by J. R. Ward
God, he was ... extraordinary. Rugged. Handsome, but with an edge. And still every bit as muscular in that black T-shirt as he had been before. His dark hair was a little shorter than she remembered, as if he'd had it trimmed during the day--maybe for their date? And there was no five o'clock shadow shading that strong jaw of his. Which suggested he'd showered and shaved in preparation for her.
Which was a compliment, wasn't it.
As she stared at him across the table, she couldn't help but compare him to G.B. With the other man, she had been starstruck, yes--and there was a certain intensity there. But that experience was a curiously removed one, almost as if she were examining something that was exotic up close for the first time.
With Duke? He was just flat-out sexy, from those hooded eyes to his full lips to those shoulders--
"I waited all day for this," he said in a gravel-filled voice.
Cait flushed from head to foot. "Me, too--"
Like the echo from some distant world that had nothing to do with her or him, she heard a phone go off dimly. Might have been her own; she didn't care. In fact, a stampede could thunder through the diner and she doubted she would notice, or care.
God, she wanted him. Here. Now...
"Tell me something," he said.
"What?"
"Your name. I still don't know what it is."
Cait smiled and dropped her eyes. Guess she'd missed that. "It's Cait. As in Caitlyn."
"That's nice."
"Thank you."
Annnnnnd now back to the mutual staring.
In fact, they were still sitting like that, looking into each other's eyes, holding hands, when the waitress came over with menus. Neither of them acknowledged what was delivered, or made much of a response when they were asked what they wanted to drink.
"I'm not hungry," he said, "for food. How about you?"
Cait shook her head. And that was that.
They both exited the booth and, after he left a fiver as a tip, walked out of the restaurant.
Outside, the cool weather did nothing to clear her head. So when he pointed to a Victorian boathouse a couple hundred yards away and nodded his head as if asking a question?
"Yes," she said.
Closest shot at privacy they had: It was too early in the season for people to be walking around after dark, and she had to imagine there was a secluded place in there somewhere. Bottom line? She had no interest in futzing around with who followed who in what vehicle to God only knew where.
Even the short walk was going to take forever.
Which proved that in some situations, distance, like time, was relative.
Chapter
Thirty
"Devina, you have me concerned."
As the demon sat on her therapist's couch, she fiddled with the horse-bit buckle on her Gucci bag. The office was totally not her--overstuffed cushions, mucky brown tones, shaggy throw rug, all kinds of beech wood mounted on stands like it was worth something. Two Kleenex boxes. For the weepers.
"Devina?"
Her therapist was sitting across a glass-topped table, her ample body draped as always in folds of flower-print fabric. Talk about somebody slipcovering themselves--Devina looked like shit in her real form, but she cured that with good flesh that was tailored well. This woman with the soft voice and perma-concerned expression? The muumuus were not a look.
Although how else could you cover all that?
Then again, it wasn't entirely her fault. As a human, all she had to choose from were clothes if she wanted to change her appearance. Well, that and plastic surgery, which could only do so much--
"Devina."
Oh, look, she was leaning forward and getting intense.
Devina focused on her purse again, thinking about how she and the therapist were such opposites. The woman might have been built like one of her throw pillows, but she was beautiful on the inside--beneath those layers of a slowing metabolism coupled with a sedentary job and probably some pharmacological estrogen, her soul glowed with the pure white light of goodness.
Devina was not that. Without her exterior lie?
As tears welled, she found it hard to speak past the lump in her throat. "I am ... ugly."
"Can you tell me more?"
Goddamn, she was so upset, she wasn't even offended the therapist didn't offer an, "OMG, you are so not!"
"I don't know what I'm saying." Devina waved her hand around. "It's nothing important. Let's change the subject."
"I can respect how much you don't want to discuss this. But frequently, the things we don't want to talk about are the ones we truly need to resolve. It's the work that is necessary to come fully into ourselves. Perhaps you can share with me what triggered your feelings?"
An image of her on her knees in front of Adrian, sucking his flaccid cock, hit her like a ton of bricks.
Ripping open her bag, she began to count the thirteen identical lipsticks that she always had with her--
"Devina, can you stop that?" When she just shook her head, the therapist said, "Well, perhaps try to? Remember, OCD is at least partially a maladaptive system of self-preservation. It's rooted, in that regard, to the need to make ourselves feel safe in an unpredictable world--a world where people can let us down or hurt us, and where, with respect to things that are important to us, outcomes can be outside of our control. We hold on to objects and rituals more and more tightly, under the mistaken belief that it will make us more secure. But eventually, we get strangled by our coping mechanism."
"Are you going to make me throw out another tube of these?"
"As we've discussed, the solution is to increase our range of emotional function. Become more secure in our ability to withstand the slings and arrows of life. The first step in that journey is talking--and that's why you're here."
Great recap there, honey.
Devina glanced at the clock. Shit, they still had thirty-five minutes left. Thirty-four. Thirty--
"I'm ugly," she said again.
"That's never come up in our sessions before."
Well, she'd never failed in making a guy come before.
