by Jenny McKane
“How do you have so much money?” Sunny asked, looking around as they were working.
They were in his garage on a set of puzzle mats that had been laid out on the floor. In order to use the space, Gideon had been required to move one of his precious vehicles. There were three in the garage, and they all looked like they were worth more than the entire building that held the apartment that he had been renting.
“Investments,” Gideon said.
He was smiling, so she knew he was lying to her. But he also didn't elaborate, which meant he really didn't want to talk about it. Some sort of inheritance? A loan? Curiosity gnawed at Sunny, and it made it difficult for her to concentrate, which meant she was disarmed over and over again as Gideon capitalized on it.
“You have to focus,” he said. His frustration was evident on his face. He wasn't happy with the fact that he'd gotten the knife out of her hand four out of the last four attempts. “If you don't get this right, you're not taking the blade with you. Ever.”
“You're not my real mom,” Sunny said, having the gall to laugh at her own joke.
Gideon only stalked away and shook his head.
“Take it serious, Sunny,” he said. “Both of our lives depend on it.”
That sobered her up rather quickly. She rolled her neck out and continued the drill that Gideon had given her. It turned out, handling a knife is actually a lot more complicated when somebody is expecting it and knows a little defense. The waitress in the bathroom hadn't been expecting Sunny to be carrying an obsidian blade in her pants, so she hadn’t been ready to defend. Gideon reminded her that most demons were battle-hardened, if they were worth their weight whatsoever. Even the beautifully deadly succubi were demons well-versed in the art of combat.
Figures, Sunny thought miserably. But she knew better. She had known from her first assignment all those months ago that she was in over her head. At least for now. Sunny had promised herself that if she survived this Seumat debacle, she was going to invest in some real training with whatever payment she received from Michael. Not that she was expecting to get into the cage and fight with four-ounce gloves, but she did know how to throw and receive a punch, at least, and how to load a weapon without dropping everything to the floor from shaking hands.
By the end of the day, Sunny was nowhere near an expert in handling the obsidian blade, but at least she hadn’t dropped it in the past three hours, and Gideon had really given her hell trying to make her.
Begrudgingly, he had a knowledge that she had got much better at handling the weapon and keeping it in her possession. He even had a crazy little leather contraption in his room that strapped the weapon under her shirt against her torso, so that she’d simply need to reach up under the hem of her shirt and pull the thing free to use it. No more haphazardly pulling a blade free from her pants in an attempt to not die at the hands of a bounty-hunting succubus.
It seemed like a good deal to Sunny, but when she’d fumbled the attempt to harness the thing correctly, she had to admit defeat to Gideon. He came into her room and started at the sight of her in her tight black pants, knee-high boots, and black bra.
Sunny had been so damned frustrated with her inability to get the buckle to connect, and she had wanted so badly to get it right on her own the first time, that she hadn’t really considered what she was wearing. Or what she wasn’t wearing at the moment--which happened to be a shirt.
She followed Gideon’s eyes down to her chest and cursed.
“Sorry,” she said.
While she wasn’t quite the succubus, Sunny wasn’t exactly embarrassed about her lack of clothing either. It didn’t faze her like it seemed to be fazing Gideon, who was still staring at her chest.
“What?” she asked, pointedly looking down at her chest again.
He swallowed audibly and finally met her eyes. The fog took a moment to clear, and when it did, he tried to act like he wasn’t just ogling the crap out of her boobs.
“Nothing,” he muttered and yanked the leather strap around the back of her with a little too much gusto.
“Stay focused tonight,” he continued, and she noticed his eyes were practically on the floor in front of him, he was trying so hard not to stare at her.
More than anything, she wanted to giggle, but knew he’d probably kill her if she did. When he finally had the harness in place, he strode to the bed, grabbed the silky tank top with ruffles along the bodice, and threw it at her without another word before walking out of her room.
She bit her lip to keep from laughing.
*****
Once, last year, Sunny had gone to a party with a couple people from her Intro to Psych class. It’d been a girl named Shelly who had wanted to hook up with a boy named Adam, who’d made his interest in Sunny abundantly clear. It’d been a train wreck from the get-go, but Sunny was lonely and bored, so she’d agreed to go to some fraternity party at one of the liberal arts colleges on the northeast side.
They’d made a few new friends at the party, and before she knew it, they were hunting a new source of entertainment once the liquor and beer had run dry. One of the new acquaintances had casually (or not so casually) suggested a strip club as their next stop. It had been the nastiest hole in the wall bar, with a dilapidated stage and tarnished pole, that Sunny had ever seen, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why someone would frequent a place like that, let alone work there.
So, while she was new to the scene, it wasn’t like she’d never seen a pair of boobs swinging around a pole before. She’d be fine.
Leave it to the demon world to take strip clubs to the next level.
It was like the Disneyworld of pole dancing, with stages and sideshows everywhere throughout two separate levels, with enough balcony space to feel like one was at Mardi Gras. She’d heard, anyway. She’d never been to New Orleans herself.
