“No?” I tucked my arm into the offered crook of his and he pulled me to his side as we walked.
“You look breathtaking,” Damon said nonchalantly, leading me across the street to a gated shop where the others were waiting.
My heart galloped in my chest, Damon’s words were on a loop in my mind even as I started trying on clothes with price tags so steep that you had to train to climb Mount Everest to afford them. It wasn’t only his compliment in my head, it was all of them.
They were too much, really. It was enough to make a girl’s head explode. But it didn’t end there. Bethany, the boutique manager, brought in outfit after outfit for me and I was stunned to find that everything actually looked okay on me. Maybe even kind of good.
Since we were alone in the boutique, the guys spread out on the vintage-style couches and demanded a show. Bethany had no objections and informed me that the boutique was set up the way that it was for precisely that purpose. Their clientele was elite and often insisted that she bring in models to show off her new lines before they purchased anything.
“For today, honey,” she told me, “you’re the model. Try to have some fun with it. I don’t know which one of those boys out there is the lucky one who’s your boyfriend, but trust me when I say that they’re all going to love it.”
I flushed, stammering out my answer, “We’re all just friends.”
“Oh, to be young again,” she whimpered. “I would have killed to have had friends who looked like that.”
Bethany zipped up the first dress she had chosen for me to model and sent me on my way with a simple, “Good luck, girl. Knock their socks off.”
Unusual self-confidence rushed through my body as I gave myself a final once over. The heels Bethany had put me in were ankle-breakers, but somehow I didn’t feel like I was about to fall. My legs looked a million miles long in them and the dress, entirely inappropriate for the weather, accentuated that.
It hit just above my mid-thigh and matched the color of my eyes exactly. The neckline was demure, but the material did nothing to hide my new assets. The dress hugged my curves like it had been made for me and I strutted out of the dressing room feeling like I was the model that Bethany was trying to turn me into, if only for the day.
Lach was the first to spot me and he let out a low whistle at the sight. It drew the attention of the others and their reactions made me feel like I was the most beautiful girl in the world. Rex’s jaw dropped and Matteo swallowed hard. Damon’s eyes fixed on mine and the coolness I had become used to seeing in them was nowhere in sight.
“You are so getting that one,” Lachlan said.
Damon simply nodded in agreement.
“You like it then?” I said, doing an impromptu turn that was totally unlike me, encouraged and emboldened by them.
“Love it as much as Damon loves himself,” Lach said with a nod.
“As much as Matty loves bacon,” Damon cut in.
I didn’t know this for a fact, but judging by how much bacon Matteo had scarfed that morning, I assumed that it was a lot.
“We need three yesses before this one makes it into the finals.”
And just like that, we started our own game show. To be fair, very few outfits didn’t get the requisite three votes.
Rex and Matteo nixed a coat that they said reminded them of one particular winter in Siberia. I didn’t ask.
Damon and Rex gave two thumbs down each to a pair of pants they insisted weren’t tight enough, while Lach, Matteo and Damon vetoed a maxi dress because it had a tiger on it.
Ordinarily, I absolutely hated shopping for clothes but I couldn’t stop trying stuff on just because the guys were loving it so much. I was loving watching them love it.
“We’ll be back for summer,” Lach promised Bethany as we brought all the items to the front of the store. His eyes lit up. “Do you do swimwear?”
“That’s enough you perverts,” Damon interrupted, but the corners of his mouth twitched and his eyes sparkled as he paid for our purchases. “But please keep us in mind if you get in any new lingerie.”
I swatted his arm. “And you call them perverts.”
“I call it as I see it.” His rare laughter sounded like a gift to my ears and followed us all the way home.
Home.
It was hard to believe that I was already thinking of the stone mansion that way, but on the way back to it, it was the only word that made sense. As we rode together in a roaring convoy, I realized how quickly I was adjusting and it was all because of them.
My guardians had taken a terrible, terrifying ordeal and made me feel like Pretty Woman for the day. Instead of curling in a ball and rocking in the fetal position with the knowledge that the devil Luci now knew my face, I was grinning ear to ear.
It might be a short-lived reprieve. A spot of sun on a cloudy day, but damn it. I’d take it. I’d take every single bit of joy that these men wanted to give me, and try to give it back in equal measure. Because despite my potential immortality, the one thing that being stalked by a succubus had taught me in the past two days was that life was short.
And damn it, I was going to live it.
Chapter 10
That night, it began to snow.
One by one, the guys all crowded into the living room where Damon was starting a fire. When we’d gotten back to the house, the guys had gone down to the gym and I’d retrieved my Kindle from my bag and was engrossed in a new crime series when Damon had appeared, arms laden with firewood and shaking snowflakes from his hair.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I was just bonding with James,” I told him.
“James?” He nodded at Maximus sleeping peacefully in my lap. “I thought the rodent was called Max or something.”
“Maximus,” I corrected patiently. “I was referring to the author I was reading.” Damon’s back was turned towards me as he built the fire, but I could tell he was still paying attention.
“James who?” he asked, carefully balancing the kindling.
“Patterson.”
