by Jenna Black
“Of course, I’m also not in the mood to be lectured, so if that’s your plan, you might as well give it up.” I sat up straight and put my feet flat on the floor.
The ottoman disappeared, replaced by an armchair that sat uncomfortably close to the sofa, crowding me. Lugh knew perfectly well how much I liked my personal space, but I decided it would take too much energy to protest.
“You need to learn how to let me in,” he said simply.
I scowled at him. “Yeah, I know. I’m trying as hard as I can.”
“No, you’re not.”
The nerve of some people! “I don’t know what else you expect me to do. I’ve tried every relaxation technique you’ve taught me. I just don’t know how to turn off my need to be in control.”
“You could do it if you truly wanted to, but you’re still fighting it.”
“I am not!” I sounded like a petulant child, but I couldn’t help it. I’d spent at least a half hour tonight trying with everything I had to let him in, and I’d done so every night for the last two weeks. I don’t think I’d ever tried that hard to do anything in my entire life.
Lugh crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair, looking stern. “I’ll grant that you’re spending time on the project, but your heart isn’t in it. You’re still afraid that if you let me in, I’ll never let you back in control.”
I swallowed the protest I’d been about to make, because I recognized the truth when I heard it. Trust had never been one of my strong suits, and what little I’d had had been whittled away by a series of betrayals that still left me reeling.
I stared down at my hands, because it was too hard to look into Lugh’s reproachful eyes. “The last time you were in control, you shut me out and killed my father.”
Being shut out of my own body had been the single most terrifying experience of my life. And considering my life, that was saying a lot. I’d been completely unaware of what was happening in the real world, my consciousness imprisoned in a deep, dark, claustrophobic oubliette. I’d like to think that him using my body to murder my father—at least, the man who’d raised me as his own for all my life, even though he wasn’t my biological father—was the worst part about that memory, but I know it’s not true.
“I did what was necessary under the circumstances,” he said softly.
“I know that.” My father had been possessed by a sociopathic demon who knew far too much to be allowed to return to the Demon Realm. He’d had to die, but despite my less-than-stellar relationship with him, there was no way I could have killed him. So my semi-ex-boyfriend, Brian, had held me down until Lugh fought his way to the surface. I had yet to forgive either one of them.
“Knowing it was necessary doesn’t help,” I said. Lugh suddenly appeared at my side on the sofa, and I jumped. “Can’t you just get up and walk from the chair to the sofa? Do you have to poof and startle me?”
Not surprisingly, he ignored my question. “We are inextricably tied to one another for the foreseeable future.”
“Yeah, like I needed that reminder.”
“If you can’t learn to trust me, we’ll both die.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “That’s just great, Lugh. ‘Trust me or die.’ Words of wisdom that are guaranteed to put warm, fuzzy feelings in my heart.”
He made an incoherent sound of frustration. I expected him to argue some more. Instead, the dream dissolved, and I slept through to morning.
I didn’t know why Lugh had let me off so easy last night, but the whole encounter left me unsettled when I awoke. He wasn’t one to give up, and I had to wonder what he was planning now.
Of course, whatever he was planning, there wasn’t much I could do to stop him, so I told myself to quit thinking about it. To help me follow my own orders, I distracted myself by getting on the Internet and seeing what information I could scrape up on the Brewster family.
I wasn’t expecting to find anything particularly interesting, or even particularly relevant. All I really hoped was to keep my mind off Lugh. But I found a lot more than I bargained for.
Claudia Brewster was exactly what she looked like—an extremely successful career woman. She’d gotten an MBA from Harvard and had eventually brokered that into a position as vice president of a management consultant firm here in the city. Her husband, Devon Brewster III, was old money, and I could see no evidence that he’d ever worked for a living.
But that wasn’t what caught my interest. It turned out there was a hell of a lot about Tommy Brewster that Claudia had failed to mention. Starting with the fact that he wasn’t her biological son.
It appeared no one knew for sure who Tommy Brewster really was. When he was three years old, he was found at a horrific crime scene in Houston, where a rampaging demon had killed four people. A cop had heard the screams and come running. The demon had grabbed Tommy and was about to smash his head against a wall when the cop reached them. The cop had shot the demon in the head, killing its host and saving Tommy’s life.
The story got stranger from there. The police were unable to identify any of the four people who’d been slaughtered, though blood tests proved that two of them were Tommy’s parents. Tommy was too traumatized to tell the police anything except his first name. He’d gone into the foster care system and had eventually ended up with the Brewsters, who’d adopted him when he was ten, after he’d lived with them for several years.
The police weren’t idiots. They knew the demon who’d killed Tommy’s parents wasn’t dead—the only way to kill a demon is to burn its host alive—and they knew it was possible it would return to the Mortal Plain to finish the job it had started. When Tommy had gone into foster care, social services had been very careful to cover their tracks and make it impossible for the demon to locate him.
So, how did I learn all this information about him if it was such a secret? Because Tommy had posted the whole sordid story on his MySpace page, along with enough anti-demon invective to get his profile deleted if anyone bothered to complain about it.
