Fashionably Hotter Than Hell

by Robyn Peterman

  “I love you,” she whispered and reached back to grab my hand.

  She was so delicate, yet the strongest, most deadly and brilliant woman I knew. Maybe I was still getting used to the fact that it was no longer a chase. The pursuit was over and I had finally won… we had won.

  “You will never be able to understand how much I love you,” I whispered as I leaned over her body and placed kisses along her shoulder. “I can’t describe it with words.”

  “Then show me with your body,” she urged as she moved seductively beneath me.

  She didn’t have to ask twice.

  Nipping at her ear I felt her body shudder in response. With great purpose, I slowly eased out of her and watched how beautifully our bodies joined together in love and passion.

  Then she tightened her inner muscles and trapped my cock like a vise inside her. The time for slow and easy was over. My brain became useless and the need between us escalated to animal like proportions. Establishing a punishing rhythm, I showed her with my body what my words couldn’t convey.

  Raquel rocked back and forth meeting me thrust for thrust. Words and moans tangled together as they fell from our tongues. I felt the tingling in the base of my spine and I knew I was close.

  I needed to see her.

  I had to see her face.

  Pulling out, I heard her gasp in dismay. The chuckle that came from deep in my chest was full of cocky male satisfaction. My woman wanted me as much as I wanted her. I flipped her to her back and laid her on the couch gently.

  “I’ve got you baby,” I promised as I slid back into her welcoming body. “I have to see you come.”

  “Fuck me,” she begged as she grabbed at my hair and pulled my lips to hers.

  The kiss was as wild and out of control as we were. Our tongues clashed and the overwhelming craving to taste her consumed me.

  “Bite me,” I demanded as I scraped my fangs along the silky skin of her neck.

  Her eyes sparkled and her sultry laugh went all through me.

  “On three,” she gasped out as the speed of our lovemaking reached a frenzied pace.

  Magical glitter flew everywhere as I roared my release. Raquel’s body clamped around me and held me fast as our simultaneous orgasms ripped through us. Color blurred my vision and I held her like I would never let her go.

  As the aftershocks of her orgasm shook her body, I placed kisses on her trembling lips.

  “I am so in love with you it hurts,” I said softly.

  Her eyelids fluttered open and I pressed my forehead to hers.

  “If it keeps getting better, we’ve not going to survive this mating,” she said in horse voice punctuated with a small giggle.

  “If this is the way I have to die, I’ll die a happy man,” I teased, tucking her wild sex mussed hair behind her ear.

  “You’re extremely good at this,” she purred contentedly.

  “I know,” I replied, unsuccessfully trying to bite back my very self-satisfied grin.

  “Oh my God.” Raquel rolled her eyes and pulled my hair. “You are such a big dick.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a smirk.

  “I didn’t say you had a big dick. I said you were a big dick.”

  “This is true,” I agreed.

  “Wait. What’s true? That you’re a big dick or you have a big dick?”

  “Both,” I stated and planted a kiss on her lips before she reached behind her and popped me in the head with something breakable. “Relax your trigger finger, Red. I’m just kidding.”

  “Uh… huh,” she said as she lovingly traced my lips with her finger. “Right.”

  “We should probably get dressed,” I told her at loathe to separate my body from hers. “It might be slightly inappropriate for my ass to be on display when your father arrives.”

  “Too fucking late! Pun intended,” Pam yelled gleefully from the doorway. “You two are just like rabbits. And that’s a mighty cute ass you have there, Heathcliff.”

  “Now darling,” the King said with a chuckle. “They’ve just mated. You remember how it was when we joined together.”

  “Ummm… Dad?” Raquel squeaked out as she blushed from head to toe.

  Being a gentleman, I covered my mate’s naked body with mine giving my in-laws an even clearer picture of my bare ass.

  “Yes, dear?” the King inquired kindly.

  “Would you guys mind giving us a minute here?” Raquel asked as she put her hands over her eyes in mortification.

  “No worries. We’ll meet you in the kitchen in five,” the King offered as he pulled a still cackling Pam from the room.

  We were silent for a long moment as we stared at each other and tried not to laugh. It felt as if we were in high school and had been busted having sex in the basement of her father’s home. Of course we were hundreds of years old and we were in Raquel’s house… but it felt the same.

  “Well, that was certainly embarrassing,” Raquel said with a snort as I rolled off of her and handed her back her dress which had ended up draped over a lamp.

  “Correct. However, if they’d arrived a few minutes earlier, it would have been hellacious,” I said with a grin.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Raquel groaned. “You’re right. Let’s just be happy for small favors today.”

  “I can do that,” I said as I offered my now fully clothed mate my hand. “Next time what do you say we lock the door?”

  “Works for me.”

  She grabbed my hand and slapped my ass. We walked out of the room with our heads held high.

  I was the luckiest bastard in the world.

  The whole wide world.

