by J. R. Ward
“There isn’t a lot of solid ground in this game,” Jim said after a while. “I’m fighting on sand, against an opponent who’s got her stilettos on concrete. Shit’s already stacked against us, and if you’re filtering, that’s one more thing I gotta frickin’ worry about.”
Adrian looked over, all dead fucking serious. “I wasn’t trying to fuck you. Honest.”
Jim cursed out an exhale. “I believe you.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“Good.”
In the aftermath, although they didn’t hug it up or some shit, he figured they could give themselves gold stars: This argument had gone so much better than that first one at the side of the road. Back then, Eddie had had to pry them apart. Guess they were making progress.
“One last question.”
Adrian glanced over. “G’head.”
“What did it say?”
As silence stretched out, Jim figured it wasn’t a good sign. Yup…if someone like Ad was actually choosing his words, it was a really bad goddamn sign.
“Do you want to win this?” the other angel demanded. “And I’m not talking about just this round. I’m talking about the whole goddamn war.”
Jim narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. I do.”
Jesus, he realized, that actually was the truth.
“Then don’t ask me to translate. Nothing good’s going to come out of it.”
There was a tense silence while Jim measured his partner: man, Adrian was meeting him right in the eye, without any kind of prevarication, everything in that big body still as if he were praying for the right answer to come back at him.
Shit, the burn to know to the particulars was like the worst kind of indigestion…but it was hard to argue with the other angel’s dead-and-serious.
“Okay,” Jim said roughly. “Fair enough.”
* * *
Up in Matthias’s room on the sixth floor, Mels lay lax on the bed, her arms loose, her legs twitching involuntarily, her mind blown and then some.
She felt like she’d had the best workout she’d ever gotten at the gym, followed it by the most incredible yoga session, and topped things off with a visit to a spa that specialized in deep-tissue massage and reflex-frigging-ology.
Oh, and also sat down at a DIY sundae bar that had hot fudge made out of Lindt truffles.
Bliss. Pure bliss. The best sex she’d ever had, even though they hadn’t actually had sex…
Next to her, Matthias was curled on his side, his head on the only pillow left on the bed, one arm tucked in, a little self-satisfied smile on his harsh face. Looking over at him, unexpected tears pricked the corners of her eyes. He’d been so generous, not asking for anything in return, seemingly satiated just by the act of making her feel good.
“What’s wrong,” he said quietly as he brushed away a tear with his forefinger. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, God no…I just…” It was hard to explain without running the risk of his feeling inadequate—and that was the last thing she wanted, after all he had done for her. “Just emotional, I guess.”
“Bullshit. You know what it is.” His voice was level, his hand steady as he stroked back her hair. “And you can tell me.”
“I don’t want to ruin this.” She sniffed a little. “It was so perfect.”
“So what are these for?” Matthias turned that forefinger around so she could see the glistening on the tip. “Talk to me, Mels.”
“I really wish I could give you the same…you know, I want to do those things to you.”
His expression didn’t change, but she knew she’d hit him where it hurt: She could tell by the way his breath stopped, and then abruptly resumed—like he’d reminded himself to draw air.
“I’d like that, too,” he said roughly. “But even if my plumbing worked, what I’ve got to offer you isn’t worth seeing, much less touching.”
“I told you, you’re—”
“And besides, what we did is more than enough for me.” Now he smiled, though his eyes remained grave. “I’ll always remember it—and you.”
A cold wave of dread rippled through her, replacing the warmth.
“Do you have to go?” she asked after a moment.
“Yeah, I do.”
Mels reached over and pulled the blankets around her body. “When?”
“Soon.”
“Do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Tell me before you do. Don’t let me find out because I can’t get ahold of you. Promise me that.”
“If I can, I will—”
“Not good enough. Swear to me that you’ll tell me—because I can’t…I don’t want to live with the uncertainty. That’ll be hell for me.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Okay. I’ll let you know. But I need something in return.”
“What?”
“Stay with me tonight. I want to wake up with you.”
Her body eased, her heart unclenching. “Me, too.”
When he held his arms out, she nestled in against him, putting her head against his chest, hearing the beat of his heart as his hands circled her back, and rubbed slow and even. Talking about sex and departures made her anxious; the contact, however, calmed her down to the point where she began to drift off.
Unfortunately, she had a feeling he wasn’t doing the same, and wished there was some way to have him relax. But it appeared this was yet another thing about them that was a one-way street.
“Matthias?”
“Yeah?”
I love you, she finished in her head. I love you even though it doesn’t make sense.
“After you go, can you ever come back?”
“I don’t want to lie to you,” he said hoarsely.
“Then I guess you’d better not answer that.”
Matthias turned his face into her hair and kissed her. “I won’t leave you hanging.”
Oh, but he would. After this was all over, she had a feeling she was going to be looking for him in any crowd, on every sidewalk, around each corner.
For the rest of her life.
Loss just plain sucked, she thought. And one would assume that as you got older, along with the other skills that you developed whether you wanted to or not, you’d get better at it.
