One Hell of a Guy
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Author’s Note
Other Books by Tessa Blake
About the Author
One Hell of a Guy
Infernal Love, Book 1
Tessa Blake
© 2018 Tessa Blake
Happy Ever After, January 2018
This ebook is licensed for your personal use and may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase a copy for that person. If you did not purchase this book, or it was not purchased for your use, then you have an unauthorized copy. Please go to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work and copyright.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system currently in use or yet to be devised.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, institutions, TV shows, or infernal creatures is entirely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
For Myra Scott,
who came up with most of the best ideas for this story.
Any half-baked ideas are probably mine.
And for Michael Omer,
Who always knows just what to say.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Author’s Note
Other Books by Tessa Blake
About the Author
1
It was the voice that got Lily’s attention.
Deep and compelling, it was unmistakably female but still intoxicating, even to straight-as-an-arrow Lily. She’d never had occasion to use the word “throaty” in conversation—and, God willing, she never would—but if anyone had asked her to describe the voice, she would have been forced to use it then.
She had to have a look at the kind of woman who sounded like that, which was why she was currently peeking around a display of insanely expensive hand cream, trying not to make a sound and—more importantly—not to knock any of the pricey jars onto the hard, Mexican ceramic-tiled floor.
30 Luxe was the sort of high-end boutique store where the rich and beautiful shopped. Lily, barely getting by and decidedly average-looking, wouldn’t even have been there if she’d been buying something for herself; she didn’t make the kind of money required to be a 30 Luxe patron. But she wanted to get a bridal shower gift for her coworker Brit that would impress everyone at the office—without driving her to bankruptcy—and Miri had insisted this was the perfect place, and there was a large clearance section.
Large clearance section had turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, which didn’t surprise Lily. If hyperbole were an Olympic event, Miri would gold-medal every year. Lily, on the other hand, couldn’t even tell someone their ugly baby was cute without breaking out in a cold sweat.
But, exaggeration or not, there were at least a few things in her price range. She’d been trying to decide between a sweet-but-slutty peignoir set and a pair of exquisite hand-blown champagne flutes when she first heard the woman speak.
“I’ll just take them all. I hate making decisions, don’t you?”
So there they were: Lily craning her neck to see around the hand cream, Miri pressed up close behind her, watching the woman take off a cranberry-colored stiletto and hand it to the attentive saleswoman.
“Wow,” Miri breathed. “Get a load, huh?”
Wow, indeed. The woman was absolutely stunning—slender but well-endowed, clad in a skin-tight black leather miniskirt and paper-thin white silk blouse that clung to and showcased every robust curve. Her hair was the kind of white-blond that didn’t come in a bottle, and she wore it loose and waist-length; it waved and curved against her face, shoulders, and arms. Even seated, it was obvious she was easily six feet tall. Her eyes were almost on the same level as those of the petite Asian saleswoman, who was her absolute opposite: short and reed-slender, with a silky black bob.
The blonde was older than Lily—she could have been anywhere from forty to a very well-maintained fifty or so—and carried herself with the kind of poise and confidence Lily didn’t even bother to covet, it was so far beyond her.
“Some girls have all the luck,” Miri whispered.
Lily nodded slightly. “They sure do,” she whispered back, eyeing the woman as she pulled on a pair of knee-high leather boots; they were in great shape but not new, so probably what she had worn into the store. She stood, towering over the Asian girl. Shoes and empty shoeboxes littered the floor at her feet. Lily did a quick count: six pairs.
The woman gestured to the pile. “Have them sent to my apartment.”
Lily wished she could have them sent to her apartment instead, particularly those sexy cranberry stilettos. Some days life seemed so unfair. She wasn’t poor, exactly, and neither was Miri. They lived in one of the most expensive places in the world, though, and neither of them had ever walked out of a store—not even a discount store, let alone a place like this—with a half-dozen new pairs of shoes.
And Lily knew she sure as hell didn’t look like that in a miniskirt.
“Where do I sign up?” Miri whispered.
Lily turned to look at Miri over her shoulder; Miri was grinning, but she had an odd gleam in her eye as well. Literally a gleam: a weird, faint light swirled into her eyes and then out again, almost too fast for Lily to see.
But that was ridiculous. Trick of the incredibly posh boutique lighting, no doubt.
