bedeviled & beyond 05 - bedeviled & besmirched

by Sam Cheever

  I placed hands on hips and glared at him. “All right, let’s get this over with. What do you want?”

  “What makes you think I want something?”

  I just continued to glare at him.

  He grinned. “I was worried about you.”

  I cocked an eyebrow, clearly skeptical.

  “And your sister was worried about you.”

  I snorted. “Nice try.”

  He grinned. “Okay, I’m here to offer you my services in a professional capacity.”

  My mouth fell open and my eyes grew wide. His suggestion brought several thoughts to mind at once...all of them negative. I shook my head, the right words to address his ludicrous suggestion escaping me.

  He frowned, cocking his head. “Don’t you want to interview me before you say no?”

  I turned away, heading into the food prep area to make myself some coffee. “I already know what you’re capable of, Slayer. It isn’t your competency that will keep me from hiring you.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I turned and lifted a hot beverage cube toward him. He nodded.

  I settled the cube under the beverage valet and pressed several buttons, watching as a steaming black brew surged into it. “Putting you and I under the same roof is like housing laserworks next to an open flame. So not a good idea.” I turned around with his steaming cube of coffee and gasped. He was standing so close my nipples brushed against the thin fabric covering his chest.

  Not a bad sensation, that.

  I shoved the cube between us and he grinned, plucking it from my fingers. But not before he ran a long, slightly calloused finger along my hand. “What’s the problem, Astra? Don’t think you can resist my charms?”

  I turned around and programmed my own coffee, studiously ignoring him. “I can resist you just fine.”

  Hot hands slid over my hips and my Settling flared. The hands slid around to my belly before I could react, and lower, into the creases at the tops of my legs.

  The heat and pressure of his inquisitive fingers made my mons swell and throb. Warm cream ran into my panties and my nipples surged to rigid attention. I tried to suck in a breath but my lungs were clenched.

  His scent enveloped me. Before I knew what I was doing I inhaled that scent, pulling it deep into my lungs to savor.

  His fingers slid downward, touching at the thumbs and forefingers to form a diamond shape that encompassed but didn’t venture toward my clit. I moaned and my suddenly nerveless fingers dropped the coffee cube, spewing hot liquid across the floor. I didn’t even feel the droplets that landed on my legs, they simply melded with the heat Slayer was creating with his ministrations.

  He lowered his head and licked the nape of my neck. I shuddered in reaction and spread my legs as the heat from his unmoving hands continued to build a fire in my loins. His kisses trailed down the back of my neck, sent heat spiraling downward from the tender skin at the top of my back, and moved around, to fire up the delicate area beneath my ear.

  My conscience gave a weak appearance, trying to battle off the sensations he created with his talented tongue on my uber-sensitive skin. But I was too far gone to listen to its feeble protestations.

  Slayer’s hands finally moved. One of them slid upward, toward a hungry nipple. The other covered my throbbing mons. I cried out and pushed myself against the hand, mindless with lust.

  Slayer pressed himself against me from the back, sandwiching my starving and all-too-willing body between twin points of heat. I moaned and dry humped his hand, no longer caring what I was doing. I was so starved for what he had to offer. So needy. All I wanted was some small relief from the pain. A small release to ease the pressure.

  Slayer’s hand covered one breast and his long fingers found the nipple, tweaking it gently so that I groaned with helpless need. “Astra?”

  I closed my eyes. I knew what he was asking and I wanted to say yes. I wanted to throw him to the ground and impale myself on the long, hard shaft I could feel driving against my buttocks and back. I wanted to jump on it...bury it deep...spin myself until I wanted to pass out. I wanted... “No.” The word barely escaped my unwilling throat. It was breathless, tattered from dragging itself forward, and barely audible. “I can’t.” Had I whined? How pathetic.

  I shoved his hands away and almost ran across the food prep area, putting a counter and the food and beverage valets between us. I pushed at my hair with shaking hands and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. You need to stop touching me like that. My Settling...”

