“There you go. You must make your choice based on those criteria.” Caspian paused his pacing in the small circle of decayed bone. He looked pleased with himself. “But I can assure you, it will be more than just a few minutes.”
“Of discomfort?”
“Whatever.” Now he looked annoyed. “Stop impugning my manhood or I will not be nice to you when you let me out of this circle.”
“Who says I’m letting you out? How stupid do you think I am?”
He sighed. “You have to let me out to fulfill both ends of the bargain. I can’t shag you senseless if I’m in here, now, can I? Nor can I wreak misery and despair upon your chosen victim.”
Grace hadn’t thought about that, really. The specifics hadn’t been mentioned in any of the books she’d read.
“You can’t just, you know . . .” She waved her hand in the air.
“No, I can’t ‘just,’ ” he sneered, “ ‘you know,’ ” and waved his arms in a similarly wild but mocking gesture. “I’m a hands-on kind of guy. I’ve gotta make sure it goes as intended.”
“Why don’t I trust you?” Grace asked sarcastically.
“I don’t know. You’re the first. I have a very honest face.” Caspian winked.
She snorted. “My ass.”
“Yes, it’s nice. What would you like me to do with it?”
“Nothing!” He’d actually sounded sincere. “Not a damn thing. I want you to—”
“Let me remind you, we still need to sign the contract. That was one of your stipulations. I wouldn’t feel right beginning without it,” he interrupted.
“Fine. Get the damn thing already.”
She experienced a moment of contrition. What had she just agreed to—besides possibly life-threatening or, alternately, mind-blowing sex? Either way, the possibilities were . . .
He produced something from his sleeve with a grand flourish reminiscent of the great turn-of-the-century showman magicians. His hands were probably slicker, quicker . . . Whatever.
The parchment unrolled of its own volition; again, this appeared to be orchestrated for the show. With his other diabolically elegant hand, Caspian produced a black quill that appeared to be made from a raven’s wing. The nib was wickedly sharp and bright. Like a razor. Well, how else was she going to sign a contract in blood?
Grace eyed the parchment carefully, her gaze going from it to the quill, to the ridiculously pleased look on the demon’s face. She wasn’t sure that sat well with her. He was looking way too self-impressed. She needed to read that contract carefully. Carefully, indeed.
Again, Grace contemplated what she was getting herself into. At the time she did the research, the cost hadn’t mattered—only that she pay Michael back in spades for what he’d done to her, because she was the kind of girl who would cut off her nose to spite her face. A contract with a Crown Prince of Hell seemed just her bad-girl speed. Now she had a feeling she would live to regret it.
Or die to regret it, for that matter. Of course, where Michael was involved, she’d exhausted all of her other options.
She read the scrolling and calligraphic script of the contract, thankful that it was surprisingly to the point. But that gave her another worry: If Caspian wasn’t trying to trick her with legal language, there had to be another angle.
Before she could think any more about it, Grace pushed the nub into her thumb. “Goddamn it!” she shrieked. “That hurts.”
“Um, hello, little girl? You’re the one that demanded the contract be signed in blood, not I.”
“Whatever, demon,” she hissed. “Fork the thing over.”
He rolled up the parchment and thrust it toward her. Grace couldn’t help but realize how very phallic the action was, presenting the scroll as if he were going to impale her with its long, tumescent shape. The demon himself was puffed up with a certain pride and watched her with a weighted expectation she’d seen on the faces of previous lovers when they’d first exposed their bodies to her view.
She scribbled her name on the line, then handed back the quill. He signed as well, and did some fancy finger-dancing before making the scroll disappear back into thin air.
“That it?” Grace asked.
Caspian looked offended. “Obviously not.”
“With the contract.”
“Not exactly. You need to break the circle to let me out.”
“I’m still not feeling good about that.”
Caspian sighed. “Is this going to be an encounter session where we talk about feelings and your childhood, or a summoning?”
