She had just settled down to watch Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore demonstrate a love that lasted beyond life itself when her phone buzzed.
“I’m at Slyders,” It was Lilith. Music blared in the background, accompanied by laughter and clinking glasses. “Come join me.”
Dara explained that she already had her evening planned. “You’re welcome to come over, though.”
“And I would totally do that,” Lilith said, “if I was ninety. Come on, chica. Don’t be such a stick in the mud. There’ll be plenty of time to sit around and watch old movies when you’re in a nursing home. Come party with me.”
Dara looked around her cozy living room. Lilith had a point. Away from work, Dara’s life wasn’t all that different from Nana’s.
“Come on. I’m lonely, and that always gets me into trouble. This bar is chock-full of cute young sailors.”
“Where’s Jeremy?” Ever since Ben’s first-night celebration party, Jeremy and Lilith had been an item.
“He played golf today with the boys.”
Dara looked out through the tinted sliding glass doors at the setting sun. “It’s getting dark. He can’t still be playing.”
“He said I kept him out late last night and he was too tired to go out.” Lilith sounded disappointed and pettish, but there was a ring of loneliness there, too.
“Come on,” she said. “Friends don’t let friends drink alone.”
Dara looked at the cued-up movie and the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. How many Saturday evenings had she spent like this over the past five years? All of them, or nearly all. Lilith was right. She was thirty-five, not ninety-five.
“Give me a half hour.” That included the twenty-minute drive to the beach. She lived inland, where property values and hurricane insurance were a lot cheaper than out by the ocean.
“Put on some makeup,” Lilith said, “and wear those slutty shoes we bought.”
Dara walked through the crowded bar, acutely aware of the looks she was drawing from the sailors Lilith had mentioned. They didn’t look any older than a lot of the teenagers she saw in the peds clinic, but that didn’t stop them from staring. She wished she hadn’t put on the formfitting sundress and strappy, high-heeled sandals she’d bought with Lilith. The boys’ interest told her she looked good, but she was much more comfortable in the anonymity of her scrubs.
Out on the deck, Jeremy was sitting at Lilith’s side. He blinked when he saw her.
“Look who decided to join me after all,” Lilith said, snuggling against him.
Jeremy had volunteered at the clinic for five years. It was probably the first time Dara had ever worn a dress around him. He gave her an uncomfortable smile.
She smiled back with a confidence she didn’t feel and sat down across the table from them. A tall drink was already waiting. “What’s this?”
“A Long Island iced tea,” Lilith said. Jeremy started to say something, but she shushed him. “I think you’ll like it.”
Dara took a sip. There was clearly some alcohol in it, but it tasted very smooth, a lot like iced tea.
“Is it okay?” Lilith bit her lip. “We can order you something else.”
“It’s fine,” Dara said.
Lilith grinned and raised her glass. “Cheers.”
An hour and a half and two iced teas later, Dara caught a whiff of petrichor and vanilla, and there he was. He was dressed in jeans and a white shirt that was open at the neck. His feet were encased in a pair of loafers that probably cost more than a week of her salary. His face bore no trace of the damage she’d done on Wednesday, the last time she saw him. He was back to being totally gorgeous. She took a long sip of her drink and pictured him with his nose smashed to the side. She giggled.
“May I join you?” He smiled, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. She pictured herself smoothing out those crinkles with her lips. No crinkle-kissing, she ordered herself. Then she frowned, trying to work out the correct response to his question. Before she could come up with an answer, he sat down beside her.
“Looks like I have some catching up to do.” He ordered another round of drinks, and a beer for himself.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you till Monday,” she said.
He smiled. “Yet, here I am.”
Dara waited for her allergies to kick in and clog up her nose so that she couldn’t smell him anymore, but for some reason, maybe because of the breeze coming in off the ocean, that didn’t happen. So she sat there, breathing him in and hoping she wouldn’t drool on the table.
She was drunker than she’d ever been in her life. Those iced teas were much stronger than a similar-sized glass of wine. Through the fog of alcohol, it occurred to her that her grandparents’ teetotaling home had not prepared her for having a friend like Lilith.
Jeremy and Ben—it felt odd to call him Ben, but she was pretty sure it would sound even odder if she called him Dr. Demon—talked a bit about a case that had come into the clinic on Tuesday night. Ben, she noticed, didn’t mention his new scheduled. Lilith chipped in some information about a public relations outreach the hospital was doing.
Even if her lips weren’t too numb to talk, Dara didn’t have anything to add. They were already aware of most of what was happening in the clinic. And what they didn’t know was better kept secret. She wasn’t too drunk to know that.
At some point, a band started playing inside the bar. Lilith grabbed Jeremy’s hand. “Come dance with me.” They headed inside.
“Would you like to dance?” Ben asked.
“I don’t dance.” Dara enunciated each word carefully, so he wouldn’t realize how inebriated she was.
He smiled a slow smile that said he knew exactly how drunk she was. “You may be better off not trying to stand up anyway.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just don’t engage in the devil’s pastime.” Ugh. She sounded exactly like Nana.
“He’s never been that much into dancing,” Ben said. “Gambling is more his thing.”