It was possible the story was a load of shit. I’d looked up the stories about the slaughter, and there was no denying it had occurred, and that a small child had been found at the scene. That didn’t mean Tommy was that child. Still, if it was true, that would explain Tommy’s devotion to God’s Wrath.
I knew Adam would find out for sure if Tommy Brewster was who he said he was. And if his story turned out to be true, then his case became even more suspicious.
Who was the demon who’d slaughtered those four people and would have slaughtered Tommy if not for a policeman’s timely rescue? Why had the demon gone on such a rampage? And could it possibly be a coincidence that shortly after Tommy Brewster turned twenty-one—the age at which he could legally register to host a demon—he turned up possessed?
The demons had shown far too much interest in this kid’s life. My gut instinct said it would behoove me to find out why.
CHAPTER 4
It was a Saturday, and Adam was on duty, so I wasn’t surprised not to hear from him. Whatever research he was planning to do on Tommy Brewster would no doubt be off the record, and he probably wouldn’t even get started on it until tomorrow. Even understanding this, I chafed at the delay. Of course, some of my impatience was probably due to my desperate desire to find an excuse to cancel my evening’s planned activity—dinner with Brian.
I’d barely spoken to him since he’d helped Lugh kill my father. He’d called a number of times, and I’d even picked up once or twice, but my emotions had been far too raw to handle an actual conversation. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I felt about him right now—though beneath whatever other layers of feelings existed, I had to admit that I still loved him.
Or at least still loved the man I’d thought I’d known. Only I was no longer entirely sure that man existed.
Until that dreadful night, I’d always thought of Brian as the quintessential Boy Scout: virtuous, kind, and law-abiding to a fault. Never would I have im
agined him being party to my father’s grisly death, and it was the disillusionment, more than the act itself, that put me into such a tailspin of uncertainty.
When Brian had invited me to come to his apartment for dinner so we could talk things through, my first instinct had been to say no. I’m always one to follow my instincts, but Brian is a lawyer, and a good one at that, and whenever I allowed him to draw me into an argument—or “discussion,” as he called it—I invariably came out on the losing end. Which was how I’d ended up promising to show up at his apartment at seven o’clock tonight.
I’m not what you’d call a girly-girl, and it was completely unlike me to spend twenty minutes agonizing over what to wear, but I did it anyway—even though my wardrobe was severely limited since everything I’d owned had gone up in smoke. I knew I was procrastinating, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
I finally settled on a pair of tight, hip-hugging black jeans and a clingy, silk-knit green T-shirt that was a perfect complement to my red hair. It was—for me, at least—an understated kind of sexy. Not something that screamed “fuck me,” but not something that screamed “keep your hands off me,” either.
I finished the outfit off with a pair of black leather thong sandals with just enough heel to keep the hem of the jeans from dragging on the ground. After a final inspection in the full-length mirror that hung on the back of my bathroom door, I finally decided I was as ready as I’d ever be. I then looked at my watch and saw that I was already fifteen minutes late.
Cursing under my breath, I hurried to the door—but not before I’d double-checked my Taser to make sure its battery was fully charged. Brian’s apartment was only six blocks from my own. Maybe I should have driven, seeing as I was already late, but I covered those six blocks at a brisk walk instead.
By the time I got there, the thong on my sandals had rubbed blisters between my toes—they weren’t the best walking shoes in the world—and I was sure I’d chewed off all the lipstick on my lower lip. I took a couple of deep breaths to compose myself—like that had a chance of working—before I rang the bell.
I’d expected Brian to be annoyed. After all my dithering, I’d managed to be more than a half hour late, and I’d been too self-absorbed to even think about calling. But his only comment was a raised eyebrow as he opened the door wide enough to let me in. I swallowed hard as I crossed that threshold. I was a mature adult. Mature adults don’t run away from conflict like frightened little girls. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t such a mature adult.
Unlike Dominic, Brian’s kitchen skills were mostly limited to simple fare such as hamburgers or spaghetti with jarred sauce. I guess he’d decided that wasn’t good enough for tonight. There’s a good Italian restaurant approximately every ten yards in Philadelphia, and Brian had ordered takeout from one of them. The fact that the food was still piping hot told me he wasn’t surprised by how late I’d shown up.
Tension sizzled and sparked between us. I fidgeted nervously as Brian laid the food on the table. I saw we’d be eating off paper plates, and wondered if he was just trying to be as informal as possible in a vain attempt to make me comfortable, or if he was afraid of what I’d do if he put breakables in front of me.
By the time we sat down to eat, my stomach was tied in such knots I didn’t know how I’d be able to force any food down. Brian had said little, but I was very much aware of how closely he was watching me. I cut off a hunk of eggplant parmigiana, but the idea of putting it in my mouth made me want to puke.
I must have been wearing my emotions on my face—not unusual for me—because Brian pushed his own food aside and reached across the table to grab my hand.
“My bad,” he said softly. “I should have known we needed to clear the air between us before we ate.”
I let out a whoosh of air, wishing my tension would flow out with it, then slumped in my chair. Gently, I extricated my hand from Brian’s grip and pushed my own plate aside. I couldn’t meet his whisky-brown eyes, afraid of what I’d see in them.
