She shook her head once, saying decisively, “There is no competition. I do not want to be with Jonas in that way, and I would never, ever cross Emma like that. I’ve been trying to get some concrete evidence on his cheating—because I know he’s cheated—to convince Emma that she doesn’t have to stay with him.”
“You’re advocating for a divorce?” Dom asked, at last seeing all the parts according to Vinny’s point of view.
“I’m advocating for the truth,” Vinny said. “Emma can do what she wants with it…unless she hired a demon to kill me, in which case I’m going to have to take back her half of the best friends charm.” She put a hand to her chest, then blinked as she remembered she still wasn’t wearing her necklaces. “Oh, well. I have one.”
“That reminds me. Did you clean that cut?”
“Not yet.” Vinny walked to the bathroom and started running water.
He followed her, and she threw a quizzical glance at him in the mirror. “I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself.”
Standing behind her, he put his hands on her hips, just at the hem of her shirt. He watched her face in the mirror. “Let me.”
Vin’s breathing changed, and that was enough answer for Dom. He pulled the shirt up and over her head, revealing the lace bra. Keeping his gaze locked on hers, he unhooked the bra. She let the straps slip down and then tossed it away.
Dom liked everything he saw in the mirror. Vinny leaned back against him, and he liked that even more.
The water from the tap was steaming now. He reached for a washcloth, soaking it. “Tilt your head up,” he said.
Vinny complied, and he used his last bit of composure to clean the long cut in her neck. It wasn’t too bad, but the sight of the darkened, dried blood put him in mind of Rachel, wounded in the neck by a monster and then turned into one. He inhaled, suddenly feeling a sense of vertigo.
He felt Vin’s hands slide down his body to rest on his thighs. “You okay?” she asked.
In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of her concerned gaze. He exhaled. “Yeah. You’ll be fine. This cut isn’t too deep.”
“You sure, doc? You could kiss it to make it better.”
He kissed her neck, just outside the cut. She sighed, and all thoughts of the past evaporated. He watched Vinny in the mirror as he ran his hands over her half-naked body. He played with her breasts, teasing her until she molded herself against him, her ass brushing him in just the right way.
God, he wanted her. “Bed. Now.”
Catching her satisfied smile in the mirror, Dom suddenly had a bad thought. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Vinny replied, laughing.
“No. I mean, fuck as in I just remembered I only had the one condom.” Watching Vinny’s face fall would have been gratifying if he wasn’t so worked up right now. “I don’t suppose you have one.”
She shook her head. “Sorry. You can’t just cast a spell that…you know….”
Now there was a terrible idea. “Nope. Magic is about intention. And if the only thing I can think about is how much I want to bone you, then any spell I cast is going to…um…intensify that.”
One eyebrow rose up. “Interesting.”
“Please forget I said anything.”
“What’s it worth to you?” she teased.
He didn’t tease back. He was too invested in the idea of getting to spend a night with her, in a bed, together. “Vin, I need you.”
Her eyes closed. “Say that again, because I really like hearing it.”
“I need you,” he repeated. “In a bed. Right now.”
“Um, one thing. Where’s your cat?”
“She’s a very considerate roommate. She won’t get in the way.”
“And the whole lack of protection thing?”
“I know what’s off limits,” he promised.
Then she smiled, very slowly. “We’ll just have to be inventive about how we get each other off.”
She proved to be plenty inventive, and very, very dedicated to exploring basically every way other than penetration to have a good time. Dom thought the sex by the river had been amazing, and it was, but this was a whole other experience. Vin told him exactly what she wanted, whether it was his hands or his tongue. That wasn’t something he was used to. He loved it. He loved hearing her reactions, and seeing every move she made.
Making her come could be his new hobby. She looked so great afterward, relaxed and breathing heavy, and sweaty in a way that made her skin extra fun to touch.
“Oh, my God,” she sighed. “You gotta lay down.”
“I’m not tired,” he told her, even as he moved to stretch out beside her.
She pushed him onto his back. “Good. Neither am I.”
When she put her mouth on him, he damn near went crazy. He would not last long at all.
But Vin decided to take her time, and he realized he didn’t know anything, and he should just let her do whatever she wanted. She was the hottest thing to ever happen to him, and he didn’t even know a tongue could do what hers was doing to him right now.
“Vin,” he moaned at last, just before he lost it. He came. Hard. He thought his heart might have stopped for a second.
Then Vinny was sliding up to lie next to him, a sweet smile on her face. “Hey. Like that?”
“Holy Christ.”
“Is that really the best person to address right now?” she asked.
Dom reached out and pulled her over to him. “No teasing. You just broke my brain.”
“So that’s a yes you liked it?” She paused. “You don’t mind I didn’t swallow. I never got into that.”
“Hey, I’m just happy to be here.” Here was the only place he wanted to be, as long as here meant with Vinny.
He turned his head to take in the sight of her, running a few fingers over her body, enjoying the way she shivered in reaction. She looked so beautiful, and even a little vulnerable.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I was thinking about how different you look without all your necklaces.”