“Fine,” Grace snapped, and she wiped her foot across the part of the circle closest to her, smearing the dust.
“Nuh-uh.” He shook his head. “It all needs to go.”
Grace was annoyed. “Why does the book call for the bone dust to start with, if I’m just going to break the circle?”
“Uh, to keep me trapped until you get what you want?”
“I know that, smart guy. But, I mean, why does it have to be something I’d likely have to kill for if it’s not vital to keeping your presence on this plane?”
Caspian grinned. “Demon-summoning is a gateway sin. It leads to other sins, like murder for bone dust. It’s a slippery slope, sugar.”
“Don’t call me ‘sugar.’ ”
“Then get to business. It’s not like I have eternity to sit here and verbally spar with you.”
She glowered at him.
“Not to say you aren’t lovely just standing there, but that only makes our other activities more pressing.”
Grace swallowed hard as he cocked his hips at a rakish angle. “You mean you want that part now?”
“When did you think I was going to want it?”
She sighed heavily. “Now, I suppose.”
He motioned for her to continue wiping the dust away, and she obliged him. When she finished, he just stood there, like he couldn’t believe she’d actually broken the circle. That couldn’t be good. Not at all. She backed up a few steps.
“I’m not going to chase you,” he said.
“Well, I’m not going to come to you.”
“Your choice. It was in the contract. You don’t fulfill your end, I don’t fulfill mine. Easy, really.”
“Just sex? It can’t be that easy.”
His eyes twinkled—or blazed. “I assure you it is.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a demon.”
He shrugged. “We get bored. And you’re hot. That’s it, really. I have my share of souls, locks of granny’s hair, and still-beating hearts. This is a better deal. It’s something I want more. You’d be surprised how horny a demon can get.”
“Uh-huh.” Grace still didn’t believe him that it would be this easy, but what choice did she have? If she wanted this thing done, she’d have to sleep with him. After all of her blabbing to Michael about how she was going to make him pay, well . . . there was just no option anymore. It had been four years. She’d waited four long years and gotten nothing, so this was her only recourse.
She tentatively stepped toward Caspian. He really was good looking, considering he was a demon. Of course, who knew what he was like under the skin? He could be all scaly and snaggletoothed. But, hell. What did she care? This had to be done. She just wouldn’t think about it.
Grace took a deep breath and began peeling her nightgown off her shoulders.
“No, no. And no.” Caspian shook his head. “That’s not going to work.”
Grace blew out a puff of breath, which caused her fringe of hair to flutter against her forehead, almost as if even it was exasperated with the ordeal. “What, then? I don’t see how you can shag me properly—or get shagged for that matter—if I’m not naked.”
He rolled his eyes and she found herself staring at those sinfully long lashes. “Well, yes. But no to the oh-so dramatic and put-upon removal of said garments. This is supposed to be fun.”
“For you, maybe. I didn’t conjure a demon b
ecause I can’t get laid.”
Caspian took another step forward, and she took another step back.
“This isn’t going to work, Daughter of Eve, if you keep backing away from me. Come here. Or do not. I have pressing business.” He glanced grumpily away.
For all that he was a demon, a Crown Prince of Hell, in fact, Grace was no longer afraid. Though, perhaps she should have been. If she’d had the common sense God gave a housefly, she would have been quaking in her fuzzy little slippers. She took a step toward him.
“That’s better.”
Grace took another step, but as his grin got wider she paused.
“I’m really not used to working so hard.”
“What, like, I should fall over on my back like a turtle? Lie flailing and waiting for my doom?” She snorted again, but was now very close.
“Yes. Usually that’s how it works. Though it’s hardly ‘doom.’ Is there something in my teeth?” He bared them at her, a scintillating smile. “No? Then what’s the problem? The sulfur smell will wash out of your hair, I promise.”
“I’m really not relishing the thought of going to Hell for this.”
He stretched out one of those long, elegant fingers and let one of her dark curls wrap itself around the digit. Fingering the texture, he murmured, “Like silk.” And when he pressed his lips to her cheek, it was anything but platonic.
