soulful, angry, frightened eyes.
Slowly, never taking his eyes from my face, he sank down on one knee. Right there on the sidewalk on Ravenswood Avenue.
His chest moved as if he was fighting for breath.
Almost defiantly, he said, “I am yours to command.”
My heart turned over.
What should I do?
I swallowed.
“Get up and walk with me,” I muttered.
He did.
Now what? I felt dizzy and helpless and confused, and at the same time some raging force inside me knew exactly what to do. I just couldn’t imagine doing it…yet.
We were close to my apartment now. My pulse jumped in the palms of my hands.
I almost turned east on Rosehill Street, to my apartment. Then I remembered that Keek and her angel would probably be there.
Instead I veered west, and we walked under the railroad bridge and through the mighty stone portal of the cemetery. The iron gates stood open this afternoon. They would be locked in an hour.
At the thought of being locked into the cemetery with Mutt, I felt a muscle twitch between my legs.
Good grief.
“So you’re a demon,” I blurted. “What kind?”
“Sex,” he blurted. “I’m a sex demon.”
That stopped the words in my throat for a full minute.
We turned left and walked along the road toward the east pond.
When it felt like I’d stopped blushing, I looked at him. His fear vibe had changed. He seemed bigger somehow, maybe more confident. His complexion, naturally reddish, had turned a dark magenta around the ears, and his fine, fine shoulders sweated in the sun.
Jackpot.
Keek had promised me a jackpot.
I licked my lips.
Then I realized that occasional cars were driving through the cemetery, especially now that it was almost closing time.
“Come with me,” I said.
A florist had once rented a big slice of cemetery land up against the wall for storing their bigger plants and baby trees, and then they abandoned the lease. Their high wooden fence was still up, but their wooden gate had fallen.
I looked both ways, saw no cars in sight, and then, grabbing Mutt’s
hand with a thrill that shook me down to my sandals, towed him behind the fence.
The grass was shin-high back there, lush and wet. Spring wildflowers bloomed. Cottonwood fluff drifted by like a miniature storm of fairy commandos.
That made me think of last night’s rain of men. Angels and demons, their wings flopping uselessly, falling like rocks into the arms of all those hungry women.
I backed Mutt up against the fence, running my hands up his beautiful bare arms.
“Do something sex-demony,” I breathed.
Sheer panic lit his big black eyes.
Then he seemed to swell all over. His hands seized my hips. He lifted me easily and spun me around till my back was against the wood. With a thrill I can’t describe, I saw his dark red wings unfold behind him, blotting out the sky. Then his hips slammed into mine.
Somewhere inside those cargo shorts, he was carrying a major weapon.
“Oh, Mutt!”
He trembled against me. Then he started grinding. In the shadow of his wings, I couldn’t see anything. His hot breath panted in my ear. He growled, and my body leaped under his. I wanted to strip him naked, I wanted to roll in the tall grass at our feet, I wanted to—
Dammit, there was a fence bolt head or something sticking into my back.
“Mutt,” I gasped. “Ouch.” I tried to shift to the left.
He kept grinding on me. I felt swollen and runny. My hands kept grabbing at his amazing biceps, his shoulders, the back of his neck arched and sweating in the darkness made by his wings—
That bolt or something banged me in the back again.
“Ouch!”
He didn’t stop. I could hear him fighting for breath in my ear. He stopped grinding and started banging against my hips with his. He hoisted me up a few inches and then banged some more.
I felt my dress catch on that bolt and heard it tear.
“Mutt!” I yelled. “Stop!”
He froze, literally, stopped dead, motionless, his hands gripping my hips, his chin digging into my collarbone. I could hear air thrashing in and out of his lungs. His boner still pressed against me, cutting off circulation to my right leg.
“Put me down!” I choked.
He let me slide down the wall. I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him away hard. He moved reluctantly an inch away. His eyes were so wide, I could see the whites all around, like googly teddy bear eyes.
I felt ready to cry.
I put both hands on his chest and shoved.
He backed away. His wings drooped.
Now my body felt ready to cry. My stupid body wanted him to come back and dry-hump me to death.
“What the fuck was that?” I demanded unsteadily. “You call yourself a sex demon? Jumping flying crack monkeys in a barrel!” I hauled off and socked him on the chest.
He crumpled. He actually fell to his knees. Kneeling in the tall grass, he looked up at me with, yes, with puppy eyes. His chest was still heaving. He looked good enough to eat.
“Did I do it wrong?” he said.
My skin felt flushed and scratched up from his roughness.
My true love is a sex demon, and he sucks at it.
I could barely breathe.
My body wanted him back. Lame and clumsy and rough and insensitive and everything, he was—I wanted—
I could feel tears coming. My throat tightened.
“You—” I began, and had to stop. I fought back tears. “You suck! Now go away! Go back to your—your lair!” I panted with rage and frustration and misery.
My man, my very own sex demon, had fallen into my arms, and he was a disaster.
Or I was a disaster.
There was a crushing thought. What if I was supposed to love that?
In the next minute, I was going to cry.
He looked like he was about to cry, too. A big wet patch was spreading on the fly of his cargo pants.
He lifted a hand, and I flinched away, banging smack into that damned bolt again.
“Go!” I cried, pointing.
He opened his mouth. His hand reached out toward the hem of my sundress.
“I command you! Mutt, Mutt, Mutt, begone!”
He vanished.
