Devil You Know

by L. A. Fiore

  “Behave wife,” a deep voice said just before a man, I assumed was Lucien, appeared. He stepped up next to his wife and pressed a kiss on her forehead before he turned his attention to Anton. “Good to see you.”

  “And you. This is Damian Tate, a friend.”

  Lucien extended his hand to me. “Nice to meet you.”

  I jerked my chin in greeting as I took his hand.

  Anton asked, “Do you have a minute?”

  “Yeah.” Lucien turned to his wife. “I won’t be long and then we’ll go over the report. Line by line.”

  His wife blushed and lowered her lashes before she whispered, “Don’t do anything crazy.”

  Lucien gestured to the room down the hall before he said to his wife, “Me? Doing something crazy? Never.”

  In his office, I stood near the door while Anton took a seat on the sofa. Lucien followed us in and closed the door. He didn’t mince words. “Why are you here?”

  “Salvatore Federico. I need your help convincing the man it’s in his best interest to talk to me. I’ve had one sit down with him, but he wasn’t very forthcoming.”

  “Why do you want a sit down?”

  “Damian’s girl’s dad was a cop, murdered in the line of duty. I think Federico knows more about that than he’s saying.”

  I didn’t know this Lucien dude, but I did know rage when I saw it. He turned his attention to me. “I’m sorry.” His focus shifted back to Anton. “Alright, tell me what you know.”

  I had spent the day thinking about Dad. He was the kind of man who would have absolutely looked into bad cops. He loved the job, the badge, and anyone tarnishing that would have been high on his list. But the idea it was a fellow man in blue that was responsible for his death was sickening and infuriating. And I felt helpless because there was very little I could do but sit back and wait for the guys to piece it all together. It was enough to make a person crazy, but tonight was a big deal for a friend and client, so I had to put all of it on the back burner and focus on making her night as special as possible.

  The remedy had done it again. After the breakfast Damian had made and a nice long shower I felt great. I finished dressing in my sassy little black dress and left my brown curls down because Damian had always loved my wild hair. And yes I was preening for him. I added a little makeup to bring out the green specks in my brown eyes and slipped on my black sandals. I was just switching out my purse when Damian arrived. I pulled the door open, he didn’t come in, but he did give me a once over. My face was down as I organized my bag, but I felt his eyes. I liked having his eyes on me, and the heat that followed his gaze down my body as he took his time to appreciate.

  “I’m ready.” I reached for my keys then finally looked at him and it was me who took my time appreciating him. He was dressed in a black suit, charcoal gray shirt unbuttoned at the collar. There was something ridiculously sexy about a man like him dressed like that. And while I looked with unabashed interest and want in my expression, his expression looked pained. “What?”

  “It’s cold.”

  “Outside? It is fall, but we’ll be inside with lots of people.”

  “You should cover up.”

  Understanding dawned and with it I felt smug and sexy as hell. With feigned innocence I looked down at myself. “Is there something wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  “Sainted, I should be fucking sainted.”

  The ride to the gallery was a silent one. We pulled into valet and as he walked around the car, women were checking him out. I didn’t like their blatant show of interest, but I understood it because I was tempted to worship him myself.

  “You want a drink?” he asked.

  “Red wine, please.”

  “You made it!” Sunshine threw her arms around me. Her name was fitting because she was as bright and warm as the sun. Her auburn tresses were long, to her ass, and plaited. She wore a flowing dress and had a band of daisies circling her head.

  “Thank you so much for coming.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  “Even though you don’t get my art.”

  I didn’t. We’d discussed it. Art was art, but where some could study a dot on a white canvas and get immeasurable knowledge from that dot, all I saw was a dot. But I loved Sunshine so even if she drew only stick figures, it would be a work of art to me…a fact I had shared countless times with her. Damian approached with two glasses of wine and handed one to each of us.

  “Oh my God. Where did you find him?”

  “I hired him for the evening.” It seemed the easiest way to answer to avoid questions that would take the whole night and then some to explain.

  “You need to tell me what agency you used if they have hotties like this in their stables.”

  Damian had no reaction, but I was struggling not to laugh.

  “I have to go mingle. Check out the painting on the end. I dedicated that one to you. Thanks for the wine, cutey.”

  Before I could reply, she skipped away.

  There was humor in Damian’s eyes when I glanced at him. “Shall we?” I asked.

  He touched the small of my back and walked us toward the first painting and all the while I worked on keeping my balance because the heat stirred from his touch was nice, really, really nice.

  “I think it speaks to the darkness in all of us. What do you think young lady?”

  It was a black canvas with a white question mark in the center. I thought that Sunshine painted it while watching her favorite show, Gravity Falls.

  “Um, it’s…” I tilted my head, like that was going to bring me clarity, but the older couple followed my lead. “I think…” I tilted my head the other way and they followed. I glanced at Damian. To the casual observer, he looked uninterested, maybe even bored, but I knew better. I would have paid handsomely to know what he was thinking because I swear he looked to be enjoying my discomfort.

