Bitter Sweet Love

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  his hand felt. “There are things I want to do.”

  Interest flared, deepening the hue of his eyes. “What things?”

  “Not what you’re thinking,” I said dryly, although the idea of those things was interesting. “I’ve never been anywhere and I want to go places. I want to see things.”

  His eyes narrowed, but my muscles tightened when his hand slid to my neck, threatening to wreak havoc on what I was trying to accomplish. “Where do you want to go?”

  “New York City. Washington, DC. Maybe even Philly,” I said in a rush. “I want to walk through a mall without a horde of males guarding me. I want to learn how to drive a car and not have someone give up on me when I grind the transmission.” Driving wasn’t necessary. Obviously. We had wings. We could fly, but driving...driving was so divinely human. “I want to go skinny-dipping.” At that, he looked way too engrossed, so I hurried on. “And I want... I want to hunt a demon.”

  “Jasmine, that’s unacceptable. Demons aren’t—”

  “Those are my conditions.” I squared my shoulders. A little wisp of guilt poked at me. I was using him to get what I wanted, and that wasn’t right, but when would I have this chance again? As a female Warden, there was so little that I could do. “Take them or leave them.”

  He held my stare for so long that I was sure he was going to say no. Then I’d probably choke-slam him―I knew how to do that because he had taught me. “And I have seven days to help you do all that?”

  That wasn’t a no. My hope grew. “Yes. You have seven days and then...well, then we’ll see.”

  Dez sighed deeply, as if I was asking him to raise the Titanic, and then he kissed my forehead. “Okay. You’re on.”

  Chapter Four

  Face shoved into my pillow, I groaned. It was early and beyond the four walls of my bedroom, I could hear the soft calls of birds chattering with one another. I wasn’t sure what stirred me awake.

  Something soft whispered down my bare skin. I moved my arm, trying to shove it under the covers. The fog of sleep cleared a little when the sensation traveled along my shoulder, skipping over the thin strap of my tank top. I huddled down under the covers, bringing my right leg up. I hit a rather immovable obstacle.

  The rest of the haze of sleep cleared when a deep chuckle rumbled through the room, sounding way, way too close.

  What. The. Hell.

  Flipping onto my side, I sat up, pushing at the hair that had fallen into my face. Two pale blue eyes framed with dark, reddish lashes met mine.

  “Good morning,” Dez drawled, lounging on his side as if he had every right to be in my bed.

  I jerked back, gasping. Would’ve tumbled right off the bed if his hand hadn’t shot out, catching my arm. He pulled me across the bed, so close that his scent, a mixture of the outdoors and a cologne I couldn’t place, was everywhere.

  “What are you doing in my bed?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  Was I still asleep? “And you couldn’t have waited until I got up?”

  “Nope.” He brushed a lock of hair over my shoulder, his fingers grazing my skin. “This isn’t the first time I’ve woken you up this way.”

  “But that... that was before,” I sputtered. He did the same with another strand of hair. My toes curled at the slight contact of our flesh. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “No one knows.” He leaned in, eyes glittering with amusement, and I was sucked back several years. “It will be our little secret.”

  I blamed being half asleep, because I couldn’t formulate a response. I was at a loss as to how to handle Dez. When we were younger, being close like this had been safe. Because we’d been little kids just sharing a bed, and even when we grew older, I’d been too self-conscious to make a move of that kind on him.

  Dez’s gaze traveled over my face slowly, and a flush followed. I tensed when his stare dipped lower. The thin tank top left nothing to the imagination.

  Nothing was safe about this.

  For a moment, I froze. The way he stared at me... well, when any other Warden looked at me that way, I felt nothing more than annoyance, but I wanted Dez to look. A strange fullness expanded my chest and it was suddenly too hot in the room.

  One side of his lips curved. “I could get used to... this every morning.”

  I sucked in a breath when his lashes flicked up. Yanking up the cover, I glared at him. “Keep dreaming, bud.”

  He chuckled as he stretched out, resting his cheek on his fist. “Do you have studies this morning?”

  “No. I’ve finished. I’m done.” All the Wardens were homeschooled and, as with humans, most of us completed our studies around age eighteen. We were provided with a lot of book smarts, but many of us, especially the females, had no real sense of the world. I peeked up at him. “Why?”

  “Good. We can start on those conditions you mentioned now.”

  “Now?” Stretching up, I looked at the alarm clock. “It’s not even seven!”

  He grinned. “You have a lot of conditions and I’m not wasting a moment.”

  Well, I’d kind of brought that on myself.

  “And I also have a condition,” he added.