As Devina pushed her hair back, the thought of what her real stuff looked like made her want to weep outright--what locks she did have were stringy and attached to rotting flesh. And the rest of her was just as bad. Without this stolen suit of Sexy Bitch? Yeah, sure, she'd get a lot of attention walking through a hotel lobby or into a restaurant, but it'd be because people were assuming the zombie apocalypse had actually happened.
"I met up with an old lover." Devina shook her head. "And not old as in geriatric--this man and I have history. Serious history."
"You've never discussed your personal life."
Well, when you were a demon fighting with the forces of good for dominion over the world--and you were seeking help from a human? You used a lot of euphemisms.
Another example of clothing something for palatability.
And actually, she had talked a lot about her and Jim: their struggles, their triumphs. All in the context of a made-up scenario about business, of course--but the therapist had a point: Devina had left a lot of the bump-and-grind out.
This didn't concern her and Jim, however.
"He's a force of nature, this former lover of mine." She smoothed her Prabal Gurung skirt. "We've had an acrimonious course--you could say we see the world from completely different perspectives. But the attraction has always been very strong."
"How long have you known him?"
Oh, God, centuries. "All my adult life. Our paths keep crossing. He called me today and wanted to see me--and I couldn't say no. We ended up ... becoming intimate."
"And was that a satisfying experience for you?"
"No." Devina dropped her head into her palms. "I am totally humiliated."
She had never, in her immortal life, had a guy--
"Why? Devina?"
"He was ... unable to perform."
"Well, most men have that challenge on occasion. It's
not uncommon--"
"It's never happened to me before."
"So you're blaming yourself."
"No offense, but there wasn't anyone else with him." Devina rubbed her temples. "I tried for hours. It was so awful--and I know that he wanted to be with me. He urged me to keep going, and I did. But ... nothing."
In a fit of desperation, she'd ended up ditching her clothes and laying herself out on her table, taking care of herself in front of him. Most men orgasmed all over themselves when she did that, and Adrian's eyes had never left her. And still...
"He never got hard." For shit's sake, she wished she could get those images out of her brain. "It was a nightmare."
"And again, I say, it sounds to me as if you're blaming yourself."
"If I'd been more attractive, or if I'd only have--"
"Has it never occurred to you that there could be a medical reason for the issue?"
"There hasn't been in the past."
"Things change. People can develop conditions that make sex difficult, or go on medications that complicate arousal."
Unfortunately, this was one of the corners she and her therapist occasionally came to, where the reality didn't fit the fake construction: Immortals like Adrian didn't need Cialis or Viagra; they didn't roll over one morning with circulatory problems or go on enough antidepressants to deflate their dicks. It was one of the perks of not living under the burden of an expiration date.
"Devina, you wouldn't expect a case of diabetes to be cured by a seductive glance, would you? Of course not. So it could well be the same here. Perhaps, no matter what you or he wanted or did, intercourse would have been impossible."
There were a lot of times when the woman's advice was spot-on. This was not one of them, unfortunately.
"Did you talk with him about what happened and how it made you feel?"
"No." Devina shook her head. "He had to go, and I dressed and followed him out. Then we spent some time together."
They'd ended up back on Earth, at a Target, of all things. She'd followed him around as he'd picked out clothes from the young women's racks, hideous little things that were made with all the sophistication and skill of an eight-year-old's paper airplanes.
She'd guessed that they were for darling Sissy--which was the only reason Devina hadn't pulled rank and dragged him over to Saks. The worse that girl looked, the better.
Actually, on the humiliation scale, it was hard to know what ranked worse--all that flaccid, or the shopping excursion from hell. And it was strange--the closest Devina had ever come to being cock-whipped was when she was with Jim. But Adrian's lack of response had been so upsetting, she hadn't known what to do with herself. She'd been brought to heel like a dog, walking around those pinwheels full of cheap clothes behind him, docile as a retriever.
After that? He was hungry--so they'd gone to TGIFriday's in Lucas Square.
She hadn't even been able to enjoy the agog stares of the other patrons when she'd walked in with all her couture.
The potato skins with bacon hadn't been half-bad, though. And the fudge brownie had lifted her spirits a little, although that hadn't lasted past the sugar buzz.
Sitting across from each other, they hadn't talked much, but what was there to be said? Being enemies was a fun thing, except when it wasn't.
"You know, Devina, it's possible he's blaming himself in an equally erroneous fashion."
"I doubt it. He'd seemed fine, actually." Which was one more ass slapper. That Adrian hadn't been bothered one way or the other had been an insult. You'd think he'd have the grace to be even slightly affected.
He'd come to her for the sex, after all.
"Are you going to see him again?"
Devina shrugged. "Undoubtedly I will." She smoothed her short skirt again. "I'm not sure I want to though. Not in a big hurry to relive all of that."
"You know, Devina, I have to ask. Is there anything else that's going on for you right now? Sometimes our reactions are compounded by..."
As the woman droned on, an image of Jim Heron looking at Sissy with possession in his eyes came to mind. Talk about your stingers. And maybe the therapist had a point. Adrian was second in line at this point on her Metaphysical Fuckable List--and having a bad experience with him would have mattered so much less if the angel at the top hadn't been so enamored of someone else.