“To be her, or to be with her?” Lily asked, snickering. “You look like you might go jump her bones any second.”
Miri shook her head a little as if to clear it, then squinted at the woman. “I don’t swing that way.”
“Apparently the salesgirl does,” Lily said, pointing with her chin at the scene in front of them.
The blonde had a hand on the salesgirl’s shoulder, making a motion that wasn’t quite a massage but
wasn’t a casual touch either. Her voice had dropped so Lily could no longer make out her words. The salesgirl was staring up at the woman adoringly, nodding at whatever she was now saying. Then the blonde squeezed the salesgirl’s shoulder a final time and strolled out the door.
The salesgirl stood quietly for a moment, then shook her head much like Miri had a few moments before. After a few seconds, she crouched down to begin slowly boxing up the shoes—so slowly, in fact, that Lily wondered if there was something wrong with her.
Lily tilted her head and elbowed Miri. “Does she look high to you?”
Miri considered, shrugged. “A little floaty, maybe. Weird question.”
“Well, it’s the oddest thing, but … I don’t think that woman paid.”
Miri shrugged again. “I doubt she drugged the help. Probably has an account or something. Once you get to a certain point, you have so much money you don’t even have to carry any money.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t give her a credit card or anything.”
Thinking about credit cards gave Lily a little pang of guilt. She was pretty sure her own credit cards would have wept openly if she’d tried to use them to purchase anything. In fact, she was so close to maxed out on the worst of them that she wasn’t sure the automatic payment that would soon be coming out of her also-weepy bank account would be enough to keep her from going over the limit. She needed to learn some self-control. Or win the lottery.
She made a mental note to stop and pick up a lottery ticket on the way home.
“If you get rich enough,” Miri said, “you don’t even bring your card.”
“Where do I sign up for that?” Lily asked. “Because I’d very much like to be rich as well as hot.”
“Same.”
“What do you suppose it takes to get to that point?”
“Deal with the devil?” Miri suggested.
“Hard work and sacrifice certainly don’t seem to be doing it.” Lily frowned and put the peignoir set back on the rack. She really didn’t know Brit well enough to be buying her lingerie, and the champagne flutes were unbelievably beautiful—not to mention a little cheaper. “I bust my ass at work and I haven’t had a slice of pizza in weeks, but I’m still just regular old under-employed, overweight me.”
“Overweight?” Miri scoffed. “By what, two pounds?”
“More like twenty,” Lily said. “And now I want pizza. Great.”
“What do you say we pay for this crap—you know, with our regular old plebeian debit cards—and get out of here? Finnegan’s has pizza rolls for Tuesday happy hour. I’ll smack your hands away if you have more than three.”
That was Miri in a nutshell. She’d never have suggested forgoing pizza rolls—or any good thing—but she was so sensible about it. Moderation in all things was her motto, and Lily knew she meant it, too. For Miri, it was all about willpower.
Of course, Lily thought, if I had the willpower to stop at three pizza rolls, I wouldn’t need to worry about stopping at three pizza rolls.
Still … pizza rolls.
“It’s a deal,” she said.
After Finnegan’s—where Lily had a fourth pizza roll, and Miri did indeed smack her hand for it—Miri suggested Club Domino. They had a single drink there, but it was full of older guys on the prowl. Like, really old. The third hand Lily had to remove from her ass belonged to a leathery old guy with enough mileage on him to be her grandfather.
They hit the sidewalk ready for something new, something fun—and found it in the form of a flyer tacked to a telephone pole, spotlit by a nearby streetlamp. It was a garish red, with glossy black lettering slashed across the front, spelling out one word:
ABADDON.
The fine print informed them it was a brand-new club, only four blocks north.
“Hey,” Lily said. “I’m doing a photoshoot there tomorrow.”
Her job with NYC Monthly wasn’t glamorous—the magazine positioned itself as hip and happening, but it was too new to have any real cachet yet—but she did get some cool assignments. For the last six months, she’d been shooting a series on hot new clubs. If she was remembering right, Abaddon had been open for about six weeks; this would be an excellent chance to scope it out before the formal shoot.
“That’s a weird thing to name a club,” Miri said. “Isn’t that the hot chick from Supernatural?”