It was a posh club. That much was certain. And unlike the supper club earlier this week, there were plenty of non-sex slave humans milling about. There were demons aplenty, to be sure, but there were no wards barring humans from attending on their own free will, and the two species seemed to be mingling with no problem.
They had a VIP table reserved for them, and as usual, Gideon paid off the doorman to help them bypass not only the line, but the invasive-looking security screening as well.
“How long have you been free from her?” She meant Seumat, and he knew it.
“A couple years,” he said, though the closer they got to the center of the club, the louder and more pulsating the music became. It was going to be impossible to have a conversation from that point on.
Gideon had keyed her in to the fact that tonight they weren’t operating alone. He’d hired a couple of enormous friends of his to act as bodyguards of sorts--they were to blend into the background and offer Sunny assistance if for some reason Gideon wasn’t able to.
“What sorts of reasons would those be?” Sunny had pretended to be flippant, with her hand on her hip and her eyebrow raised at him.
Gideon didn’t take the bait. He never did.
Sure enough, Enrique and Tyler gave her subtle nods of acknowledgement when Gideon pointed them out to her.
Sunny was still nervous as hell, but she felt a little better, for sure.
The evening started slowly. Gideon ordered plenty of drinks for their table, but everything Sunny sipped on was plain soda. Not a single sip of alcohol. Since when was Gideon a teetotaler?
The music was loud, and Sunny counted no less than fifteen human and demon dancers located through the club, entertaining customers and doing their damnedest to lure them to the “VIP” area. She knew the VIP area was where the big money lap dances went down and that it was what the dancers were aiming for the whole time. It was where the money was.
Eventually, after about an hour of trying to look interested in all the naked chests gyrating around the club, Sunny was getting antsy. Just as she was about to make her feelings known, a redhead with a smattering of freckles on
the bridge of her nose leaned down from behind Gideon and whispered into his ear.
The beautiful redhead laughed.
Gideon laughed.
Sunny scowled.
And when Gideon seemed to take her up on whatever offer she’d given him, Sunny saw red.
Chapter 22
It was a stupid thing to do.
As Gideon was a grown-man demon-thing, he’d spent however many years in the demon realm, working with the succubi. It meant that he probably had tastes beyond what Sunny realized and had made a few sordid friends along the way. But she still felt jealous.
It was as though there was a fire somewhere in his pants, and the redhead speaking to him was the only source of water within fifty miles. Hell, Gideon had practically vaulted himself over the back of his chair to follow the woman. He hadn’t even said anything to Sunny to let her know what to do in the meantime.
Sure, she didn't need a babysitter. But they were a team, and the way he just behaved seemed suspicious to her.
But Sunny was also wanted within the demon world with a price on her head and making herself more visible than necessary would not help her cause. Or Gideon’s. She knew she had to stay put and let Gideon finish whatever job he had started, the very thought of it making her sick to her stomach. Instead, she fished around the table top for the alcoholic drinks that he had given her. She found a rum and coke and started to sip on it.
It was watered down and tasted awful, but at least it tasted better than the jealousy she was forcing herself to swallow at the moment.
After a few songs, her curiosity had become boredom, and Sunny was certain that if she had seen one pair of breasts, she had seen them all by that point. She had marveled at how they came in all shapes and sizes, and the patrons of the club were drawn to them all like moths to a flame. They were powerless when it came to the addiction, and they willingly bled their money to keep the show going.
The longer that time dragged out, the more bitter Sunny became about the whole thing. Who was winning here? The dancers? They didn’t exactly look thrilled to be pawed at by some of the patrons. Were the customers the winners? Half of them were so drunk that they’d hardly remember where all their money went when they woke up the next morning. And that was assuming they didn’t have partners to whom they would have to explain the large amounts of cash missing from their wallets.
Still, Gideon didn’t return. She cast a glance at Enrique, but he didn’t seem to notice that Gideon hadn’t returned. Glancing over her shoulder at where Tyler was stationed, she saw the same thing. Neither looked concerned, and Sunny didn’t want to appear overly jealous. Even though she really was.
After forty-five minutes had passed, Sunny had had enough. She slammed down the second drink that she had pilfered from the table, cursing Gideon stingy ways for not getting top-shelf liquor. And she stood. She really had no concept of what direction she was headed in, having never ever been to any VIP section, let alone this particular one. Something in her gut told her that was exactly where the redhead had taken Gideon.
That fool better not dare complain about having no cash left in his wallet, she muttered to herself as she moved through the tables. All eyes were on the dancers that surrounded them. None of the customers seemed to notice her moving through the crowd in search of the VIP lounge.
She had paced the entire bottom floor and came up short. But then again, it might make sense. She knew that strip clubs had a tendency to be raided by police, and if there were any illegal activities, it would not behoove the club owners to have the VIP section on the bottom floor. She glanced up into the balcony. Of course.
Finding the hidden staircase proved to be another obstacle that Sunny had to navigate, but it didn’t take nearly as long. Her heels clicked as she went up the linoleum steps, and she felt her pulse beginning to quicken. Was it the music? Had it changed? Something made her notice it, and the last time she had felt that, she’d been attacked in the bathroom. She glanced behind her to the stairwell, but nobody was there. It was equally as abandoned ahead of her as she climbed to the second floor. Nothing.
