“Despite what happened, Rohan? You’re denying an essential part of yourself. I’m not saying go all rock star again, but you can’t stop singing and making music. It’s who you are just as much as being Rasha.” I cupped his jaw. “Even if you don’t do this song, please think about what I’ve said. You don’t need to live with that deep-seated unhappiness. You don’t need to live with that guilt. You have the right to decide how you want to live. You have the right to be happy.”
Rohan didn’t say anything, just held my gaze. Every particle between us was charged with this intense intimacy and, in that moment, I almost broke my rule and kissed him.
Our mutual tensing hit at the same instant.
I dropped my hand. “What are we doing here?”
He sighed. “Fuck if I know.”
“Right.” I sat up and retrieved my nightgown, pulling it over my head. “Thanks for the sex stuff.”
“Any time.”
I paused at the doorway. Normally sexytime did not require any clarification because normally I would not be seeing the dude again. However, with Rohan and I being in such close quarters, I figured the laying out of mutual expectations would be appropriate.
“Are you still mad?” I asked.
“About what? Using sex to get what you want, your issues with kissing, or the fact you apparently have never met a personal boundary you care to respect?”
I winced, toeing at a groove in his floor. “Yes.”
“No, because I believe you weren’t. No, because I’m almost impressed with your level of dysfunction–”
“Your issue shit doesn’t smell like roses either,” I shot back.
“It would if I had any.”
I rolled my eyes at his ability to say that with a straight face.
“And no,” he said, “it’s annoying, but I’m not mad.”
The tightness in my chest relaxed. “Last item. To ensure there is no slap down of a Sexual Harassment 101 course on our,” I circled a finger between us, seeking a noun that wasn’t relationship, “situation by the HR department.”
“You mean our resident dominatrix?” Rohan asked.
“Stay professional, Snowflake.”
He schooled his features into a serious expression, nodding for me to continue.
I repressed my grin at the amusement in his eyes. “To clarify,” I said, ticking the items off on my fingers. “Our future dynamic includes training, dispatching unholy spawn, and doing the horizontal mambo at every opportunity, correct?”
“Except Saturdays,” he said. “I rest on Shabbat.” The Jewish Sabbath.
My face fell and Rohan laughed. “So easy on so many levels,” he teased.
“So mind-blowing on so many levels,” I corrected, and left.
Chapter 25
Our talk didn’t bring Rohan to an earth-shattering epiphany. It certainly didn’t get me any closer to my goal of having Ari checked. All that happened was that Rohan avoided me the next day. I buried myself in more training, then headed up to my room, stopping in surprise as I entered.
My tap shoes were sitting on my bed. I reached a tentative finger out to touch them. Last time I’d seen them had been at my parents’ place. Ari would have mentioned if he’d brought them over. Except he wouldn’t have. As far as he was concerned, I’d shut that part of myself down. Only one person was aware that I’d danced again that one time.
I pressed my palms to my cheeks. Was this about me? About him? About us? Not that there was an us.
“Babyslay?” Kane stood in my doorway. “Rabbi Abrams wants to see you in his office.”
Hope rising in my chest, I bolted downstairs, skidding to a stop as the rabbi’s office door opened and my shell-shocked twin stumbled out.
“I’m still an initiate,” Ari said.
Behind his desk. Rabbi Abrams paused his polishing of a gold bar engraved with symbols to throw me a thumbs up. With a whoop, I jumped up and down.
Ari wore the same dazed look all the way out to the car.
“You’re happy, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. I just… need to process that it’s for real.” He sank into the driver’s seat, shaking his head. “Listen, Rabbi Abrams wants us to keep this between the three of us for now. Something about figuring out why re-running my induction ceremony didn’t work.” He popped his seat belt in with a click.
“Okay, but that means no unting-hay emons-day on your end.”
Ari started the car. I shut his door, doing my happy dance for the benefit of his rear view mirror until the car had veered out of sight down the drive.
