Devils are prickly basta.., p.4
Devils Are Prickly Bastards, page 4
I dressed quickly, and though I probably should’ve thought about going to bed soon, I tiptoed past a sleeping Cleo on the couch toward the kitchen instead. While I puttered around the kitchen trying to decide if I was really hungry or not, my vampires joined me.
“Belle, please sit,” Sawyer said. “I’ll make you something.”
“Am I really hungry?” I asked.
“Yes,” they answered in unison.
I snorted and made my way toward the table. “Hey, quick question. Do you guys ever...”
Eddie’s lips twitched as he strode toward a cupboard. “Ever...?”
“Uh, you know. Fuck each other?” I blurted.
The three of them turned to stare.
I laughed. “Sorry. I mean, you’re all just as horny as I am, it seems, and when I saw Eddie drinking from Sawyer, I thought of the blood link and how it heightens that feeling.”
Jacek leaned against the refrigerator with a grin. “We’ve never crossed swords.”
Eddie nodded in agreement as he took down a mug from the cupboard. “We do feel the blood link when we drink from another vampire in order to heal a little faster, but we’ve never fucked each other.”
“The three of us are pretty solitary.” Sawyer strode toward me with a sliver of apple pie on a plate I hadn’t even seen him get. “Even though we’re friends, we like to be alone with our own thoughts and endeavors, for the most part. Except when it comes to you. We don’t mind sharing you. We don’t mind fucking you at the same time or individually, if that’s what you want.”
Jacek winked. “All we see is you anyway. No one else.”
Well, damn. When did I get to be the luckiest woman alive?
The doorbell rang, making all four of us jump. Cleo sat up from her nap on the couch and blinked her droopy eyes sleepily. We looked around at each other, none of us seeming to know what to do next. Because answering it was obviously out of the question. Who did that? Not me. I shuddered at the thought.
“Is it Book Delivery Day?” I asked Eddie.
He shook his head.
I turned to Jacek. “A judo client?”
“I’m done for the night,” he said.
It wasn’t Paul, at least I didn’t think so because he wasn’t exactly the doorbell type. He just bashed the door in and then waited for me on the porch like a psycho stalker.
The doorbell rang again.
Cleo let out a half-assed bark.
“I’m getting the door.” Sawyer strode through the living room doorway, his long legs eating up the distance too quickly.
I sprinted to leap in front of him and pushed back with my hand to his chest. “Wait. As the slayer, it’s my job to protect you.”
He covered my hand with his, dwarfing it, and smiled. “You mean it’s your job to kill us.”
“That too,” I said. “I mean that’s what I meant.”
My vamps chuckled as Jacek and Eddie joined us in the living room.
No, that wasn’t what I meant, and we all knew it. I shook my head at how far I’d strayed from my slayer job description, but with these three sexy-as-fuck vampires, breaking the rules had cost me my heart. And it was so worth it.
I stared up into Sawyer’s kind, amber eyes. “Opening a door would be super fun for me right now, so let me do it. Just this once.”
He waved me on to the front door like a true gentleman. “Far be it from me to take that joy away from you. But I have your back.”
Nodding, I turned to face the door and settled my hand on its knob.
A knock came again, and I jumped. Again. I’d done too much of that lately.
Slowly, I opened the door a crack and peered out into the night. Cold blasted through, stinging my eyes, and freezing rain pelted down, giving everything an icy sheen. No one stood on the porch, but a sleek black motorcycle was parked at the curb. I hadn’t even heard it pull up, though I couldn’t hear much over Detective Appelt’s shouts of bloodlust. My curiosity piqued, I opened the door farther, held up a finger to my vamps, and closed the door behind me.
And then leaped back, my heartbeat slamming.
Standing on the porch when seconds ago no one had was a man. Decked out in studded motorcycle boots, black jeans, and a black leather jacket similar to mine, he seemed to be carved from the same size of granite as Sawyer. His back was turned, and as he started to face me, moonlight shone on each individual speck of frozen rain in his short-spiked blond hair, as if he’d dunked his head in microscopic diamonds.