  Chapter 19

  Politely ignoring the pornographic scene they’d walked in on, Pam and the King greeted us warmly—although it was very obviously killing Pam not to tease us mercilessly. She kept giving us the evil eye coupled with an enormous grin. Jean Paul was clearly up to speed on the latest gossip. His smile was large and he gave me a covert thumbs up.

  The family I’d mated into was nuts… and I was fine with that. Very fine.

  “Are we ready to get down to business?” the King asked as he made himself comfortable at the large solid oak kitchen table.

  “Looks to me that Heathcliff and Raquel have already been there and done that,” Pam muttered under her breath with glee.

  Thankfully, everyone chose to pretend we didn’t hear the reference to the X-rated movie Raquel and I had just starred in.

  “Yes,” Raquel said as she seated herself next to me and shot Pam a look that made her simmer down.

  “Well my dear, it appears that the Angels were not only told you were not attending the Summit, it was implied that you were ash,” the King said with a disgusted shake of his head.

  “They were told I was dead?” Raquel asked shocked.

  “Yep,” Pam confirmed. “I wanted to set the doucheheads straight, but amazingly I held my tongue. I decided finding out who spouted such bullshit was more important than shocking my brethren Angels with my creative use of language.”

  “Very wise of you dear,” the King said lovingly.

  “Damn right,” she agreed. “It was all from that twatwaffle, Vlad.”

  Pam confirmed what we had suspected—far more descriptively than any of us would have.

  “Vlad is aware of the curse,” Raquel said as she absently stroked my hand. “Someone told him about it.”

  “This is true,” the King said tightly. “Or perhaps he placed the curse.”

  “But what about Gareth?” Raquel questioned. “And Leila, Nathan and Alexander?”

  “We only know for sure that Gareth was cursed. Has Ethan checked in?” Jean Paul asked as he set a platter of chips and a variety of salsa in front of Pam.

  She dug in with gusto as we all looked on with amusement and a bit of envy. Angels could eat. Vampyres could not. For a brief moment, I felt Astrid’s pain of not being able to consume food.

  “Haven’t heard from Assjacket, Ethan or Gareth yet,” P
am mumbled through a mouthful of food. “We’ve tried to contact them, but we haven’t been successful.”

  Pam loved to mess with Astrid’s name. I’d heard everything from Asshead to Assbutt to Asswipe from the Angel’s foul mouth. Astrid didn’t seem to mind. She had many profane endearments for her Guardian Angel as well. To an outsider they seemed contentious with each other, but that was as far from the truth as one could get. Both would kill and die for each other.

  “That doesn’t bode well,” I muttered as I tapped out a private code on my cell to Ethan that he should answer immediately.

  Nothing. Shit.

  “Satan’s with them,” Raquel volunteered hesitantly. “They should be safe.”

  The groans of dismay from the King, Pam and Jean Paul were loud and guttural. Again my original plan seemed less appealing by the second. However, it was happening for better or worse. The Devil never failed to deliver.

  “Who got Satan involved?” the King asked with a shudder.

  “I did,” I replied evenly and waited to be lambasted. “He’s bringing someone who should be able to throw Vlad off his game.”

  “Astrid needed the Devil too,” Raquel added quickly, trying to lessen the ire directed at me from her father. “She couldn’t break the Demon spell holding Gareth without caving in Paris.”

  “My girl is growing up,” Pam said with pride and nudged her unhappy mate. “Couple of months ago that child would have taken out the entire fucking United States without meaning to. So who owes the sneaky little bastard favors?”

  “Obviously Heathcliff does,” Raquel confirmed with a sour expression. “However, Astrid plans to have the Devil owe her by calling Napoleon an assbucket turd knockin’ little shit for brains when she gets to the Summit.”

  “That’s certainly going to go over well,” Jean Paul snorted as dropped his head to the table with a thud.

  “Napoleon isn’t there,” the King informed us with a slight wince. “I hear he’s hung up at the moment.”

  “Hung up?” I repeated, confused.

  “Hung up.” Pam nodded and visibly gagged. “Pole shoved up his mean, undead ass. Hanging high at Dracula’s pad. Ass harpooned. Butt spiked. Impaled,” she tacked on at the end of her colorful diatribe just in case all her other references had flown over our heads.

  They hadn’t.

  “Well, that’s certainly some piercing news—heinous pun intended,” Raquel said with a half giggle-half groan. “Will he live?”

  “People that mean never die.” Pam shook her head and went to the refrigerator. “Damn,” she bellowed happily. “You undead people sure keep a nicely stocked fridge for people who can’t drink anything but blood.”

  “I knew you were coming,” Jean Paul told her.

  “Did you bake a cake?” she sang with a smirk.

  “Ummm… no,” Jean Paul laughed. “You would want nothing I cooked seeing as I can’t taste it.”

  “No worries, child. I’ll be fine with what’s here.”

