Kiss & Hell

by Cassidy, Dakota

  The demon beside him cackled, revealing missing teeth and breath that smelled like a Dumpster. “Good thing, too. You were one ugly son of a bitch.”

  Yeahhh. “Okay, so you’ve checked on me. Now get the fuck out.”

  The demon screwed up his ugly, bony face, his skin mottled with pockmarks. “Christ. Don’t be such a fuckhead. You know what Pauley’s like. Since he made level boss, he’s up in our shit all the time. If he says check up on you—I’m doin’ it, motherfucker.” He craned his neck around, eyeballing the living room, the stretched skin of his face shiny under the lamp. “Where is she, anyway? Shouldn’t you be banging the shit out of her by now? It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  It was all he could do to keep from ramming his fist up this dick’s ass and leave it tangled somewhere in his esophagus. “Walking those stupid mutts,” he muttered. “But she’ll be back.” He gave the demon a sly grin, punching his fist into his hand. “You better get the hell out of here before she gets back. Her damned dogs can sniff out demons.”

  “And they didn’t sniff out you?”

  Clyde shot him another smug smile, adding a touch of lascivious and sneaky. “I’m that good. Don’t forget it.”

  The demon slapped Clyde on the back. “She’s pretty fuckin’ hot. But I gotta tell ya, for the time she made my damned eyes feel like they were on fire, I can’t wait to see her dead. But just before she bites it, I wanna give it to her good.” He bent his arms at the elbows and made a lewd gesture with his hips.

  Dead. The idea that Delaney’d miss out on all those things she wanted so much because she was dead made him want to heave. Clyde rolled his head on his neck, fighting the sudden burst of total rage at even just the hint this prick would come anywhere near Delaney—let alone touch her. It made his stomach roil, but he had to play along or he’d be fucked. He held his tongue instead. He’d never been one to rush into anything; keeping his head was more crucial than it’d ever been before.

  “So we’re cool, man?” he held out the top of his fist to Clyde.

  With a sneer, Clyde ignored the dirt embedded under his fingernails and dropped his fist down on the demon’s—hard.

  He snapped his hand back, shaking it out. “Ow! What’s your hard-on?”

  “Pussy,” Clyde spat, letting his own cackle erupt from his throat. “Now get the fuck out of here before she comes back in and catches you here. I’m workin’ her like a snitch works the feds.”

  He snorted. “You oughta know.” The demon grinned wide, the rot of his teeth making Clyde want to turn away in disgust. But he couldn’t do that. Apparently, whoever this asshole was, he’d known Clyve. That meant Clyde couldn’t take a chance the man’d figure out he wasn’t Clyve at all—and rat him out. The shit would get ugly if that happened and then he wouldn’t be here to watch Delaney’s butt. So he played along like they were long-lost buddies.

  He slapped Clyde on the back again. “Yeah, yeah. Just remember, man, you’re being watched. The big boss wants this chick—bad. Don’t fuck it up or you’ll never make level four. I’ll tell Pauley you said hello.”

  “Do that.”

  The demon disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the foul stink of his rotting soul.

  Dropping his head to his hands, Clyde inhaled a deep breath, shaking off the fear that rose in his throat like sour bile. How in the frig was he going to keep Hell from getting to Delaney? He was only one demon, and a sorry-assed one at that. Even if he could accumulate a power or two to help her, the shit he had to do to acquire them went so far against his nature, he couldn’t even think it.

  He’d never forget the kinds of things those demons had laughed over around that water cooler. He’d never forget how their black gurgles of laughter had erupted when they’d talked about Delaney’s demise.

  Now more than ever, he wanted to know what she’d done to have this much heat from Lucifer. The problem didn’t just lie with her crossing over souls. She’d said herself that most of the people she’d crossed weren’t the bottom-of-the-barrel souls. They were just indecisive, or needed to pass on one last message. She was their conduit for safe passage.

  Something was out of whack with her claim of innocence. Something he had to make sure he found out before he had to leave her, or he’d risk leaving her to fuck knows what.