  “To me it speaks...” And then inspiration struck. “What do you think it means, darling?” And as I hoped, I successfully turned the elderly couple’s attention away from me and onto him. They waited with bated breath for the perils of wisdom he was about to bestow on us.

  “I think it speaks to the ageless question…is there something after death?”

  He said it so matter-of-factly; it just rolled off his tongue like he spewed nonsense like that every day—the man who didn’t speak except when it was absolutely necessary. The older couple looked at him like he was the messiah. I swear they were getting on their knees if we stayed much longer. But we didn’t, he led me away, giving them time to ponder his words.

  “Where the hell did that come from?”

  He shrugged, but his lip twitched and when he glanced down at me there was laughter looking back. I teased him. “You’re about to smile, you might want to pull it together.” But I was hoping he would smile—seeing every aspect of his face brightened by a genuine smile, one directed at me—because it was my very favorite of his expressions.

  It had been two days since Sunshine’s show. The painting she had dedicated to me was of actual stick figures. I could still see Damian’s laughing eyes every time I closed my own. We were older and different but I liked the man he had become. The one who could spout that shit about the ageless question, could find humor in me suggesting he was an escort, could take me up against the wall and give me the best orgasm of my life while we were both fully clothed, held my hair back and made me greasy food after a night of overdoing it. Like the boy he had been, the man he was now was someone well worth knowing.

  I finished the work I had planned for the day. I wasn’t in the mood for a movie because I was feeling a little too wired given the state of things. I needed a release and since sex with Damian was off the table, it was zombie-killing time. I fired up my Xbox, checked my arsenal and got to it.

  I was a little rusty but into the second hour I was on a roll. I felt fairly confident that when the zombie apocalypse came I would make a dent in them before I turned into one
myself. At first I thought I’d want someone to lop off my head because who wanted to be a zombie, but then it might be cool to see what it was like. A mindless, brain addicted fiend. There were worse things to be. When my phone rang I almost didn’t answer it, but it could be important. I put it on speaker.

  “What the hell are you doing, having an orgy?”

  “Only you, Kimber, would hear the surgical and precise sounds of a master taking out a zombie horde and mistake it for a sex fest. What’s up?”

  “Just called to see how you were doing.”

  “Why? What did you hear?”

  “You are paranoid.”

  “No, I’m not. Someone got to you. Who? Mom?”

  “She was worried, she hasn’t heard from you in a few days.”

  “I’m fine, just releasing some tension by killing the undead. It’s very therapeutic. You should try it.”

  “Nah, I like my method of relieving tension.”

  I was only half listening, so I walked right into it when I asked, “What’s your method?”

  “Sex and lots of it.”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s get together for dinner.”

  “Sounds good. How about here on Friday.”

  “I’ll call Ryder.”

  “Thanks, Kimber, for checking in on me.”

  “That’s what friends are for. See you on Friday. Have fun with your brain eating friends.”

  The knock at the door came about two hours later and I was still killing those bastards. I hadn’t eaten, except for some pretzels and canned cheese. I had also closed my blinds because the glare from the sun hurt my eyes. I looked like an insane shut-in. I paused the game and checked the door then felt my pulse jump when I saw Damian on the other side.

  I yanked it open and he walked in then stopped and just stared. I didn’t doubt I looked slightly wild.

  “I’m killing zombies. There’s no room for vanity.”

  “Zombies?” There was definite interest in that word.

  “Are you a brother in arms? Do you also kill those brain sucking monsters?”

  I realized I was talking to someone who probably killed people every day, well not every day because that’s excessive. The deli man didn’t put enough rare roast beef on his sandwich and so he slit his throat with the dagger he had hidden up his sleeve. I giggled at the thought.

  Again I saw the humor in his eyes in response to me calling him a brother in arms. I asked, “Do you want to play?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You do?” And that was said almost identically to how Farmer Ted said it in Sixteen Candles.

  “Come on in.”

  He strolled into my apartment, shrugged off his leather jacket exposing the black t-shirt that just hugged his body. I wanted to be that t-shirt. I really wanted to be that t-shirt. He was wearing cargo pants and boots, he looked like a zombie killer. He reached for the controller, his arms flexed and I had to bite down on the moan. I wasn’t going to be killing zombies, I was going to be watching him and wishing he were wearing me like he was that t-shirt.

  He glanced over, his sign that he was ready, so I grabbed my own remote and started the game. At some point I just stopped playing because the man was…lethal. I realized it was just a game and there were countless people out there, living in the basements of their parents’ home, who could kill as efficiently as Damian. But they were gamers, this man hunted for a living. His skill didn’t come from hours and hours of play. It came from real life. Damian was a lethal weapon. And fear stirred in me thinking about the situations he had been in that turned him into the man he was now. That part of his life was in the past and still it was terrifying to think it could have ended very differently.

  I didn’t want to think about that, so I indulged myself a little. My eyes moving over his perfectly sculpted arm, the biceps and triceps, his wide shoulder and the bulging muscles of his middle back that tapered to a flat stomach. I loved the view, but I was getting turned on, so I focused back on the game. He was on a level I had never seen, would never again see without his help. I wasn’t thinking about the game anymore though.