  Slayer’s face was still soft with lust, his pretty eyes lidded. But he looked away and nodded. “I know. That’s why I do it.”

  Anger washed through me, sluicing some of the lust away as it came. “Which is exactly why you and I can’t work together.”

  “And exactly why we must.”

  I twisted a strand of my hair and fought to get my breathing back to normal. My belly was painfully tight with unleashed need. I had to force myself not to think about it. Eventually it would go away.

  I hoped.

  Or I would find myself jumping the next pimple-faced, food-delivery boy I encountered and riding him to the ground.

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  Slayer settled his untouched cube of coffee on the counter and leaned over it, scouring me with a still burning gaze. “You react so strongly to me because we are in tune. We are a natural mating pair.”

  “I react to you because you have a dick and nice eyes. It doesn’t take much these days.”

  He nodded. “I went through my Settling last year. I remember what it was like. But what we create together is more. Much more than just a biological reaction to a natural event.”

  I shook my head, determined to disagree with something that sounded like it would make my life even more difficult moving forward.

  “Don’t misunderstand, Astra. I’m not saying we should mate. I don’t think we are well matched intellectually or emotionally.”

  “You’d better clarify that immediately or you’re gonna have a size-six boot up your ass. And I really don’t want to ruin a fine pair of boots by getting Slayer butt all over them.”

  “I don’t mean you’re not smart enough or I’m not smart enough, just that we have different goals, different motivations. You’re much more tuned in to humans than I am. You give more, care more. I’m basically a selfish creature...”

  “You think?”

  He grinned and I couldn’t help joining him in the smile.

  “But we are tuned into each other on a physical level. And that makes me the perfect person to protect you.”

  “Protect me? From what?”

  He looked at me like I had a boot box for a head. Maybe I did. If I had any brains at all I’d have thrown his ass out of my office several minutes earlier. “You haven’t noticed somebody’s trying to kill you?”

  “Oh.” I shuffled my feet. “That. I can handle it. I don’t need a babysitter.”

  He shook his head and swore. “Yeah, mostly you can. It’s a good thing you are so good at taking care of yourself, Astra. Where the hell is your guardian angel during all this?”

  I blinked. I’d gotten used to doing without a guardian since my aunt Myra got kicked up the celestial ladder and they’d replaced her with a five-hundred-year-old virgin who was minus a sense of humor and had no visible protective skills. “I guess he was busy.”

  “He seems to be busy a lot.”

  I just shrugged. What could I say, he was right?

  “That’s why you need me.”

  I shook my head. “Not happenin’, Slayer.”

  “Why? You afraid the Devil King will get pissed off?”

  It was my turn to look at him like he had a boot box for a head. “You’re kidding me right? You’re not afraid of Dialle’s reaction if you and I started spending all day, every day together?”

  “I’m not afraid of that slick bastard. Besides—”

  “If you say ‘He’s not the boss of me’ I’
m blasting you in the foot with a power arrow.”

  Slayer got all shoulders squared and chin jutting, and I rolled my eyes. “This conversation is over. I’m not hiring you. Go away.”

  His eyes narrowed on me for a moment and I thought he might argue, but he finally smiled and stepped back, hands up in surrender. “I’ll give you some space, Astra. In the meantime, if you need my help feel free to call.” He pointed to his hand, indicating I should use the hickey he’d given me.

  I frowned, not enjoying the reminder that he’d tapped into my internal communication system without asking me first. It seemed the men in my life tended in that direction and it really pissed me off.

  He space shifted away and I sat down behind my desk, determined to get some work done before I got pulled into the next personal crisis.

  It didn’t take long for my good intentions to get waylaid again.

  The air before my desk shimmered and my Aunt Myra appeared, glaring at me as usual. She looked so glacial, I almost expected to see frost begin to form on the surfaces of my office. I stared into her coldly beautiful face and tried taking a chink out of her cold demeanor by flinging a sharp smile at her. “Hey, Aunt.”