  Pam grabbed some fancy French cheese, crackers, potato chips, cheesecake, a cooked chicken, whipped cream, a jar of pickles and Ranch dressing and settled back in.

  “So Vlad informed the Angels of my demise?” Raquel questioned as she gaped in horror at Pam’s buffet.

  “Yes,” the King said tersely, oblivious to his mate’s line up of mismatched of edibles—or possibly used to it. “It was before we’d arrived and we decided not to set anyone straight. More of a chance to find out what’s going on if we played as if we were uninformed.”

  “He means we acted like dumbasses,” Pam added with a wink as she dipped her chips in the salad dressing

  The visual of the breathtakingly beautiful Angel slathering grease covered paper-thin fried potatoes in white goop was all kinds of wrong, but Pam was Pam…

  “And you found out what?” I asked as I placed my fingers under Raquel’s chin and closed her mouth before she commented on Pam frightening array of food and questionable table manners.

  “Strangely, not much,” the King said as he lovingly rubbed his mate’s back while she ate. “I want to know if Vlad cursed you, Raquel. I want proof so I can tear him apart with my bare hands.”

  “Get in line,” I snapped. “However, I do believe we’re overlooking the obvious. At this point, there’s no way to determine if Vlad placed the curse on Raquel, or Gareth or the others if they’ve been cursed. Only he can tell us that.”

  “Well, that certainly isn’t gonna fucking happen,” Pam said with a mouthful of cheese and crackers. “That bastard would rather shove a pole up someone’s ass than deal with his own shit.”

  “He wouldn’t tell us… but he might tell someone else,” I said cryptically.

  “Who? Raquel?” Jean Paul asked, clearly unhappy at the thought of his sister going one on one with the bastard.

  “Nope,” I replied.

  “All right, I’ll bite. Who in Jesus-in-a-thong’s-name are we overlooking?” Pam said as she offered a squirt of whipped cream to her mate, the King.

  He politely declined and gave her a kiss on her nose.

  “The missing puzzle piece,” I said enjoying the perplexed expression everyone’s face. “The only one who would reveal Raquel’s secret and the one who tried to kill her. The lovely gal I have in mind had to have informed Dracula as he shall be known henceforth, that Raquel was slated for death.”

  “Holy shit… Juliet,” Raquel said as her fangs dropped and her eyes turned green with fury.

  “Well Hell fire and damnation, why on earth do we always forget about that canker sore?” Pam bellowed and punctuated her disgust with a table slam that sent all the food flying.

  “Wishful thinking?” Raquel suggested as she deftly ducked a flying cheesecake.

  “It breaks my heart to agree with your summation, but I fear it’s correct,” the King said quietly.

  Juliet had been missing for hundreds of years and the King had searched tirelessly for his renegade daughter. His hopes of a joyous reunion had been dashed tragically in the last year. Not only had Juliet tried to kill Raquel, she’d also tried to kill Astrid and help some unsavory Demons take over the world. Thankfully, her skills were lacking and her insanity made her stabs at power a joke.

  But innocent people had died because of Juliet. Being locked up in the Cressida House was just the beginning of the Hell she was going to have to pay for all she’d done—especially if she was involved in this mess as well.

  “I want to avoid a war with the Angels,” the King stated firmly. “We can’t afford to fight them. Untold numbers of our people and theirs would die needlessly if this is all the brainchild of Vlad.”

  “Then we simply need to trick him into admitting his guilt in front of us and the Angels,” I stated logically.

  All at the table stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  “And I want to be a unicorn that poops rainbow glitter,” Pam said in her outdoor voice. “That shishkabobbing fool ain’t gonna come clean on anything. And I guarantee you that spear-happy motherfucker will never tell the Angels shit about anything.”

  “Ahhhhh, but I think he will,” I disagreed. “He just needs the right person to ask. Possibly our own certifiable Juliet would do the trick in persuading him.”

  The chorus of no’s and a loud you’re fucked in the head from Pam rang out in the kitchen. I just smiled and waited. I was far from crazy. I was fucking brilliant.

  “You are not bringing Juliet to Europe,” Raquel said vehemently. “She won’t help us anyway—especially if she’s involved in all this with Vlad.”

  “Raquel’s correct,” the King added. “Juliet’s a loose cannon and it would be a very unwise move to bring her here.”

  “If he admits it to her, we avoid a war. We steer clear of senseless death. We stay on good terms with the Angels and they get to punish Vlad. It’s a win—win,” I said cockily knowing I was only revealing part of my plan.

  I knew I was being an ass, but I was enjoying myself tremendously />
  “If she wasn’t so damned unbalanced it would be a solid plan,” Raquel insisted, still in protest mode. “She’ll do anything to destroy us. You can’t possibly be thinking about relying on her with something so large and potentially deadly for our race.”

  “Yep, I am,” I admitted with a casual shrug.

  “You’re an idiot,” Raquel snapped and ran her hands through her hair in frustration. “A total idiot.”