  “What?” I sat up, eyes narrowing. “You can’t do that now. We already agreed—”

  “We didn’t sign a binding contract, Jas,” he said dryly as he pushed up. As big as he was, he took over the whole bed.

  “What is your condition?”

  My insides coiled tight at the slow smile that crept over his face. “That we complete each of your conditions with a kiss.”

  I gaped at him. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” he murmured. “You’re getting something out of this, so should I.”

  “Well, that’s real nice to hear.”

  He shrugged large shoulders.

  “My company should be enough,” I shot back.

  “Your company is, but take it or leave it, Jas. You want to do these things and I want you. And you want to play this game, so I’m going to play.”

  The stubbornness he’d displayed as a boy when he wanted something hadn’t changed. Usually it had been reserved for arguments over video games or wanting to hunt before he was old enough, but never had it been about me.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at him. I had the sinking sensation that somehow the conditions I’d established last night had played right into what he wanted―and now he had the upper hand.

  You’d think a Warden, with his ability to phase and turn his skin into granite and rapidly heal, wouldn’t be petrified of being inside a car.

  But Dez looked as if he was going to be sick.

  Both hands were planted on the dashboard as he stared out the windshield of the SUV. “Right! Turn the steering wheel right!”

  I turned right and the car jerked to the side, tires uneven on the shoulder, jolting us. “Sorry.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have taken the SUV,” he grumbled.

  I giggled.

  For six hours, we’d been in and out of the car and switching seats as Dez attempted to impart his driver’s education skills to me. We’d started in front of the manor, easing the SUV around the cul-de-sac and up and down the long driveway. It drew a lot of attention from the males and even more jests at Dez’s expense. He’d taken it in good stride and had been laughing up until the moment he’d deemed I was ready to take the SUV out on one of the many back roads that weren’t heavily traveled. We’d eaten a quick lunch and then hit the roads, and that’s when the real fun began.

  Driving wasn’t so hard, I realized.

  I straightened the wheel and smiled as he eased back in the seat, his legs stretched out, pushing against an imaginary brake. “It’s not that bad.”

  He slid me a sideways glance. “You might want to ease off the gas pedal.”

  My gaze dipped to the speedometer. Pushing sixty-five, I gripped the steering wheel as my smile spread to epic proportions. Trees blurred on either side of the narrow roads as I pressed d
own on the pedal, hitting seventy.

  Dez braced a hand on the car door. “Remember, hands at the nine and three o’clock position.”

  “I thought it was ten and two o’clock?”

  “No.” He sucked in a breath. “Curve. Curve coming up. Slow down. Curve!”

  I readjusted my hands and lessened the pressure on the gas, but my heart jumped in my chest as the SUV hugged the centerline. With the window down, wind blew through my hair and over my skin. “It’s like flying.”

  “Except we’re in a several-ton death trap,” he muttered.

  Laughing, I gunned it on the straightaway and giddiness swept through me. Driving for many Wardens wasn’t a big deal, not after they got their license and it became a method of getting from point A to point B, but there was something liberating in the tires eating away at the miles, in traveling almost as fast as we could fly. I was getting away from the house. I was escaping.

  “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “It’s so... well, you’ll probably think it’s stupid.”

  “I won’t. Tell me.”

  “It’s freeing and it’s... normal and strange somehow.” I struggled to find the right words as we crested a hill. “Danika is the only girl close to my age and she’s always busy trailing after the guys, so she’s never been interested in this kind of thing or really anything I’m interested in.”

  “She’s still trying to learn how to fight?” Amusement colored his tone.

  My sister wanted to fight demons. That was never going to happen, but she’d manage to convince the males to train her for self-protection. “Yeah, and while that’s fun and passes the time, I like to...”

  “Get out?”

  I nodded again, silent as I remembered the past three years of being alone in so many ways. Dez had been my buddy, my partner in doing things I shouldn’t be doing, and when he left, a lot of things became impossible.

  Dez shifted in the seat, his large body crammed into the spacious SUV. Seconds ticked by before he spoke. “Why didn’t you ask anyone else to teach you?”

  “I did, but none of them had the patience or thought it was a good idea.” The constant irritation of being caged stoked to life like a fire. “They think that if we do this, then we’ll just run amok and get ourselves in trouble. That demons will find us and—”

  “Demons will find you, Jasmine. They sense us just like we sense them. It isn’t safe for you to be out here without one of us.”

  “I’m not weak.” I cut him a sharp look.

  “I’m not saying that. You’ve never been weak. Not once.” His sincerity rang true. “But if you were ever to run into an Upper Level demon, you would not get away.”