She put her elbows on the table and folded her hands, making a cradle. With care, she balanced her chin on top of the cradle.
“Really?” she said. “That’s fasssscinating.”
His lips quirked as though he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t.
“What else?” she asked.
His smile deepened. “What do you mean, ‘what else’?”
Her chin rocked a little on her hands. She stilled it. “What else do you know that’s fascinating?”
“Lots of things.” His lips—his beautiful, smooth, shapely lips—quirked again. “What would you like to know?”
At the moment, the only thing she could think of was what it would be like to have hot demon sex with him. “Nothing.”
“I see,” he said. She had the feeling he knew exactly what was going through her mind.
From inside the bar, the strains of “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” flowed out the door. It was a challenging piece, but the lead singer was surprisingly good for a bar band.
“I love this song.” She hummed along, swaying in time to the music.
He tilted his head. “Are you sure you don’t want to dance?”
She did want to dance. At that moment, she wanted to dance more than anything in the world. She wanted to be self-confident and fun, like Lilith. But she’d never learned how. Granddaughters of ultra-conservative demon-fighters did not dance. That struck her as very sad.
“I don’t know how to dance.” She sniffled. A tear slowly rolled down her cheek.
Ben made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. Then he stood and held out his hand. “Slow dancing requires absolutely no skill whatsoever. You just shuffle your feet and sway in time to the music.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Come on. What do you have to lose? Lilith will make sure I don’t step over any lines.”
It was so tempting. “Will you steal my soul?”
“On the dance floor?” He gave the ghost of a
laugh. “No.”
She stood, and the deck tilted beneath her feet. She grabbed the table to regain her balance and noticed her purse. She held up a finger. “One moment.” She dug through her purse until she located the jar of VapoRub and smeared it on her upper lip. The pungent scent filled her nostrils.
He took her arm and half led, half dragged her inside. Even drunk, she was all too aware of the warmth of his palm cupping her elbow. Out on the deck, the evening had cooled off, but inside the bar, it was still hotter than Hades and reeked of liquor. It was a veritable den of iniquity. And there she was, the granddaughter of Lonnie and Esther Perdue, right in the thick of it, dancing with a demon. Without giving her a chance to change her mind, Ben pulled her into his arms and they began to sway.
To her disappointment, he held her far more loosely than she’d expected. The only places where their bodies touched was where his hands touched her shoulder and her waist. She took a half a step closer to him but, so smoothly she might have missed it if she weren’t paying attention, he stepped back.
She frowned. After four weeks of stalking her, why didn’t he want to hold her?
Then he ran his fingertips along her exposed collarbones. The sensation was electric, and it wasted no time traveling south. As though he sensed her desire, his hand slipped around behind her neck. As she arched her back with pleasure, Nana’s ruby pendant slid down her chest, lodging between her breasts.
She grabbed it before it could drop any further, wrapping the chain around her hand. She inspected it. The link holding the clasp was twisted and pulled apart.
“You broke my necklace,” she said.
He shook his head. “The clasp must be bad. You should put that in your purse, so you don’t lose it.”
Nana had told her the truth about the ruby. He didn’t want to brush against it. That was why he held her so loosely.
Inside her brain, two women circled each other. The honorable woman who had been raised by demon-fighting grandparents had self-respect and moral certitude going for her. The human woman who hadn’t been touched by a man in five years had biology on her side. They locked arms to wrestle for domination, but with three of Lilith’s iced teas flowing through Dara’s system, it was no contest.
She opened her little evening bag and dropped the ruby inside. As soon as she snapped the purse closed, he pulled her hard against him.
She was still a little dizzy, but that feeling was quickly overwhelmed by another. Pressed against his chest, with her face buried in his neck, she wanted to nuzzle his throat. And it wasn’t his scent that was doing it, because all she could smell was eucalyptus. She rolled her head back, which made her miss a step. His arms tightened around her. She trailed her mouth up the side of his throat, then licked her lips, tasting skin and sweat and vanilla and that hint of sulfur. He tasted even better than she’d imagined.
The effect on him was immediate. She lifted her face to look at him. “Demons are easy.”
He smiled down at her. “In that dress you’re wearing, any male would be easy.”
She pressed her pelvis against his again. What would happen if she led him out to the Toyota and climbed into the back seat? He cupped her glutes and ground himself against her, and she knew the answer. He would make her feel better than she’d ever felt in her life.
Recklessly, she lifted her head and pressed her lips against his. As though that were a signal, his arms tightened around her and his mouth crushed hers. It was the kiss she’d dreamed of since that night by the gas pumps. Beneath the persuasive pressure of his lips, she opened her mouth, as she’d wanted to the night Milton got out. Why had she resisted? All she had done was delay the inevitable. His tongue stroked hers with a copulatory cadence that awoke an answering rhythm low in her belly.
Working beside him day after day was like being an asteroid pulled into the gravitational force of the sun. It had worn down her defenses far more than she’d realized. She no longer had the strength to resist him. Desire seared through her, pooling in her belly like mercury, liquid and deadly. His erection pushed against her, thick as her wrist and hard as bone. He rubbed her back in slow circles, giving her no option to pull away, even if she’d wanted to. One hand traveled up the side of her ribcage, making her aware of how little fabric was covering her body.
