by Annie Dean
Dev sighed. “You’re thinking of fairies again. Demons don’t have their own currency, there’s no grand bazaar in Hell. It operates on the barter system, a favor for a favor.” His expression turned brooding. “In fact that’s how I wound up here.”
“Is that so bad?” She didn’t know how to take that, not when he looked so disgruntled. Certainly it was for her, but it rankled that a minion of the Dark One might find her company objectionable.
He sat up then. “Yes.”
“Why? I don’t understand.” Ridiculous, she should be glad he hated being around her. That must mean she was on the right track.
In a lithe movement, he slid off the bed and eased to his feet. Tonight he wore black, and it suited him, framed his golden skin in somber elegance. “You’re not like the others,” he said quietly. “My aura doesn’t work as it should. If it did, you would’ve succumbed by now, so I’m simply waiting to fail. That’s not a pretty feeling.”
“You could be lying to get me to lower my guard.” She couldn’t remain prone with him standing over her. That disparity roused a helpless feeling she didn’t like, so Teresa clambered up as well.
After running a hand through his hair, he shrugged. “I could be. Doubtless you’ll say I work for the Prince of Lies and all that. But I’m not him, Teresa, nor even one of the dukes. I quite like humans, actually. You burgeon with ideas, however ridiculous, and you smolder with enthusiasm. Just being on the surface offers a sense of renewal. You can’t imagine what it’s like down there.” His jaw clenched and he braced his feet as if preparing for an attack.
Teresa tried to steel herself. Under no circumstances should this devil be able to rouse her sympathy, even for a moment. She didn’t know what sin he’d committed to wind up down there or whether he was one of the lesser spirits Lucifer raised after the fall. Dev might even be a former angel for all she knew.
“Are you one of the fallen?”
He shook his head. “Just one of the damned. I worked my way out of the throng to merit assignments on Earth.” Dev held up a hand. “No, I won’t tell you. You don’t want to know.”
“How do other women react to you?” Her cheeks pinked at indulging such curiosity, but she didn’t regret the question.
The tension in his stance eased. His blue eyes shone with a hungry light. “They inhale my scent and their pupils dilate. Their nipples harden, and their breathing becomes shallow. If I touch them, they go boneless. Their legs fall open and they beg me to touch them. Take them. By the time I slip my fingers between their thighs, they’re wet and writhing. They come if I breathe on their flesh, and they scream when I enter them. I ride them through as many climaxes as they can bear, and when they’re spent, I withdraw, strong and sated with their lust.”
Perhaps his aura didn’t affect her as it should, but his voice did. Teresa trembled, hoping he couldn’t sense the heat rising within her skin. She remembered the nice tingle from her blankets, and for the first time, she realized there might be more.
Heaven help her.
“What about you?”
Dev arched a brow in puzzlement. “What about me?”
She found the jargon difficult to speak aloud, much different to shape the word inside her own head. “Don’t you have … climaxes?”
By the way he tilted his head, nobody had ever asked him such a thing before. “No. I crave the energy generated by such union. Need it. That’s where my satisfaction lies.”
“But it pleased you when I undressed for you.”
When he licked his lips in a very human gesture, she knew.
“Yes.”
“You’re untouched,” she said in astonished glee. “Even though you’ve ridden legions of women to their own pleasure, you’ve never had anyone touch you because she wanted to. I bet you never even held anyone before last night. They would’ve all been too busy panting and pleading for completion for you to lie quiet like that.”
“Why do you interrogate me so? You are a most unnatural woman.”
The most beautiful idea occurred to her, full-fledged. “Perhaps I am. Let me see if I understand our situation. I forfeit my immortal soul only if I give myself to you, and you may touch me only with my permission. Is that essentially correct?”
“That is entirely correct,” he bit out. “Do you intend to gloat?”
“No. I intend to avail myself of an opportunity that may not come again.” Teresa prowled toward him, and her expression appeared to alarm him because he backed toward the window. “You have two choices: submit or flee. Which will it be?”
