His deep baritone rang out pure and clear through the first verse.
Hard fists they strike/ Still not the stone my heart entombed lies beating
Scoring big/ I pay my dreams in blood/ Rush like a knife
Strike a match blaze/ Seize the bright lights/ Give me some illumination
In the end Hell will come calling/ Crown me king of hard knock strife.
Rohan growled the last line, his famous rasp front and center. He stretched out the final word impossibly long, the rest of us collectively holding our breaths.
With the first three songs, he’d given us a show.
With this one, he gave us magic.
The silence when the note finished was absolute; the chord he struck for the start of the chorus was shocking in comparison. The dark majesty of it resonated through the room after the clarity of his voice. I shivered.
Rohan didn’t play the next note. The crowd wailed in protest. He shot us a sleek, satisfied smile. “I live to tease,” he drawled.
The woman next to me fanned herself.
Rohan stood up. “That’s all you get… for now.” He winked and walked off the stage.
Samson immediately jumped on it, clapping. “Big hand for Rohan. Now let’s party.” Points for effort, but the audience demanded their idol back.
“Encore,” they chanted, stomping their feet.
A darkness slithered behind Samson’s eyes. I doubt anyone else noticed but I was close up and besides, Rasha. I was watching more intently than most. He covered it with a big grin. “Ro, get your ass back out here.”
Behind me, Drio chuckled.
Rohan came out, shaking hands with Samson like they were the best of friends. After presenting Rohan with an arm flourish, Samson jumped off the stage and Rohan once more sat down on the stool. He slung the guitar around to his front, then spread his hands wide as he raised an eyebrow, as if saying “you got me, now what do you want me to do?”
“Toccata and Fugue,” Samson yelled out.
My breath hitched. It hadn’t occurred to me that this song would be played. That I’d have to listen to Rohan sing it to Lily.
Rohan’s eyes flicked to mine for the briefest second, the genuine concern in them causing me to step back. “What about–” he said. Any potential suggestion was drowned out by the demon rallying the rest of the crowd into picking up the “Toccata and Fugue” chant.
As one, Rohan and I turned toward Lily. She beamed, nodding at him. Dancing hearts couldn’t have conveyed her feelings any clearer. He smiled at her, the kind of smile bestowed on a woman by a man who is powerless to deny her anything.
I’d seen those smiles. In movies.
I flinched, my gaze clashing with Samson’s. A mocking smile on his face, he held up a glass in cheers. I looked away.
Rohan strummed the opening chord, his head bent forward in concentration, cocking a hip to better adjust for the weight of the guitar. Looking down at the instrument through half-lowered lashes, his hair falling forward, he had the tiniest smile on his face.
Barely blinking, barely breathing, I let the song flow over me, forcing myself to remember with every word flaying my soul, that these lyrics were not for me and never had been. Forcing myself to watch the bond between Rohan and Lily, my head bouncing from his face back to hers. The entire audience were voyeurs on an incredibly intimate moment between the two but, for me, there was no titillation in the spectacle.
Standing rooted to the spot as Rohan sang of the girl with lightning in her eyes and the boy with demons in his soul to the actual fucking lightning girl, I learned exactly how deep my masochism ran.
At some point Drio took my arm trying to pull me out of there, but I tugged free.
It was the rawest version of the song I’d ever heard. My stomach twisted with the irony that as much as that song had freaked me out when he’d first sung it, now it broke my heart.
Rohan’s bow when he finished the song was more subdued this time. He disappeared off the stage. Further demands for another song were ignored. The show was over.
People wandered back to the bars or stayed on the dance floor as the band brought out the funk. I raced toward the green room. If I was going to have any hope of facing myself in the mirror again, this ended now.
I found him leaning against the wall, eyes closed. His head was tipped back, hair sweaty and sticking up in tiny spikes. One leg was bent, his foot planted on the wall. A mostly empty water bottle dangled from his hand.
