Can’t Fix Cupid
Raven Kennedy
Copyright © 2019 by Raven Kennedy
All Rights Reserved. This work, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission of the author. This work may not be used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Nichole Witholder at Rainy Day Artwork
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Dedication
To anyone who has ever felt like a dud. This one’s for you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Thank You For Reading
About the Author
Signs of Cupidity
Chapter 1
He’s the worst bachelor ever.
Really. In the two months that I’ve been watching Warren Knight, he’s blown a total of thirteen dates. Thirteen! Maybe that doesn’t sound too terrible, but considering his busy schedule, it’s way too many.
I shake my head as I watch him get increasingly impatient with his date. Sure, this is the fourth time she’s fixed her lip gloss at the table, and sure, she kind of has a habit of making all of her statements sound like questions, but her boobs look great and she’s definitely a ten. They’re always tens.
It’s no surprise, since Warren Knight himself is probably a twelve, and that’s even when he has bed head and a bad attitude.
But see, therein lies the problem. He’s just too good looking for his own good. Poor guy.
“So that’s what I did when I got my followers up to ten thousand…”
The girl is droning on and on about her Instagram profile, but Warren looks like he’d rather be at a dentist appointment than on this date. And I would know, because I watched him go to the dentist last week, and he seemed like he really enjoyed himself.
“So do you wanna get out of here?” the beautiful woman suddenly asks.
She’s leaning over, her hand lightly touching the sleeve of his suit jacket. He doesn’t even look up from the plate of food that he’s eating as he answers her. “No.”
The woman sits back, anger and hurt flashing across her features, but she quickly covers it up with a cool smile. “Okay...How about we go to Slash?”
Excited, I smile happily and edge closer to them, because I’ve been to Slash a few times for work. The nightclub always has plenty of music and drinking, dancing, and flirting. It’s like a cupid’s playground. Well, if a cupid were actually good at her job. Which I’m not.
I try to be good. Hell, I try to be great. But my powers just don’t work right.
“No,” Mr. Knight says again, finally lifting his head to look at her.
When he does that, it almost seems like he’s looking at me, but that’s just because I’m hovering right in front of Beautiful Date Number Fourteen. So he can’t see me, but that’s okay, because I can see him and he looks damn good.
Black suit and tie, black hair slightly disheveled, and brown eyes that remind me of crispy leaves. Pale skin, healthy covering of dark stubble, sharp jaw and eyebrows that hover a bit menacingly over his eyes. Plush lips. Cheekbones you want to run your hands over, and perfect white teeth you want to lick.
He’s even better naked. Trust me, I’ve seen him.
I look back at the woman, wincing slightly on her behalf. He’s so damn handsome, but at this point, it’s just a detriment to him. Apparently, your level of attractiveness also raises your level of rudeness.
The woman smooths down her glossy brown hair and crosses her legs under the table. Her dress hugs her curves to perfection. I bet she knows a lot of tricks in bed, but it looks like I won’t be able to find out, because just like his other dates, Mr. Knight is cutting things short. Too bad, because I’ve become a bit of a voyeur. I enjoy a good show.
“If you didn’t want to hook up, why did you ask me out?” she demands.
Oooh. I perk up at the steel in her voice. Like I said, I’ve become a bit of a voyeur, and it doesn’t just extend to sexual escapades. I pretty much like watching everything that has to do with Warren Knight, and this is the first time in fourteen dates that one of the women has snapped back at him. This is getting good.
I take the liberty of perching on their dinner table, but my ass goes through it a bit. I’m still trying to perfect the whole hovering thing. It’s hard learning to live in the Veil. The ghosts make it look easy.
Mr. Knight regards her a little more closely than before—like her clapback made her more relevant.
But then he does the eye sweep. You know the one.
The one where the hot dude looks you up and down. But it’s not in a nice way. He does it in a way that makes you feel like a total joke.
So he does the condescending eye swoopty, and her face heats up faster than a hotdog in hell.
“Stop that,” I hiss at him. He doesn’t listen, but I can’t blame him for that because he can’t actually hear me.
“I took you out as a favor,” he tells her with a wave of his hand. “Your cousin works for me. He said you’ve been trying to move on from just being an Instagram model to walking for fashion week. He knew if you were seen with me that it would help boost your career. So I agreed because now he’ll have no choice but to owe me one. I’ll be cashing in that favor quite soon, actually.”
Her teeth clench. “You’re a son of a bitch, Knight. You know that?”