“You threaten an incubus with pleasure?” He almost managed a convincing laugh.
“Not mine,” she whispered. “Yours. Can you bear it?”
“You’re a nun!” The poor thing sounded almost outraged.
Who’s tempting whom?
She smiled. “Not yet.”
His whole body quivered as she set her fingertips on his chest, respectably covered by his black shirt. For a moment, she thought she’d won; he would run and leave her in peace. At best this was a gamble, but then Dev called her bluff.
He stood before her, arms open in the manner of a sacrifice. “I’m yours. Do with me what you will.”
While some might call it cowardice, she lacked the nerve to push. Besides, by keeping him off balance, she might make it through the week intact. “I need some fresh air, so let’s start with a walk. It’s unlikely anyone will check on me, but can you do something about it, just in case?”
“A walk,” he repeated.
Her gaze centered on his mouth. Why had she never noticed its beauty before? She’d registered his overall attraction, but not the sculptured line of his lips with the tiny dent in the bottom, or how the top one swelled a trifle fuller.
“Mmhm.”
With visible effort he shook off the residual effects of whatever she’d done to him. “I can leave a simulacrum in your place. Illusion is my specialty and people aid me by seeing whatever they expect.”
Teresa stared, wide-eyed. “That sounds powerful.”
Dev smiled. “Perhaps, but it doesn’t last long, so we need to return by dawn.”
Pausing, sneaker in hand, she said, “You say that as if you expect us to hike to Calgary and back.”
“No. I intend something better. Much better.” His excitement shone from his wide smile, a tangible force. “Do you have street clothes, Teresa? Surely you have some left from college?”
Even though she knew better than to cooperate, she found his anticipation infectious. In fact she did have some jeans and T-shirts folded at the bottom of her drawer. She fought for the suspicion she should be feeling, but she liked Dev.
Still, she couldn’t fall in without a token protest. “Why?”
“Can you trust me half an inch? This will be fun. Other than sex, that’s the extent of my expertise. Look, I’ll even turn around while you change.” He presented his back.
Teresa stared. Though she couldn’t permit him to see her admiration, she loved the breadth of his shoulders, so much strength. But then she’d seen the horror such strength could unleash. She used the opportunity to scramble into a pair of jeans. It only made sense, she told herself. If they went into the woods, the robe might get torn and that would be hard to explain.
She stuffed her novitiate’s garb under some nightgowns, tugged a T-shirt over her head and layered it with a big gray hoodie. The grainy white letters on the chest spelled out St. Mary’s. Even in college, she never snuck out, never wanted to risk ruining her chances of being chosen for the Sisters of Peace. As a small order, they rarely accepted new postulants.
When he turned, his face creased in a broad smile. “Even in that, you manage to look like a nun, Teresa.”
She hunched her shoulders, perceiving it as a criticism. “That’s what I always wanted.”
It occurred to her she’d said that an awful lot lately.
Who am I trying to convince?
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.” He sound
ed remarkably gentle. “Who wouldn’t want some peace after what you’ve suffered?”
Her whole body froze. “What do you know about it?”
“Everything. I know what you’re running from. And why. I know you broke your arm when you were eight, you cried because you weren’t invited to Missy Shannon’s birthday party when you were twelve and at thirteen…”
“Did they give you a demon dossier on me? My life laid out for your delectation? Pick and choose what you use against me?” Anger rendered her words biting.
“Something like that,” he said somberly. “And I understand why Pittsburgh feels like a fate worse than death. But this isn’t your only option, you know. If you want to help people as you did in the hospice, you could take up nursing. You could work for a charitable organization. You don’t have to hide from the world to survive.”
Before she could tell him she didn’t want to talk about it, he turned to face her bed. “Speculum imago.” To her astonishment, the bed looked as if she slept in it, tucked innocently beneath the covers. Dev strode to the door and beckoned. “Come. The whole world awaits us.”