Instead, it just seemed to kick up all the full list of things that you’d been forced by fate to leave behind: The fact that he was going to peel out of her life like a car pulling away from a curb made her feel as though her father had died yesterday.
Mels shifted her arms so she could hug him as well. And of course, the instant her hands made contact with his body, he stiffened—but screw that. He was going to have to let her touch him in some way.
Battered though he was…scarred though his skin remained…he was beautiful to her.
“You’ve ruined me for other men, you know,” she said.
He laughed harshly. “Not unless you like the Frankenstein types—”
Mels jacked her head up. “Stop it. Just—stop it. You can’t keep me from giving a crap about you, and you’re just going to have to suck it up if I want to put my hands on you. We clear?”
In the dim light that came from the bathroom, he started to smile, but then lost the expression, a strange emotion filtering through his features.
In a low voice, he said, “You’re an angel, you know that?”
Mels rolled her eyes and put her head back on his pec. “Hardly. You haven’t heard me curse yet?”
“Who says angels can’t have potty mouths.”
“No way.”
“Oh, and when have you met one lately?”
For some stupid reason, an image of Jim Heron jumping forward and putting his own body in the way of that ceiling panel shot into her head.
Unless he’d shown up at that very moment, she might have been killed.
“Actually, maybe you have a point,” she said on a shiver. “I could see how they’re out there…I really could.”
Chapter Thirty-one
; “Pablo, are you kidding me?” The woman jacked forward in the chair. “This is…blond.”
The inflection in that high-pitched voice made it sound as if someone had taken a dump on the crown her head.
As opposed to turning her tacky-ass bright red hair into a yellow that perfectly complemented her chemically peeled complexion.
Frankly, Devina was a little offended. The shit was hot.
Staring out of Pablo’s eyes, the demon put the man’s hands on his hips and decided that being in a service industry didn’t suit her. What a pain. In. The. Ass. Bitch had been thirty minutes late for the appointment, had wanted a soda while she processed—like this place was a fucking restaurant?—and then had whined about the temperature of the rinse at the sink.
And now this attitude.
“I tink you vill like eet when eet’s blown dry.”
The voice Devina spoke with was smooth and slightly accented with a no-way-to-place South American-ish variant. Then again, Pablo was a self-invention, apparently, a human who, much like she did, chose to clothe himself in ways that made him better than he really looked, sounded, and came from.
He was actually from Jersey.
She’d Googled him at his desk when things had been cooking on that head, because there had been nothing else to do—and God knew talking to the client was enough to make her want to have Pablo shoot himself in the head.
Maybe she should have let a couple of the assistants stay? Nah, then she’d have had to deal with them as well.
“Let mee vork viz eet,” she said though Pablo’s mouth as she ran the man’s hands through the long, wet tangles. “I vork wiz eet. You see.”
The client went on a tirade, reminding Devina of some of those nutjobs from the Bridezillas marathon she’d caught on WE TV the other night—and also of why she could never be a lesbian. Jim Heron’s flavor of swinging-dick, macho-bullshit double cross was easier to put up with than this inexorable, soul-sucking, passive-aggressive melodrama:
“…blahblahblah! Blah-blah! Blah blah blahblahblahblah blah blah…”
The blabbering kept up for a while, but like all deluges, eventually the shit stopped. “Fine,” the bitch said. “But I’d better like it.”
Devina smiled with the stylist’s mouth and picked up a brush and hair dryer. Using the kind of long, even strokes she did her own hair with, she set about straightening the semi-curly lengths. As she worked, she thought back to a month ago, when she had come in for her own appointment on time—Pablo was the best in town, after all—only to find this nasty-ass woman had barged in, all on fire about the cut she had been given. Pablo had deferred to the loud noise because there had been no other choice, plopping her into the chair, hitting the hair with a spray bottle of water, getting out the scissors.
Devina had been delayed nearly an hour, and all for less than a sixteenth of an inch taken off the ends.
Like the bitch did her hair in the morning with the help of a tape measure?
Sometimes karma really did come back and bite you on the ass.
It took forever to dry the combination of extensions and real stuff, but Devina wasn’t worried about an intrusion: she’d locked the front door of the salon, and there was no way to see inside this far back. Also, the quiet location was another thing working in her favor. Pablo’s establishment was in the ritzy part of town, on a street jam-packed with stores that sold French bedding, English stationery, and Italian shoes.
This was the land of the country-club wifey, and that meant everything else but this salon closed at six o’clock.
Generally speaking, fembots had to earn their keep when their husbands came home.
And on that note, Devina had a feeling that the chick in the chair was someone’s second wife. Between the fake boobs, the Botox, and the too-thin thing, she was a brittle, jumpy version of a woman—which was what came when you liked things you couldn’t afford, and had sold yourself to an old goat to get them.
Then again, maybe she was banging her “Pilates teacher” on the side.
When Devina finally had Pablo’s hands put the dryer and the brush down, the bitch was leaning forward in the chair, fluffing everything out and turning this way and that.