“I think it’s from the Bible.” Lily’s memory of what it might mean was pretty hazy, though—she’d had three drinks so far, and Sunday school had been an awfully long time ago.
“Everything in Supernatural is from the Bible, Lily. That’s, like, its whole schtick.”
Lily snorted. “I just mean that it means something else. I think it might literally mean Hell. I don’t know; my Mom was crazy for church and stuff, but I haven’t been in more than a decade.”
“Wanna check it out? Maybe the guys there will have more hair on their heads than they have in their noses.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Lily said. “Or, you know, whoever can send us some eye candy.”
They linked arms and, giggling, headed north to find Hell.
2
The music pumped out of a couple dozen six-foot-high speakers, loud and drum-heavy; the bass was loud enough to shake the walls. The lights pulsed—all the colors of the rainbow plus blinding white, over and over—throwing the room into complete darkness for just a beat every thirty seconds or so. On the dance floor, a throng of people writhed and bumped, alone or together in twos and threes. The air smelled of sweat and booze, with an undertone of something Gabriel knew only he could smell: brimstone.
Leaning back against the bar, keeping to himself as he watched the dancers, Gabriel pretended not to see the goth princess scoping him out from across the room. She’d been standing on the edge of the dance floor for half an hour, waist-length black hair catching the flashing lights, looking at him like she was thirsty and he was a mirage. He’d been making bets with himself about whether she would come over.
He thought she was just about ready.
Sighing, he turned around and circled his finger over his empty glass. Rob pulled the bottle of Glenlivet down from the top shelf and poured an inch, then another when Gabriel merely raised an eyebrow.
“Everything okay?”
Gabriel shrugged and drained the glass with two swallows. “Okay as it ever is,” he said, and turned back to the dance floor.
Dancing, if one thought about it, was an awful lot like having sex—at least if you were doing it right. The palpable energy coming from the direction of the dance floor wasn’t as potent as what he might get from having a partner—dance or otherwise—but it fed a baseline need in him. It made it easy to resist the occasional overture from any woman who happened to get past the not-interested vibe he was very intentionally putting out.
And the vibe was sincere. He wasn’t interested in trolling for women—and if he were, he wouldn’t do it here, in his own place. Even a year ago, when he hadn’t known what he was, he’d known better than that.
And now? Unthinkable. It would call attention to his club, which would call attention to him.
His long-lost—and now, regrettably, found—mother would have relished whatever attention she could get; that was her way. But he wasn’t like Vivienne, and had no desire to be.
She’d swept into his life like a hurricane eighteen months before, and explained who and what he was. After that, he’d had as little to do with the opposite sex as he could manage … which was a lot harder than he’d expected. He was virtually irresistible to them, but it had nothing to do with him, with the Gabriel he’d been for almost all his life.
Since then, he took a woman on occasion, when nothing else would slake the need. But there was little joy in it beyond the momentary release. The thrill, as the saying went, was gone.
He missed it—that thrill—very much.
Speaking of women, the goth princess had finally worked up the courage to approach. She strolled across the floor
toward him, trying to look casual. Even when he was projecting Leave me alone as hard as he could … they couldn’t.
“Hi,” she said. “How come you’re not dancing?”
He could tell she was pitching her voice low on purpose—trying to sound sexy, he supposed. And she was quite lovely, by any objective standard.
But so what?
He shrugged. “Don’t feel like it.”
She stepped closer, into his personal space. She wasn’t touching him yet, but if he didn’t stop her she would. “What do you feel like?”
He layered frost over his voice. “Nothing you’re selling,” he said.
She smiled slowly and lifted her eyes to his. There was real desire there; that pissed him off most of all.
“Oh,” she said, reaching out to trail a finger down the front of his shirt, “I’m not selling. Call it a gift.”
He caught her hand. “No, thanks.”
Her brow wrinkled. He thought she probably wasn’t used to being told no, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings over something she couldn’t possibly help. But in that moment, he just couldn’t stomach it anymore.
A handful of insults came to mind, cutting things he could say that would send her back out to the dance floor—maybe even out of the club—hurt or outraged.
But he couldn’t do it. She couldn’t help being drawn to him like a moth any more than he could help being the flame. It just was.
Weary of it, just suddenly so damn tired of it all, he turned his back on her and signaled Rob for another drink.