  What would Satan do to her when he found out Clyde had fucked with his plans? How could he even consider crossing over knowing he’d leave her behind to face that alone? What would happen when his month was up and they came looking for Delaney’s soul?

  While he’d like to believe his fears for Delaney were nothing more than humane, he knew better. He hadn’t experienced many women in his life, but he’d never experienced one like Delaney.

  Right out of the gate, when he’d been looking down at her from that plane he’d been stuck on during the séance, he’d found her compelling. He’d been drawn to how utterly unaware she was that she had this fresh innocence about her. She had a sharp tongue, no doubt, and every time she used it to lambaste him for something new, he wanted to make it stop wagging by clamping his mouth over hers. And each time he was close to her he discovered something else he found attractive about her. All that red hair with darker strands of golden brown in it, for one. When was the last time he’d noticed fucking highlights in a woman’s hair? Yet the compulsion to run his fingers through it tonight and take a deep whiff of the apple shampoo she used was driving him out of his mind.

  As was the soft, supple melding of her body to his and the curve where waist met hip.

  To make this attraction to Delaney even less likely, she had fluky ideas, crazy notions, and a healthy sense of humor, considering her lot in life as a medium. She ate things he couldn’t pronounce that smelled like a Jersey dump, and believed in things he’d never heard of and couldn’t be swayed to change her mind about.

  Yet, he found he respected that—much more than he would have if he’d known her when he was alive.

  Alive . . . now that was a problem. If he’d known her in life, he might have missed her due to the fact that he’d once thought clairvoyants like her were quacks. Now that he knew her in this unlife, there was no chance this could go any further because his time would be up in a few weeks.

  But then there was that kiss. Two of them, to be precise. One just as hot as the next. Her lips had done things to him. Things that had never been done before her. Her body, clapped up against his like plaster on a wall, had left him with a raging hard-on and a lust that tore at every nerve ending he possessed. It’d been a while since he’d been intimate with anyone, and he realized that could play a part in how much she turned him on, but not all of what he’d felt with Delaney attached to him had to do with sex.

  He liked her.

  He didn’t want her to be hurt.

  He found he wanted her to have all the things she seemed to want so much.

  He also found himself wondering if he were alive, with the kind of view he had on how precious life was now, if he wouldn’t want to explore her desires with her.

  Clyde halted those thoughts with a mental screech of metaphoric brakes.

  That just couldn’t happen. He’d come here, taken this blood-sucking assignment so he could get out of Hell with no idea he’d find himself attracted to this free spirit. Whether he succeeded or not, he had an egg timer attached to his time on this plane.

  When it dinged—he’d never see Delaney again.

  And that made his gut clench into a tight, unwelcome fist.

  Fuck.

  twelve

  “Oh, Clyde. Is it my perfume? No, wait, I know. It’s my animal magnetism. My va-va-voom. Yeah. ’Cause I have so much of that. It just oozes from my every pore.” Her laughter tinkled, but her body was on fire. Clyde’s arm around her waist, the crisp hairs on it brushing against her arm, made her nipples turn to tight beads—which was totally and utterly pathetic. Given how little it seemed to take to turn her on these days, she might as well start humping lampposts.

>   No disrespect meant to Clyde, who was far and away much more attractive than a lamppost.

  Clyde stiffened behind her, stirring to the sound of her voice.

  In fact, every part of his body was stiff.

  Every. Part.

  “I’m in your bed again? How do you suppose this keeps happening?” His voice rumbled, groggy with sleep in the deep velvet of the night.

  “Uh-huh, and I’m taking a stab in the dark, but I think it must have to do with the binding.”

  “Right. The binding. Am I naked?”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. Was he? “Were you nak—uh—nu—ah . . . when you went to bed on the couch earlier?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Perfect. “Then I imagine not much’s changed. And you’re sucking up more than your fair share of the bed. Not to mention, you have all the covers. So you know what that means, don’t you?”

  “I’m apologizing?”

  She giggled despite his sinfully tempting nudity. “No, you’re taking the dogs out—as penance, bed hog.”