She liked it.
“Well, I’m not paying you. This wasn’t what I asked for, and I hate it.” Except she was making these pursey puckers with her injected lips, like she was posing for a camera. “I am not paying.”
Actually, this was good. Less of a chance that she’d be tied to Pablo. Devina wasn’t about to lose her stylist, and he was just a medium in all this, a pass-through point that wouldn’t remember a thing.
The client picked up her ridiculous Takashi Murakami LV bag—like someone hadn’t told her you needed to be fifteen to carry that shit off? “I don’t know how much longer I can keep coming here.”
Hah. Devina knew the answer to that one.
Not. Long.
Pablo’s mouth started flapping, that falsely accented voice doing all kinds of ego petting as the target marched into the changing room and shut the door.
With a little time on her hands, Devina sent Pablo’s legs over to the reception desk. She wanted to check and see when her next appointment was, but everything was computerized, and although she could Google stuff, she was no hacker.
It was at the end of this week, wasn’t it?
When the woman came out—clothed in a “fashion-forward” ensemble that appeared to have been put together by a color-blind cubist who hated her—she seemed to already be getting into the habit of swinging the blond around.
This woman deserved to die on too many levels to count.
“Pablo” escorted his client to the door, and that meant it was time for Devina to pare off from her host. As she separated herself from the Jersey-boy-gone-Rio, she left him with no memory of having seen his last client. As far as he knew, the woman who was now a blonde hadn’t showed up—and the police, when they found the body, wouldn’t be able to trace the hair color to him.
Devina hadn’t used the stuff at the color bar. Too complicated.
More L’Oréal.
And during processing, she’d slipped out the back and put the box and the used tube and bottle in some random car that was parked two shops down.
No one was going to associate this with Pablo—and if they did, he was going to pass any lie detector with flying colors, because as far as he was concerned, he’d never seen the bitch.
Outside, the air was crisp, and Devina assumed an anonymous male image as she fell in lockstep behind the newly blonded. The woman immediately got her cell phone out, like she was all excited to share her tale of trauma at the hair salon.
Sorry, sweetie, that was a no-go.
With a quick blink of energy, Devina knocked out the iWhatever—which was yet another public service. No doubt she had just saved somebody who didn’t care a fifteener of indignant Louboutin-stamping about The Tragedy at Pablo’s.
As the woman stopped and tried fixing the problem by smacking the cell phone against her palm, Devina walked by, hands in the pockets of her jeans, head down, affect calm.
She continued along the row of darkened shops, checking the environs. No one else was on the sidewalks; nobody was passing by on the road; nothing was doing.
She knew when her prey resumed walking thanks to the clip-clip of those stilettos over the concrete. And there was the cursing, of course.
When the blinkers flared on a lone black-on-black Range Rover half a block down, Devina smiled. There was a cross street that cut through the lineup of shops about ten feet away, and that was just what she needed.
Willing four streetlamps to suddenly extinguish themselves, she slowed her pace and let those loud shoes catch up.
It was a case of perfect execution.
Literally.
Devina sprang herself around at just the right moment and grabbed a handful of that blond hair, securing a grip strong enough to rip the female off her feet. Then, in a quick succession of moves,
the demon dominated the situation, taking control of arms and legs that flailed around, shifting a palm so that the mouth was covered, holding hard and fast.
Superior strength was leveraged to drag the victim into the cut-through, into further darkness as more streetlights were willed off.
There wasn’t any time to waste. Yes, this part of Caldwell was a snooze-fest at night, but a car could come by at any moment, and it would be nice to enjoy the killing in peace.
As dense shadows swallowed them both, Devina wasn’t worried about the Maker getting pissy about this kind of thing. She’d been on the earth since time had begun, her nature expressed through exactly this sort of shit.
And no one could argue that this pain in the ass was part of Jim Heron’s great quest to win the game. This was a sideline issue.
Now…if this female happened to be killed in a manner similar to the way another girl had been murdered? If there was a pattern carved into some skin that was of a runic nature exactly like said other dead body? If there were some commonalities in ethnic group and hair color?
And if that crap happened to bother Jim Heron, causing distraction, disquiet, and dysfunction?
Well, as her therapist always said, you could only control yourself and your actions.
If Jim couldn’t handle the shit, it wasn’t Devina’s fault…or problem.
Chapter Thirty-two
Mels woke up to the feel of hands traveling across her belly and dipping in between her legs. Half-asleep, she eased onto her back and turned into the warmth, finding Matthias’s mouth in the darkness. Instantly, they returned to where they had been most of the night, pressed in tight, the heat pooling in her sex, the tension twisting in her gut.
As her lover went downward, pushing the covers out of the way, he found her breast and began to suckle on her as his talented fingers eased in right where she wanted them.
The idea that she was going to lose him soon made everything feel first-time intense, as if her body understood exactly what her mind was stuck on: Enjoy this now, because the memories are going to have to last a very, very long time.