“We can try,” I said. “But you know I suck at this.”
I could almost feel his frown, even though I still hadn’t found the courage to look at him. “What exactly is ‘this’?”
I squirmed. “Talking.”
“Ah. Yes, I know.”
That made me wince, and I finally looked up. “You didn’t have to agree that easily,” I grumbled.
One corner of his mouth was turned up in wry amusement. “You wouldn’t have liked a lie any better.”
“Silence is always nice.”
“Yeah, that was working really well for us.”
Never argue with a lawyer. It’s a losing proposition. “What do you expect me to say, Brian? That I’m okay with you helping Lugh kill my father? Well I’m not, and you know it.”
Brian leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table and fixing me with an intense look. “You’re right, I do. But if I had it all to do over again, I’d do the same thing. If we’d let that demon go back to the Demon Realm knowing what he knew, you’d be dead by now. I’d rather have you hating my guts than dead.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t hate your guts,” I said, though I knew he’d just basically manipulated me into saying it.
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but at the moment, you dislike them intensely.”
Even in my muddled state of mind, I couldn’t possibly imagine disliking Brian. I might be disillusioned, and I might have made assumptions about him that turned out to be incorrect, but whatever his faults, he was a truly nice guy. At least, I was pretty sure he was. Had I been putting him on a pedestal all this time, seeing only what I wanted to see?
I grabbed the paper napkin I’d laid over my lap and began calmly tearing it into shreds. “The man I thought I knew would never have been party to murder. You wouldn’t even lie to the police to give me an alibi when they hauled me in for illegal exorcism.”
He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I didn’t lie because I could have been caught in it and that would have made you look guilty. Look, I don’t like what I did. Just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach. But I love you. I’ve always loved you. How could I let you throw your life away like that?”
Of course, he was right. Der Jäger, the demon who’d possessed my father, had had to die. Not just for my safety, but for Lugh’s. If Lugh died and Dougal took the throne, he’d do his best to make the human race into slaves. There had been far too much at risk to let Der Jäger live. In a way, Brian had even done me a favor, helping Lugh take over so that I didn’t have to be directly responsible for my father’s death. Logic told me I couldn’t hold any of this against Brian. Now, if only emotions were logical. .
I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a non-Lugh-induced headache coming on. The napkin lay on the table in front of me in neat, thin strips. I fought the compulsion to start tearing at those strips. I had to swallow past a painful lump in my throat before I could speak.
“I know all that, okay? I understand why you did it, and I know you were right, but I still can’t seem to swallow it.” I’m just not as nice as Brian. I hold grudges and nurse my anger like a well-loved baby. Why a man like him loved someone like me was beyond my comprehension.
Brian’s chair scraped back from the table, the sound making me wince. Was he about to wise up and wash his hands of me? The thought made my stomach clench with dread.
I must have looked as anguished as I felt. Brian flashed me a comforting half-smile, then came around the table to stand behind my chair. When I tried to get up, his hands came down firmly on my shoulders and held me in place. I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck as he bent to whisper in my ear.
“Maybe we need to do something other than talk to break the tension,” he said. He nipped my earlobe gently, just in case I was too clueless to get the hint.
I tried to form a coherent protest. Surely we shouldn’t even be thinking about sex when there were so many issues between us. I even got a husky, grunting sound out of my mouth tha
t was probably the start of a word. Then his hands slid from my shoulders to my breasts, and the protest died in my throat.
“There’s always more than one way to attack a problem,” Brian said in a smug whisper as my nipples beaded under his hands.
I didn’t mean to do it, but my back arched with the pleasure of his touch. My mind was pretty sure this was a bad idea, but my body didn’t give a damn. I tried once more to get up, figuring it was time to take this party to the bedroom, but Brian’s hands tightened on my breasts, holding me in place. It was an odd feeling, being held down by my breasts, but trying to get up would hurt if he didn’t let go, and it seemed he wasn’t planning to.
Against all logic, moisture pooled between my legs. I tried to say something, anything, but my throat was too tight, my breaths too shallow.
When he sensed my capitulation, Brian eased his grip, kneading a breast with one hand as his other hand wandered lower to pull my T-shirt up. I hadn’t figured on getting undressed in front of him tonight, so I was wearing a utilitarian tan bra rather than one of my sexy numbers. Brian didn’t seem to mind. He nibbled on my earlobe, his tongue occasionally flicking to the shell of my ear as his hands slipped under the bra to cup my breasts.
I moaned and pushed myself into his hands, my skin alive with his touch. The damn bra fastened in the back—another sign that I hadn’t been expecting to get any tonight—but instead of bothering to open it, Brian just shoved the cups upward. I’m not exactly flat-chested, so the underwire was painfully tight as he forced it over the fullest part of my chest. I opened my mouth to complain, but then my breasts popped free of the constriction and his hands were back where I wanted them and I forgot what I was going to complain about.
Brian had always been a fantastic lover, and we had so much physical chemistry he could soak my panties with a single smoldering look, but tonight he was. . different. His fingers played with my nipples, plucking and pinching, creating a sensation just on the cusp between pain and pleasure.