Vowed in Shadows

by Jessa Slade

  He stared at the Nymphette.

  Anything.

  The beat of the music stumbled from one song to the next, and she knelt to retrieve the snake, but instead of beginning her next dance, she crossed toward him and stepped out onto the bar that surrounded the stage. Another step and she was standing on a bar stool. The gawkers rumbled, a sound somewhere between approval and consternation at the break in their routine.

  The three-legged stool wobbled. At his table, Jonah planted both feet on the floor, half rising to catch her, and rocked his own chair with his haste. But she crouched, one hand steady on the bar, the other on the snake, and slipped to the floor to continue toward him, as if she hadn’t noticed the near fall.

  Dimly, he heard the deejay squawk for the next dancer, the Nymphette having naughtily abandoned the stage. Though her hands busily rearranged the snake across her shoulders, her violet-tinged gaze never left his.

  He’d been stalked before, but this made every hair on his body prickle in alarm.

  She glided up to him, right between his legs. He leaned back, arms still crossed, thankful the height of the stool gave him a vantage point to look down at her.

  She didn’t touch him, but the heat of her naked body radiated through his jeans and sank into his thighs. “You want a dance, Cap’n?”

  Her low voice hummed through his bones. The scent of the snake—a sharp, loamy tang—made him shudder.

  “Assuming you can swing it.” Her gaze angled down to his crotch. “The price, I mean.”

  She had no idea what this was costing him. “In private, if you’d oblige.” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.

  The league’s leader had explained what would happen, in a conversation as excruciatingly embarrassing as that heard by any bride on her wedding night. Not that Jonah wanted to compare this moment in any way to his wedding night.

  The sacrilege tightened his fist another notch, and the rage-curdled tension brought his demon screaming from his depths. The demon’s power rebounded through his body, but it recoiled from the brimstone-scorched scar tissue that had been his weapon hand. Surely even her nascent demon would sense the danger, the thwarted violence, and she would withdraw.

  Instead, she canted her head forward, a dare. “VIP lap dance? Well, look at you, coming on strong now.”

  He stood abruptly. “Yes, that’s me. Coming strong.” He took her arm.

  The long-forgotten sensation of soft flesh beneath his fingers swept him in a hot tide, and his pulse raced ahead of the demon’s seething temper like spindrift on the crest of a killer wave. His breath tumbled through his chest.

  She jerked away. “Don’t touch,” she hissed.

  “It’s a strip club.” But when the snake hissed too, he let her go—the better to restrain the rampant wickedness inside him.

  “And I’m stripped, in case you hadn’t noticed. No touching.”

  “Ludicrous,” he muttered. He waved her toward the hall that led to the private rooms he’d scouted earlier.

  She eased around him. “You paid eight bucks for a Power Slug. You’d know ludicrous.” She nodded to the bartender, who popped the tab on a small aluminum can and slid it across the countertop toward them. “Have another. I get a percentage of the bar.”

  Jonah took the energy drink as they passed. In the hallway, the pounding music dulled to a merely irritating headache. The AC pushed the stale odors of cigarettes and damp cardboard boxes, but did little in the way of cooling. “Are you always so . . . honest with your patrons?”

  “Not on the first date. But you and me, we’ve been dancing around this thing for a week now. Time for flattering lies is long past.”

  “A week is a long time?”

  “You owe me for all those hungry stares. All that looking and no paying is giving Mobi a complex.”

  “Moby? Ah, the snake. Curious choice of names. The obsession angle works, but I can’t picture you dancing with a white whale around your shoulders.”

  In the gloomy hall, her eyes glimmered with only human reflections. “Mobi as in Möbius strip, going round and around, always ending up back in the same place.”

  The brooding tenor of her words struck him deep.

  Before he could speak, she ducked behind a curtain. He followed her into the closet. The VIP lounge lacked any features that might have identified it as important or a lounge. A wooden chair faced into the corner, as if it had been pushed hastily awry. He yanked the shabby red curtain closed.