He pulled his mouth away from hers to press kisses against her collarbones.
“So beautiful,” he murmured.
She wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor, but even more, she wanted to pull him outside, away from the crowd, and discover what it would be like to fill herself with that demon heat.
The song ended and he straightened.
“Come,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
She tried to lean into him again, but he took her elbow and steered her out to the deck. Jeremy and Lilith were already there, snuggling. When the cool air hit Dara’s face, some of the fog lifted.
“You can’t drive.” She blinked at him. “You’ve been drinking.” The Toyota’s back seat still beckoned.
“I had one beer,” he said.
She looked around the table in surprise. There was a single mug sitting in front of his chair, still half-full. “You did just have one beer.” A little more fog drifted away. She frowned at him. “I don’t think it’s safe to go home with you. You’re a demon.”
“Whoa, Dara.” Jeremy reared back. “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think? I mean, Ben is a doctor.”
“Not really,” she said. “He’s really a demon.”
Lilith chuckled. “Yeah, we saw you on the dance floor.”
“No,” said Dara. “He’s a real demon. Nana says he was sent here from Hell to destroy me.”
“Okay,” Belial said, shrugging at Jeremy in a way that said these were the drunken ramblings of a woman with a grandmother who disliked him. “Time to cut you off.”
She leaned across the table.
“I tried to resist,” she told Lilith. “You saw that, didn’t you?”
“You fought the good fight.” Lilith made a fist and bumped her knuckles against Dara’s.
Jeremy frowned. “Maybe we should take her home.”
“I want to dance some more.” Lilith nestled against him. “She’ll be safe with Ben.”
She wouldn’t, of course, but that was okay. She didn’t want to be.
Chapter 28
Belial walked Dara out to the parking lot, one hand cupped beneath her elbow. His erection hadn’t ebbed since his fingertips first grazed her scarred collarbones. He expected his condition to abate a little once her supple body was no longer pressed against him, but it didn’t. He was harder than any of the stalagmites jutting up from the floor of Ring Nine.
In ten thousand years, he couldn’t recall ever reacting like this to a woman. He could only hope that, once he’d possessed her lush body, his cock would stop pulling in her direction like a dowsing rod that had located life-giving water.
Beside him, Dara stumbled. He swept her up into his arms. She put her arms around his neck and rested her head against his chest. She felt so natural there he gathered her closer. For an instant, he wished the Enemy had not chosen her as the pawn in this cosmic wager.
“I’m being carried off by a demon,” she said, her tone dreamy.
He set her down and opened the car door. “And that doesn’t bother you?”
She attempted to place her thumb and forefinger an inch apart but couldn’t manage it. “A little bit.”
“But not a lot.”
“Not a lot,” she agreed. “It’s been a while, you know.”
He gave her his most seductive smile. “I promise I’ll make it worth the wait.”
She pressed soft fingers against his lips. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That ‘I’m a sexy demon’ stuff. Just be real.”
He had no idea how to respond to that. It felt like she’d peeled away a layer of his identity. To cover his discomfort, he helped her into the car. Sh
e made no move to fasten her seatbelt, so he leaned across her and pushed the buckle into the catch. When he straightened, she stroked her hand down the length of his shaft, squeezing when she reached the head. He was so caught off guard he almost ejaculated right then and there.
He peeled her hand away. Her lower lip protruded in a pout that made him even more rigid.
“Just a few more minutes and you can play with it all you want,” he said.
Eve’s daughter that she was, she smiled at him with heavy-lidded eyes and licked her lips. It was a side to her personality he hadn’t expected.
Ten minutes later, he was sitting on the leather sofa in the beach house, watching her check out the great room. Would she notice the tiny cameras DemSec had installed in the upper corners of every room? She didn’t. Instead, she stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that comprised the back of the house. He turned down the lights. Beyond the glass, stars twinkled above the ocean.
“So pretty,” she said.
He stretched his arms along the back of the sofa. “I like it.” He did, too. There was nothing like it in Hell, just endless vistas of rock and flames. “Now come over here.”
She kicked off her shoes, leaving her several inches shorter, and crossed the room to sit beside him. He moved his arm so that it rested on her shoulders. With his other hand, he lifted her chin and stared into her eyes. She stared back, unafraid. She reminded him of a doe he’d once seen, drinking from a clear pool near Gibeah. It had looked at him with that same liquid, fearless gaze. He’d killed it with a spear and eaten its heart for breakfast.
Down in Hell, the other demons would be watching, courtesy of those cameras, raising their glasses and chanting their approval. A wave of distaste caught Belial off guard. Satan would retain the videos, of course. When the wager was over and Dara became a client, they would appear onscreen everywhere she went. And that would be only one of the humiliations Satan would heap on this favorite of the Enemy. Belial shoved any guilt away. It wasn’t he who had chosen her to be the pawn in this cosmic wager.
The Demon Always Wins: Touched by a Demon, Book 1 Page 18