Just before pushing the door open to the second floor, Sunny pulled her hair down from the ponytail she put it up in earlier. She tugged on her tank top, pushing her cleavage out just a tiny bit more. She even pulled the lip gloss from her back pocket and applied another layer. She might need to pass off as somebody’s date, or even a customer in her own right. The schoolmarm look definitely would not cut it.
The music was less obnoxious and more insulated on the second floor, and for a second, Sunny’s ears rang at the sensation. The two drinks were also definitely having an effect. She wasn’t fall-down drunk or anything at this point, but she was definitely moving a little sloppier, and her eyes were taking a few more seconds to focus on what she was doing.
Fuck. No wonder Gideon had been handing her sodas all night. Just once it might do her good to trust someone.
Nope, she giggled to herself. Not gonna happen. She was working with angels and demons, and both of them were bastards.
“Bastards,” she muttered out loud, as she found her way around the balcony, which was full of tables with people watching the show below. Each side of the balcony had a miniature stage with a small pole and their own dancer working it. Things on the second floor were definitely catering to a much different clientele than the first floor.
Sunny squinted, as the lights got dimmer as she moved toward the back wall. Too late she realized she hadn’t bothered to let either of the body guards know what she was doing. She cursed.
“Shitty bodyguards,” she slurred, thinking that if they were being paid a lot of money, they should have better powers of observation and deduction and should have seen Sunny leave the area and followed her to make sure she was okay.
Another thing Sunny realized as she moved was that she hadn’t heard from Plaxo in a few hours. She also noted that it was nothing short of a rager in there with the DJ blasting electronica for the dancers. She wasn’t sure Plaxo would enjoy a scene like this. He seemed sensitive when it came to his cute little cat-like ears.
Cat ears. It made her giggle and stub her toe on the carpeting.
“Pull yourself together,” she admonished herself. She had a job to do. She had a half-demon to yank off a stripper and beat the crap out of, come to think of it.
She saw a beaded curtain up ahead and strange red and purple lights streaming through.
“Bingo,” she whispered as she crept forward, suddenly a little worried about how she was actually going to pull this off. She still wasn’t sure what she was pulling off, actually. Yanking a grown man-demon away from a stripper by his ear?
Unlikely.
Still, her lack of objective didn’t stop Sunny from pushing away any doubts that were currently clouding her mind, as she walked through the tacky beaded curtain.
Back in what she assumed was the VIP section, the vibe was different from the main club. The music was more subdued, the lighting was completely different, and privacy was considerably greater. She’d watched a few dancers give “preliminary” dances out in the main club while she had waited, but it had all been a lure to get them back here. There were partitioned booths and chairs in the expansive VIP section, and many were occupied.
Sunny had been worried that she’d be spotted immediately, but most of the occupants in this section were incredibly busy and had their minds, hands, and money on different things altogether. She wandered through, looking for the tell-tale head of orange hair and was close to giving up when she finally spotted it in a booth on the right toward the end of the row.
Sunny crept slowly forward, making sure she avoided a second case of turf toe as she walked. She thought of what she would say or how she’d even get Gideon’s attention at this point. The thought of clearing her throat or some other equally clichéd move wasn’t her first choice, but she didn’t have much experience with this.
She slowed a bit and moved to her left, trying to get a b
etter view of what exactly was going on. It wasn’t that Sunny was suddenly trying to become a voyeur after an entire night of trying not to stare at all aspects of another woman’s anatomy, but she wanted to get a glimpse of Gideon. To see what sort of state of mind he was in, so she could measure her approach against it.
From what she could see in the dim light, his head was forward, his chin nearly on his chest.
Strange.
The redhead was straddling his lap with her curly, glossy hair cascading down her naked back, meaning her perfectly taut boobs were probably inches from Gideon’s face.
So, was Gideon at least looking at them as the woman ground her hips against him? The sour pit was back in her stomach, but Sunny refused to look away. Even if this was a mistake, she wasn’t going to back down.
She took a few steps closer and watched in a blend of horrific fascination and raw anger as Gideon’s hands clamped down on the woman’s hips as she ground against him, his knuckles white and his fingers flexed. Was he pulling her harder against him?
She swallowed and forced another step.
Sunny tried her best to catch a glimpse of Gideon’s face, but his hair was falling in his eyes and the angle of his stare hadn’t moved. Upon closer inspection, Gideon wasn’t even looking at the dancer on his lap--his face was looking toward the floor beside him. Now, Sunny had zero experience as a man, but she was somewhat certain that if a beautiful woman (and she had to begrudgingly admit the dancer stripper bitch was hot) was grinding her junk against your crotch, as a man, you’d be bound to pay attention and at least looked a little engaged.
A few steps closer.
She heard it then.
It was a moan, and from what she could tell, it was coming from Gideon. But it wasn’t the throes of passion or even a really raging boner--it was a mindless sort of zombie moan that sounded completely out of place.
What the actual hell?
Gideon wasn’t getting a lap dance--he was in some sort of trance, and from the sounds of it, fighting it.