by Jenna Black
I could have used the money, but I didn’t feel right charging her when Adam was going to do all the work. “No need for that. If I end up performing a legal exorcism for you, you can pay me then. Meanwhile, can I have your assurance that you and your husband won’t try anything illegal while I’m looking into this for you?”
She hesitated, then agreed with a nod. “All right. I appreciate your help, and I’m sorry I asked you to risk yourself like that.”
No, she wasn’t, but I couldn’t entirely blame her, so I accepted the apology.
CHAPTER 2
I put off calling Adam for so long that when I finally talked to him it was nearly six, and he invited me to come discuss the case over dinner. Like Pavlov’s dog, I began drooling at the suggestion. Adam’s boyfriend, Dominic, is very possibly the world’s best cook, and I found it almost impossible to turn down a chance to sample his wares, despite the unpleasantness a visit to Adam’s house would likely entail.
Adam just loves making me uncomfortable. Enduring public displays of affection and sexual innuendo was the price I’d have to pay for the free meal, but when I considered the contents of my own kitchen, temptation overwhelmed me.
I arrived at Adam’s house at about six-thirty. As soon as he answered the door, I knew it was going to be one of those nights, the kind that made me regret letting my stomach make decisions for me. His eyes were dilated with excitement, and he was slightly short of breath, which told me my arrival had interrupted something I didn’t want to know about. Of course, he’d known I was on my way, so my interruption wasn’t exactly an accident.
He smiled his typical wolfish smile, and I hoped I wasn’t blushing already.
“Come in,” he said, stepping aside to let me through the door.
I might have backed out if I hadn’t caught the scents from the kitchen at just that moment. My stomach gurgled loudly, and like a zombie I followed that scent, Adam close behind me as if to block my escape.
Dominic is a seriously good-looking guy, tall and olive-skinned, with a sculpted body and meltingly warm eyes. Despite his sexual orientation, he exudes masculinity even when standing over a hot stove. Tonight, he was wearing a chef’s apron, which I’d never seen him do before, and he greeted me with a wave of his hand rather than turning to face me.
I suspected immediately he was hiding a boner, and my cheeks flushed. They flushed even deeper when I saw the paddle Adam must have set carelessly on the counter when he went to open the door.
Yeah, “carelessly” my ass. He loved rubbing my face in the more unconventional aspects of his relationship with Dom.
Adam and Saul, Dominic’s demon, had been lovers, though from what I could tell they hadn’t actually been in love. In a moment of candor, Dom had once told me it had always been him, not Saul, who’d loved Adam, though when Dom had been possessed, he’d only been able to love Adam from afar.
When Saul had been declared rogue after his control snapped during a God’s Wrath attack, I’d been called in to exorcize him. The fact that I’d exorcized Saul hadn’t endeared me to Adam or Dom, but, in my admittedly biased point of view, they were clearly better off without him. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that they were devoted to one another, though I knew that there were aspects of their physical relationship that Adam found less than fully satisfying.
Demons are incorporeal in their own world, and some of them—like Adam and Saul—find all physical sensations, even pain, fascinating. Adam’s fascination, however, was more in the giving than the receiving. When Dominic had been possessed by Saul, Adam could inflict as much damage as he liked, because Saul could heal his host’s body. Saul could also shield Dominic so his host didn’t feel any more pain than he found pleasant. Ever since I’d exorcized Saul, Adam had to be content with what Dominic could tolerate as a human being, and I knew sometimes he missed the thrill.
That didn’t mean he and Dom didn’t have a jolly old time together. And, to my never-ending embarrassment, thoughts of the two of them together really cranked my engine. They were just so incredibly sexy, both of them, and they were so hot for each other I swear they sometimes leaked pheromones.
“I’ll have dinner on the table in just a moment,” Dom said, his back still turned.
As I moved to the kitchen table, which was set for three, I saw that Dom was dishing out jumbo servings of lasagna. Manners prodded me to offer to help him serve, but I knew from experience he wouldn’t let me. The kitchen was his domain, and he wasn’t about to let a culinary barbarian such as myself intrude.