  “Astra.” She gazed at me for a minute, her expression accusatory.

  My infamously short temper hit the end of its abbreviated track. “What? What did I do now? Who’s pissed off at me? What impossible hoops do I need to jump through to fix it?”

  My aunt’s glacial expression cracked just enough for her to raise one eyebrow in disgust at my outburst. “Simmer down, halfling. I just came because I’m worried about you.”

  I let my shock show in my expression. “You did? You are?”

  Myra dropped her tukus into my client chair and a steaming mug appeared between her hands. Celestial warriors are allowed a minimum number of harmless vices. Myra’s biggest vice was coffee, hot and black like her mood. “It’s obvious someone wants you dead, Astra.”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face. Argh! Reruns. “I just had this conversation with someone else, Aunt. I don’t need to have it again with you. I can take care of myself.”

  Myra sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “That is true, Astra. Under normal circumstances, but this is different. You need someone to watch your back.”

  I hated to do it but it was my only shot at conserving the status quo. “I have Flick.”

  Myra grimaced. “Yeah. About that.”

  My eyes widened. “Are you kidding me? They’ve shuffled the coconuts on me again?”

  “Flick just wasn’t working out, Astra. And now that he’s gotten himself embroiled in the mess...”

  I leaned forward. “Mess? Does this have anything to do with his girlfriend?”

  “You know about that?”

  I grinned. Gotcha! “Only that he has one.”

  Myra frowned. “She wasn’t the best choice, unfortunately, but having made it, Flick is determined to make it work.”

  “Do tell.”

  She glared at me. “I didn’t come here to gossip about a fellow guardian, Astra.”

  I sat back, frowning. “No, you came here to tell me that I’ve been pushed to the bottom of the slush pile again.”

  She just shrugged and sipped. “Regardless, until we get you another guardian, you need to surround yourself with protection.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she and Slayer had colluded to work me over. But I knew if I even mentioned his name she’d jump on it. Then I’d be fighting them both off. So I just flung my hands into the air and kept my mouth shut.

  Never an easy thing for me to do.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Does Hell Have Doilies?

  Our heroine sees new rings of Hell, peopled with elder folk,

  Their gnarly hands and rheumy eyes, the devil’s unkind joke.

  I was going over my digital mail and clearing out the televisual messages that had built up over the previous few days when I heard Bob and Ralph in the outer office. A moment later, a head with longish, curly black hair and the most amazing hazel eyes with long lashes popped around the doorframe. “Hey, Astra. How’s it going? You okay?”

  I smiled at Ralph. He and Bob had gone out of their way since I’d joined them, making sure I was safe and comfortable. It might have been because I’d saved Ralph’s life once when Satan lowered a magic veil over the Earth, which turned ordinary humans into magic-hating, evil zombies. Ralph had found himself on the wrong side of a mob and had gotten pretty severely beaten. But the truth was that Ralph and Bob were just really nice guys and I considered them my friends.

  “I’ve had a pretty constant stream of people popping in today to ask me that very same question. If nothing else, the chances of a bad guy managing to work his way between the visits of my family and friends is very small.” I softened the complaint with a grin.

  Ralph laughed. “Got it. If you need us...”

  “I’ll scream at the top of my lungs.”

  He lifted a large hand in my direction and turned away.

  I went back to work.

  A moment later I heard a sound at my door and looked up to find Bob staring at me. He was shorter than Ralph, with sandy-brown hair and non-descript brown eyes. He stood there with his hands in his pockets. Although Bob was only about five foot ten, he was built like an enforcer, with bulky muscles and a thick neck. I knew from seeing him in action that he could be deadly in either his human or wolf forms.

  My teeth grinding together, I smiled. “Hey, Bob.”

  He leaned against the doorframe. “How are things, Astra?”

  I nodded and stood, giving up trying to get anything done. “Things are good, Bob. How about the three of us hit the Devil’s Den? I feel the need to beat your ass in jet pool.”