His eyes snapped open, pinning me in place. The blazing naked hunger in them stole my breath. He peeled himself off the wall. I stepped forward, powerless to resist his gravitational pull. Rohan inhaled, a harsh shaky sound and–
“That was so good,” Lily squealed, bounding into the room and breaking the spell. She leapt on him, kissing him squarely on the lips. Rohan tensed for a second, then his arms came around Lily and he kissed her back. Short and sweetly everything.
I shut down. Eviscerated. There were parts of my heart and my brain that I wouldn’t–couldn’t–visit right now. I cauterized them just to make sure.
Other people poured into the room and I slipped away.
Drio caught up with me outside the club. He fell into step beside me, telling me some stupid story about Samson’s posse. I didn’t know when things had shifted between us for him to become my guardian angel, but I was very happy to have him there distracting me.
Back at the hotel, I went straight to the bar. Drio matched me drink for drink. Eventually I’d consumed enough that he had me laughing. I poked his shoulder. “I like you.”
“I’m likeable. You’re a hot mess.”
I curled an errant strand of hair around my finger. “Yeah, but you’re trouble and I bet you love hot messes. We don’t come with strings.”
He cocked an eyebrow in interest. “No strings?”
I licked a drop of vodka off my lip. “None at all.”
Drio’s nostrils flared.
I ran a hand over his pecs. These Rasha boys had such nice bodies.
Drio grabbed my hand. We practically sprinted over to the elevator. Inside, he pushed me up against the wall, sucking on my neck. I pulled his shirt out of his pants to get closer to his skin. To feel his heat.
To feel something.
The second the elevator door opened, he flash-stepped me down the hall, slamming me up against my door. Giggling, lightheaded from the jaunt, I nipped at the underside of his jaw. “Speedy.”
Drio leaned into me, his erection hard between my thighs. “No, bella,” he purred, “it’s going to be a very long night.”
My knees buckled. I wove my hands into the silky strands of his blond hair as he made his way down my body, his mouth hot and sloppy through the fabric of my dress. My head thunked back against the door and I closed my eyes to better lose myself to the tingling along my skin.
Drio pushed my dress up, his breath ghosting over Cuntessa. She voiced her approval with ripples of hot pleasure. With a wicked glint up at me, he nipped the inside of my thigh.
An electric sizzle caught at the base of my spine, arcing up through me. Holy yes, Batman! I fumbled in my clutch for my keycard, yanking him to his feet. “Inside,” I breathed. “Now.”
His eyes, fiery emeralds, locked onto mine. Using his powers so absolutely for good, he had me inside on the bed with my dress off my shoulders before I could blink.
“More skin.” I wrapped my leg around his waist, tearing at his shirt buttons.
Drio dragged his finger up my side. The sharp smell of his arousal pushed me into overdrive.
I moaned, rocking against him.
“I don’t kiss,” he murmured in my ear.
“What?”
He raised his head. “I don’t kiss.”
His words were like a douse of freezing water. Ice seeped through my veins, making everything numb when I should have been on fire.
I pushed Drio off of me.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
I rub
bed my hands over my arms, thoroughly unnerved by this of all similarities between us. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
He wasn’t angry. In fact, the look he gave me was heavily laced with compassion. He shrugged. “Sometimes you just want to feel something else, you know?”
I nodded. Yeah, I knew. I pulled my dress back onto my shoulders.
Drio made himself presentable once more. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes.” I squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”
He was already opening my door. “Yeah, yeah.”
I figured that I’d toss and turn all night, but sleep claimed me pretty fast. The next morning, I woke up to a moment of horror for what I’d almost done. That turned into a moment of horror that I felt horrified about being horrified when Rohan and I weren’t in a relationship. Whatever had not happened with Drio was none of Rohan’s business. Just like whether or not Rohan spent the night with Lily was none of mine.
Then I sprinted to the bathroom and vomited.
Chapter 24
I’d always thought battling demons involved physical fights, but Samson was the second demon I’d faced who’d unleashed emotional wreckage and mind game fuckery on a brutal scale. I almost blinded myself with my mascara wand, lost in the grip of my savage urge to destroy him for loosing that encore on me.