He shook his head. “You won’t go to Hell, silly witch. Not unless this becomes a habit, you know—the summoning.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth, his tongue darting out across the edge of her lip. “You have righteousness in your heart, do you not?”
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” she mumbled.
He filled his hand with her breast through the thin material of her nightgown. His tongue pushed past her lips, invading her very senses as if she already belonged to him. “Ah, like honey,” he said.
She supposed it would have been fitting if he tasted like sulfur. It would be just what she deserved, but he didn’t. He tasted like innocence, like childhood summers hiding in tall grasses after the rains, and there was something else that Grace just couldn’t put her finger on—an intangible that made the feeling of innocence seem all the more real. Which, of course, it couldn’t be. He was a demon, after all.
Grace pushed him away.
“Look here.” He made a frustrated sound. “I don’t usually put forth this much effort, but I like you.” Her vision of Caspian shimmered before her eyes and his features softened. His generous mouth, the hard planes of his angular jaw, everything became smoother. Those beautiful hands became even more slender, feminine. In fact, his deliciously broad chest was now—
It was wrong. That was the only description she could manage. Grace was watching it happen right before her eyes, yet somehow it was still amazingly unreal. Unnatural. Caspian was becoming a woman.
“No, no. Stop that! What are you doing?” Grace sounded to herself much like one of those yipping, little ankle-biter dogs. If Caspian didn’t knock off this stunt directly, she was probably going to start bouncing around like one as well.
“I figured,” he/she began in a sultry voice, “that my shape must be the problem. I’ve never had a non-virgin be as reluctant as your most desirable self. . . .”
His features realigned and he was again devastatingly handsome and male, the bastard. As a woman he’d been beautiful. It was unfair. Was it too much to hope for that the creature had known a day of ugly, ever?
Well, of course, there was the fact that he lived in Hell. That had to suck.
With that thought in mind, she sucked in a deep gulp of air and walked with stiff shoulders into Caspian’s arms, which were really quite nice, if she were honest. And unfortunately, she was. She was always honest. That was how her dear sweet granny Seraphim had raised her. There were some people who believed that her granny wasn’t really dead, that she was the Baba Yaga herself—an immortal witch more powerful than any who’d ever walked the earth. But that was crap. Grace had sobbed at her funeral and watched as the last bit of dirt had covered her coffin and taken Seraphim away from her forever.
She mentally sighed. Oh, Gran. Grace missed her so much.
“Okay, chickadee. I need you to not be thinking about your grandmother while I’m plowing your field, if you know what I mean.”
“Get out of my head!” Grace demanded. “We didn’t agree on any Vulcan Mind Meld, buddy.”
“I can’t help it. You think loud. Not to mention you weren’t forthcoming with pertinent information—like your name. That’s what you get when you leave a demon to his own devices, Grace.” He tested her name on his tongue, a first bite of the myriad confections he’d stolen from her mind.
“Oh, so it couldn’t be that you’re just nosy? Rude?” She shrugged her shoulders beneath the heat of his palms. When she got no response, she continued. “Uncouth? Pretentious? Invas—”
If he hadn’t kissed her then, she would have continued to spew insults, so perhaps it was self-preservation on his part. Though, he’d already said that he wanted her. But . . . how many lips had his touched? How many places had he put the tongue that was now stroking her bottom lip, for that matter? The thought made her stomach a little queasy. Maybe more than just a little.
Those elegantly strong hands splayed across her waist and pulled her hard against him. His defined body was taut, his skin hot and seeming to beg for her touch . . . To Grace’s chagrin, all of the thoughts in her head seemed to leak out of her ear and onto the floor. Ah, well, she had always been a fool for broad shoulders, and who could blame her? She sighed into his mouth and realized she might as well just enjoy herself. It’s not like this was a sin. Nowhere in the Book did it say, “Thou Shalt Not Shag Angels, Be They Fallen or Otherwise.”