Set a bad stage, as it were.
"... sorry you're being challenged like this, but it presents an opportunity to develop new coping skills. I imagine you're feeling very triggered?"
As a matter of fact, she was. The compulsive need to perform an extensive review of her collection, the whole thing, was trembling on the edge of her consciousness, about to become an earthquake that took over every thought or feeling or priority.
"My suggestion," the therapist interjected, "is to do something that makes you feel beautiful, instead. Maybe it's journaling about all your positive attributes, your accomplishments, your successes. Perhaps it's meeting up with a friend and having a nice meal. A yoga class."
Ha. Been there, done that. And it had made her want to commit murder--no doubt not the direction that the therapist was going in.
"I want you to think in terms of self-affirming things. It is important for you to reach out beyond the compulsions--to find solace and purpose within yourself and your support system. Be creative. Have fun with it. But above all, know that the more you stretch yourself to explore your feelings, tolerating the bad ones and discovering that they too shall pass, the stronger and better off you will be. You can do this, Devina. I have faith in you."
Devina looked across at the woman. Given that her therapist wore a cross around her thick neck, one could extrapolate the irony if she knew that she'd just tried to inspire a demon.
Surprise!
And, you know, Devina was almost tempted to drop her slipcover, just to see the reaction--and to give some credibility to her statements about how hideous she really was. But what stopped her was all the dead-serious in the woman's face. The therapist honestly believed everything she was saying, and that was kind of touching.
"So I just leave here ..." Devina cleared her throat. "And..."
"Anything that keeps you from acting on a ritual. The best thing to do, especially as denying the urges becomes more uncomfortable, is to go about your life. Focus on self-affirmation, and activities that give you a sense of mastery. Anything that will root you in all of the strength you possess. You can do this."
"Be creative. Have fun with it, huh?"
As the therapist nodded like a bobblehead doll, all Devina could think of was, God, she'd rather go back to Target.
Chapter
Thirty-one
"It's after hours. The door's locked."
As Cait jogged the boathouse's combination lock, the disappointment she was feeling was obvious in her voice. But come on, of course the facility was still going to be mostly off-limits in late April.
"Here." Duke stepped into the light thrown by the fixture overhead. "Let me take a look at it."
"It's totally locked."
Damn it. Where could they go now? There was nothing else around, really--not unless they wanted to be picked up on public-obscenity charges. It looked like they were going to have to go back and get their cars--
Click. Creak.
Hello, wide-open.
Duke motioned the way in gallantly.
"How did you..."
"I work for the city during the day. This is an officially owned Caldwell property, and gee, what do you know, I have the master combination to all the locks."
"You are incredible."
Those lids dropped low again. "You haven't seen anything yet."
In an instant, Cait was totally aroused, and as she brushed past him, she deliberately let her shoulder move across his chest. He hadn't bothered to bring a coat, and his invincibility with the weather made her wonder if he couldn't lift cars, stop bullets with his teeth, leap buildings in a--
Okay, now she
was being ridiculous.
Inside, it was dark as night, the illumination from the lights along the roofline no match for the grime-covered windows. The only thing that registered was the sound of the water clapping under the cribs--a good reminder to watch where you were going so you didn't fall in--
"Ouch!"
Or run into something.
"Are you okay?" he said right behind her.
"Yes, I hit a..."
Well, she wasn't too sure what the thing was, but hard-as-a-rock certainly covered it. Reaching out, she found the sharp vertical edge that had caught her right in the shin, and then a long, widening rail--ah, yes, a canoe, she thought as she felt around.
"Come here," Duke growled, spinning her around. "You can hang on to me."
Cait needed no other invitation. She went right against his powerful body, arms rising up so she could grab the back of his neck and bring his mouth to hers. Their lips met in a clash of flesh, the sexual need exploding between them, everything going even more desperate than it had the night before: She was only dimly aware of him kicking the door shut. And after that, nothing mattered but what they were doing.
Duke's hands were rough as they ripped the bottom of her shirt free from her skirt, and then his broad palms were on her breasts.
"Oh, yeah, that's what I want," he bit out before melding his lips to her own again.
The kissing was utterly delicious, the slide of velvet on velvet as intoxicating as the way he was caressing her--but he broke up the dueling of their tongues and pulled back all too soon. Fortunately, the relocation of that mouth of his was so not a problem, considering where he went next.
Duke beelined for what he had bared, and as warm, wet suction found her nipple, Cait closed her eyes and went limp in his powerful grip. As he licked and teased at her, his strong arms gathered her up off the dock, and held her aloft.
Unlike her, he knew exactly where to go: A moment later, she was laid down on a soft pile of boat cushions.
"This okay?" he asked.
"Lay me on asphalt, concrete, wherever. Just come with me."
"Oh, I will. You can bet your life on that one."
His mouth was back on hers a split second later, his tongue entering her mouth, penetrating her as one of his knees pushed in between her legs and then his hips thrust against her--he was utterly erect, his arousal pushing into her core, the barriers of their clothes frustrating to the point of pain.