So when Drio and not Rohan called me with the details of the location for the meeting, I needed more than a few steady breaths to calm down. Rohan didn’t get to start avoiding me now. Not before I’d had my say and officially ended our penile paradigm.
I armored up in all-black.
The one good thing in my morning was a message waiting at reception for me from Dr. Gelman saying her panel had gone well. Her check-in calmed me down a bit.
Using Rasha connections, Rohan and Drio arranged for us to have use of a cool underground bar. I’d texted Samson the time and address, receiving confirmation that he’d be there.
I paced at the top of the stairs leading down to the bar for a good ten minutes before I felt psyched enough to go meet up with my team, though I was surprised to descend the stone stairs and find other patrons inside. The bartender looked up from drying a glass, studying me with more curiosity than my presence warranted. Then he nodded, raising his hand to show his Rasha ring. Ah. He’d looked a bit too ripped to spend his time slinging booze. Each of the half dozen or so other men here were hunters as well, providing background so Samson didn’t get suspicious by walking into a deserted bar.
I took a seat at one of the high tables, taking the chair that put my back to the wall. The bartender brought me over a can of dark beer. “I shouldn’t.”
“Root beer,” he said.
Neither Drio nor Rohan showed themselves. I wished that I had some understanding of what would happen but I guess they couldn’t risk Samson walking in and seeing them.
Samson kept me waiting for twenty minutes. Long enough to make me sweat that he wasn’t going to show. He skipped hello to go straight for the jugular. “Guess you’ve been replaced. I hear she’s smart, too.” A mean sort of smile slid across his face.
I ran the edge of my thumb over the can’s tab. “Does that change things?”
Samson shrugged, watching me with a feigned casualness. “You tell me.”
“If you were only interested in me for Rohan, then you should have skipped the middle man and fucked him yourself. You’d have enjoyed it. Evelyn sure did.”
White spots of rage appeared on his cheeks. “You cunt,” he hissed.
A low chanting filled the room. A call to Adramelech.
Samson hopped off his chair, but was blocked by Rohan. The other Rasha, including the bartender, had slipped out. Samson tried to knock Rohan aside, but Rohan wrenched Samson’s arm up his back, planting him facedown against the table.
“Going somewhere?” Rohan asked.
Samson’s eyes darted to the door, being locked shut by Drio.
The source of the chanting, Drio held a small blade, using it to trace a complicated pattern in the air.
“Hey man, I’m not into Satan shit.” Samson laughed as he struggled against Rohan’s grasp.
Rohan’s eyes met mine, twins of the doubt I felt. Why wasn’t Samson’s form changing? I was positive that after our encounter in his trailer that I’d correctly pegged him as a demon. Had we gotten his true name wrong? If so, we were screwed. We’d never get another chance to get close enough to do this ritual.
“You know, if you didn’t like the terms of the recording contract, you could have just said.” Samson was way too blasé.
Rohan slammed the blade of his middle finger through Samson’s palm. Samson howled. His face flickered, revealing black charred skin.
I exhaled.
Rohan held the demon down as he struggled.
Closer and closer Drio came, chanting and tracing the pattern. The demon’s skin rippled and bubbled. Tendons strained in his neck. An eyeball bulged out. His teeth ground together trying to fight his transformation.
Rohan yanked his blade from Samson’s palm. The demon snapped upright, clearly not of his own volition.
“Hear me, Adramelech,” Drio said. “Before me now, I use your name, demand your form.” Drio slit his own palm with the ritual blade. Blood dripped onto the floor.
Samson’s glamour fell away, leaving a humanoid creature covered in ruined, burned flesh. Not unexpected for a sun-demon. But he also had a gorgeous peacock’s tail, rising six feet high, and swaying behind him in a vivid swirl of iridescent greens, blues, and golds.
“You think you can take me, Rasha?” the demon sneered. He turned a look of unadulterated loathing on me. “Puppet.”
