by Kimber Lee
Andrei switched back to guttural Russian and I suddenly felt that extreme wave of nausea and unbelievable prickliness I had endured the night he uncloaked himself. Biting my lower lip, I held it in, fighting not to puke my guts out and give away my location.
“And you forget who I am, demon,” Damien was saying, but it was getting harder to keep up with their pissing contest when I was so damn uncomfortable.
Dammit, Andrei. Stop it! I mentally implored him—and, wonder of wonders, he did.
I sucked in a grateful breath, shifting slightly to alleviate the pressure on my stomach. I had never been so appreciative of God’s clean air before. Sure, there was quite a bit of dust under this bed—as if it had never been vacuumed or something, and my incredibly minuscule strapless dress would definitely need dry cleaning, but nothing was worse than being hit with a heavy dose of Andrei Anghelescu.
My relief was short-lived, though, because the bed was lifted clean off of me and I was exposed, my hiding place hovering above me. Panic immediately knocked me in the solar plexus. Andrei was towering over me, holding the bed up with one hand as if it weighed as much as a marshmallow. If looks could kill, I would be buried in the Erickson family plot back home in Sallow Bay in a few days. Despite the fact that he looked absolutely delectable in his usual all-black ensemble, I knew there was no way I was getting the opportunity to run my hands through his snug shirt or loose mane of dark hair… which I think sucked.
“Hi,” I squeaked, awkwardly getting to my feet and ducking from under the bed and into the center of the room. Stretching to relieve the kinks in my muscles, I turned to get a look at the elusive Damien Ivanov. I finally had the opportunity to see him in the flesh, although under the worst circumstances thinkable. Although, I was thinking, seeing him is totally worth all the shit I find myself in.
My arms fell to my sides and my jaw dropped when my eyes settled on him.
Damien was beautiful. No, Damien was… angelic!
He was standing behind his large mahogany table but I could tell that he was tall—not as tall as Andrei, but towering all the same—and lean, like an athletic teenager. I could see all these, even through his charcoal black suit. On top of that, he had platinum blond hair that curled around his face in tiny, glowing ringlets and long lashes that framed cornflower blue eyes. And at the moment, his lips were pursed and there wasn’t a hint of hair on his face. The man had rosy cheeks, for Pete’s sake! How the hell was Damien the evil Russian?
Maybe I had it wrong.
But God, I so wanted to touch him, to stare at him forever because his face was like…
An almighty crash resounded behind me and I whirled around, finding that Andrei had flung the bed across the room, mattress and all. I stared at him with an open mouth.
“Was that really necessary?” I spluttered.
“Was that look on your face necessary?” he countered, glaring at Damien over my head.
“Ah, so the rumors are true,” Damien’s singsong voice came from behind me. It physically compelled me to turn and look at him, look upon his face. “The great, almighty lord has found himself a mortal pet to play with. Green is not your color, incubus.”
My face creased up with annoyance. “I’m not a pet, you asshole.”
His eyes narrowed at me. “Maybe so, but you are a trespasser. What shall I do with you? What shall I do to you?”
“Nothing,” Andrei growled, stepping before me and blocking my vision. “You touch her, I fuck you up. Simple.”
“My, my, my, incubus.” Damien let out a mirthless laugh. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen. What a pathetic demon you are.”
“Why the hell are you letting him talk to you like that, Andrei?” I wanted to know, more than incensed on my behalf and his.
“Pathetic?” Andrei snarled, ignoring me. “If I’m so pathetic, why do you keep running away from me?”
“Take your little eavesdropping bitch with you and get the hell out of my club,” Damien spat in response.
Andrei launched himself at the guy and I prepared myself to witness the death of a stupidly courageous human. But Damien ruined that by vanishing into thin air… literally.
“OK, I get it. You’re mad at me,” I stated, watching Andrei stride past me and onto the balcony outside my bedroom, “but could you please explain what I just saw?”