“A Patterson fan, huh?” Damon rubbed his hands on his jeans and sank into the couch next to me. “I love a good Alex Cross novel myself, but Patterson writes faster than I can read.”
Matteo sank into the couch across from us. “To be fair, I can write faster than you can read.”
“Don’t challenge him,” Lachlan warned, sinking into the same spot he had been in the night before. “He actually reads pretty damn fast.”
“One would hope, since I assume he had to get through some pretty boring biographies while he was studying,” Matteo added. “Imagine having to read the autobiography of dictator after dictator all playing the victim before they were executed or something.”
Damon snorted. “That’s what you think studying political sciences is all about?”
“What else?” Matteo shrugged. Lach rumbled with laughter.
Rex was the last to arrive, grunting, “Thank god you chose business management then.”
“All right, you assholes,” Damon said. “Enough with the jabber. Now that you’re all here, we need to talk to you, Stevie.”
“That sounds ominous.” I turned to face Damon, doubt creeping into me. It had been such a good day. I knew it was too good to last, but still. With the snow and the fire, I’d hoped for one night of peace to bolster me for what was to come.
“It is, but only a little.”
Matteo shook his head in disgust. “How can something be a little ominous?”
Damon flipped him off and focused on me. “Now that we know that Luci is aware of you, we think it would be good if we start teaching you some self-defense moves and more about succubi and what you’re capable of.”
That didn’t seem too ominous. I mean, sure, I’d rather pretend Luci didn’t exist, but learning how to defend myself against her only seemed prudent.
“Okay, that sounds like a solid plan. I’m a great student. When did you want to start?” The last thing I felt like do
ing was fending off karate chops right now, but reading was hardly going to help me defend myself and the guys from Luci.
“The sooner the better,” Matteo said. “We’ve done our thing for the day, how about we head into the gym and—”
He was cut off by a loud knock on the front door. The guys froze for barely a second and then jumped into motion, their expressions fierce.
“Did we order pizza or something?”
“No,” Damon gritted out, shoving me behind him.
As if they were one organism, they moved together to the front door with Damon’s hand like a vise grip around my wrist as he tugged me behind him. “If I let you go, run, as fast as you can out to the garage. There is a Ranger Rover there with the keys in the ignition and a pile of cash in the center console,” he muttered as they formed a wall in front of me.
My brain was in hyperdrive as Rex stepped forward to swing the door open. I was standing slightly to the side and I craned my neck to see who was there, but the guys stood shoulder to shoulder, making it impossible.
A familiar voice rang in my ears, “Where is she?”
I blinked, struggling to process that voice in this setting, and then yanked my hand from Damon’s grip to step around him.
“If you hurt my friend, I swear, I will—”
“Brie?” my voice rang out. I stared in shock at my best friend standing in the doorway with a baseball bat gripped menacingly in her hands. “W-what are you doing here?”
Brie did a double-take when she saw me. She lowered the bat and then let it clatter to the floor.
“I take it this is the best friend from the club, then,” Lachlan muttered, the tense mood in the foyer easing some at my recognition of our guest. “At least this one came at us with a proper weapon instead of a children’s book.”
“Zip it, Lach,” I shot back. “She was worried about me. And I’ll have you know that Harry Potter is a book for all who believe in magic so…” I trailed off as I realized how inane that sounded and rushed out to drag my snow-covered, shivering friend inside.
Damon locked the heavy doors behind us with a decisive click.
“I’ll get cocoa,” Rex volunteered, slinking away from the scene. “She’s half frozen.”
“Brie, what are you doing here?” I asked, wrapping the blanket that I’d had around my shoulders around hers and leading her to the fireplace. “How did you find me?”
Brie’s eyes were wild, but she couldn’t stop staring at me.
“Are-are these guys doctors?” she stammered, her teeth chattering. “Is this some kind of spa or something?”
“They’re not doctors,” I answered, but beyond that, had no clue what else to say. I’d wrongly assumed that my last text had bought me some time to figure out what to tell her but apparently I’d procrastinated myself right into a major pickle.
I rubbed Brie’s arms and back until the warmth of the fire and blanket returned her lips to a more rosy hue from their previous blue.
She blinked at me, staring hard. “You look amazing, like yourself but more vibrant. Full of energy. It’s like you’re Stevie, but in HD.”
“HD?” I arched a brow at her.
“Yeah, you seem… clearer, somehow,” Brie said. Rex got back with her cocoa, but she barely looked at him to mutter her thanks before her eyes were back on me. “And that hair?”
I was at a loss for words, for a plausible explanation. I looked to the guys for help, imploring them silently.
What do I tell her?
They all shrugged, leaving it up to me as they filed silently out of the room.
“How did you find me?” I asked Brie again when we were alone. And, if it had been that easy, what in the world was going to keep Luci from doing the same?
“Remember that find my friend app you, Charlie and I installed last year?” she said.
“Vaguely,” I replied, rubbing at my temples as I tried to think.
“Well, when I got your text, I felt like it was sort of weird. So I activated your location and tracked you here.”