“Which look is better?”
“The necklaces are definitely a signature.” He paused, then said, “You look good no matter what.”
“So I could skip the necklaces for a while?”
Something in her voice made him pull her closer, wrapping her in a hug.
“Why did you do that?”
“You looked like you needed it,” he said easily.
Dom let her go after a moment, and Vinny laughed softly. “You sure you’re not a mind reader?”
“Very sure. But that wasn’t a hard call. Just because the one necklace was cursed doesn’t mean you have to give them all up.”
“I know it’s irrational,” Vinny said. “But all of today has been way past the edge of the rationality scale.”
“You can wear your necklaces, and you’ll be fine,” he said. “In fact, you should definitely wear the ones with the cross and the little bottle of salt.”
“Are they special?”
“Short version? Yes. Where’d you get them?”
“One of my first piano teachers was a nun, actually. Sister Stellamaris. She gave me the cross when I completed my lessons from her and moved on to my next instructor. Said she asked the holy family to watch over me.”
“It holds a blessing in it,” Dom told her. “It’s really possible that if you weren’t wearing it up to the end, you would have been hurt a lot worse. What about the salt charm?”
“Um.” Vinny’s forehead wrinkled. “That I got in Vienna. I was twelve. I was wandering around this crazy flea market one night…”
“What, alone?”
Her voice turned icy. “Yeah. Alone.”
She started to pull away and he tightened his grip, saying, “Nope. Not till you finish the story.”
“Fuck you.”
“Give me a few minutes. Until then, tell me what happened.”
Vinny huffed, but said, “All right. I was in Vienna for a competition. Pian
o. Big international competition, one that actually matters in terms of proving that you’re the real deal or not.”
“At age twelve?” he asked incredulously.
“There were several age levels,” she explained. “If you place, you get scholarships and offers to exclusive schools or programs and stuff like that. It matters. It was one of the times I was with my father, because it was a summer competition, and he had custody when I wasn’t in school.”
“What happened?”
“Well, my dad was telling everyone that I was the best, and no one had heard Debussy like I played Debussy, and I’d blow the competition away…yadda yadda yadda.”
She took a breath, and Dom felt the pain in it. She went on, “I played. I played it perfectly, and better than I thought I could. Out of forty competitors, I took second place.”
“That’s amazing.”
Another breath, one that suggested what was to come was not amazing. “I was on stage to get my trophy, and they invited my family up to get pictures. Which meant my dad. But he didn’t come up. Because he wasn’t in the theater. He wasn’t in the building. He wasn’t even on the campus where the competition was. Turns out he was at the airport, flying back to New York. He’d scheduled a bunch of interviews with some TV people and magazines, but when I didn’t take first place, he just left. He didn’t want to deal with a second place girl.”
“He left his twelve year old daughter alone in a foreign city?”
She sounded resigned. “Yup. No one knew exactly what happened at the time, of course. It was a while ago, I was a kid without a phone, and everything was pretty chaotic. But the upshot was that I walked off the stage into the loving arms of no one, and then just kept walking. Walking around Vienna, with no real idea of what to do or even where I was.”
Vinny took a breath, gathering herself for the next part. Dom was careful not to interrupt. She went on, “I ended up at this…place. An old train station, maybe, with stalls and stalls of vendors selling everything. Lace and incense and weird animals and soap and jewelry. And it was night, but it was jam packed. I ran into this woman. She just looked at me, really the only person to look at me. She gestured for me to come over and I did. I asked her directions to the hotel I was staying at. She didn’t speak English, but her daughter did. And I told them the whole story, and I was crying and they probably thought I went completely bonkers. But at the end, the daughter said she’d take me to a taxi and tell him where to go. Then the older lady gave me the salt charm necklace. I gave her the trophy to pay for it. It was this big gaudy crystal thing, and she just took it like that was totally normal. The daughter said her mom was a good witch and the charm would protect me from evil spirits.
“And then I got in the cab and got back to the hotel,” Vinny wound up with a sigh. “Found out that my dad left me behind. Called my mom international long distance. She was so happy, because she could bring Dad’s neglect up in the next hearing. I flew home the next day. First class, of course. And somewhere in Vienna right now, there’s probably an old lady with a trophy that says Lavinia Wake is second place.”
“Holy shit.” Dom wasn’t good with words just then. He wanted to find Vin’s father and stare him down, or possibly just punch him.
“Downer story,” she said apologetically. “Sorry to kill the mood.”
He shifted to draw her closer. “I asked.”
“You did. Serves you right.” Vinny yawned, and then tucked her head so it rested on his chest. One hand curled around his other shoulder. “Dom?”
“Yeah?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he moved his head to look at her, she was asleep. He kissed her once and then stared at the smashed remains of the camera in the wall. He didn’t sleep for a long, long while.
Chapter 24
It was Vinny’s birthday, and waking up next to a hot guy was a fantastic present she didn’t know she needed. She looked over at the still sleeping Dom, and smiled because looking at him first thing just felt so right.