  She spun the chair toward him. “The only Mopey Dick I expect to see here is yours. And I can make that all better.”

  Jonah took a pull off the Slug. The sweeteners and caffeine buzzed through him as his demon-boosted metabolism dealt with the chemical brew. At least the task distracted the creature of evil inside him from its impotent seething.

  He wished he hadn’t thought “impotent” just now.

  Nim plucked the can from his hand and tossed it aside. The spilled liquid fizzed. Under the lone lightbulb, her small smile was hard enough to dash hearts upon, were any careless enough to somehow find their way to this place. “So, tell me what you want, Cap’n.”

  Jonah sat and crossed his arms. He needed her demon ascendant before he made his move. She wouldn’t believe his story otherwise. “Dance for me, Nymphette.”

  Physical stress triggered the demon’s rise. Dangerous, but necessary, since the newly possessed needed to find a way to balance the demon within them. Males traditionally drank and fought their way through the other-realm emanations coursing through their bodies. He’d been told it worked differently with the females. Just as well, since his balance was shot.

  “Call me Nim.” Her voice turned husky, not with the demon, just a generic come-on. She swayed closer. “Nymphette is such a mouthful. And maybe you want me to save my mouth for . . . other things. Right, Cap’n?”

  “Don’t call me Captain.”

  Her fake tarantula lashes narrowed at his brusque tone, but she didn’t speak. She sidled toward his chair and slowly sank to her knees between his legs. Her gaze rested straight ahead, and his flesh, already strung tight, lifted like a marionette. Her mouth—that wide, generous mouth—was such a short distance from his zipper. He ached all over at her closeness, his erection straining toward her, his jaw locked hard against giving in.

  She unwrapped the snake from her shoulders and laid it over his feet. The weight of the beast as it wound around his ankles was surprisingly heavy and hot through the leather of his boots. He couldn’t stifle a grunt of dismay.

  Nim grinned, a crooked chink in her seductress armor that revealed the first hint of honest emotion he’d seen: amusement, at his expense. “Don’t want you sneaking away early, like you’ve been doing all week.”

  “Hadn’t planned on it.” Anyway, not until her demon was firmly anchored in her soul and she’d been drawn into the league as its newest possessed fighter.

  She rose, so close between his thighs that he felt the passage of air, faintly scented with patchouli. But she never touched him. The way she used her body was sinful, but he had to admit, she kept it as brutally honed as any warrior maintained his weapons. A demon could choose worse than to take such a dwelling.

  Within the confines of his spread knees, she turned and set her back to him. She ran her hands up her torso, over her shoulders, and through her dreadlocks. With a single twist, she bound her hair into a thick knot at her crown.

  She leaned to one side, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from following the sinuous curve of her spine, down between the points of her shoulder blades to the twin dimples framing her tailbone. His hand twitched to test whether his spread fingers would span the distance.

  Just as well it was the missing hand.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “No touching.”

  “So you said.” He hadn’t given himself away. Couldn’t, considering his maiming. But she obviously didn’t think that would stop him.

  Her fog-on-the-water gaze traced him. “You aren’t
here with flesh on the mind. No lusting man could have lasted that whole week. Definitely couldn’t last now.” She straddled his knee, again without touching him, and dipped low in a slow-motion grind that never quite brushed his jeans. “You’re so strong. Crazy strong.” Her voice was a purr. “Is that because of the ring?”

  His left hand, tucked against his ribs, clenched against his will, but the gold band on his third finger was too worn to bite into his flesh. “No. Not because of the ring.”

  She tilted her hips and smoothed one hand over her haunch to ride above the shadowed cleft between her buttocks. Where he’d wanted to put his hand. “Because of the hook?”

  The metal tip drove into his biceps as he drew even tighter into himself. How could she ask so casually? “Aren’t you supposed to be dancing?”