I danced my way up the back stairs into the kitchen where I found Rohan sitting on the counter, texting. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” I threw my arms around him.
He jumped down, sliding his phone into his pocket. “I shouldn’t have held up the mission like that.”
My exuberance leaked out of me and I stepped back. I mean, yeah, it was a perfectly good reason to do the theme song but what about the tap shoes? Weren’t they symbolic of well, something?
Before I could ask, Drio bounded into the room and grabbed Rohan in a bear hug, spinning him around.
“Dude. Put me down.”
Drio squeezed him one more time then messed up Rohan’s hair. “I could kiss you!”
I could watch that.
“We’ll have the proof to take Samson down in no time.” Drio did a quick one-two step. “Prague, here we come!”
“Why Prague?” I asked.
“The final part of the production is being shot there.” Drio eyed me up and down, one hand braced on the counter. “Want to go?”
“Suuuure.” I pointed to the stairs. “I’ll pack my bags.”
“I’m serious.” He jerked his index finger up and down my body. “You’re attractive enough.”
I fluttered my hands in front of my face. “You think so?” I dropped the act. “Attractive enough for what?”
“Yes, Drio,” Rohan said. “Whatever are you up to?”
Drio’s hands gestured excitedly as the words tumbled out of him. “You doing the song opens up a bunch of new ways to plant more Rasha in the inner circle. As part of your entourage, I’ll be vetted by his posse no problem.” He jerked his thumb at me. “And any ‘friend,’” he used air quotes, “of the great Rohan Mitra’s…”
“Hell no,” Rohan growled.
I punched Drio. “I’m not whoring out for a demon.”
“You don’t have to fuck him,” he said. “But you’re his type. Be a tease. I don’t care. The more people we have on him, the faster we take him down. Besides, you’re a good Rasha,” he added grudgingly.
Wow.
Still, any plan of Drio’s to send me in and play nice with a demon needed to be examined inside and out for all the possible ways I could end up dead. I started with Baruch, dropping the comment casually in during a training session the next day. “Drio wants me to go to Prague undercover and get close to Samson for proof he’s a demon. What do you think?”
I startled my trainer enough that I managed to land a right hook on his jaw. A first.
“Ben zona,” Baruch swore. “No.”
“It wasn’t a yes or no question, Tree Trunk. I could help.” I raised my fists back up to my face.
“You have no experience.” He corrected my stance.
I laughed. “Getting guys? That’s pretty much the most experience I have.”
“Outing demons. You don’t have to do this.”
Oh, I knew that, but I figured that the Brotherhood would, too. Sure, Ari would be taken care of now but they were still undecided on me. I wanted to change that.
“Scale of one to ten,” I asked later, “with one being me coming out unharmed and ten being my grisly remains found twenty years from now. Where do you put this job?”
“Fifty-seven,” Kane said. We sat on the front porch, Kane keeping me company “for no reason” but really because Ari was coming over.
“You don’t think I could do it?”
/> “I don’t think I could do it and I’ve pulled straight boys with the best of them.” Kane wagged a finger at me. “King is dangerous. And not in the fun way that makes you do that moaning sound that I find highly irritating to have to hear, child who has not processed that my room is directly over Rohan’s.”
I blushed.
Ari showed up, looking between me still totally embarrassed and Kane, legs splayed in his Adirondack chair. “Do I want to know?” he asked.
“Your sister is being very naughty.”
“That would be a no, then.”
“Also, she has a death wish.” Kane got up. “Talk to her.” He swatted me across the top of the head and went inside.
Ari sat down in the vacated chair and held out a gift bag.
“What’s this?” I pulled out a giant box from the fancy-ass chocolatier I loved but could never really afford.
“Because you believed in me.”
“Aww, Ace.” I kissed his cheek.
He allowed one peck before he swatted me off. “What was Kane babbling about?”
“Prague.” I explained the situation and why I wanted to do it.
“You’re not ready.”
