Forged of Shadows: A Novel of the Marked Souls

by Jessa Slade

  There’d been a time when he believed wholeheartedly in converting the heathens. Not that he’d had much luck. And it seemed neither he nor the world had come very far.

  He clenched his fists. Fist. His missing hand burned as if he held it out toward open flame. Rather like he was doing with what was left of his soul by coming to her now.

  The djinni that had taken his hand six months ago had taken with it his certainty that the fight for good would prevail. He would do anything to tip the balance back in favor of his belief.

  He stared at the Nymphette.

  Anything.

  The beat bled awkwardly from one song to the next, and she knelt to retrieve the snake, but instead of beginning her next dance, she crossed toward him and stepped out onto the bar that surrounded the stage. The gawkers rumbled, a sound somewhere between approval and consternation at the break in their routine.

  Another step and she was standing on a barstool. The three-legged chair wobbled, and at his table, Jonah planted both feet on the floor, half rising to catch her should she fall. But she crouched, one hand steady on the bar, the other on the snake, and continued toward him, as if neither furniture nor elevation changes would get in her way.

  Dimly, he heard the deejay squawk for the next dancer, the Nymphette having abandoned the stage. Though her hands were busy rearranging the snake across her shoulders, her violet-tinged gaze never left his.

  He’d been stalked before, but this made every hair on his body prickle in alarm.

  She glided right up to him, right between his legs. He leaned back, arms still crossed, thankful the height of the stool gave him a slight vantage point to look down at her.

  She didn’t touch him, but the heat of her naked body radiated through his jeans, sank into his thighs. “You want a dance, Cap’n?”

  Her voice hummed through him with the demon’s double lows, and the scent of the snake—a sharp, loamy tang—made him shudder. But the league’s leader had explained what would happen, in a conversation as excruciatingly vague and embarrassing as heard by any bride on her wedding night.

  Not that Jonah wanted in any way to compare this moment to his wedding night.

  The pain and rage that swept through him brought his demon screaming from his depths and should have made the woman before him step back. Surely her rising demon would sense the violence in him.

  Instead, she canted her head forward, a dare. “Assuming you can swing it.” Her gaze angled down to his crotch. “The price, I mean.”

  She had no idea what this was costing him. “In private, if you’d oblige.” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.

  She eyed him. “VIP lap dance? Well, look at you, coming on strong now.”

  He stood abruptly, forcing her back a step. “Yeah, that’s me. Coming strong.” He closed his fingers around her wrist.

  “Don’t touch,” she hissed.

  “It’s a strip club.” But he released her when the snake hissed too.

  “And I’m stripped, in case you hadn’t noticed. But no touching.”

  “Ludicrous,” he mumbled. But he waved her ahead of him toward the hall that led to the back rooms he’d scouted earlier.

  She eased around him. “You paid eight bucks for a Power Slug. You’d know ludicrous.” She nodded to the bartender, who popped the tab on a small aluminum can and slid it across the countertop toward them. “Have another; I get a percentage of the bar.”

  Jonah took the proffered energy drink as they passed. When they stepped into the back hallway, the pounding music dulled to a merely irritating headache. The AC pushed the stale odors of cigarettes and damp cardboard boxes but offered little in the way of coolness. “Are you always so . . . flattering of your patrons?”

  “Only on the first date. You and me, we’ve been dancing around this thing for a week now. Time for flattery is long past.”

  He lifted one eyebrow. “A week is a long time?”

  “You owe me for all those long stares. With all that looking and no paying, you’re giving Mobi a complex.”

  “Moby? Ah, of course. The snake. Curious choice of names. The obsession angle works, but I’d suppose it would be hard to dance with a white whale around your shoulders.”

  She cast a glance back at him. In the unlit hallway, her eyes glimmered with only human reflections, the demon’s drive waning for the moment. “Mobi as in Möbius strip, going round and around, always ending up back in the same place.”

  The brooding tenor of her words struck something inside him.

  Before he could speak, she ducked behind a curtain. He followed her into the small cubicle. The VIP lounge lacked any features that might have identified it as important or a lounge. A single hard-backed chair faced into the cubby’s corner, as if it had been pushed hastily awry. He pulled the shabby red curtain closed behind them.

  She spun the chair toward him. “The only Mopey Dick I expect to see here is yours. And I can make that all better.”