I waited in silence—and hunger—as Dominic brought the plates to the table, then retrieved some aromatic garlic bread from the oven, popping it into a napkin-lined basket. I had to wait even longer as Dominic poured wine for himself and Adam; then he finally removed the apron—it seemed the delay had calmed him—and took his seat.
I dove for the basket of bread. Naturally, it was homemade, and would have been delicious even without the butter, garlic, and spices. I practically moaned in ecstasy when I bit into it.
“Have you ever thought of starting your own restaurant?” I asked with my mouth full.
Dominic had been a firefighter when he’d been possessed, but he’d quit once Saul had been exorcized. He still had all the training and experience from his time with Saul, but because of Saul’s inhuman healing ability, Dom’s experience could very well have led him to take unacceptable risks. I’m pretty sure that it was Dom who’d made the final decision to quit, but I’m also pretty sure his department had encouraged him to get out. I didn’t know how long he’d be happy as a full-time housewife, or whatever exactly he was right now. I knew he’d given up his crappy house in South Philly and moved in with Adam, but I had no idea what his long-term plans were.
“The idea has crossed my mind,” Dominic admitted as he sampled his lasagna and frowned. “Too much oregano,” he muttered under his breath.
That prompted both Adam and me to take a bite, and we both assured Dom it was perfect. He blushed with the praise, but it was well deserved. I wondered how come neither he nor Adam weighed three hundred pounds if they ate like this every night. I kept eating long after I was full, unable to stop myself because it was so delicious.
Unfortunately, pigging out on the lasagna forced me to turn down the homemade cannoli for dessert. I accepted a cup of strong Italian-roast coffee as a consolation prize, then finally got around to telling Adam why I’d contacted him.
He and Dom both listened carefully to my summary of Claudia Brewster’s story, but they were eerily silent afterward. I looked back and forth between the two of them. Adam was giving me a look that said I was pond scum. Dominic was staring at his coffee cup as if it held the secrets of the universe.
Belatedly, I remembered that Dominic—actually, Saul—had been attacked and savagely beaten by God’s Wrath. I supposed it was naive of me to expect Adam and Dominic to have any desire to help one of its members.
The silence grew increasingly painful as the seconds ticked away, and I tried to think how to extricate my foot from my mouth.
“Look, I don’t have any sympathy for this kid,” I said, though strictly speaking that wasn’t true. Considering my own aversions, I did feel sorry for Tommy Brewster being forced to host a demon in his body, no matter how many ideological problems I had with God’s Wrath. “I do have sympathy for his parents, though. Claudia Brewster was so desperate, she tried to hire me to commit what the law thinks of as murder. She had to know she’d be arrested herself, but she was willing to do it anyway to free her son. She didn’t approve of his involvement with God’s Wrath, but sometimes you love your family even if you don’t approve of them.”
Despite rivers of bad blood between myself and my mother, I was pretty sure we still loved each other, at least a little bit. My general state of happiness increased in direct proportion to the distance between us, but I’d have been miserable if something terrible happened to her. That thought immediately led me to thoughts of the terrible t
hing that had happened to my father, and I shut that line of reasoning down in a hurry.
“You have one hell of a nerve,” Adam snarled at me, shifting his chair closer to Dominic and slinging his arm protectively around his lover’s shoulders.
“Don’t, Adam,” Dom said softly, though he leaned into Adam’s embrace. “There’s poetic justice in what happened to this guy, but if this really is a case of unwilling possession, how do we know it’s the only one? Maybe it’s happening more often than we think, and this kid is just the only case weird enough to cause raised eyebrows.”
I hadn’t thought of that myself, but it was a good point. I decided to keep my mouth shut, though. I figured anything I said would just dig the hole deeper, but Dominic might be able to persuade Adam to look into the Brewster case.
Adam scowled. “It’s bullshit anyway. There are too many safeguards in place to believe the guy was unwilling. There’s a reason the police have told the mother they can’t help.”
