He didn’t trust himself to do any better now, in the light of day. Well, he was going to have to try.
When he spoke two words of a greeting, she fell. He watched her tumble as if in slow motion, landing catlike on her feet and glaring at him with those unforgettable eyes of hers.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, rising to her feet instantaneously.
“I came to pick up Nick. I had no idea you were his yoga teacher,” Julian lied smoothly. The lie was thinner than the yoga top that stretched over her luscious curves, but it gave him such satisfaction to see her eyes narrow with annoyance.
Beside her, Nick popped to his feet. “Good to see you.”
“He’s not finished yet,” she said, unwilling to retract her claws from the clueless human.
He’s mine, Julian thought as he smiled down at her. You invaded my territory last night, and now it’s pay-back time.
Stubborn, she dug in deeper. “He needs to rest before he leaves. Nick, please take sivasana for fifteen minutes.”
Sivasana. A bullshit name for lying on the floor, Julian almost said aloud. But he refrained. It wouldn’t do to pick a fight in front of Nick. Not yet. Nick lay down complacently and the angel fussed around the room, covering him with a blanket in a gesture that was so very caring.
“Namaste,” she said, in a tone of voice one might use to say good-night to a small child.
“Namaste,” Nick murmured back.
How sweet. Julian wanted to vomit.
What disturbed him even more was that it looked like yoga was working for Nick. Here in the studio, the actor looked younger and happier than he had last night, the hard set of his drug-frenzied face smoothed away in his post-yoga sprawl. If he was this relaxed after a bender of a night—Julian had seen him finally crumple into a cab at around five o’clock in the morning—what would yoga do for him on a regular basis? Julian didn’t like it one bit. Yoga went against everything he believed in. He’d always written it off as an exercise craze, targeted primarily to weak-minded women who fell for Eastern spirituality imported as a commodity and turned into a trendy sport.
But now more than ever, it seemed imperative he destroy Serena immediately.
He would find a chink in that virtuous armor of hers. He would work his way in and set about seducing her, taking her down with her own desire. In Julian’s vast experience, a little corruption went a long way. She was so tightly wound, it wouldn’t take much. All he would have to do was give her a little push. She would fall the rest of the way herself.
She sat down in a lotus position, watching over Nick as he lay on the floor. Julian waited. He would wait all day if he had to. Within minutes, the young actor was snoring loudly. He’d fallen asleep in a patch of sunlight slanting in through the large windows.
She got up, motioned for Julian to follow.
In the reception area, she flicked on an electric kettle. While she made tea, he pretended to peruse through the racks of books and yoga clothes displayed for sale. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her pour the boiled water into a mug. It was a simple gesture, but she managed to perform even that task with supple grace.
“Chai?” she offered.
He grinned. “Got anything stronger?” In actual fact, as much as he plied others with alcohol, he rarely touched it himself. He was in the business of sending people to hell, not ending up there himself. Long ago, he’d realized that he needed a clear head to control the orchestrated mayhem that happened on a nightly basis at Devil’s Paradise, as well as overseeing operations at his other clubs. But she didn’t need to know that.
“Drink some,” she said. “It’ll be good for you.”
“Thanks, but no. I’ve had enough goodness for one day.” He felt an overwhelming need to knock that goody-goody halo of hers askew. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, radiating smugness into the core of him. Gesturing to a large statue of a six-armed goddess poised on a window ledge, he said, “Isn’t that sacrilege? Won’t your god strike you down for worshipping false idols?”
“I happen to be a multi-faith angel,” she said, straightening defensively, those blue eyes of hers tracking him as he paced around the lounge. “All major religions share the same basic principles.”
As she talked, he picked up a book with a photograph of a man with his leg behind his head, skimmed through the pictures inside. Ridiculous what people today fell for. Did they think they were going to reach enlightenment just by twisting their bodies into pretzel shapes? He set the book back on the shelf.
“That’s a bit naive. There are vast differences between religions,” he said, frowning.
“If we focused more on what people have in common and less on our differences, the world would be a better place.”
“Who wants it to be a better place?”
She lifted her chin, stared up at him with those magnificent blue eyes. “I do.”
A sound broke from his throat, a laugh half-choked by bitterness. “What makes you think your side will win?” He stepped toward her. “Do you have any secret weapons we don’t know about?” he mocked. And took another step. “You think you’re any match for me?” He stood over her, looking down into the fiery blue blaze of her eyes.
“I know I am.” She stared back, defiant. Obstinate. Beautiful.
“How do you know?” he challenged. “How can you be sure that your little Company of Amateurs is going to come out on top?”
Her answer died in a little gasp of protest as he snaked an arm around her waist. Pulled her to him. Kissed her. As she had the other night, she squirmed in his embrace. He held her, kept the pressure of his lips on hers. And then a miracle happened. She kissed him back, this time of her own accord, not out of coercion or force.
In the past two centuries, he’d lost count of the number of women he’d kissed. He’d kissed servant girls and crown princesses alike. Catholic nuns and courtesans. He’d kissed women at the top of the Eiffel Tower, in the secret enclaves of a Saudi sultan’s harem, in London bordellos, in the open market in Marrakech and on the beaches of Saint-Tropez. Not one of those kisses was as memorable as this one.