  Bob’s pleasant face spread in a grin. “You can try to beat me, but I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on the outcome. Unless you’re betting on me.”

  I headed for the door, feeling better already. “In your dreams, bud. You’re goin’ down.”

  Bob snickered. I draped an arm over his shoulders and we turned away from the door. We both looked around when we heard Ralph talking to someone in the foyer area.

  His back bowed to minimize his height. Ralph was talking to a tiny, elderly woman. He held one of her gnarly hands in both of his own massive paws and was nodding kindly, obviously listening carefully to everything she was saying.

  “Looks like you have a new client,” I told Bob.

  We approached Ralph and, as we neared, I heard him say. “Don’t worry a thing about your husband, Mx. Diamon. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise you.”

  “Hello.” Bob held his hand out to the elderly client, a gentle smile on his face. “I’m Bob Gleason.”

  She smiled and let him clasp her hand. I watched Bob’s face carefully. I’d recently learned that he was an empath. He could read the emotions and map the electrical signatures of some races. He was particularly good with humans. Like a ripple across still water in a soft breeze, Bob’s non-threatening face showed a very brief disturbance, which I would have missed if I hadn’t been watching closely. He quickly smoothed it over and offered the old woman a smile.

  His momentary blip made me focus my extra sight on the woman. Her aura was human. almost too human. It was thick and opaque, with smooth edges and very few nicks or holes in it. Unusual. But not unprecedented. It just meant that the woman had no magic at all in her gene pool. She was pure, unadulterated human. Or she was damn good at manufacturing auras. I knew that some shapeshifters were able to create fake auras.

  “This is Mx. Phelps. She occasionally works with us.” Ralph placed a hand on my shoulder. “Astra, this is Mx. Diamon. Her husband has apparently been abducted by unknown magical beings and she’s come to us to help her find him.”

  Lacking my office mates’ people skills, I grimaced at the woman in my inimitable fashion and asked. “Demons?”

  Her rheumy eyes flashed with something that I couldn’t read before she gav
e me a tremulous smile. Her voice, when she spoke, warbled and was thick with tears. “I don’t know what took him, dear. That’s why I came to you people.”

  Smack down. Delivered in a wobbly old lady voice.

  Alrighty then. No wonder old ladies gave me the creeps. They’re really just demons in wrinkly skin. “But you don’t believe he was abducted by humans?”

  She shook her head and began to vibrate alarmingly, from her tiny feet to the top of her small, blue-haired head. My first thought was that she was possessed.

  Fortunately, Ralph understood elderly humans better than I did and figured out that she was probably just scared and overcome with grief. “Let’s have a seat, shall we, Mx. Diamon?” He took the old woman’s arm and helped her to a chair. He gave Bob and I the look that said, sit down and help me get the facts.

  So we sat.

  “Tell us exactly what happened, Mx. Diamon.” Bob’s voice was gentle with persuasion and the old woman responded nicely.

  “We were just sitting in our little house, drinking our hot tea. Henry so loves that new Martian blend, Little Green Tea Leaves. It has a sweet undertone that he appreciates. It’s really hard to get though, even on the underground market. And the cost...”

  “What happened next, Mx. Diamon?”

  She blinked, sucked in her wrinkly cheeks, and glanced at me, as if it was my fault Ralph had interrupted her.

  I gave her my best, wide-eyed innocent look. She gasped and clutched her chest. Damn. I really needed to work on that one. Ralph glared at me and I shrugged.

  “Go on, please.” Bob encouraged.

  “Well, as I was saying, we were just drinking our tea. And then the air behind Henry started to kind of pulse and sparkle and something appeared.” The old woman’s voice shook at the memory and one gnarled hand lifted to her mouth. She started to vibrate again. When she spoke her voice was muffled behind those wrinkled fingers. “This thing opened its beak and spit out something that glowed purple. It looked slimy and it spread all over Henry before he could even make a surprised noise. Then he just...disappeared. Tea cup and all.” She sobbed and dug in her little clutch bag for tear-drying spray.