by J. R. Ward
“Am I.” He nodded at the cash. “Don't think so. And I also don't think you're crazy enough to bolt out of town with no resources. You use your credit cards, there's a trail. You withdraw the funds from your bank account, there's a trail.”
“Damn you to hell.”
“I have a feeling I've done that to myself already, thank you very much.” He leaned down and shoved the piles in her direction. “Take the money, Marie-Terese. Take it and know that there are no strings attached. You never, ever want to see me again, that's okay. Don't go with nothing, though. You can't do that to me. I wouldn't be able to live with it.”
In the tense stretch of silence, he realized that this was the first time since he'd started making paper that he was giving any of it away. Or at least trying to give it away. Over the years, he'd never supported charities or causes of any kind—if money was going out of his pocket, he had to get something tangible in return, and always at an increase in value.
“You're going to take this,” he murmured. “Because this isn't knight-in-shining-armor time. I'm not trying to save you. I'm repaying a debt and giving you one of the tools you're going to need to build your better future.”
When she didn't reply, he tapped one of the bundles. “Think of it like this—I'm helping you buy your own white horse…Gretchen, for God's sake, you need to take the money.”
* * *
The bastard used her real name. Damn him.
God…it had been so long since anyone had called her Gretchen. To Robbie she was “Mom.” To everyone else, she was Marie-Terese. She'd always loved her real name, though, and hearing it now, she wanted it back.
Gretchen…Gretchen…
She stared at the money. Vin was right: She took that and she had serious breathing room. Except…how was this different from before? It was still a man bailing her out. It just didn't feel right.
She stepped up to him and put her hands on either side of his face.
“You are a lovely, lovely man, Vincent diPietro.” She pulled him down to her lips and he went willingly, his palms settling lightly on her shoulders as their mouths met. “And I want to thank you.” Happiness flared in the hard lines of his face. But only for a moment. “I'll always remember your gesture,” she murmured.
“You don't have to take the hard route,” he said, his brows drawing together. “You—”
“But see, that's what I learned. Things are hard for me now because I tried to take the easy way out first.” She smiled up at him, thinking that she was going to remember how he was looking at her now for the rest of her life. “That's the problem with white horses. You have to pay for them yourself or you'll always be using someone else's reins.”
He stared down at her for the longest time. “You're breaking my fucking heart in half right now, you really are.” His hands tightened on her arms and then released as he stepped back. “It's like…I can reach out and touch you, but you're already gone.”
“I'm sorry.”
He looked over at the cash. “You know…I've never realized this before. But money is really just paper when you come down to it.”
“I'm going to be okay.”
“Are you.” He shook his head. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”
Except he was right to be worried. Hell, she was, too. “I'll stay in touch.”
“I'd like that…Any idea where you're headed?”
“I don't know. Haven't given it a lot of thought.”
“Well…what if I told you I had an empty house I could lend you. It's out of state—” He held up his hand as she went to interject. “Just wait a minute. It's in Connecticut, in horse country there. It's a farmhouse, but it's close to the town, so you wouldn't be isolated. You could crash there for a couple of nights, get your feet under you, figure out where to go next. And it's better than a hotel, because you won't have to use a credit card. You could leave your house tonight after dark and get there in less than two hours.”
Marie-Terese frowned as she thought it over.
“Not a handout, not cash, no strings,” he said. “Just a place for you and your son to lay your heads. And when you're ready to leave it, just lock the place up and mail the keys back to me.”
Marie-Terese walked around to the windows in the dining room and looked out at the stunning view as she tried to think through what the next day and week and month would be like…
She got nothing back. Not a clue.
Which was a pretty clear signal she needed somewhere safe to figure it all out. “Okay,” she said quietly. “This I will take you up on.”
She heard Vin approach from behind, and as his arms went around her, she turned and embraced him as well.
They held each other for a long, long time.
It was hard to say when things changed for her…when she started to notice not just the comfort of his broad chest against her, but the warmth of his body and the strength in his muscles and the spice of his expensive cologne.
He was warm, though.
And so very strong.
And so…
Marie-Terese ran her hands up his back, feeling the softness of the silk shirt he had on, but concentrating on the hard man beneath the fabric. In a flash, she saw him in the mirror in his old bedroom, naked and rearing up before her, his muscles flexing along his spine.
Vin moved his hips back. “I think…I think we should probably—”
She arched into him and felt the erection he was trying to hide. “Be with me. Before I go…be with me?”
Vin's entire body shuddered. “God, yes.”
He took her hand and the two of them hit the stairs fast. On instinct, she headed left toward a black-and-gold room with a massive bed, but he tugged her in the opposite direction. “Not there.”
He took her into another bedroom, one that was smaller and done in warm reds and tans. As they landed on the satin-covered mattress, they melded hip to hip, mouths fusing, tongues meeting, hands going to zippers and buttons and belt buckles.
She all but ripped off his shirt, and when his chest was bared, her palms rubbed over his smooth skin and his tight muscles. Shifting back, she helped with the shucking of her jeans and tops and then focused on getting his pants off.