There was a moment, when her lips first brushed against his, that he heard that same whoosh of unfurling wings he had heard when he’d touched her last night. This time, he knew it was no illusion. It pricked at his conscience for a moment—kissing an angel was surely some kind of sin, one more to add to the vast heap he’d accumulated. But then the kiss deepened and all notion of sin fled from his mind.
It seemed to him that the entire universe had contracted into this single, perfect moment. Past and future seemed to disappear in the sweetness of the kiss. There was only the present, the contact of their lips and the heat of her body calling to his.
He ached, wanting to pull her nearer. His cock pulsed, engorged and ready. He held himself back, knowing that to push too hard would be to lose her. With a gentleness that came from his deepest reserves of discipline, he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. They parted, and he plunged his tongue into her mouth, exploring with a tenderness he never knew was possible.
It was the sweetest kiss of his life.
He didn’t know how long they stood there, how long he reveled in the sensation of holding her to him, of feeling her woman’s body melting against the hard planes of his maleness. It might have been two minutes; it felt like two hours. He had no idea what, after that disastrous interaction in the practice room, had made her relent. All he knew was that the kiss ended too abruptly when Nick’s voice pierced his consciousness.
“Serena? Julian?” Nick’s voice drifted into the lounge.
Julian released her. They leaped apart like two teenagers caught necking behind the school bleachers.
“How long was I out?” Nick wandered out of the practice room, still blinking the sleep out of his eyes.
Serena had the dewy glow of a well-kissed woman, but her smile was as flat and wooden as the countertop she gripped for support. “Not long.
Your body needed to recover. You’ll start detoxing soon. As long as you take it easy on the hard stuff.”
Nick grinned. “Thanks, Serena.” He gazed at her with an infatuated devotion that made her smile soften into something genuine. It made Julian sick. Watching the two of them positively shining at each other, he wondered fleetingly whether he would ever be able to make her smile like that.
“Let’s go, Nick,” Julian said gruffly. “There’s something I want to show you at the club.”
“At eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning?” Nick asked, his gaze flickering to the angel.
It was Julian’s turn to grin. Detox be damned. As far as he was concerned, a few shots of tequila and a couple of strippers could cure whatever ailed a man, no matter what time of day it was.
They stood poised in the classic triangular configuration Julian knew so well: demon on one side, angel on the other, unwitting human in the middle. All it took to tip the balance was for Julian to clap a proprietary hand on Nick’s shoulder.
“Until we meet again,” Julian said to Serena, slipping her a wink.
With that, he swept Nick out of the studio, leaving her stunned and flushed, standing by the front desk of the yoga studio, gripping her mug of tea.
Serena arrived late for the Company’s weekly meeting. She sprinted through the lobby of her unit’s headquarters, which doubled as a legal-aid clinic during working hours. Banged on the locked doors of the boardroom, slinking in when Arielle opened them. The thirty other members of the unit, angels of every race and color, watched her as she crossed the room.
Do they know about Julian?
She collapsed into the empty chair beside Meredith. Like her roommate, many of the other angels also had psychic abilities. Some of the older ones were adept at reading minds, able to perceive minute details stored in people’s memories. Serena glanced quickly at their faces, wondering who suspected what.
From the head of the boardroom table, Arielle smiled at Serena. “We were just going over the weekly status reports,” she said, consulting her file. “I see you were assigned to Nick Ramirez’s case three weeks ago. Why don’t you share with us what you’ve accomplished so far, Serena?”
I kissed a demon. Twice.
Thirty pairs of jewel-bright eyes swiveled to Serena. Some of those brilliant stares held the recognition of her own thoughts, her own remorse reflected back at her. It was impossible to hide anything from the Company. Serena opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Arielle’s question hung in the air.
The Company waited.
In the air-conditioned room, a rivulet of sweat dripped down Serena’s forehead. Finally she said, “I ran into Julian Ascher.”
A collective gasp went around the room, and the angels began murmuring to each other. Arielle’s face remained composed, but her lips twitched into an almost imperceptible frown. “Please carry on amongst yourselves,” the supervisor said. “Serena, I’d like to see you in my office. Alone.”
“Now?” Serena’s voice came out in a tiny squeak.
Silence fell.
Never before had Arielle halted a Company meeting.
“Good luck,” Meredith whispered, her forehead wrinkling in sympathy.
Alone with Arielle in her office, Serena talked without daring to look at the supervisor’s face. The words seemed so sordid as they tumbled out of Serena’s mouth. Heat flooded her face. Arielle would never understand. Her life was dedicated to the Company and the legal-aid clinic, and she ran both with a brisk efficiency that did not tolerate nonsense. Here in her modestly furnished office, Arielle’s perfectly coiffed hair glowed halo-bright in the afternoon sun flooding in through the windows.