“I’m Rasha.” I lit up my hand. “I am not without resources.” I flexed my fingers. “Ever since I became a hunter, I’ve been focused on doing this job to survive or prove a point that I wasn’t a total fuck up. But I’ve missed having something to be passionate about and being Rasha might be it. You were right. I am happy. At least, I’m starting to be.”
Ari was silent for a while. “Okay.”
“Also, I–wait. Okay?”
He nodded. “You’re right. You’re Rasha. This wouldn’t even be a discussion if you were a guy. And the passion for the gig? I get it.”
“We are going to be the coolest super twins ever.” I broke open the chocolates. While I chose mine by shape most likely to contain nuts, Ari carefully studied the legend. My first choice contained a macadamia so I nailed it. Next I went for a dark chocolate surprise. “So you don’t think the Prague idea is a subtle murder plot by Drio?”
“No. Though once Samson’s dead, you might want to watch your back. Sweet! Hedgehog.”
“Wait!” I tried to grab the chocolate, but Ari stuffed it in his mouth before I could. “No fair. There was only one of those.”
“You snooze, you loose,” he said through a mouthful.
“So much for gratitude.”
He looked at me like I was insane. “It was a hedgehog. You’d push me into traffic for one.” I couldn’t argue with that, though I did make sure and eat his second favorite flavor of Mexican hot chocolate truffle next.
Once I had Ari’s support, blessing, and common sense take on the matter, I gave Drio my assent. He told me that he was waiting for official permission from the Brotherhood, but that he expected the call soon.
I hurried downstairs to Rohan’s room, rapping softly on the door. “Hey, Snowflake.” My plan was to keep things professional. He hadn’t said word one to me about the tap shoes so I was taking that to mean it had simply been a kind gesture from a colleague.
Rohan stepped out from behind his half-open closet door, dressed in tight black jeans and a white T-shirt, his hair spiky and gelled. And, oh my, he was wearing eyeliner.
He grinned his rock fuck grin.
I clutched the doorframe in support as every bone in my legs dissolved into jelly. “I’ve decided to go to Prague.” My voice came out in a squeak.
“I heard.” He advanced on me, pure strut. The light caught the silver of his multiple rings on each hand.
I eeped and held onto the doorframe harder. “Maybe I’ll run into you while I’m there.”
I prayed that Prague was a big enough city that that absolutely would not happen, because with him dressed like this and in full rock god mode, I didn’t stand a chance.
“I’m sticking close to have your back on this assignment.” He skimmed his hand over my hip, the warmth of the black leather strap worn with a single fat silver bracelet on his right wrist brushing against my skin.
“Dressed like that?” I stammered. My heart beat a furious tempo at the clear and present danger of this incarnation of Rohan. I flapped a hand at him. “Surely, you don’t have to go zero to a billion? Start small.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about how you missed dancing like breathing.” His arrogance fell away, leaving a soft vulnerability that hit me harder than the rock god look. “It made me realize that I’d been holding my breath, too. That, after Asha, I hadn’t thought I deserved music in my life.” His gaze turned penetrating. “I hadn’t admitted that to anyone. Not even myself until now. Until you.”
I had to jump start my breathing. “Happy I could help,” I squeaked. I tried to step away but he held me fast. Careful what you wish for, idiot. I swallowed, his raw charisma flooding my system.
“I’m meeting with Forrest about the song. And I wrangled an intro to King. Now I need more of an entourage than just Drio.” He leaned in, his lips hovering over mine. “You were nominated and won as groupie.”
“Mazel tov to me,” I murmured, practically pulling the frame off the wall. My mouth was dry and my brain had gone wonky and stupid in the face of his pure male swagger. Oh, how misguided I’d been with my whole “players and their games” insight I’d had on Rohan.
I hadn’t even begun to see his game because Rohan Mitra had been slumming in the junior league with me. Nope, I was screwed, and this time, I didn’t think I’d get a say in how.