  She bent backward, an impossible contortion without making contact. And yet she managed to keep even her hair suspended above his lap, teasing but not touching. She stared at him from her inverted pose. “You’re supposed to be pulling something out.”

  “You said no touching. Presumably that also means myself.”

  “Your wallet is exempt from the no-touching rule.”

  He sighed, aggrieved, and uncrossed his arm to shift to one hip and reach for his back pocket. “At least this is on an expense account.”

  “All business. I like that in a man. We’re practically soul mates.”

  Anger, cold and jagged, wrenched like the hook through his chest, dragging the demon to the surface. “Don’t say that.”

  “Bosom buddies, then.” She turned again to straddle his other leg, facing him. Her arms, crossed in a low X across her belly, pushed her breasts into tempting handfuls. Another supple writhe brought her down low, so low and close her nipples would’ve grazed his lips. If not for her oft-stated no-touching rule, of course.

  “You have no idea how close we’ll be,” he said.

  He’d meant to sound as flirtatious as any of her customers, but a faint hint of alarm crinkled her brow. When he opened his billfold, though, the wary look in her eyes evaporated with a spark of simple avarice. He wouldn’t bother making mental bets about the weakness in her soul that had made her vulnerable to possession.

  “Let’s see, then. Shall we?” She edged closer and propped her foot on the chair seat between his legs. “I bet that big, shiny hook scares the good girls away, doesn’t it? Well, not me. I don’t easily scare.”

  “Because you’re a bad girl.”

  “Just like you wanted.” Her bare toes grazed his crotch, such a glancing touch it might have been an accident, except he suspected she didn’t make such mistakes. She fancied herself fully in control of the situation. Of him.

  His body didn’t exactly disabuse her of the notion. The surge in his jeans kindled a flare of victory in her eyes. As if this was a battle she planned to win.

  No way for her to know she’d already lost.

  Pity chewed at his defensive anger. “Ah, Nim. Was there no one who cared to turn you from this path?”

  Her eyes widened, and a streak of violet shot across the whites. “Shit. You’re one of those? Come to save me from myself?”

  “No.” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “I couldn’t dream of saving you.” Maybe once, he’d believed himself the man for such a task. Not anymore.

  “Good, because I like what I do.” Her lashes fluttered like a Venus flytrap closing on unsuspecting prey. “And I can tell you like it too.”

  The league had no idea what it was getting. But demons—even the repentant teshuva that fought against the darkness—never cared much for harmony. Their quest for redemption would be found through obliteration. “I still don’t condone selling your soul for money.”

  “Very good money.” She bent her knee, lowering herself toward him, the V of her breasts one deep breath away from swallowing his wallet. “And it’s just a body. Don’t you think it’s worth that wad?”

  He twitched the wallet away. “You don’t even care that much about the money.”

  “Not true,” she protested.

  “You do it because you like when men ache.”

  “Oh yeah, I ache all over. For you.” She flexed so that her shin hovered above his chest, her naked body stretched nearly parallel to his. “Just returning the favor, lover.”

  “Did you ache when you marked yourself with these?” He touched his fingertip to the first in a row of circular scars marching up the inside of her thigh.

  She recoiled with a snarl. “Don’t. Touch.”

  Behind her back, he reached up, and, with his hook flattened between her shoulder blades, he dragged her down to his chest.

  She squawked as she sprawled over him in a tangle of long limbs and a thrust of bare breast. Her first ungraceful move of the week.

  He cupped his palm to her cheek, fingers against the curve of her skull, thumb pressed under her jaw, firm but not unnecessarily cruel. “You put too much faith in your body.” He was relieved at his conversational tone. “Control the head and you control the body.” Control was good, yes.

  Unable to regain her balance without testing his grip on her pressure point, she glared into his eyes from inches away. The purple flare spiraled from her irises into the blacks of her pupils, bright enough to dazzle him. He knew her vision was shifting into hunter mode.

  An irate breath flared her nostrils. “Which head?”