  His groan tickled her ear before he lifted his head to look at her alarm clock. “They’re still asleep. It’s three in the morning. So I say we go back to sleep, too. We deserve to sleep in, don’t you think? It’s been a rough few days.” He burrowed closer to her; the impulse to lie back into his strength was pushing overwhelming, bordering desperate. Clyde curled his fingers into her waist when she tried to get up.

  Delaney fought the hitch of her breath. “You’re right. We have stuff to do, demon. So hit the bricks so we can get some sleep and call Tia in the morning. I’m still not convinced her being here at exactly the same time as you is a coincidence. I find it very strange rather than coincidental. I know you don’t want—” Clyde rolled her over with swift hands, pulling her flush to him, making her forget why they had to call Tia.

  But it was important.

  Really important.

  His blue eyes gazed into hers, glittering despite the late hour, and his hands spanned the width of her back, creating an arch in her spine that made her hips lift toward his. “We definitely have stuff to do.” His nose pressed to hers, his breath caressed the corner of her mouth.

  Wow—way to put some distance between you and the demon, Delaney. Get up, tard. Get up from this bed right now and don’t look back. But . . . this was soooo nice. And so wrong. Very wrong, Delaney Markham. “This presents a problem, doesn’t it?”

  “I think it might.”

  The breath she took shuddered with nervous hitches, but if she was about anything, she was about honesty, and that was required here. “Let’s just lay this on the line. If we do this, Clyde Atwell, you know it can’t go anywhere, and I’m not just saying that like some standard ‘no strings attached’ line. I’m saying that because it really, really can’t. Ever. We won’t have to wonder if it’ll end because it will end. No ifs, ands, or buts. Which might be completely fine with you. For all I know, you were a real playa in life and all this ‘I was a lab rat always wrapped up in my work’ is just crap.” And even then, she didn’t know if she’d still turn him down because if that really had been the case in Clyde’s life, what diff did it make if in the end he’d be gone anyway?

  Well, the difference is, you’d be shimming his shank just to shim.

  Yes, indeedy.

  Okay, so that was different, but not by a lot. Him and his shank would be on the highway to Heaven either way if all went according to what she hoped would happen to Clyde’s soul. Yet, there was a safety in knowing he couldn’t dump her because her gift interfered in their lives. There was also a safety in knowing he understood her gift and wouldn’t be troubled by it the way anyone who didn’t believe was. Plus, he didn’t think she was a nutjob for talking to dead people. It was hard to deny the overall hotness of that.

  “So in closing, this won’t ever be anything but two people fulfilling their baser needs. As a demon, and if you’re anything like Marcella, those needs can be demanding. If you’re the nice guy you say you are, I don’t want you all whiny with regrets after the fact because we just did it to do it.”

  The nod of his head against hers was in agreement. “First, even if that were true, and when you dig into my life, you’ll see it’s so far from the truth it borders ridiculous, that I have to leave when my time is up is also true. Second, I can’t remember the last time I whined. So the question then becomes, do you want to take that risk, knowing what you know? Or maybe even what you don’t know?”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do.”

  Her cheeks warmed and her stomach fluttered. “Then I’m just going to be straight with you because I have absolutely nothing to lose. It’s not like I’ll ever run into you—there’ll be no awkward encounters where I have to hide at the grocery store in the feminine protection aisle behind the pads with wings because you’re there with your new hottie. I can’t make an ass of myself with all that senseless begging and pleading with you not to break up with me, because you have no choice in the matter.”

  Clyde’s eyes flashed an emotion she was unsure of before he said, “That much is true. So be straight.”

  “Alright, but here’s the deal. Don’t let me embarrass myself.”

  His laughter was deep, his hands warm and firm. “Deal.”

  It was do or die. “Okay, so straight up. I’m all about owning my needs. I haven’t met a man yet, aside from you, who doesn’t think I’m some fruitcake, making things up. I’m good with this being something temporary, knowing an opportunity like this might never happen again in my lifetime. Which is pathetic, and very, very sad, but whatever—my life is what it is. Not that you’re just an opportunity . . . I mean, well, I’m just going to have to hope you know what I mean. But I want to be clear about me and who I am—this isn’t something I . . . well, I’ve never had a one-night stand or anything even remotely like it. I’m no man-eater.”