The sky was dotted with stars tonight, and that—coupled with the nightlights on earth—would have made it so easy for me to think of just curling up on a deckchair outside, leisurely observing life around me.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, I felt like a teenager caught sneaking out by her father. It wasn’t a great feeling. Andrei was standing outside now, his back obstinately turned to me. It had been torture teleporting back to my penthouse, since it meant that we had to be pressed really close and I could feel the anger radiating from his powerful frame. What probably took five seconds felt like an hour to me.
Sighing heavily, I peeled my dress and underwear off, throwing on a very unsexy old basketball shirt to sleep in. Although I knew I wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night. First, I had to text Temp and let him know that I got busted by His Royal Sexiness. And then I had to piece together what little I found out that night. Sift through the little English that had been said, that is. And lastly, figure out what the hell Damien Ivanov was, since he sure as hell wasn’t a demon. My brain was already aching thinking about it all.
Whipping out my phone and turning it on, I shot Temp a quick text letting him know that I was fine and didn’t just ditch his ass at the club. When that was done, I flopped onto my bed, raising my left hand and staring at the ruby that was glimmering in the light. This little thing was the reason Andrei found me under the bed. That much was obvious. It was proving to be extraordinarily traitorous.
“How did you get into his office?” Andrei stood at the foot of my bed, staring down at me. “And don’t lie to me. I’ll know if you do.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Temp might have worked his magic on a couple employees there.”
“Temp might be dead tonight,” Andrei said through clenched teeth.
I instantly sat up. “He’s my brother.” It felt weird saying it aloud. Nevertheless, it was true and I didn’t care how warped it was. “He only wanted to help so don’t even think of going after him. Damien’s only human, right?” I snorted. “Well, maybe not so much.”
Andrei’s nostrils flared. Grabbing my ankles, he tugged me down the bed, until I was sprawled in an ungainly fashion.
“What did I tell you about Ivanov?” His voice was dangerously low, dangerously promising. “What did you promise me?”
I blew out a breath. “That I would stay away from him.”
“And sneaking into his office is synonymous to that?”
“I didn’t expect you, of all people, would be there,” I muttered, trying to pull my legs free from his grip. “Andrei…”
He held fast, his eyes gleaming with a familiar menacing red. “If I hadn’t been there, do you know what would have happened?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “First, he would have thrown you to his friends. They would’ve raped you, defiled you in all the ways my kind could not. By the time they were done with you, you’d be begging them to kill you.” He paused, stroking my feet. “But they wouldn’t. Because Damien would want that honor.”
I swallowed, shaking off the mental image. “So if he isn’t human and he isn’t a demon, what is he?”
Andrei’s lower lip curled in disgust. “He’s worse.”
“You have to tell me, Andrei,” I told him. “Relationships need communication. You can’t keep something important like this from me.”
“If you’d just minded your fucking business…”
“Minded my business?” I freed my leg with a hard tug and pushed myself to my feet on the bed, so that I was looming over Andrei. “This is my business. Whatever Damien is doing, he’s using innocent humans and it involves demons. Sure, this scares the bejesus out of me.
But hey, what can you do? It’s my job to investigate. And up to this point, I’ve been very good at it.”
A long moment of silence passed, in which we glared at each other.
Andrei finally broke it with a muttered, “Fallen angel.”
“Excuse me?”
“Damien… is… a… fallen angel,” he bit out. “Is that communication enough for you?”
“An angel?” I tried out the word, found it to be ludicrous, and so collapsed on my bed in stitches.
“I’m dying to hear the joke,” Andrei remarked sarcastically, his face hard as he glared down at me.
I held up an index finger as I attempted to rein in my laughter. This was just all too much, too soon.
My boyfriend was a demon lord; my long-lost brother just happened to be a demon, too; and the owner of the nightclub I sort of frequented in Paris was an angel that spoke Russian and cursed like a truck driver.
I guess that’s why he fell, I mused, and laughed even harder at the thought. I just couldn’t stop and Andrei’s peeved expression only tickled me further.
“You done?” he asked in a warning tone.