He didn’t know I was Rasha. That was a refreshing first. Before I could enlighten him, there was a resounding crash of breaking glass. I looked over at the window, confused. Logan, Samson’s flunky, had just burst inside. Glass dotted his skin, blood streaming from a dozen cuts.
Drio grabbed the demon’s tail, lifting the blade to plunge into the base of his spine.
Logan flicked his fingers and it felt like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room. Drio’s knife clattered to the floor.
I doubled over, gasping, my lungs burning. My head was being squeezed in an invisible vise. Drio coughed, swearing, which snapped my attention up.
Samson and Logan were gone.
I looked over at Drio, who held a handful of peacock feathers, and blinked. There was Drio, but I stood next to him. I shook my head. That wasn’t right. Neither was the stunned expression on my face as I stared back at me.
I pointed at myself. This wasn’t my hand. This was too big and too male to be my hand.
Eyes wide, I looked down. “Oh shit,” I said in Rohan’s voice.
“Shit,” he echoed in mine.
The next hour was surreal. While Drio and Rohan, as me, commanded the other Rasha on hunting down Samson and Logan, I went into the washroom to stare at my new face. Planting myself in front of the dingy mirror, I examined every feature of Rohan’s with more thoroughness than I ever had, but I couldn’t reconcile my brain with reality. Again and again, I touched a fingertip to his nose, his tongue, his lashes, but no matter how much I willed the face to change back into my own, it didn’t.
I trailed his fingers over the silver taps. Solid. Cool. Back up along his arm to the reflection staring out at me, sweat breaking out over his skin at the disorientation of being there but not.
I shifted, aware of a pressing on my bladder. Were these insides still mine? Unbuckling his jeans, I gripped his dick. So freaking weird, feeling his hand and his cock at the same time. I pointed it at the toilet but that felt wrong too, so I ended up sitting down, giving his dick a firm yank to shake it off. I tucked it back in his jeans and washed his hands.
Bad enough walking back into the bar that I had to find my balance, learn how this body moved, I kept having to adjust his balls because the jeans pinched. How did men get anything done?
“Are you wearing butt fl
oss?” Rohan’s words said in my voice, stopped me in my tracks, every Rasha in the bar swinging his head my way. The bartender even halted the phone conversation in rapid Czech he was having.
So. Dead. So not answering him.
I marched over and swiped Rohan’s bottle of water away. “You don’t eat or drink anything until we’ve switched back.” I was not having Rohan wipe my ass.
He glowered at me. Wow, I gave really good glower. I tried to glower back but hadn’t perfected the movement with these facial muscles so I’m not sure what the overall effect was.
“Ro,” the bartender said, hanging up, “get a move on. The bar needs to open for real and we need to get the window replaced.”
Rohan stalked over to my jacket, one hand held across my chest.
“This is no time for your cheap thrills,” I informed him.
“They bounce. You need a better bra.”
“They bounce because they’re real. That’s what women’s boobs do.” I adjusted his stupid balls again shaking out his leg in my attempt to make everything lay properly.
“You’re going to chafe them,” Rohan said. “Men’s genitals are very sensitive. Unlike some who require a battering ram.”
Baring his teeth at him, I tugged on his cock. He winced, but I did too at the pain that spiked through me. Spectacular backfire.
A sharp whistle cut through our hostility. Drio muscled between us like a ref at a boxing match. “You two need to go back to the hotel and stay there.”
Rohan tried to argue the point, but I agreed with Drio. I didn’t want any unnecessary further harm to my meatsack and I didn’t trust Rohan to take proper care of it. Rohan’s-my-eyes spat electricity. A spark landed on the sweater I’d worn this morning.
I slapped at it before it could do any actual damage but in my anxiety, I triggered one of his finger blades. It slit the fabric, drawing a fine line of blood along my actual body’s skin.
Rohan hissed in pain and jerked his arm away. My arm. The arm of the body he was in. Both of us limited to feeling sensations in the form that we were each trapped in.
We glared daggers at each other.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 50