  “Hall and Oats—”

  She sighed.

  “Sorry—it just happens.” She could faintly see his grin was sheepish, the lines by his eyes crinkling with laughter.

  “Could I just get this off my chest so I know we’re not going to have any ugly misunderstandings?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Okay, so I’ve had one serious relationship my entire life. And one sort-of relationship when my ghosts were off on sabbatical on some tropical island or something. I had a blissfully quiet period for about a month. They showed back up—he caught me in the bathroom talking to his shower curtain because my ghost was an old navy sea captain and the bathtub was his ship, labeled me batshit, and it was over. I don’t have those hurdles with you, and that’s fine by me. And on that note, I’m also going to be honest about something else, too. I find you okay looking. Seriously, like really okay looking . . . I don’t know what you looked like before, but the human form you chose deserves a standing O.” Delaney paused, shifting her eyes down to his chest, a mere silhouette in her darkened bedroom. “And I’m okay with this just being what it is.” Though the regions of her heart were clearly less okay with it, judging from the size of the compression she’d just had in it.

  Clyde tipped her chin up, catching her gaze with his. “Are you done?”

  “I think my pop-up timer just popped.” Delaney took a deep breath, the inhalation forcing their chests to once more press together. The rigid line of his body pressing against hers became maddening; the rigid line of his everything else wasn’t helping either.

  “I’d like to clear something up.”

  “Go on with yer bad self,” she encouraged.

  “This is what I look like. I didn’t steal my image from anywhere. When I look at myself in the mirror, it’s exactly what I looked like before I died.”

  Tight. “Consider that cleared up, then. Anything else you want to add?”

  “Is this where I confess my past relationships, too?”

  Delaney’s laugh was hoarse and gritty. “You suck at small talk.”

  “Guilty aga
in. But I just want to interject one thing.”

  “Interject.”

  “I find you really okay looking, too.” He pushed the strands of hair clinging to her cheek away with gentle fingers.

  Fire shot from her toes to her cheeks. So okay. Golden.

  It was on.

  Let the sexcapades begin.

  Hell to the yeah.

  But Clyde didn’t make the first move. She wasn’t sure if he was waiting for her. It’d been so long, she wasn’t clear on what meant all systems go.

  So she went for both of them.

  Clenching her eyes shut, Delaney threw her arms around his neck and smashed her lips to his with fierce intent, but Clyde set her away from him with a flash of his white teeth and a rumbling chuckle. “Breathe. I need to do that in order to do this properly.”

  Delaney reared her head back, mortified. Oh, the shame of inexperience. “Sorry. All of a sudden, I’m just nervous . . . it’s been a long time . . .”

  Clyde hauled her closer, spanning his big hands over her lower back. “Understood. You can relax,” he coaxed, nipping at her jaw with his teeth and lips.

  A wave of shivers clung to her skin as he worked his way toward her lips, grazing the shell of her ear, tracing a slow methodical pattern over it. Heat built in her chest, a simmer of blood sparking in her veins and nerve endings sizzling to life. Her heart began to thump so loud, she heard it in her ears, crashing erratically. The thickness in her throat created a lump of anxious energy.

  Yet Clyde soothed her with confident, strong hands, allowing her time to not just anticipate, but acclimate.

  His fingers slipped beneath the straps of her nightgown, dragging them over her shoulders. She let her arms slide free, the thin material falling to her waist, exposing her breasts. The cool air stung them pleasantly, making her nipples harden to tight peaks, rubbing against Clyde’s chest with delightful friction.

  Lips, molten hot and silken, trailed along the curve of her neck, teasing the sensitive hollow with flitting strokes. Delaney gasped when he finally took her mouth, gripping her shoulders, kneading her flesh. Clyde devoured her lips, skimming the crease between them, slipping his tongue inside the hot cavern, stroking the inside of her mouth.