He takes a gulp of wine and shrugs easily. “Now that you were photographed here with me, your career will spike, more connections will open up. You should be kissing my shoes.”
I wince. “Now you’ve really done it,” I say, hopping to my feet and heading over to him. My hand passes through his arm when I try to touch him, but that’s okay. All I need to do is use some cupid mojo on him, and then maybe I can turn this date around.
After all, I know they’re attracted to each other. My cupid senses tell me that much at least. But he always does this—always seems to purposely run his dates into the ground until it’s just a fiery crater of I shoulda swiped left.
I just don’t get it. I know he desires women, so I don’t understand why he does this.
“This is why you need a cupid,” I tell him seriously as I lean in. “You’re clearly just incapable of plugging your asshole
long enough to squelch out anything other than rude shit.”
I take a determined, deep breath. “Okay. I can handle this. I’m just gonna fix this whole thing right now before you ruin date number fourteen, okay? Okay,” I say, giving myself a much needed pep talk.
With as much concentration as I can muster, I look him in the eye and then blow out a huge exhale of Lust Breath right into his stupidly handsome face. There’s nothing like a dose of desire to really get things turned around.
But instead of the perfect pink mist that’s supposed to come out of my mouth, I get a plume of watered-down pea soup smoke that has no Lust in it whatsoever. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It kinda just plops onto the table and slinks away like a slimy slug.
“Dammit!” I yell, pulling back. I try to stomp the ground in frustration, but instead, my foot just disappears into the floor all the way up to my ankle. I can’t even throw an acceptable hissy fit.
Knight’s date gets to her feet, tossing her napkin down. She walks around the table, her eyes glittering with contempt, and then leans in close so that their faces are right beside one another as she digs her phone out of her purse. “Well then, since this is all I’m getting out of a famous Warren Knight date, I might as well use my cousin’s favor to my full advantage, wouldn’t you agree?” she asks with a sneer.
His dark eyes flick to hers, somehow looking more bored than before, despite the enraged woman all up in his face space. “You’d be a stupid woman if you didn’t.”
I groan. And the asshole just keeps on leaking.
Her eyes tighten, but then she lets a huge, beautiful smile come out. Holding her phone in front of them, she turns her face. “Smile for the camera, Knight. Make all my followers believe you actually have a soul.”
I snort. “Good one, girl.”
Knight doesn’t smile of course, but he looks really hot anyway. All settled back in his high-backed chair, looking that perfect mixture of sharp and tousled. She snaps the photograph, and as soon as it’s done, she leans away and stuffs her phone into her purse. “I had a terrible time,” she tells him.
“Likewise,” he answers.
I facepalm. “Man, you’re the literal worst. Don’t you wanna get laid? I want you to get laid!” I tell him.
It’s true. I really do. Because like I said, I’ve seen this guy naked, and he is delicious. But so far, it’s been a no-go. He takes all these beautiful women out, but then he acts like such an ass that most of them don’t make it through dessert. Oddly, he seems relieved about that every single time.
Like right now. His date has barely made it to the exit of the restaurant, and already he’s grinning at the waitress and ordering the Mont Blanc chocolate pavlova, whatever that is.
I sit down across from him in the chair the woman just vacated, being extra careful to hover over the seat so my ass doesn’t sink through it. I give him my stern stare. “Look, Mr. Knight. I’m gonna level with you. This is not good,” I tell him with a chastising shake of my head. “You’re handsome, you’re successful, you have sweet digs, you’re rich. But you are failing in the love department. Big fat F minus.”
He stares down at his wine with his arm draped over the edge of the table as his thumb lightly raps against the glass.
Surrounded by people in the crowded, posh restaurant, he suddenly looks incredibly lonely. It’s these small moments, when his guarded mask slips for just a second, that I think I see something else in Warren Knight that nobody else does. That maybe there’s something deeper going on under his handsome skin that made him this way. But then, his asshole mask slips right back into place, and that vulnerability is gone before I can latch onto it.
“There you are!”
The sudden voice scares me so badly that I jump up and almost fly right through the damn chandelier. If I had a corporeal heart, it would’ve beat right out of my chest.
Scowling, I fly back down to my partner. “Shit, you scared me!”
She doesn’t look sorry for startling me. In fact, she looks pretty mad.
Cupid CXVI stands there with her arms crossed and shakes her head at me. With her beautiful dark skin and her cupid number marked into her wrist, her short spiky pink hair, red feathered wings outstretched behind her, and bow and arrow in her hands, she looks like a pissed off love goddess.