“I just…” I choked out, rolling onto my belly and pressing my face into a pillow. “He owns a nightclub! But he looks like… like a choirboy!”
“Could you be serious for one second?” Andrei barked. “He knows you exist now, Rainelle. Since you obviously don’t understand the implications of that, I’ll spell it out for you. Any chance he gets, he’ll kill you, even if it’s just for the heck of it. He’ll kill you just because it’ll piss me off. So quit laughing because this is no joke!”
As I finally realized the gravity of the situation, my laughter instantly died.
Yeah, so that sobered me up, I thought to myself.
I zoned in on the one thing that really stood out from his mini rant. “My death would piss you off?” I sat up and shot him a glare. “Gee, thanks. I’m touched.”
“What?” he said, completely nonplussed.
“I keep forgetting you’re a cold, heartless demon.” The minute the words left my, I regretted them.
Andrei’s brow furrowed.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean that,” I whispered.
He pulled my ankle again and I was once more brought to the edge of the bed, but this time, he let my legs go, so that my feet were dangling over the bed. He sank down to his knees until we were almost eye-level.
“Cold?” He took my hands in his, the heat of his fingers transferring to mine. “And heartless?” Then he brought them to his chest, where I felt the beat of his racing heart. “No. But I am a demon. Yours.”
“Mine,” I whispered, bringing his other hand over mine. “When you’re like this, it’s hard to believe I ever referred to you as Scary Russian Guy.”
He arched a brow. “Scary Russian Guy? Seriously?”
“Only when I didn’t know your name!” I said, laughing. “Can you blame me? You were scary as hell and I thought you were Russian.”
His brow creased and he looked at me with questioning blue eyes. “Are you scared of me now?”
I shook my head, stroking his cheek. “Not anymore.”
“But there will come a time when the smartest thing will be for you to be scared.” He gently took my hand and kissed my palm. “No one defies me but you.”
“And Damien, obviously,” I mumbled.
His face changed. “Demons don’t exactly get along with angels, even dark ones like Damien. He’ll never listen to me.”
“You were talking about the girls, right? They’re from a Bible college?”
“Rae…”
“Either you tell me, or I find out myself.”
He gave me a level stare. “Fine. Yes. And that college just happens to spit out the strongest exorcists in the world. Damien’s twisted. He does things out of spite because of his expulsion.” He pushed himself to his feet. “But who knows what his plans are. All I know is that he’s on his way to attracting the attention of the Big Guns. And that means my kind are in for hell.”
“Does he have to be so beautiful?”
Andrei glared at me. “He’s an angel. Your response to his face is a reflex.”
“He’s not as gorgeous as you, though,” I coyly remarked, leaning back and propping myself up on my elbows.
“No, Rae,” Andrei said, although I could see the distinct bulge in his jeans. “We’re communicating about something important.”
“We can communicate and… play.” Honestly, I am done with discussing yet another anomaly in my once peaceful existence. Fallen angels? I internally scoffed. I needed to sweep that under the carpet, ASAP. Maybe I could pretend I never heard of them.
“Sometimes I swear you’re the sex demon,” Andrei quipped, his lips twitching with amusement.
“Sometimes I’d swear you’re a monk,” I mumbled, peeved. “An incubus who refuses sex so that he can talk. I’ve created a monster.”
“Probably because I’ve fed,” he said huskily, his eyes turning into dark pools of lust. “I fed this morning.” He lowered himself onto the bed, hovering over me. “I fed last night. Twice.” He placed a kiss on my nose. “I fed the night before…”
Andrei’s mouth found mine, and I slung my arms around his neck and wrapped my legs around his waist, as I parted my lips. His tongue stroked mine and I moaned, desperate for him to be inside me. My fingers slipped into his hair—the hair that I was borderline obsessed with—and yanked, drawing an appreciative groan from his mouth. I swallowed the sound, grinding against him.