  She slammed her fist toward the fly of his jeans.

  If she hadn’t all but announced her intentions—and if he hadn’t already been thinking about that part of his anatomy—she might have landed the punch. But he was already twisting away, so her knuckles caught the point of his hip instead.

  She yelped, not loud enough to carry over the bump-and-grind music. He’d already confirmed that the security cameras covered only the doors and the cash register, and the bouncer had willingly taken two hundred-dollar bills with nothing more than a wink and a man-to-man nod.

  More important, the isolation that had made her susceptible to the demon and now her unconscious reliance on its powers would keep her from calling out for help.

  However, the rising demon also made her harder to handle. He twisted again when she braced one foot between them on the chair seat and reared back, nearly overturning them. He stood, still clasping her close. With the weight of his body, he pinned her to the wall while he awkwardly adjusted his one-handed grip.

  Since the hook, he hadn’t held anyone he didn’t want to hurt.

  And this wasn’t exactly a grappling hold he could practice on his fellow fighters. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said aloud, but the demonic growl in his voice made that hard even for him to believe.

  Nim’s irises flared to a more violent purple in response, and she jackknifed against the wall, angling and weakening his hold. Obviously she wasn’t interested in what he had to say.

  Come to think of it, neither was he.

  “Dance for me, Nim.” This time, he let the demonic double-lows ripple through his voice. He let her go and dropped into the chair. “Make me want it.”

  She landed in a crouch, one hand braced on the ground between her feet. But she didn’t run.

  She could no more escape than he could. No matter how much he hated the wicked thrill flowing through him, the pulsing, stiff flesh behind his fly pointing the way.

  His long, slow descent into hell had brought him here. But the dark twist inside him promised that now he might actually enjoy it.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nim couldn’t stop her feverish shivers. What was happening to her? She’d stepped off the stage, knowing exactly what she was after—and the number of dollar signs that entailed—and he’d taken her plans away from her, one-handed.

  And now he held it out again. Not the wallet, which he’d tucked safely into his pocket. But the memories . . . those he’d yanked out of her with a single, fleeting touch against her scarred thigh.

  She’d shove the past down his throat.

  What
else could she do? Nothing. She had nothing else. So she danced, no holds barred.

  The already tiny room shrank to the circle of his thighs. His heat thawed the chill that had invaded her, as if the perpetually struggling AC had decided to turn August into Arctic. Her tightened nipples sent a pang all the way through her body, and when she ran her hands over her breasts—same as she always did when the moment came to rock the crowd—her knees almost buckled and she moaned for real, a breathy sound too soft and weak for the stage.

  Oh, this was not good at all.

  It was too good. His blue eyes raked her with a sensation more intimate than any touch. God, who was he that he could do this to her? No man should be able to touch her. She’d made sure of that. Now everything she knew was breaking down, all the certainties she’d lived with. Ugly, they might have been, but they were hers, simple and constant.

  And all the while, he watched her as if waiting for her to finish breaking.

  Fuck that. He thought he could confuse her, mess with her head and from there control her body? Well, she’d seen—felt—that he wasn’t so calm and cool as he pretended. And if there was one thing she still knew, it was manipulating the body.

  She slithered over him, as close as Mobi twined around her during a dance. His eyes widened in momentary shock. She might have laughed, but her breath was gone as her thighs scraped over his jeans and her nipples dragged on the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She reveled in his heat and rubbed the length of him.

  When the chair wobbled, he put his arm around her. His hand landed on her ass, and she felt his chest heave under her as he gasped. He released her at once, so she rocked the chair again. The hook where his hand should have been thudded into the wall as he steadied them.

  “Nim,” he warned.

  She sank her fingers into the blond waves of his hair. Somehow, in the nasty little room with its one lightbulb, his hair managed to shine like sunlit gold. No man had ever offered her gold.

  “You wanted this,” she reminded him. “‘Dance,’ you said.”

  “I haven’t paid yet.”