  Jonah took a pull off the Slug. The sweeteners and caffeine buzzed through him as his demon-boosted metabolism dealt with the chemical brew. At least the task distracted the creature of evil inside him.

  She plucked the can from his hand and tossed it aside. The spilled liquid fizzed for a moment. Under the lone incandescent lightbulb, her small smile was hard enough to dash hearts upon, were any imprudent enough to somehow find their way to this place. “So tell me what you want, Cap’n.”

  Jonah sat and crossed his arms. He needed her demon ascendant before he made his move. She wouldn’t believe his story otherwise. “Dance for me, Nymphette.” He knew physical stress triggered the demon’s rise. The newly possessed males traditionally drank and fought their way to balance with the other-realm emanations coursing through their bodies. He’d heard it worked differently with the females.

  “Call me Nim.” Her voice turned husky, not with the demon, just a come-on. She swayed closer. “Nymphette is such a mouthful. And maybe you want me to save my mouth for . . . other things, right, Captain?”

  “Don’t call me captain.”

  Her eyes narrowed at his brusque tone, but she didn’t speak. She sidled toward his chair and slowly, muscles flexing, sank to her knees between his legs. Her gaze rested straight ahead, and his flesh, already strung tight, lifted like a marionette. Her mouth—that wide, generous mouth—was such a short distance from his zipper. He ached all over at her closeness, his erection straining toward her, his jaw clenched against giving in.

  She unwrapped the snake from her shoulders and laid it at his feet. The weight of the beast was surprisingly heavy and hot through the leather of his boots as it wound around his ankles. He couldn’t hold back a grunt of dismay.

  Nim smiled at him, crookedly but with the first hint of honest emotion he’d seen in her. Amusement, at his expense. “Don’t want you sneaking away early, like you’ve been doing all week.”

  “Hadn’t planned on it.” Anyway, not until her demon was firmly rooted in her soul and she’d been brought into the league fold as its latest possessed fighter.

  She rose smoothly, so close between his thighs he felt the passage of air against the denim of his jeans, but she never touched him. The way she used her body was sinful, but he had to admit, she kept it as brutally honed as any warrior maintained his weapons. A demon could choose worse than to take such a dwelling.

  She turned within the confines of his spread knees and set her back to him. She ran her hands up her torso, over her shoulders, and through the dreads of her hair. With a single twist, she bound her hair into a thick knot at her crown.

  She leaned to one side, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from following the sinuous curve of her spine, down between the points of her shoulder blades to the twin dimples framing her tailbone. His hand twitched to see if his spread fingers would span the distance.

  Just as well it was the phantom hand.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “No touching.”

  “So you said.” He knew he hadn’t g
iven himself away. Couldn’t, considering his maiming. But she obviously didn’t think that would stop him.

  Her fog-on-the-water gaze traced him. “You aren’t here with lust on the mind. No lusting man could have lasted that whole week. Definitely couldn’t last now.” She straddled his knee, again without touching him, and dipped low in a slow-motion grind that never quite brushed his jeans. “You’re so strong. Crazy strong.” Her voice was a purr. “Is that because of the ring?”

  His left hand, tucked against his ribs, tightened into a fist. He smoothed the pad of his thumb over the gold band. “No. Not because of the ring.”

  She tilted her hips and slid one hand back to ride above the shadowed cleft between her buttocks. Where he’d wanted to put his hand. “Because of the hook?”

  The metal tip drove into his bicep. How could she ask so casually? “Aren’t you supposed to be dancing?”

  She bent backward, an impossible contortion without touching him. And yet she managed, even her hair suspended above his lap, teasing without touch. She stared at him from her inverted pose. “You’re supposed to be pulling out something.”

  “You said no touching. Presumably that means myself as well.”

  “Your wallet is exempt from the no-touching rule.”

  He sighed, aggrieved, and uncrossed his arm to shift to one hip and reach for his back pocket. “At least this is on an expense account.”

  “All business. I like that in a man. We’re practically soul mates.”

  A cold anger swept him. “Don’t say that.”

  “Bosom buddies, then.” She turned again to straddle his other leg, facing him. Her arms crossed in a low X across her belly pushed her breasts into tempting handfuls. Another supple writhe brought her down low, so low and close her nipples would’ve grazed his lips. If not for her oft-stated no-touching rule, of course.

  “You have no idea how close we’ll be,” he said.