She tangled his hair in her fist and, while it was like silk, what gave her the most pleasure wasn’t the texture but knowing his coiffure wasn’t perfect anymore. She grinned as her hands slid down to his shoulders, and she found her fingers sliding beneath his greatcoat and pushing it off.
“That’s much better,” he said.
“Shut up, or this isn’t going to work.” She was still fighting the brocade and velvet of his coat.
“Oh, it will work. I promise you that.”
Grace snorted again. “Yes, yes, great demon prince. I’m sure it works fine. I meant ‘it’ as in the sex. Not your cock.”
Caspian gasped. “Such perversion from that seemingly sweet mouth. Do it again.”
“What? Belittle your cock?”
“Don’t be deliberately obtuse.” He sighed. “You know what I mean.”
“The deal was for skin, not for 1-900-Gracie Talks Nasty.”
Caspian was kissing the corner of her mouth. “So, does Gracie talk nasty? Hmm?” He accented this last with a swipe of his tongue across her lip.
“Only to curse you back to—”
That was enough of that, or so Caspian must have decided. The teasing swipe of his tongue became another full-on military campaign, another invasion. Grace wasn’t complaining, though, even if she could do so with him ravaging her mouth in such a way. She melted against him, knowing that it had to be an illusion—the way that she fit perfectly against him, the way the curve of his shoulder was just right for her cheek, the way that her hands already seemed to know him. He was a demon, after all.
She kissed him back, using her tongue like a weapon, capturing and invading him just as he’d done to her. Of course, he liked it. It was obvious. What demon wouldn’t? Hell, what male wouldn’t?
Grace ran her tongue and mouth along the hard angle of his jaw, the corded column of his throat, the deliciously sculpted outline of his pectorals, down farther still to that valley of sin itself, that road to Hell—or to Heaven, as the case was turning out—those hard, hard abdominals. She found herself on her knees, prostrate before his maleness. Caspian didn’t take it as his due, however. He watched her with glittering eyes, no expectation there, only desire.
Only unbridled lust. He didn’t thread his fingers through her hair only to get at the back of her neck and push her lips toward his cock. He waited to see what she would do next.
Because he didn’t ask, didn’t demand, didn’t expect, Grace found that she wanted to taste him, wanted to bring him pleasure. She’d given over to this illusion. It wasn’t the mortal and the demon having sex here, or even Grace and the harbinger of Michael’s destruction. This was just a man and woman coming together for a moment of ecstasy.
She freed his cock from his breeches and drew her thumb across its velvet head, pearly fluid welling at her touch. Grace’s lips were whisper close to the tip, her tongue darting out to follow her thumb. He tasted of salt and sweet, and she swirled her tongue across the swollen flesh, down to the base, then back up again before she took him fully in her mouth, her talented tongue working his need.
A sound began low in his throat, almost like a growl. “Grace.”
She dug her fingers into his hips, pulling him forward, and opened her eyes to glance up and meet his gaze. Hellfire burned in those depths, and when she flicked her tongue, it blazed brighter. Closing her fingers around his member, she drew back to talk, stroking up and down to keep her momentum.
“Yes?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Enough.” Magick crackled in the air.
Suddenly Grace found herself on her back, naked and splayed for his pleasure. Caspian covered her with his body, his weight pressing her down into the mattress, his mouth hot on her throat, his hands on her breasts, her hips, sliding between her thighs. She allowed him to anchor her hands above her head with one hand, but locked her legs around his waist. This wasn’t right. Not yet.
“No,” she said sweetly.
“What?” Caspian sounded disbelieving of what he’d heard. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean: on your back, demon.”
Looking intrigued, he shifted his weight and rolled so that she was sitting astride him.
“I’m going to finish what I started,” Grace explained. But she wouldn’t deny him what he wanted. She swung her long legs across him and worked her hips up his torso to press herself against his lips as she took his cock in her mouth.
How to Lose a Demon in 10 Days Page 2