“Holy Christ,” he grunted as she pushed his slacks down to the middle of his thighs and gripped his erection through his briefs.
Fusing their mouths and sucking on his tongue, she stroked him through the thin, flexible cotton of his boxer briefs until the head of him burst out past the waistband. The instant she went skin-on-skin with him, he broke the contact of their lips and hissed in a breath through clenched teeth.
His Armanis went the way of his pants, getting shoved roughly down his legs, and she eased her way over his chest, kissing, nipping, allowing her hair to fall all around and tickle him as she went lower.
Just as she stood his arousal up and was ready to take him between her lips, his hands tightened on her arms. “Wait…”
A single, glistening tear formed at his tip and wept down his head and onto her hand. “Your sex doesn't want to wait, Vin,” she said huskily.
Another tear followed the first, as if her words were just as erotic as anything she could have done to him physically.
“I need you to know…something.”
Marie-Terese frowned. “What?”
“I…” He put both hands to his face and rubbed so hard it was like he wanted to sand his features down. “When I'm with you, it's not like how I've been. You know, with anyone else lately.”
“Is…that a good thing?”
“I definitely think so.” He dropped his arms. “But I've done some out-there shit, to be honest. With strangers.”
Marie-Terese felt her brows pop, as if they were doing so of their own volition. “Like what?”
He shook his head like he didn't want to remember. “Nothing with men. But that's really about the only line I've drawn. I just…I haven't been tested and I haven't always been careful. I feel like you deserve to know th
at before we do anything riskier than kissing and sex with a condom.”
“Weren't you monogamous with Devina?” Although even as she asked, she realized the question was pointless because the woman hadn't been monogamous with him.
“There were other women along with her sometimes. If you know what I mean.”
An unwelcome picture of Vin covered in female flesh barreled in. “Wow.”
She was about to make a crack about it taking a special man to get a prostitute to blush, but given how he'd reacted before to her bringing up her “profession,” she stopped herself.
“But it's not going to be like that with you.” His eyes drifted around her hair and her face and her bare breasts. “To me…you're everything I need, all that I want. I can't describe it. Just when you kiss me, that's all I'm after—What?”
She smiled as she stroked him slowly. “You make me feel precious.”
“Come up here and let me show you exactly how precious.”
He pulled gently on her arms, but she resisted, not wanting to be diverted. Funny, it felt odd and wonderfully unfamiliar to want to do what she had been on her way to doing.
“Vin, please let me give you this…” Moving her palm up and down, she watched his head fall back and his mouth open and his chest heave. “And I'll just make sure you don't finish. How about that.”
Before he could argue, she bent down and used the head of him to part her lips—in a rush, he groaned and his hips shot up, the movement pushing his erection deeper into her mouth. As she sucked him in, his fists balled up the duvet, his arm muscles straining, his pecs and his six-pack going rigid.
He was gorgeous like this, stretched out on the red satin, his big body sexed up to the point of no return…
In this hot, erotic moment, Marie-Terese had him exactly where she wanted him to be.
Chapter 31
“Wait…say what? Vin gave her exactly what?”
Jim glanced across his studio at Adrian and didn't like the expression on the guy's face. Fucker seemed a little pale. “A ring,” Jim said. “He gave her an engagement ring. Or at least, he said she left with it when he broke up with her.”
The angel's puss tightened even more. “What was it made of.”
“It was a diamond.”
“Not the stone. What was the setting made of.”
“I don't know. Platinum, I'd guess. Vin's the kind of guy who always goes top-drawer.” As Eddie shook his head and cursed, Jim said, “Right, now is the happy moment when you tell me why the hell you both look like someone pissed in your gas tanks.”
Adrian knocked off the rest of his beer and put the can down on the crappy kitchen table. “You know anything about black magic, my friend?”
Jim shook his head slowly, not at all surprised at the way the conversation was heading. “Why don't you enlighten me.”
Adrian fished around the shoe box full of chess pieces and one by one took out all the pawns, lining them up. “Black magic is real. It exists and it's more prevalent than you think—and I'm not talking about singers biting off the heads of bats onstage, or a bunch of sixteen-year-olds getting stoned and playing games with an Ouija board, or so-called paranormal investigators jacking off their adrenal glands in some creepy old house. I'm talking about the real shit that will bite you on the ass hard. I'm talking about the way demons get to owning souls…I'm talking about spells and curses that not only work in this world, but the hereafter.”
There was a heavy, dark pause of vast significance.
Which Jim broke by flashing his hands and belting out, “Booga-wooga!”
At least Eddie laughed. Adrian flipped Jim the bird and headed to the fridge for another beer. “Don't be an asshole,” the guy snapped as he cracked a freshie.
“Oh, right, because two in this group would be overkill.” Jim eased back on the bed so that he was leaning against the wall. “Look, I just felt the need to break the tension. Keep going.”