Chapter Three
I SQUATTED ON TOP of the cemetery wall, invisible, my red leathery wings wrapped tightly around me, and watched her stumble across the street. Tears ran down her face. I felt like the bottom of a stableboy’s boot.
I groaned aloud. Why had I told her I was a sex demon? What kind of idiot pretends he’s what he isn’t—that he can—that he knows— My chest clutched up.
She went into a little two-story brick building. Soon I saw her at an upstairs window. She put her hands on each side of the window and looked down, then up, then to the side, toward me and the cemetery gate.
If she looks up here, will she see me?
I fell backward off the wall and flew away, staying invisible so nobody would point and make fun of a big badass commando demon flying over the neighborhood with tears on his chin.
When I walked into the former factory section of the Lair, I found Baz standing at the barbecue with Kamadeva. They were peeling big pink shrimp and dunking them in melted butter.
Baz looked straight at the wet crotch of my cargo shorts and licked his fingers one at a time. “Is that a good sign?”
Kama said, “Hey,” but he wasn’t paying me any attention, thank hell. He snatched a shrimp off the grill and started peeling it, blowing on it, and yipping at the heat.
“Listen,” I said to Baz, pulling him aside.
He ambled across the cavernous concrete floor with me. “Not good, then?”
I slapped the open beer can out of his paw. “Not good at all. I sucked. She started crying. You’re supposed to be teaching me how to be a sex demon.”
He picked up his beer can, wiped some scuzz off the open mouth, and sucked some beer. “Is that how your recruits talked to you when you were fighting the Crusades? Spill your beer and then go all ‘Teach me, Master’?”
I fought the weepy feeling. “No bullshit. Are you gonna show me or not?”
“Tell. I’ll tell you.” When I glared at him, he lifted both hands and the beer can. “Hey, I’m shy.”
“Tell me,” I grated.
“After you eat. Nobody makes sense hungry.”
We headed for the food. I grabbed a beer.
“So what did Lido say when you talked to him?” Kama said, between slurping melted butter off his fingers.
“What we thought. Archie dipped the fucking fireworks in that love potion they cooked up, and then he set them off all over the neighborhood. Thank goodness I was inside,” Baz vowed.
“No kidding,” Kama said.
After I’d had some shrimp, which I admit were succulent, Baz led me off to the corner where the motorbikes were parked.
He straddled a modest Harley with a primer-red gas tank. “Okay. What did you do?”
I had resolved on the way over not to tell him anything, but to my embarrassment I couldn’t hold it in. The thought of Mella’s face as she cussed me out, fighting tears, was a gut-slitter.
I told him everything.
“Uh-huh,” Baz said, when I was done. “Where did you get these brilliant techniques? The battlefield?”
I nodded, miserable.
“You oaf,” Baz said with offhand affection. “Now tell me how she reacted.”
I blinked. “Well, that was the confusing part. She wanted—whatever she wanted. She seemed eager, I mean. I mean, even after she cussed me out, she looked—she smelled—” I swallowed.
I felt confused and miserable and rageful and helpless. I wanted her, and she hated me, and I hadn’t a clue what to do to change that, and all I had to work with was this condescending motherfucker of a retired-war-god-turned-sex-demon.
His eyes lit up. “So you could smell her readiness?”
“Is that wrong?”
“No. Actually, it’s a good sign. I begin to have hope for you.”
I eyed him with resentment. “Yeah, yeah. Can we skip ribbing the new guy and get down to business? I’m dying here.”
His expression sobered. “You may die yet. Don’t forget it.”
“Skip that, too.” If this was the power of love, I fully believed it could kill me. Slowly and painfully.
“Okay, okay. Here’s the dope.”
Baz put his beer can on the floor. I leaned against a tricked-out Yamaha covered with fringe and bling, trying to pretend my heart wasn’t banging against my lower ribs.
“Look, when you work on a motorcycle, you don’t just hit it with a hammer until it runs again, right? You got to feel the threads move. Let your penetrating oil do most of the work.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Now tell me where to put the oil.”
Baz rolled his eyes. “In plain English, buddy, you go slow. Listen to her breathing. Watch her eyes. Smell what’s going on. Oh, and, I know this is gonna stick in your craw, but you can always try asking.”
“Ask.”
“Yes, ask. Ask her what she wants. Some of them get turned on if they have to tell you what they want.”
I frowned. “Can’t you just tell me what to touch and how and when?”
“No. I can’t. They’re all different.”
“Great,” I grumbled.
“Just go slow and pay attention.”
“And grovel. You told me that before.”
“Last-ditch resort. If you have to grovel, you know you’ve really screwed up.” He looked at me with ancient, pitiless eyes. It’s possible that the misery in my face made him feel guilty. “Okay, here’s a list. Do you have to write it down?”
I shook my head, and he gave me a list of things to try. I couldn’t picture any of it. I’d never been close enough to a naked woman—a naked, happy, alive woman.
“Where do you get all this stuff?” I said, mystified.
“Trial and error.” The gleam was back in Baz’s eye. Tormenting me again. My fist started to bunch up on its own. “Okay, okay. Next time you go to the grocery store, pick up some of their magazines. That’ll tell you everything. There’s a how-to sex article in every issue.”
“How do I know which ones to pick up?”
He rolled his eyes again. “Just pick the fattest ones.” He jumped off the Harley. “Let’s have more shrimp before Kama gets ’em all.”
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