I had completely forgotten about that. And as inconvenient as this was, I couldn’t deny that I was a little choked up to have a friend that cared so much about me that she’d driven an hour to confront a biker gang of huge, tattooed guys to threaten them with a baseball bat if that was what it took to secure my safety.
She was a true ride or die bestie, and now I had to decide whether to lie to her face or not when she’d risked her neck to find out if I was okay.
“What’s going on here, Steve?” she whispered, her eyes darting around like she was scared that the stone walls had ears. “Where are we?”
Since the guys had left it up to me, I gathered that there were no holds barred. The biggest issue was the fact that they knew exactly how difficult it would be to convince a person that this was real life instead of some sort of nervous breakdown.
But I couldn’t deny that I wanted nothing more than to let my best friend in to what was quickly becoming the best part of my life. And more than that? I had to return her show of loyalty and faith in me with one of my own.
I sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “I think we should go upstairs before we get into it, because this is going to take a while,” I said, fully aware of the size of the bomb I was about to drop on her head. The least that I could do was to ensure our privacy while she processed.
Annnd, just maybe a teensy little part of me also hoped the distance would keep her from running out the front door as soon as I uttered the word demon.
“Okay.” She nodded, pausing to take a few gulps from the steaming mug of chocolate before standing. “Lead the way.”
I dragged her up to my bedroom, ignoring the inquisitive stares of the guys as we passed them. Lach was with Rex in the kitchen, pretending to be in deep conversation as we scuttled past.
Matteo was lying on his bed a couple of doors down from my room, studying his tablet with unwarranted attention but I caught the corner of his eye as we passed and he offered a reassuring nod.
Damon was less subtle of course, standing with his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the doorframe of his bedroom at the end of the hall.
Giving Damon a tight smile to indicate that we were okay, I ushered Brie into my room and stood silently as she took in the lavish spread.
While Brie was gaping at the cavernous space and lux furnishings, I grabbed a spare set of pajamas from the dresser and passed them to her before tugging mine from where I’d stuffed them under my pillow that morning.
“What the fuck is this place?” Brie asked as she set her mug down gingerly on the corner of the bedside table before stripping off her clothes. She seemed like she was in a trance as she pulled on my spare pajamas and settled onto the bed.
“We’re at my new home.” The words sounded foreign on my tongue, but it didn’t make them any less true. “The guys that I’ll introduce you to later, the ones you saw at the door? They’re my new…friends.”
“Friends? They look like a biker gang holding you hostage.” She wasn’t entirely wrong though, that was exactly what they looked like. “Are you some sort of sex slave, Stevie?” she whispered furiously. “Because I can get my bat and we can—”
“No!” I stepped closer and squeezed her hand. “No, nothing like that.” In fact, it was almost the exact opposite, but that was a story for a little later. “I know what they look like, but I promise you they’re good guys.”
Brie rubbed a hand over her weary face. “Okay, so how did you meet them?”
“Do you remember my twenty-first?” I demanded.
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “That was a couple of days ago. Duh, of course I do.”
“Did you come looking for me after midnight?” My questions were hesitant, but that was only because I knew precisely how crazy I was about to sound.
“No, we got your text.”
My text? I frowned, I hadn’t sent them a text.
“You know, the one on our gro
up chat about how you met a cute boy and went home with him. Charlie had a shit fit about that, by the way.” Brie’s eyes lit up in false understanding. “Oooh, is that what this is? One of them is your hookup and the rest are his roommates? Did you finally—”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” It was almost exactly like that, at least the latter part. I paused, needing to clear something up. “Charlie had a shit fit?”
She shrugged. “He’s used to me being the irresponsible one.”
“How was I being irresponsible?”
“You know, taking a stranger home. Or going to his place. Your text was vague.”
I made a mental note to ask the guys which one of them had sent my friends a text, though I was grateful that someone had thought about letting them know I was okay that night.
“What does any of this have to do with the fact that your hair is suddenly blonde and sexy and you seem to be living with four smoking hot guys in the middle of nowhere?” Brie asked, her tone demanding answers.
“They’re my protectors.”
“Your what, now?” Brie asked, narrowing her eyes.
“My protectors.” I inhaled a fortifying breath and started telling Brie the fantastical tale that had somehow become my life. Brie let me talk, her silence only broken by gasps every now and then. A myriad of emotions crossed over her features, none of them necessarily good. Once I was done, she put a hand to my forehead like she was checking me for a fever.
“So you think that those guys down there are demons?” She arched a perfectly shaped brow at me. “Is that what you’re telling me right now?”
“I don’t think so, I know so. I’ve seen some of the things that they can do and I’ve heard their stories.” It was not great that my friend thought that I was sick or crazy, but it also wasn’t a surprise. It was exactly what I’d thought.
“So they told you a few bullshit stories and you believed them?” she asked incredulously.
“It’s not bullshit, Brie.”
“So they say. Have they given you anything?”
“What do you mean?” Then realization dawned on me. “They haven’t drugged me, B.”
Her Demon Harem: Reverse Harem Duology 1 (The Succubus Chronicles) Page 8