“This is not a joke.” When Jim nodded, Adrian took a deep one from the Bud can, parked it in his seat again, and seemed to be filing through the catalog of his mind. “There's a lot you're going to learn over time. So let's just call this lesson one. Demons collect shit from the people they're targeting. The more they get the better, and they keep it with them unless someone takes it back. Within this practice, there's like…think of it as a rating system. Gifts are worth more than shit they steal, and one of the strongest is a gift of true metal. Platinum will do it. Gold. Silver to a lesser extent. It's like a binding agent. And the more they get from a person, the stronger those bonds are.”
Jim frowned. “To what end, though? I mean, what does it get Devina other than an account with PODS?”
“When she kills him, she can keep him with her for eternity—those binds translate into a kind of ownership, in effect. Demons are like parasites. They latch on and it can take them years to overcome someone's soul—but that's what they do. They get into the person's head and affect their choices, and with each passing day, week, month, they slowly invade the life that is led, corrupting, fouling, destroying. The soul dims from the infection, and when it gets to the right point, the demon steps in and a mortal event occurs. Your boy Vin's right at that critical point now. She's setting the events in motion, with the first being his arrest. It's a domino thing, and it's going to get worse fast. I've seen it too often for words.”
“Jesus…Christ.”
“Or very much not Him, as is the case.”
As questions spun in Jim's head, he said, “But why Vin? Why was he chosen by her in the first place?”
“There has to be a place of entry. Think of it like getting tetanus from a rusty nail. There's an injury to the soul and the demon enters through the 'wound.'”
“What makes a wound?”
“Lots of shit. Every case is different.” Adrian moved the pawns around to form the shape of an “X.”
“But once the demon's in there, it has to be removed.”
“You said Devina can't be killed.”
“We can give her one fuck of an eviction notice, however.” At this Eddie let out a low growl of approval. “And that's what we're going to teach you how to do.” Well, wasn't that a lesson he was goddamn aching to learn.
Jim ran a hand through his hair and got up from the bed. “You know what? Vin said something about…Vin said when he was seventeen he went to, like, a fortune-teller/psychic kind of thing. He was getting these seizures where he was seeing the future and he was blind desperate for them to stop.”
“What did she tell him to do?”
“He didn't go into it, but the seizures stopped until recently. He mentioned, though, that after he followed orders, so to speak, his luck changed altogether.”
Adrian frowned. “We've got to find out what he did.”
Eddie spoke up, “And we need to get the ring back. She's trying to lock him in even harder before she kills him and that is one hell of a strong bind.”
“I know where she lives,” Jim said. “Or I saw her go into a warehouse downtown.”
Adrian got to his feet and so did Eddie. “Then let's do a little breaking and entering, shall we?” Ad said, scooping up the pawns and putting them back in the box. After he finished his beer, he cracked his knuckles. “Last fight I had with the bitch ended way too soon.”
Eddie rolled his eyes and glanced at Jim. “It was back in the Middle Ages and he still hasn't gotten over it.”
“Why so long ago?”
“We got put on ice,” Eddie said. “We were a little more fallen than the bosses were comfortable with.”
Adrian grinned like a motherfucker. “As I mentioned, I like the ladies.”
“Usually in pairs.” Eddie put Dog down and stroked his ears. “We'll be back, Dog.” Dog didn't seem happy with the parting and began circling all of the feet in the room, including the couch's—which seemed to suggest he thought the piece of furniture was on backup. Not exactly what Jim had in mind.
Nope, he was goin
g in with something a little more powerful.
Going over to the empty bookshelves in the far corner, he pulled out a black duffel bag and unzipped the thing, revealing a stainless-steel case that was about four feet by three feet. Running his forefinger over its keypad, he released the lock and opened the top. Inside, the three guns that were packed in egg padding caught no light whatsoever on their matte gray finishes and he left the assault rifle where it was. Of the pair of SIGs, the grips of which had been custom-designed for him, he took the one that fit his right palm.
Adrian shook his head, as if the auto-loader was nothing more than a squirt gun. “Just what do you think you're going to do with that piece of metal there, Dirty Harry?”
“It's my safety blanket, how 'bout that.”
Jim put the gun through a quick check, locked up the briefcase, and stashed the duffel. The ammo was behind the cans in the cabinets over the sink, and he took enough to fill the clip. “You can't shoot her with that,” Eddie said softly.
“No offense—but until I see it, I'm not going to believe it.”
“And that is why you will fail.”
Adrian cursed and hit the door. “Great, you've got him channeling Yoda again. Can we get moving before he levitates my fucking bike?”
As Jim locked things up and they all went down the stairs, Dog took up res on the back of the couch, and watched them out the window. He pawed at the glass a little, like he was protesting the fact that he'd been left out of the action.
“Let's take my truck,” Jim said as he hit the gravel. “Less noise.”
“And it has a radio, right?” With tragic concentration, Adrian started warming up his voice, sounding like a moose being backstroked by a cheese grater.
Jim shook his head at Eddie as doors were opened. “How do you stand the racket?”
“Selective deafness.”
“Teach me, master.”
The trip into town lasted about four hundred years—largely due to the fact that Adrian found the classic rock station: Van Halen's “Panama” had never sounded so bad, but that was nothing compared to what happened to Meat Loaf's “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That).”