Oh...right. She is.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” she reprimands.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling instantly guilty. I kind of got separated from her. And by that, I mean I purposely separated from her.
It’s not that One Hundred Sixteen is a drag to hang out with. Actually, she’s quite nice, and she’s a really good cupid. Her powers always work right, which is something I can’t say about myself.
Her Lust Breath is always the perfect hue of pink, and it instantly gets men hard and women wet. Her Flirt Touches are a thing of beauty too. One swipe of her finger, and people start spewing playful, naughty banter or go off to buy candy and flowers. And don’t even get me started on her success ratio for Love Arrow hits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her miss. I can’t even get my arrows to magically refill in my quiver like they’re supposed to.
No matter what I do, my cupid powers just don’t work right. Which really sucks, considering this is my afterlife job for all of eternity.
Just to see if something has changed in the past fifteen minutes, I lean over to a couple’s table and try to blow some Lust their way. A gross, grayish green puff escapes me, and instantly, their faces turn from mildly interested in one another, to full-blown disgust. Nope. Definitely not working right. The woman takes one look at him and starts to gag. Whoops.
My partner sighs and flies over, fixing my mishap by blowing some Lust that actually works. It’s perfect, of course, and the woman’s gagging turns to sighs of desire as she shifts her legs together. The guy instantly hardens beneath his slacks, and all is right in their world again.
“Thanks,” I grumble to my partner.
She turns to me with a pinched expression. “You aren’t supposed to leave without me.”
“I know. I really am sorry. I just…” I trail off, embarrassed, my fingers fidgeting over the little twirly buns in my hair. At least when I died, my hair looked good. It would’ve sucked to spend all of afterlife’s eternity with bed head.
My bright teal dress is nice too, and it really complements my red wings and pink hair that I inherited upon becoming a cupid. Still, I’m nothing compared to my partner, because even though she’s just wearing corduroy pants and an ‘80s band tee, she still is the epitome of cupid perfection.
We were assigned cupidity partners about two months ago, so she knows exactly what’s going on without me having to say it.
Her eyes flick over to the table beside us, and when her gaze lands on Knight, she sighs. “Really, Cupid Thirty?” she asks. “You’re following him again?”
I can’t even be mad at her insinuation that I follow him too much, because it’s true. I do follow him too much.
“Our job is not to haunt the living. You’re not a damn ghost!”
“I know, I know,” I say wearily.
And I do know this, but for some reason, I can’t seem to stop. Not when it comes to him. My eyes hook onto him as the waitress returns, bringing his dessert. He digs into it faster than a pirate shoveling buried treasure.
“It’s our job to spread love and desire,” she goes on. She doesn’t like to miss out on an opportunity to lecture me. Maybe she was a manager during her life. Or a drill sergeant. “And we’re supposed to do it together,” she stresses.
I huff out some built-up frustration. “But that’s the thing—we don’t really do it together, do we?” I challenge. “Every successful Love or Lust Match we’ve had was all because of you. I’ve been completely and totally useless.”
“That’s not true…”
She’s so unconvincing that she winces as she says it, like her face can feel the lie leaking out of her.
“Do I need to blo
w some Lust again?” I ask, waving a hand at the table I just anti-desire bombed.
“Please don’t.”
“See? We both know I’m a disaster. I can’t make my quotas, which means you’re doing yours and mine.”
“Which is why you should stop ditching me all the time to follow this jerk around. Why have you made it your afterlife’s mission to get him to fall in love? There are plenty more people out there. Even when I tried to do it, we couldn’t get anything to stick with this guy. He’s a lost cause.”
Once again, my eyes flicker over to Knight. He has little bits of meringue stuck to his bottom lip as he continues to eat. My heart swells watching him, and not just because he’s handsome, but because of what Cupid One Hundred Sixteen just said. Lost cause. That’s what he is. Just like me. He’s a failure at relationships; I’m a failure as a cupid. So here I am, determined to give him love so that I can fix both of us.
“I’m going to get him to fall in love if it’s the last thing I do,” I say with steely determination.
One Hundred Sixteen gives me a disappointed look. “Fine. Then why don’t you let me try to—”
“No,” I say quickly, cutting her off. “I want to do it. Me. It has to be me.”
She looks at me guiltily. I can see in her face that she’s trying to figure out how to tell me that, despite my best fricken efforts, I can’t do it. I can’t be the cupid he needs me to be. For whatever reason, my powers suck. They always have. Hers come so effortlessly it makes me want to cry.
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