That was a stupid thought, and I scolded myself for ever having it in the first place, but then he looked at me with eyes the color of sapphires. He was just so...shiny and made out of such pretty things.
An energy pulsed off of him, slow and inviting, and it perked my nipples and grinded my thighs together against an ache that had just been sated by three different vampires. I grasped the doorframe to keep from rubbing myself all over His Shininess and firmed my mouth to hold back my moan. What the hell was wrong with me?
His full lips tipped into a devious grin, like I’d just shouted every thought I’d had about him. “Belle Harrison?”
“Just Belle,” I croaked out.
“You broke my heart, Just Belle.” His voice was like honey and velvet, crushed into a deep timbre I could feel all the way down to my toes. His jewel-tipped gaze roamed over my face, repeatedly catching on the wrinkle forming between my eyebrows.
Uh, no I hadn’t broken his heart. Pretty sure I would’ve committed him to memory if I’d ever met him. “What?”
“I can explain.” He released a breath through his grin, fluttering a heated caress through my loose curls. “Mind if the devil comes inside?”
Chapter Four
My whole body tightened. The devil... The devil was here? This guy?
He held out his hand, the leather on his jacket creaking. “Luc Morningstar.”
I forced myself to blink, to think, and a slow burn started in my gut. The devil was no friend of mine, no matter how hot he was or how hot he made me, the fucker. “I donated all the money you sent me to cancer research.”
His sapphire eyes widened, giving them a multi-tonal appearance when they caught the moonlight behind him. “That’s really noble of you.”
I cut him into shiny pieces with my glare. “Don’t patronize me.”
He took back his hand when I didn’t shake it. “I just want to come inside.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you do,” I said. “If I say no, will you have a demon drag me away against my will, or are you just going to club me over the head to make me marry you?”
“That particular demon is dead.” He pointed along the side of the house in the direction of the backyard gate. “Locked in the woodshed with a newborn vampire.” He stepped closer, his gaze roaming over my tightened nipples underneath my thin Scrooge McDuck T-shirt. “Is that where I’ll end up if I don’t behave myself?”
I shoved a finger toward his nose. “Don’t be cute with me.” Though I doubted that was even possible for him not to be. Damn it, he was probably glamouring me with a sexual trance or something. I dropped my hand, shaking my head. “If stuffing everyone into a woodshed makes me look like a serial killer, then so be it. I make my own rules.”
“Mmm, yeah. So I see.” His gaze lifted to the house and he grimaced. “Anyway, it sounds like Night’s Fall got into the wrong hands tonight. That sword was never meant for a dark unknown, so with your help, I’d like to get it back.”
Well, shit. I would like to get it back too. I gave him a skeptical side-eye. “If I open the door of this house, do you promise to behave yourself and not talk about marriage?”
“I promise,” he said, but I could practically hear the truth in his seductive undertone. “And I’ll tell you all I know about Paul.”
All of my confused bristling vanished. Even the devil knew his name, or the name of the attached body he’d literally taken from some innocent human. This shouldn’t have surprised me, but it somehow made the dark unknown even darker.
I turned the doorknob, and the door swung open to a wall of vampires just behind it. Red fury ignited in three pairs of eyes, all aimed at who stood on the porch. Fangs lengthened and fists curled.
Behind me, the devil’s eyes burned red as well, his sexual power now twisting with pain and violence.
“Okay, whoa.” I held my hands up between my vamps and the devil, my arms suddenly feeling very twig-like even with my slayer strength between all of their bulky muscle. “Let’s all put our dicks away, shall we? Pissing contest comes later. Right now, I need the devil’s help.”
Eddie ticked his gaze to me. “Vampires and hell spawn can’t mix.”
The devil rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t spawned in hell. Get out of my way, and I won’t send you to the bottom of hell where you belong.”
Jacek sized the devil up with a lethal slide of his gaze down to the motorcycle boots and back to his face again. “You’re the one with vampire repellant magic. You sure you can stand to be around such filth?”