End of Book 1
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Sting
Chapter 1
“Shove it in already,” I said through gritted teeth. My back was freezing from the damp, flaking basement concrete I lay against, while the two-foot-long, rat-shaped demon pinning me down was doing shit for my front.
Rohan Mitra, rock star turned demon hunter, shook his tousled dark hair, his full lips puckering in obvious disgust. “I’m not putting my finger in there. You want it so badly, do it yourself.”
I slammed an elbow into the underside of the vral’s jaw, whipping her head sideways, intent on keeping the demon’s double row of razor-sharp incisors out of my shoulder. One bite and I’d be paralyzed.
And lunch.
“Now you’re going to get all pussy about sticking your finger places it doesn’t belong?”
“I’ll reconsider if she begs as nicely as you did, Nava.”
The vral snapped her teeth, the sound a loud crack in my ear. Her dank, rotten-meat belch wafted over me.
I tried to plug my nose with my shoulder, my arm muscles straining with the exertion of holding her at bay. “Bite me, Mitra.”
He sipped his latte, standing there immaculate and infuriating in a camel-colored trench coat more appropriate to a night at the theater than a demon raid. A raid, it turned out, Rohan had no intention of participating in, deeming it “a training exercise for the newbie.”
Overhead, a bulb sizzled and popped out, dimming the light and casting almost-romantic shadows over the warped structural beams and grotty walls.
Rohan had the gall to check his watch.
“Don’t let me keep you from anything.” I shot lightning bolts at the vral from my eyes and she jerked, her weight almost off me. Hand blasts were so level one. I rolled sideways, but the demon crashed back down on top of me. The two of us tumbled into the shadows, her teeth flashing in and out of the darkness.
“Then finish her,” he said.
“I’m trying, but I don’t think she’s into me that way.”
Rohan took another sip. “Make her want it.”
Continued grappling with the demon wasn’t going to get me anywhere other than exhausted and then dead. Fine, mostly dead. Rohan wouldn’t let me be unequivocally taken out.
I wove an electric net around the vral’s body, temporarily paralyzing her with my magic so I could scramble free. My problem? The only way to permanently stop a demon involved hitting their weak spot. My other p
roblem? There was a different spot for each demon. With vral, it was their left eye. As in the one that bulged jiggling out toward me from her socket, laden with pus. “If I blast her eyeball, demon goo will splooge everywhere.”
“Always about the hard and messy,” he chastised. “Gentle has its place, too, you know.”
The vral, who I’d thought was still suffering the effects of my magic paralysis, lashed her tail around my arm. Surprise. What looked like smooth fur was actually dozens of tiny barbs. I wrenched free, my stomach heaving at the sight of my flesh that now looked like raw hamburger, and blasted the demon in the chest. “Have at it. Gently use one of your blades to puncture–son-of-a-bitch!”
The vral convulsed under the sharp crackle of my power, locking onto me in a spasming hug, her claws shredding my sweater. Eight bleeding gashes were not my idea of body adornment.
The air stank of sizzling fur, which was still a step up from the stale BO and garbage juice that had seeped into the walls of this squatter’s paradise.
“Stop acting from the flight part of your brain and go to the fight,” Rohan said.
Thrashing on the floor, I squeezed my eyes shut against the blood and sweat dripping into them. The vral’s claws burrowed into my back. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“Napping? Baruch trained you better than this.”
Yeah, for three whole weeks. Muttering an anatomically impossible suggestion Rohan’s way, I pulled out a self-defense move that Baruch had drilled into me. Before the demon’s tremors could subside, I wrapped my right leg around her left foreleg to trap it, curling my right arm over her body in a tight overhook. My fingers dug deeper into her wiry, scorched fur, hitting something squishy that was matted into her side.
Please don’t let that be leftover homeless person from her earlier meal.
I planted my left foot firmly on the floor, bridging up, my hips exploding into the air. The combination of that momentum, along with the pull/push dual action of my arms as I chopped my left hand into the demon, allowed me to swing on top of her.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 28