Then the second guessing hit her. Was she literally the most gullible person ever? The day before, she’d basically broken every rule about relationships she had, twice, just so she could get it on with a guy she didn’t know nearly as well as she should. And yes, it was level-up sex. But did she really think she was somehow magically protected because he said so? Or was that just some ridiculous role-play shit she bought into because she was overly emotional and horny and Dom was convenient? And then what explained the second act, other than the fact that the first act was just so good?
But she saw the demon, she reminded herself. The necklace physically contracted and tried to choke her to death. No matter how weird Dom’s tales of magic and monsters still seemed, that stuff happened. The vampire attack before happened. She wasn’t hallucinating it.
She told herself to stop looking for the cloud in every silver lining. Maybe some good things could occur in her life. Reaching out, she traced the outlines of the tattoo on Dom’s arm, then moved to run her fingers lightly down his back. He made an mmming sound, but didn’t open his eyes.
The sound echoed by the foot of the bed, and Vinny saw Piewicket curled up there, her eyes on Vin.
“Hey, cat,” Vinny said quietly. Before she could do anything else, another wave of sleepiness came over her. She inched closer to Dom and closed her eyes.
The next time she woke up, the light was brighter. Dom was awake, propped up against the headboard, and peering at the screen in his hand. His other hand was entwined with hers, and when Vinny realized that, she sort of went mushy.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Dom glanced over, his frown transforming into a smile just for her. “Hey.”
She sat up, disentangling her hand so she could drag her fingers through her hair, which was probably a horrendous mess. “What are you up to?” she asked, nodding to the screen.
His frown returned. “We found some stuff out. None of it’s good.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, Lily found the true name of the demon associated with the symbol. Which is very good news, because I’ll need that if I want to get anything done against it.”
“What’s the name?”
He showed her the screen. “Read it. Not out loud.”
She looked at an incomprehensible string of letters. “I couldn’t pronounce that if I tried.”
“Yeah, demons’ names are hard to pronounce on purpose. Cuts down on the accidental summonings.”
“What’s the bad news?”
He exhaled. “The necklace is a problem. As far as we can tell from previous reports like this, the necklace is basically Cinderella’s shoe. You put it on and the magic will find you anywhere. Doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing.”
“Ugh. This is the worst version of Cinderella ever. If it’s what you say it is, then why did it start choking me before the stroke of midnight tonight?”
“Not sure. I think maybe part of you knew, subconsciously, that the necklace was dangerous. Your body was reacting to it, trying to tell you to get it off. But it’s magic, so when you actually tried to remove it, it tightened up like a noose so you couldn’t get it off without some countervailing power.”
“Which you cast.”
“With the help of the river, yes. For future reference, binding magic and running water do not get along.”
Silver and water and love. The words echoed in Vinny’s head. But Dom was still explaining things, so she put it away and listened.
“The bad part is that even though I got the necklace off you physically, I think you might still be connected to the curse within it. It all depends on the details of the original deal. But because it’s your birthday, I’m pretty sure you were mentioned in the deal. It also explains why I was having so much trouble finding the source of the evil in the house when we first got here. When I reached out to search, I kept getting images of you. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. But now I know it’s partly because
you were already wearing the necklace.”
“So your seeing me was like a false positive?”
“Or noise hiding the signal. Now that the necklace isn’t being worn, I can sense everything a lot more clearly. Including the fact that the curse inside it is still active.”
A wash of cold edged up her spine. “What does all this mean? For me personally?”
He put the phone aside, and pulled her over to him. “It means I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. So all day long, even if it seems like I’m not too concerned, everything I do will be necessary to break this curse. I need you to trust me on that.”
Vin really wanted to trust him. “I—”
Without warning, the bedroom door swung open. “Vin, you better be here—”
Emma stopped short when she saw Dom and Vin together, naked except for the sheets. Her eyes wide, she mumbled, “Um. Okay. I guess…you’re here. We can talk later. When you get, um, dressed.”
“Down in a second!” Vinny called, but Emma had already skedaddled, the door pulled tight behind her.
Vinny bit her lip. “Welp. Cat’s out of that bag, I guess.”
“Was it supposed to stay secret?” Dom asked, sounding a little offended.
“Of course not,” Vin said. “We’re grownups, right? Besides, after what you just said, Emma knowing we spent the night together is literally the least of my worries.”
Vinny scooted out of bed and got dressed fast. What Dom said hit her all at once. By the end of the day, she could quite possibly be a demon snack. And yeah, he said he’d try to stop it, but Dom was just a guy. And the demon was a demon.
And this morning her best friend was going to tease the hell out of her for hooking up with a random monster hunter.
It was going to be a weird day.
Downstairs, Emma was evidently over her surprise, and was now grinning like she won a bet. She had three mugs of coffee already poured. “So,” she said, on seeing Vinny and Dom enter the kitchen together.
Vinny sat at a tall stool and reached for a mug. “So.”
Emma’s grin widened. “Have a good night?”
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