“Well...” The devil tilted his head toward me and bit his bottom lip. “It’s not all filth inside this house, is it?”
“Oh, for fuck’s s—” I started.
“You look at her again like that,” Sawyer rumbled at the devil, “and I’ll shove all your limbs so far up your ass that you’ll have to staple your eyes closed so they don’t pop out.”
The devil grinned. Actually grinned. “Sounds painful. I’m going to start taking notes from you guys for when I head back. But I think we’ve already wasted enough precious time as it is. Do you want my help for the slayer or not?”
I glanced back to my vamps and gave them a short nod. They knew as well as I did that we weren’t in any position to refuse help of any kind from anyone.
Eddie glowered. “Only if he drops that desire magnifier thing he keeps throwing at you. Your smell is through the roof, Sunshine.”
“Desire magnifier?” I turned back to the devil. “I fucking knew it.”
He shrugged, the leather on his jacket creaking again. “It was the only way I knew to keep you from plucking my eyes out. Despite my best intentions, you’re not my biggest fan. If you’d married me, I swear it would’ve been worth it.” He studied my narrowing eyes carefully. “Still could be.”
“Get the fuck away from her,” Jacek growled.
“Leave! Now!” Sawyer shouted at the same time.
“No.” I held them both back, their firm chests pressing against my palms.
“Funny that the devil had to magnify her desire.” Eddie gnashed his fangs against his bottom lip as he cocked his head at the devil. “Guess who doesn’t have to do that?”
“Okay. Okay!” I shouted. The devil and vampire sandwich I’d put myself in choked the air with dangerous levels of testosterone. If I breathed any more of it in, I was sure to grow a mustache and beard. I turned and pointed at the devil. “You. You promised you wouldn’t bring up marriage again.”
He slid me a sly smile, one that curled heat between my legs. “A promise from the devil. Come on, Belle Harrison. You’re smarter than that.”
A riot of fury ignited through my blood, at both myself for being attracted to him and at him for not dropping his desire magnifier yet. I snapped my fingers at his face. “Just. Belle. And drop the magnifier. Now.”
His jeweled eyes widened, and gradually that annoying heated need coiling tight in my gut lessened. The sound of gnashing fangs and growls behind me faded. I glanced to my vamps again, and they moved away from the door, though their hackles were still raised. The devil entered, and Cleo bounded up to him with her tail whipping the air. He gave her ear scratches and belly rubs, and she became a brown furry puddle at his feet.
“What the hell, Cleo?” I asked as I skirted around them to the couch.
She just looked at me while she lay belly up on the floor, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. Traitor.
An awkward silence fell, because having the devil in the one place I considered home tipped everything on its side and made it feel foreign. This was my oasis. These were my vamps. The devil had wanted to take it all away from me because he didn’t understand the word no, one of the most important words ever. That was a shitty thing for him to do, and I would never forgive him for it. But as I sat on the couch and faced him, took in the steel columns of his legs, the impressive width of his shoulders underneath his leather jacket, his ridiculously gorgeous...everything, I had to wonder why he hadn’t forced someone else into marriage. Someone better, someone who didn’t kill their bosses, lock people up in the woodshed, and who were smart enough to wear a coat outside to cover up their jutting nipples.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Spit it out. Let’s get this over with.”
He shot me a knowing look that included my nipples as he settled himself in a chair in the corner of the living room, his movements just as graceful as Jacek’s, his size just as intimidating as Sawyer’s, and his brain... Nah. No one’s brain was sharper than Eddie’s.
Cleo followed his every move and rested her chin on the chair’s armrest, staring adoringly at him. Yes, he was pretty, but come on. Pretty sure I was going to have to do some finger wagging at my dog later.
I took Eddie’s hand as he sat next to me, and he didn’t even flinch. Next to Eddie, Jacek perched on the arm of the couch, twirling my seraph knife that had been with my slayer supplies by the door while he glared down the devil. Sawyer sat on my other side and spread his large hand over my thigh to mark me as his. Theirs. I didn’t mind.