  I bit my lip. There were many types of demons. Most common were Fiends. They looked human and they were into general mayhem, breaking things down, starting fires, manipulating the emotions of large crowds. I’d heard they could be ferocious when cornered. Then there were Posers. They too looked human, but only for a short while, and they had one hell of an appetite, including the rare cannibalistic tendency. When they bit a human, things went downhill fast—like turning-into-a-zombie fast. There were dozens more, but most dangerous of all were the Upper Level ones—the princes and dukes of Hell—the very kind that had killed my mother and wiped out Dez’s clan. They were rare, but their threat was very real.

  Suddenly, some of the fun was sucked right out of this experience.

  “I’m sorry.”

  His apology caught me off guard and I wanted to not be affected by it, but my chest spasmed.

  “When I left, I knew it would impact you, but I didn’t realize all that it would change,” he continued quietly. “I didn’t think that you’d be alone, stuck there.”

  “Stuck” was an accurate description. “Well, I guess in reality, you really didn’t owe me anything, right? You didn’t accept my father’s offer and you—”

  “I did owe you.” His eyes flashed teal. “If it hadn’t been for you, well, God only knows what would’ve become of me. You helped me move on, for the most part. And you...” He trailed off, staring out the passenger window. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”

  I accepted the change of subject, wanting to recapture the earlier giddiness. “I think I’m doing pretty awesome.”

  He chuckled. “You are. I think you’ve got it down. You’ve always been a fast learner.”

  I smiled and then a jolt of nervousness hit me. Once I completed a condition, then I had to fulfill his. Kissing. Fire spread across my cheeks. Sweat dotted my palms. Would I have sweaty palms while I kissed him? Ew. I told myself I didn’t care if I did, but as Dez had reminded me, I was a terrible liar. I did care.

  “Can I drive some more?” I asked.

  “You can drive as long as—stop the car!” he shouted suddenly, rearing up in his seat. “Stop the car, Jasmine. Now!”

  Tiny hairs rose over my body as a thick, smoky feeling invaded my blood. Something was wrong, something unnatural. I slammed my foot on the brakes. Tires squealed and the smell of burnt rubber filled the air, but another scent overshadowed it—the smell of rotten eggs.

  Sulfur.

  The back wheels spun out and the SUV fishtailed into the other lane. Desperately, I straightened the wheel and we slid to a bumpy stop along the side of the road.

  Movement blurred from a thick cropping of trees crowding the road. The air shimmered and warped, as if a lens was out of focus and then was corrected. As if a veil had been ripped away, forms rapidly took hold. My eyes widened and I smacked my hand over my mouth.

  Two of them stood side by side, their lean, muscular bodies covered in reddish matted fur. With clawed, four-fingered hands and hoofed feet, they didn’t resemble anything remotely cuddly or friendly. Their wings were black and fragile looking. Mouths gaped open, each exposing a ragged set of teeth that rivaled a great white’s. A large brown horn curved out from each camel-shaped head, sharp as a dagger.

  My heart jumped into my throat as I processed what I was seeing. Humans believed these creatures to be nothing more than a legend, comically named the Jersey Devil. One part of that name was correct. I knew what these things were. I’d seen them in books I’d sneaked from my father’s library.

  They were Terriers—demons.

  Chapter Five

  Stomach lurching, I studied the horrific-looking creatures. Terriers were lesser demons, ones rarely seen by the human eye. They were controlled by Seekers—demons who were in charge of finding something for an Upper Level demon or for Hell itself. If there were Terriers, it meant they were rooting around for something.

  I’d only seen a demon once—an Upper Level one who had made it past the males protecting Danika and me while we’d traveled from a nearby town with our mother. I had been six, and a simple outing had turned into a tragedy.

  “Stay in the car,” Dez ordered, throwing open the car door. “No matter what.”

  In a second he was outside the SUV, slamming the door shut behind him. One of the Terriers cocked its long, narrow neck to the side as it lifted its nose, sniffing at the air. A squawking sound came when it opened its mouth.

  Two more Terriers appeared between the trees, answering the call. I lowered my hand to the seat-belt clasp. Four of them? One against four? Icy fear embedded deep into my soul. It was like being six again, helpless and only able to watch the horror unfold.

  A stuttered heartbeat later, Dez phased into his true form. The back of his shirt shredded and slipped from his body as his wings unfurled, arcing high on either side of his broad shoulders. The change took only seconds, but the end result was magnificent. His skin turned a dark gray and his jaw widened, nose flattening. Two horns erupted from the messy spikes of auburn hair, curving back.

  Seeing him in his true form for the first time in years, I could no longer view him as the handsome boy I had fallen for.

  Dez was now a full-grown male—a warrior at that.

  A Terrier shrieked as it w
ent airborne, wings flapping as it