  “I’m hungry. Do you want to order a pizza?” It wasn’t pizza I wanted.

  “Yeah.”

  “Pepperoni and mushroom?” I hadn’t realized his attention had shifted to me, so I was surprised to look over and see him staring. “What?”

  He said nothing but there was a softening around his eyes. “Yeah.”

  I ordered the pizza and grabbed two beers before settling back on the sofa. Given the situation I found myself in, my thoughts often detoured to Cam’s investigation. “Do you think it was Miguel who killed my dad?”

  “It points to him, but the pieces don’t all fit.”

  “And so until they do you’ll be looking at other possibilities.”

  “It’s what I’m trained for.”

  “And we have to be careful of which cops we involve because we aren’t sure who we can trust.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You gave up a lot to come back and help Cam. Thank you.”

  He stopped the game and turned his focus on me. “I gave up a lot when I left home all those years ago and I told you, I didn’t come back for Cam.”

  “If that’s the case, why didn’t you let me know you were home?”

  I couldn’t quite read his expression, his gaze shifted to the floor. “I stopped by the day I got home, but you were with someone. I intended to reach out again, but the truth is I didn’t like seeing you with another guy.”

  Another guy? There had only been the one, Ethan, and that had ended years ago. “Whoever he was, he wasn’t a boyfriend. He was probably a client. I learned if I couldn’t be with the one I loved, I wasn’t interested.”

  His eyes turned back on me and I liked the hot possessive look in them.

  “I want to kiss you so badly right now, so I’ll get us another beer instead.” I jumped from the sofa. A few minutes with my head in the freezer would help take the edge off.

  I knew he had joined me because every part of my body responded to him like a mare preparing for a stallion to mount her. He pressed into me, sandwiching me between the fridge and his body, his chest to my back. He rubbed his cheek against my head, his forehead touched my shoulder and yet it was only his body holding me in place, he had yet to put his hands on me. His discipline was warring with instinct and the breath caught in my lungs as I waited to see which would win. The second his hands touched me I knew that instinct had won. He turned me into him and right before he kissed me I saw the wild look of him. He hadn’t just given in to instinct; he’d given in to his baser needs. His hot, wet mouth closed over mine, his tongue driving into my mouth while his hands ripped at the barrier of my clothes. We were frantic; both of us crazed with the need to taste and touch after so long a fast. I heard the t-shirt tear before he yanked my bra down. My whole world was focused on my breasts and the need to have his hot mouth on them, but instead he lifted the key hanging from the long chain.

  Pain moved into his expression when he asked, “What’s this?”

  “It was from my dad, his last gift to me.”

  Understanding replaced pain as he let the key drop back into place. He moved his hands up my body and cupped my breasts, teasing my nipples with his tongue. I was so wet and the need to rub myself against him was strong. He sucked one of my breasts into his mouth and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. He dropped to his knees, taking my sweats with him, and buried his nose between my legs to smell my arousal. With a tug, the thin layer of silk that separated us was gone and his tongue was inside me as my body splintered apart from the orgasm. I went boneless and my head fell back against the fridge because I had missed this. He lifted me into his arms and carried me to my bed. My back hit the mattress as he stripped and then he was all over me, hands, lips, teeth and tongue and I was just as frenzied trying to taste and touch as much of him as I could.

  “I need to be inside you, feel you. No condom.
I’m clean.”

  Unlike the last time we had had unprotected sex, I was on the pill. But even if I hadn’t been, I would have thrown caution to the wind. “Please.”

  The word was no sooner out of my mouth when he lifted my hips, looking me right in the eye, and surged into me. For just a second we both stilled at the beauty of being here again, but the beast that ruled him took over as he lost himself in my body. Right before he came his mouth found mine for a kiss that was poignantly tender. He buried his face in my hair and for several long, blissful minutes we stayed just like that…replete and connected.

  His head lifted and tenderness stared back.

  “I never knew that zombie hunting was an aphrodisiac.”

  He chuckled.

  “What changed your mind?”

  He brushed my hair away from my face, his hand settling on my cheek as his eyes took a slow journey over my features. “You remembered what I liked on my pizza.”

  I almost laughed, but I realized he wasn’t entirely kidding. I got it because I felt it too. We were connected, bound, and had been since we were seventeen. Even after all these years, our bond was still just as strong.

  A wicked smile spread over his face. “You do remember what I told you.”

  I was too wrapped up in how he was looking at me to really follow along with the conversation. “What?”

  “Once wasn’t going to be enough.”

  I followed that and he knew how his words affected me because he was still buried in the part of me that shuddered. He shifted his hips. “You like this idea.”

  I had always been a fan of his ideas. “Very much.”

  “Do you have condoms?”

  “In the bathroom, but they’re like four years old.”

  He liked hearing that by the cocky grin he threw me before he climbed from the bed. And that was when I saw his back. He had the most beautiful back, defined muscles that cut to his narrow waist and smack in the middle of all that beauty was a tattoo of the devil—a horned, winged beast of a man with red eyes. His tail curled between his legs at the small of Damian’s back.