“I know where this lake is that Paul’s looking for—or found if Night’s Fall’s power didn’t go out in time,” the devil started, crossing his ankle over his knee. “The lake was once at the bottom of that trapdoor in the cemetery, but I moved it. The lake, I mean.”
“How do you move a lake?” Jacek demanded.
“Well, I’m the devil. I can do a lot of things.” He eyed me as he said it, a wicked gleam in his eyes, and a spark unfurled in my blood.
I shifted uncomfortably and gave him the middle finger. I thought he’d turned off his desire magnifier, though no one else had reacted but me, but obviously the devil didn’t play fair.
“Super handy skill, tough guy.” Without even looking at the seraph knife, Jacek maneuvered it into a complicated series of flips from one hand to the other while he kept his death glare on the devil. “Stop undressing the slayer with your eyeballs, and I’ll let you keep them.”
Eddie caught the knife midair, flung it into the front door, and then turned nonchalantly back to the devil as if nothing had happened. “Why did you move the lake at the bottom of the trapdoor?”
“That’s where the dark unknown came from, out of the lake below the trapdoor,” the devil said, now serious. “He kept going back there, and when he came back, he’d be even more powerful. So I thought if I moved his power source, he’d stop preying on slayers.”
“And you care about slayers why?” I asked.
The devil sat back in his chair, posted his elbows on the armrests, and threaded his fingers together. “There’s a delicate balance to the universe. Good and bad, darkness and light, the sun and moon.” He nodded to Sawyer. “The Necron Brotherhood almost had that concept down, but they warped it to fit their own worldview.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Sawyer rumbled, nodding.
The devil frowned. “Interesting choice of words. Anyway, the slayer is a key part of the supernatural universe. Without one, everything is off-balance, helter-skelter, chaos.”
“Isn’t chaos the devil’s playground, though?” Eddie asked.
“Not from a businessman’s perspective, and technically, that’s what I am. If the slayer dies and there’s no one to take her place, the light fades. Darkness wins. Paul wins, and even I have to admit he’s pretty damn dark. But think of the position this puts me in.” The devil shook his head. “And I thought I put in long hours now. If darkness wins, people will decide to do whatever the fuck they want. Hell’s a busy place already, but I don’t have time for that kind of influx.”
“So...you’re helping me because of a purely selfish reason,” I said.
He cut those sapphires to me again. “Not selfish in all the ways that matter.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost did a back flip on the couch.
“So the slayer is the key to all of this,” Eddie said. “If that position is deemed so important to the entire universe, then why aren’t there more safeguards in place to keep her safe? Someone to train her, teach her.”
“And a Senate that’s actually useful instead of...you know, dead,” I piped in.
“From the beginning,” the devil began, “there were numerous safeguards in place. The Necron Brotherhood picked off those who watched and trained slayers, sometimes within a day of them being hired. It was difficult to find people brave enough for the job.”
Sawyer’s grip on my thigh tightened as he looked away, his jaw muscles jumping. I smoothed my hand over his knuckles, wishing it were as easy to smooth over his memories of the past. None of this was his fault, and while he’d come a long way to accepting that, he still carried a heavy burden.
“When the Necron Brotherhood first got the idea to summon the dark unknown...they didn’t realize that he would be a game changer. He killed slayers almost as fast as they could be chosen. The slayer Senate became laser focused on finding a way to destroy him.” The devil met my gaze, powerful and penetrating. “But he destroyed the Senate first.”
“No, you mean my witch of an ex-boss and her detective boyfriend destroyed the Senate,” I corrected. “The Senate were so poisoned that they dove headfirst into their dinner plates.” I shivered at the memory, one of many lately that would haunt me for my lifetime.
The devil shook his head. “The slayer Senate was dead long before that, Belle.”
I gasped. Blinked. Forced his words to unscramble themselves in a way that made sense. “What? But they chose me. I went to their mansion and...” Never had a conversation with any of them. Never even saw their faces. I forced a swallow, my throat suddenly feeling too tight. “Who were all those people?”