“And maybe Brewster had some kind of sudden religious conversion and decided it was time to host a demon,” Dom agreed, “but it sounds damned unlikely. No matter what the evidence says, I find it hard to believe he could go from being in God’s Wrath to being a willing host in ten days.”
Adam removed the protective arm from Dom’s shoulders and, after giving me another glare, turned his chair to face his lover. “I find it hard to believe anyone would bother going through this elaborate scheme to possess some low-level God’s Wrath flunky. What would anyone have to gain by it?”
“Well that’s a good question, isn’t it? What would it hurt to do a little unofficial investigation? Maybe look at his registration video, see if you see something that ordinary human beings wouldn’t see. Look into Tommy Brewster’s background, see if there’s some reason the Spirit Society would consider him a threat. After all, it’s beginning to look like most of the Spirit Society are Dougal’s puppets. You never know—this could turn out to be something important.”
Adam gave him a sour look. “That’s a bit of a stretch.” He made a sound between a sigh and a growl. “You really want me to investigate this?”
Dominic thought about that for a minute, then nodded. “Yeah, I do. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s none of our business. But I’d feel more comfortable if I knew for sure.”
Adam turned his sour look on me, but I knew he wouldn’t turn Dominic down, so I met his gaze steadily.
“You’ll owe me one for this,” he said, and his tone of voice sent a shiver down my spine.
I tried to think of something to say, some clever retort, but nothing came to mind. Dominic ended the staring contest by grabbing another cannoli and plunking it on Adam’s plate.
“Here,” Dominic said with a little smile. “Eat this and see if it sweetens your mood. I’ll walk Morgan to the door.” The smile turned impish. “We have unfinished business, remember?”
I forced myself not to glance toward the paddle that still lay on the counter in plain sight. And I tried my best not to visualize what the two of them would do as soon as I was out the door. It didn’t help when Adam picked up the cannoli with his fingers and scooped out some of the creamy filling with his tongue. Dominic and I both blushed, and I hastened out of the kitchen without a parting shot.
CHAPTER 3
I went home after dinner, planning a quiet evening of vegging out in front of the TV. I didn’t have many quiet evenings these days, and the prospect held a surprisingly strong appeal.
Because of my uncomfortably eventful life, I never just strolled into my apartment as if it were a safe haven. Before I unlocked the door, I activated and armed my Taser. Once inside, I did a thorough room-to-room check before allowing myself to relax.
For a while, I’d tried the old trick of putting a length of string between the door and the frame when I went out. Supposedly, if that string was still in place when I returned, it meant no one had opened the door. The problem was I didn’t always remember to put it there, and any time I returned home and didn’t see the string my heart would go into overdrive and I’d conjure the image of hordes of demons invading my apartment. Even when the string was still right where I left it, I found I didn’t feel comfortable until I verified with my own two eyes that I was alone. I always felt vaguely silly when I’d finished my search, but that didn’t stop me from doing it.
Satisfied that there were no bogeymen waiting to kill me, I plopped down on the sofa, grabbed the remote, and tried to turn on the TV. Nothing happened. I’d forgotten the batteries were dead—I’d meant to stop by the store and buy some on my way home.
I was just mustering the enthusiasm to stand up and turn the TV on by hand when a sudden pain stabbed through my eye.
“Ow! Shit!” I pressed at the space between my eye and my nose, where the pain was most intense, but it was gone before I even got my hand to my face.
Lately, this was the only communication I had with Lugh while I was conscious. For a while, during a period of intense stress, I’d been able to hear his voice in my head, but my subconscious had learned how to block him out. I actually preferred the pain in my eye to hearing his voice in my head, which made me feel like a Looney Tune.
“Do we have to do this now?” I complained, and Lugh answered with another stab. I grumbled some more, but figured I might as well get it over with.