Stepping boldly into the hall went against all of her instincts. She felt as though she passed beyond some imperceptible boundary she’d set upon herself, and it felt less like sin than freedom. Teresa laughed softly.
When he held out his hand, she took it. Then she stopped as their fingers twined together, but no lightning bolts fell from Heaven. The house sat quiet around them, full of sleeping nuns, none the wiser.
As a child, before she discovered the pain of falling, she enjoyed running. So they did. They ran. They ran down silent corridors and out into the dark. Teresa breathed in the night, redolent with cut grass and cherry blossom. The air carried a bite, frisky with remembered winter.
Breathless, she tipped her face toward the stars. She couldn’t remember when she’d seen them so bright and clear, a vast swirl of cut crystal glittering on a bed of midnight silk. The clicking of insects broke the silence, and other nocturnal animals lifted their voices to join the song.
“God loves the dark too,” she said. “I’d forgotten that.”
“You know my stance on that,” Dev returned. “And I don’t want to ruin this. Let’s get some distance from the house.”
Before what? Before he eats you? Part of her insisted that she shouldn’t trust him, but she silenced it with mockery. If you could resist him in bed, what greater magic can he produce in the forest? So shut up and let me have a little fun.
Teresa gave one last look over her shoulder at the rambling old farmhouse, built of weathered timber and stone. A mile past the last pasture the land turned from field to woods, and he led her in that direction. Not content to follow, she set the pace, dashing toward the trees with her free arm extended like she might take flight.
With a smile, Dev caught her mood and he flew with her. They spiraled and drew figure eights across the meadow with their feet. Her heart ached with the joy of it.
By the time they reached the shadow of the pines, she felt drunk, or rather, as she imagined that might feel. “What did you want to show me?”
“This,” he said as he began to change. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”
Before her incredulous eyes, the reality of him shifted. Blurred, elongated, and by the time she processed the transformation, something else crouched beside her in the dark. Teresa took in the long line of him, the coiled tail and serpentine grace. His great wings rustled with the wind.
His voice rumbled the ground beneath her feet. “I miss this every moment I spend below, worse than any torment they could devise. I yearn for the wind against my face. When you began to run, wheeling like a gull, I knew. Come, Teresa. Fly with me.”
A terrible beast with fangs and claws asked her to come away into the inky sky. Instead of screaming, she thought it over. The night no longer felt real.
“Has anyone ever ridden you?” She caught the innuendo after she spoke.
The shape of his face didn’t lend itself to human expression, but he flashed a sharp mouthful of teeth. “Never. I want you to be the first.” Dev bent his elegant neck, so she could grasp the scales and pull herself up if she so chose.
Why me? Did he hope to impress her? Or drop her?
Still, a girl who grew up guiltily reading Anne McCaffrey couldn’t resist for long. It didn’t matter why. Even if this was a dream, she wanted to see where it would lead, if he could truly fly.
After a moment she pulled herself up.
“Hold on, pretty one.”
As he thundered along the tree line, gathering momentum, she understood why he’d wanted distance from the house. Then he threw himself to the winds with a powerful push from his back legs. His wings caught the updraft and they soared, first over the fields, and then the treetops.
With insane speed they passed the lights of Langley and sped onward. She felt embarrassingly aware of the big body beneath her, even wrapped in hide tougher than lizard skin. She leaned to one side, peered over his shoulder, and then hid her face at the sight of the world skimming by so far below. Teresa huddled against his neck, hands scrabbling for purchase. So far, the ride seemed impossibly vivid and she didn’t want to end it by splattering in New Brunswick.
Even so, she still slid in ways that made her heart leap in raw terror cut with exhilaration. Her teeth chattered. Far below, the world seemed tiny and insignificant, nothing to trouble a dragon and his rider.
His voice growled above the wind howling around them. “Where have you always wanted to go? What would you like to see?”
“Oh, I don’t…”
“Where?” This time, he roared.