But when Serena finally glanced up, what she saw in the supervisor’s eyes was compassion, not judgment.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Serena,” Arielle said, sitting straight upright with her hands folded neatly on top of Serena’s closed file. “You did your best to perform your duty. Nick was supposed to be an easy assignment, suitable for a novice angel. The situation has become more complicated now that Julian Ascher has entered the picture.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Serena asked quietly.
“Continue to do your job. But keep in mind that you are not to sacrifice yourself again. I would have thought that with your one-year mark approaching, you would remember how tragically your human life ended.”
Serena disagreed. By pulling that family out of the car, she’d saved three lives by giving up her own. To her, the simple math indicated that she’d done the right thing. However, one look at Arielle’s face told her not to push that point.
“We’ve discussed this many times before,” Arielle said. “Whatever happened during your human life, self-sacrifice is not part of your current job description. You would be of no use to the Company or your future Assignees if you martyr yourself for the soul of this one man.”
“But—”
“Once is enough,” Arielle said firmly. “Nick Ramirez has choices, and he’s bringing this suffering on himself. You are doing your best to guide him in the right direction.”
Serena dropped her gaze again, waiting until the lecture was finished.
“You’re a Guardian now,” the supervisor continued. “You have very clear instructions and a very clear goal. If you succeed at offering the correct guidance to your Assignees, you will continue to evolve through the ranks of angels. One day you will receive your wings. Regardless of the choices your Assignees make for themselves. Do not give in to this demon, even if it means losing Nick’s soul.”
“What about kissing Julian? Aren’t there…consequences?” Serena asked quietly.
Arielle shrugged. “There’s no use fretting over it. You’re a fledgling angel. Sometimes mistakes happen. You’re not perfect. Yet.” She smiled. “But be careful around Julian Ascher. He has the power to destroy you. He could have your soul in eternal damnation if something terrible happens.”
“Like what?” Serena wondered aloud. She couldn’t bring herself to say what was really on her mind: Would sleeping with a demon automatically get you sent to hell?
After a pause, Arielle said, “It would depend on the circumstances. But love heals all. If you keep love in your heart, you will always be safe.” The supervisor scribbled some notes on Serena’s file, then shuffled it closed and set it neatly to one side.
Serena sighed inwardly. “What circumstances?”
“I really wouldn’t worry about that now,” Arielle said, cutting off the question with a tranquil smile. “If you do find yourself in questionable circumstances, just avoid promising him anything. If you do, that promise must be honored. As you know, that is one of the most important rules governing the interactions between angels and demons. But otherwise, trust your intuition. You’ll know what to do.”
Something was not quite right here. Arielle usually made herself clear, but today she was being deliberately vague. In any case, Arielle shut Serena’s file into a drawer. If Serena wanted answers, it didn’t seem like she was going to get any today. Yet, there was one more thing she had to ask. Before she got up to leave, she said, “Why didn’t you warn me about him?”
Arielle looked up, surprise glinting in her clear blue eyes. “What?”
“Why did you warn Meredith about Julian, but you didn’t warn me?”
For a sliver of a second, a flicker of covert knowledge glittered in her gaze. She blinked, and it was gone. “Again, I wouldn’t spend time worrying about that, Serena. You may go now.”
Arielle smiled placidly and folded her hands on the desk, signaling that the conversation was unequivocally over. Serena knew better than to argue. But as she got up to leave, she wondered exactly what Arielle was hiding, and why.
Young angels were always so impressionable. The girl was remarkably like herself at that age, Arielle thought as she closed Serena’s file. Now she picked up another file. It was Arielle’s own file. There, under Arielle’s name was written the name of her first Assigne
e.
Julian Ascher.
Two centuries ago, Arielle had been assigned to Julian when she’d been a fledgling Guardian herself. When he’d still been human. She’d been fighting for his soul ever since. Julian himself had never known, never suspected that he ever had a Guardian. He had refused to see the signs. Had thwarted all previous attempts to convert him. Now, the Company kept his activities under careful surveillance. And Julian had spent these past two hundred years wreaking havoc and amassing power.
Arielle’s mandate was to stop him. This time, her secret weapon against Julian was Serena.
I knew this moment would come. Julian has taken the bait, Arielle thought. Yes, Serena had been assigned to guard Nick because it was inevitable that she would come into contact with Julian.
The Archdemon’s major weakness was women—any fool could see that. And Serena seemed as though she had been tailor-made for him. Young, beautiful, so full of the vibrancy that Julian clearly craved. What more could a demon want? He was already hooked. And once Julian got his claws into a girl, he would not back down until…
Arielle leaned back in her desk chair and massaged her temples, willing herself not to think about the worst that could happen. Exposing a young angel to such dangerous forces was a risk, to be sure. But there was too much at stake. Julian’s new nightclub, Devil’s Ecstasy, would open in two weeks. When it did, it would draw thousands of people every night. Massive crowds would be exposed to temptation and corruption at Julian’s whim. His influence was expanding at a terrifying rate.
He was becoming invincible.
Serena must succeed in her true mission. To help Julian experience love. She must not suspect the nature of that mission until it was accomplished. To make Julian fall in love, the object of his love must be genuine and true.
Where Demons Fear to Tread Page 5