“Shit, Rae,” he gasped, bringing a hand up my shirt and finding me bare. Then he slid his other hand between my thighs. “Wet, wet, wet,” he chanted, tearing his mouth from mine. He dipped into the crook of my neck, the feel of his tongue there so erotic, I could’ve come then and there.
His fingers were teasing me, slowly exploring me as if he had all the time in the world—like I had all the time in the world.
“Andrei,” I pleaded, bucking against him. “Oh, crap.”
His fingers began to work me and I couldn’t stop the soft moans from leaving my lips, even if I wanted to. I rocked against his hand, unashamedly using it for my own pleasure… and then it was gone.
“I have to go,” Andrei was saying, but in my pleasure-addled mind, it sounded like “I have to cruelly leave you hanging on the brink of climax like the dickhead that I am.”
He disentangled himself from me and got off the bed. “Stay in the house, Rae. I mean it,” he said firmly, but his eyes were pleading. “We’ll continue our discussion later. You know how to reach me.” He let out a heavy sigh. “Call Templeton.”
I knew how big of a concession it was for him to say that last part. But it didn’t matter because I was pissed off and sexually frustrated.
Andrei gave me a full-blown smile. “No fingers when I get back. Just you and my cock. Got that?”
I bit my lower lip, nodding, and he disappeared.
Closing my eyes, I counted to ten and took deep breaths, trying to calm my raging libido. I certainly wasn’t going to relieve the aching down there, not when there was a better option later.
I crawled off my bed and grabbed my phone from the nightstand, dialing a number I was surprised to already know by heart.
“Wanna swing by and watch Uma Thurman hunt Bill and company?” I asked as soon as he answered.
“Just us, Baby Phat?” Temp was obviously surprised.
“Yup. Bring something fried and I’ll tell you all about the elusive Damien Ivanov.” I nearly smiled. Nearly… until I thought about him killing me. “You won’t believe it.”
“If you, he, and Andrei had a threesome, I don’t wanna know. I just had sex with a girl who thought Led Zeppelin was a Dr. Seuss character. My night just can’t get any more disturbing.”
Chapter 18
When I got the call that JP Fontaine was dead, I still had one foot in dreamland. But Ana Fontaine’s agitated voice quickly dragged me back to the waking world.
“Dead?” I echoed stupidly, sitting up in my rumpled bed. The scent of the man I’d spent the entire night with filled the air, as strong as if he were still there, naked and awake beside me.
“You said you would help me,” Ana sputtered, promptly bursting into tears, followed by a stream of unintelligible words that I could only guess were French. “You promised! He was my baby brother… and now he is gone.”
Guilt wrapped an icy hand around my neck. “What happened?” I forced myself to ask, knowing full well that if he was tangled with a deranged fallen angel and body-hopping demons, he was bound for an ugly end.
“I don’t know!” she said, only it came out as a high-pitched ‘Je ne sais pas!’ “I saw his ghost. I saw it and no one believes me. No one believes that my little brother is… is dead.”
Ghost? She saw his ghost!
I was pulled out of a very satisfying dream because she’d seen a ghost?
“Ana,” I said through clenched teeth, “have you tried his cell? Gone to his apartment?”
“He’s dead!” she insisted, and I pinched the bridge of my nose, mumbling to myself.
This was an extremely talented, famous fashion designer whose work I admired… and she was mumbling about ghosts like a crazy person. But then again, I’d seen and heard stranger things.
“You should calm down. Wouldn’t it put your mind at rest to actually go to his…”
The woman actually hung up on me.
“Brilliant way to start the morning,” I mumbled, getting out of bed.
My foul mood came to the fore in the bathroom when I discovered that my period was early. There was no way in hell I was ever getting another shot, not when irregular period and weight gain were the side effects. It was back to the pill for me, that was for sure.
Can’t make it. Stuck in a blonde. R U crazy? WWAD?: What Would Andrei Do? ~ T
I deleted Temp’s text and switched my phone off, shoving it into the back pocket of my cut-offs and simultaneously nodding at the bouncer, who I was beginning to recognize as Club Nicolette’s weekend muscle.