“Paris!”
They wheeled once as he took stock of the stars and altered their course accordingly. He couldn’t possibly—they couldn’t return by dawn, could they? Teresa shrieked a little as they surged onward into a spring storm. Now she was both wet and cold, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to turn back. If this was a dream, what a glorious one, and she wanted to finish it.
By the time he descended she’d lost track of their whereabouts. Surely he must have been teasing about Paris, though. He touched down in a garden somewhere and went at a run. Teresa thought they must surely smash into the Greek statues at the opposite end because he couldn’t stop in time. Dev shifted, much less weight to slow, and she found herself clinging to his back. As she leaped down, she couldn’t stop laughing.
“May I?”
Teresa nodded before she thought, and he swept her into his arms. Spun with her in a dizzying circle. “Welcome to Paris, my girl. This is Le Jardin du Palais-Royal.”
In either form, his heat sent a sweet shock throughout her body and she surprised herself by wondering how it would feel, skin to skin. Mortified, she averted her eyes as she stepped back, gazed at the brick paths and manicured trees that marched alongside subdued flowerbeds.
“How is it that nobody noticed you?”
He shrugged. “People don’t believe in dragons anymore.” Teresa didn’t hesitate when he laced their fingers together. “Your hands feel like ice. Come, I know a lovely all-night place on Rue Coquillière. They make the best onion soup in the city.”
They walked like lovers along the avenue. “I take it you’ve been here before? And relatively recently.”
He nodded, not seeming to notice the looks he drew from passing women. Something about that troubled her. “Yes. It’s one of my favorite places on earth.”
“What’s the other?”
“Bangkok.”
Before he could elaborate, she figured it out. “Hey, they can see you!”
Dev grinned. “Of course they can. This is the city of lovers, where they expect couples walking together.”
“Convenient,” she grumbled.
“Perception also depends on whether I will it, Teresa. Tonight I want to be seen with you.”
Her heart clenched as she noticed the disparity between them. A thin woman with schoolg
irl plaits, faded jeans and an old sweatshirt walking with a golden god in his tailored black trousers and matching pullover. “Do you? Why?”
“Because you know what it’s like,” he said simply. “The longing to fly while you must remain earthbound.”
Teresa chose not to discuss her longings with him. The buildings shone pale as bone with reflected light. She traced the columns with her eyes, and before long, they came upon Au Pied de Cochon, its name written in pretty neon over the red awning.
She read the letters printed on the canopy—Ouvert jour et nuit—and guessed at the meaning. “Open all night?”
As a waiter led them to a seat on the terrace lined with miniature trees and flower boxes bursting with red blossoms, Dev nodded. “Onion soup and wine? Or coffee?”
“Coffee.” He ordered for them in flawless French. “You speak it beautifully. I could listen to you all night.”
“You nearly have.”
“But not in French. I wouldn’t understand much, but it would be worth it.”
People passed on the narrow brick street, sometimes close enough to touch. “I like it here. I had a place near Provence for a while. Lovely maidens.” His summer-blue eyes sparkled in the candlelight, and she realized—
When he shifts, his eyes don’t change. And if they are the windows of the soul…
Well, Teresa didn’t know what that meant, but it must be significant. She waited for the waiter to pour the coffee and then she curled her hands around the cup. What sweet, blessed warmth.
As she ate, she watched him, but couldn’t tell whether he actually consumed anything. He made a good show of it if he didn’t. When the waiter presented the bill, she panicked, remembering what he’d said about demons lacking currency.
“Are we in trouble?” She’d never run out on a check.
Laughing, Dev shook his head. “I can convince the reader it’s running my card. Don’t feel guilty, we didn’t order much.”
“If you say so.”
She didn’t feel entirely right about that, but she didn’t have any Euros either. Maybe this was how demons wore a person down, getting them first to accept lesser sins and working their way up. Teresa sighed because she couldn’t regret riding the wind to Paris or cadging a free bowl of soup.