Once, when the bad guys had been about to burn me at the stake, I’d voluntarily let Lugh take control of my body to save the day. It had taken a monumental effort, and though he’d ceded control back to me afterward, the experience had left me shaken to the core. Recently, when I’d desperately needed to let him in, I’d found myself unable to do it. Lugh had eventually managed to take control, but by then I very much didn’t want him to.
I’d been seriously pissed at him for taking control of my body without my permission, and he’d promised me he’d never do it again—on one condition: that I learn how to let him in voluntarily when the situation warranted.
To that end, I dutifully tried once a night to let myself cede control to him. So far, I hadn’t succeeded, and I had a sinking feeling that wasn’t going to change. I’m a control freak by nature, and letting a demon—even one as benevolent as Lugh—take control of my body was my worst nightmare come true.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to relax enough to have a hope, however slim, of success. My muscles remained tight, and I was twitchy enough to have trouble keeping my eyes closed, so I got up and turned out all the lights, then reclined on my uncomfortable couch in hopes that that would be more relaxing.
I was still tense, and I noticed I was grinding my teeth. I huffed out a deep breath, then started on the litany of relaxation exercises Lugh had taught me. As usual, my mind kept running on its damn gerbil wheel, analyzing my body’s responses instead of letting go and drifting like it was supposed to. I thought I felt a pulse of frustration that wasn’t my own, but it was hard to be sure.
I tried my best for a half hour, but I didn’t even manage to get myself relaxed, much less let Lugh take control. He gave me another stab of pain when I gave up, but he had to sense how pointless it would have been to keep trying, so he let me be after that.
I didn’t go to bed until well after midnight, not because I wasn’t tired, but because I knew Lugh was going to have some words for me tonight and I wanted to put it off as long as possible. It was only when I almost nodded off on the couch that I decided it was time to face the music. If I was going to fall asleep and dream of Lugh, I’d rather do it in the comfort of my bed.
Sure enough, the moment I lost consciousness, I awakened in Lugh’s imaginary living room. I found myself reclining into the butter-soft embrace of a leather sofa, my bare feet propped in Lugh’s lap as he sat facing me on the matching ottoman.
I opened my mouth to protest the intimacy of the position, but at the same instant, he ran a strong, warm thumb up the center of my right foot. The pressure was just right, and I bit my tongue to suppress a moan
as my toes curled in pleasure.
Lugh’s hair was unbound tonight, the long, raven’s wing tresses partially hiding his face, but I saw one corner of his mouth turn up with satisfied amusement. The bastard always knows exactly what buttons to push.
Before I could get pissy about it, he cupped my foot in both hands, using his thumbs to search out each knot of tension and soothe it away. I decided that protesting something that felt this good was the height of stupidity, so I closed my eyes and let myself enjoy the sensations.
I was warm and mellow when he’d finished with my right foot, and I was practically putty in his hands when he’d finished the left. Then he slid his hands up my calf, kneading the muscles. It felt damn good, but I couldn’t help opening my eyes and seeing that the sweatpants I’d been wearing when the dream began had disappeared, and I was dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and panties.
My feet were still in his lap, so I instinctively jammed my heel into his crotch to discourage his now wandering hands. Of course, since his body was just an illusion, he wasn’t even slightly discouraged. In fact, he closed his thighs tightly around my foot, holding it in place and pressing his erection against it. I had to suppress a shudder. I’ve got big feet for a woman, and his hard-on stretched from my heel to my toes.
“Unless you’re auditioning for a role as a porn star, you might want to consider a more realistic size,” I quipped, though my voice came out breathless.
He laughed, a sound as delicious as the darkest chocolate. “The advantage of dreams is they are not slaves to reality.”
I tried to pull my trapped foot away, but I wasn’t going anywhere unless he wanted me to. This was one of the reasons I hadn’t particularly wanted to see him tonight—his flirting was getting progressively more aggressive. And harder to resist.
“Will you knock it off, already? I’m not in the mood to play games.”
He regarded me intensely, cocking his head as he thought. Then he released my foot, and my sweatpants reappeared. “No, I suppose you’re not,” he conceded. Score one for me!
