I said, then mentally threw myself off of a cliff into shark-infested waters. Stupid, stupid, stupid! “I just have a lot on my mind.” Understatement of the day.
“Anything you want to talk about?”
I wished I could. I so dearly wanted to tell him the truth about me, about who I used to be. But that was a part of my life he could never know. It wasn’t like I could prove I’d been a succubus, and on close terms with Lucifer Himself. All that confession would get me was a trip to a padded room, complete with a form-fitting white coat. And while restraints had their merits, white would never be my color. So I said, “It’s just family stuff. Nothing important.”
“One day, I’d really like to hear about your family.”
“One day,” I agreed, knowing I’d never go there.
His hands rubbed, rubbed. “You need a change of scenery, hon. Get dressed. We’ll go out, grab some dinner.”
“What about the Chinese food you brought home?”
“Leftovers waiting to happen. Come on, what do you say—dinner and a movie?”
I perked up. “Maybe dancing?” If I was possibly going to Hell tomorrow, damn straight I’d be dancing tonight.
He groaned. “Jess, I hate dancing.”
Taking his hands from my shoulders, I led them down to my breasts. “If you take me dancing, I promise to do wicked things to you later.” I rubbed my ass against his pelvis, feeling his growing agreement.
“You make a hell of an argument,” he said, his voice husky. “How wicked?”
I grinned. “Very.”
Chapter 4
New York City
“Dance Hall Daze.”
“A pool hall.”
I tugged Paul’s arm, urging him to walk faster down the block. “Sweetie, you said you wanted to take me out, right? Out means dancing, not shooting pool.”
“Out means out of the apartment. Out means getting you out of your funk.”
Funk, he said. Hah. Funk nothing. I was a freaking basket case. Dinner itself had been very tasty—to think there’d been a time when I’d thought that “Chinese food” meant chopped-up Asians, sautéed over a medium flame—but I’d been too paranoid to really enjoy it. I couldn’t stop myself from scanning the restaurant, wondering if Lillith or Daun were watching. One thing about eating hot and spicy food: that made it a royal bitch to smell brimstone nearby.
Daun I thought I could handle. Sort of. Okay, so now he was getting all evil and possessive (in more ways than one), but hey—he was an incubus. What did I really expect? Of course he was going to attempt to tempt me. And I could handle temptation, as long as I was on my guard. If it came down to it, Daun would never hurt me (unless we were in the middle of a particularly active bondage and discipline scenario). So I just had to practice saying no and meaning it. No problem.
Lillith, on the other hand, would cheerfully rip my spinal cord out through my throat and wear it as a belt. She’d had it in for me ever since I could remember. To this day, I didn’t know why she hated me so much. Some things weren’t worth questioning, and this was one of them. To me, it was enough knowing that the former Queen of the Succubi despised me. Maybe Daun had been lying about her coming after me. He was a demon, so there was a good chance he’d been less than truthful. The thought cheered me somewhat.
And then there was Alecto, with her taunt about her sister. No matter how I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care what was happening to Meg, I knew deep down that was Grade A bullshit. Worst of all, I kept wondering why Alecto wanted to take me back to the Pit in the first place. Had the King of Hell put out another contract on me? No—if that were the case, Alecto simply would have scooped me up with her serpents and bamfed us to the Abyss.
Never let it be said that I forced you to make this choice.
She wanted to take me back…but she also wanted the decision to be mine.
Bless me, what in Hell was going on?
“See that?” Paul’s voice jolted me out of my thoughts. “You’re still in a funk.”
I squeezed his hand. “I promise I’ll get out of my funk if we dance. Come on, we look too fine for a pool hall.”
“You, maybe. Me, I look like a goober in this shirt.”
“I think you look yummy.” And he did. At my urging, Paul was garbed in a silver, long-sleeved woven mesh shirt that I’d bought him a few days ago. It was perfect for clubbing: it hugged his form, showing off his lean torso and broad shoulders to maximum advantage. Of course, it was also currently hidden beneath his leather jacket. He’d been only too happy to do the black jeans and black boots thing, but I’d had to coax him into the shirt.
“Terrific. I look like a yummy goober.”
“I promise to slurp you up later,” I said, already thinking about how my body would move to the music. Maybe dancing wasn’t actually sex, but it was a close second. Feeling a beat throbbing through your body, moving in time to a melody that builds and builds…All that sweat, all that passion. “Come on, love. I want to dance.”
Paul groaned. “You dance four days a week.”
Lifting my arms, I did a shimmy-bop as I imagined a heavy bass thrumming around me, in me. “I take off my clothes four days a week,” I said, “for guys I don’t care about. Tonight, I want to dance with you.”
He reached over and pulled me close. I gazed up at him, loving what I saw shining in his eyes as he looked at me. He said, “I’m not much of a dancer.”
“Just follow my lead. It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”
“Can’t we just go to a bar, stand beneath the speakers?”
“Come on, sweetie,” I said, pulling him along. “The night’s young.”
We trekked to East 23rd Street. It was brisk for early November, with winds that insisted on ruining my hairstyle. I clutched my black trench coat closed with one hand and the other twined in Paul’s.
“How about an overpriced cup of bad coffee?”
“Paul…”
“Or maybe go to a dentist, get a root canal without Novocain. That’s a lot more fun than dancing.”
I opened my mouth to say something appropriately witty, but I closed it as we approached a newsstand at the corner of the street. My footsteps slowed, stopped. I felt something dark pass over my face, twisting my mouth into a scowl and narrowing my vision until all I saw were headlines screaming in their self-important bold all-capped letters.
THIRTEENTH VICTIM FOUND announced one; ARSON SUSPECTED IN BROOKLYN INFERNO insisted another. In a national daily, a headline swore that the murder rate in America was at AN ALL-TIME HIGH. Sandwiched between these tidbits were articles dedicated to the latest war, the latest
