Lassiter, page 3
Which meant the thing was capable of great goodness… and unfathomable evil.
There was another ruffle.
“Oh, thank you,” she murmured. “I appreciate your concern. But I shall endure.”
The dismissive sound that came back at her could have meant the Book was doubting her endurance or mayhap her course, but either way, there was no unkindness. With her, it had only ever been full of grace. Then again, unlike so many others, she had never had any interest in harnessing its power—and further, she believed it felt as though a debt was owed because she had rescued it from an untenable, abusive situation: Safety had been requested, and safety had been provided, without questions or expectation of recourse.
Knowing how the poor thing had been used, she could understand why removal from the demon Devina’s sphere of influence had been sought—
Fast flipping now, as if the pages were a spinning wheel that went round and round, no beginning, no end.
“Please don’t,” she whispered in defeat.
Yet it would not listen to her.
Closing her eyes, tension taloned up her spine and dug into the nape of her neck, and on reflex, she tugged at the sweater that clothed her and switched the arrangement of her legs in the jeans she wore. Neither eased the tension.
And when things stilled, she did not want to look because she knew what she would see.
She opened her lids anyway.
And there he was. As if the Book had become a window, she saw through the interior of its contours a male who was never far from her thoughts: Lassiter, the fallen angel, was iridescent-eyed and blond-and-black-haired, his face constructed of powerful angles and balanced by an intelligence that, having watched him in a crowd once, she believed he kept well hidden under a drape of humor.
“Oh, Lassiter…” Then she cleared her throat. “Whyever do you keep showing him unto me?”
The pages fluttered, as if it were attempting to point at something.
“Yes, I know he’s the one. Therein lies my sadness.”
More fluttering and then a couple of slaps.
“I wish I spoke folio, I truly do.” There was a heave of pages, a sigh of paper—as if she were being deliberately obtuse. “And if your commiseration with my mourning is the way you’re trying to repay me—”
Much flipping the now, the sound like it was applauding.
“It is? Well, that is very sweet.” She brushed its pages with a soft touch. “And I understand that you are grateful for this respite here, but I am happy to be of service to you. I know what it is like to be used for one’s gifts and in ways that harm. My own commiseration with your situation is the purpose for the security I offer.”
A wedge of pages puckered up and blew a kiss.
Rahvyn smiled. “Yes, we are kin, are we not.”
Looking out over the landscape, she toyed with changing it once again, shifting the colors and the arrangement of flora, mayhap turning the lake into a waterfall, perhaps creating an unnecessary, but attractive, shelter.
“Lassiter bid me farewell, however,” she heard herself say. “Even if I went to seek him out, he wouldnae hear me in that fashion. He departed from me—and he is probably correct. What would I have to offer him?”
Flipping again, as if in disagreement.
And then the wheel started up once more, an infinite number of folios flashing by—until there was an abrupt stop and the Book bumped itself closer to her. Words she could not translate choked both of the pages, the text in orderly lines—
All at once, the letters began to quiver within their alignment, the vibration intensifying until they broke free and jumbled across the page, scattering like marbles and running into each other’s paths. Waves began to form, rushing forth and receding, only to coalesce and fly away once again.
And then they froze and held their position.
“I am afraid I am unable to read…” She let the statement drift into silence.
With a frown, she tilted her head. It was not text of a strange and unfamiliar derivation. It was not writing.
Portraits.
The letters and symbols had pulled together to reveal two faces, one on each side of the open folio. They were males, and the longer she stared at them in an attempt at recognition, the clearer the depictions became, until they were as pencil drawings attended to with leaded tip over and over, the shadows darkening and bringing out a three-dimensional nature that was positively sculptural.
The Book clapped again, the emphatic sound an obvious attempt to focus her—except she was already locked upon what it was showing her.
It clapped again.
“You want me to go find them?” she asked. When there was a third smack of the folio, she shook her head. “I am sorry, but however important they are to you, I am not going to go look for these two males—”
A sharp clap interrupted her.
“But you need me, too. This landscape is in my mind, so if I am here I know you’re safe. No one can get to you—”
The faces broke apart, the letters bursting into action as they whirled around once again, the features dissolving… only to re-form in a different alignment of eyes and nose and mouth.
“My cousin, Sahvage,” she whispered.
Another scrambling, another face, this time a female. “His shellan, Mae.”
In a relentless procession, more portraits created by the letters cycled through, and she knew them all: They were the males and females from her time in the present down below, the people at Luchas House, where she had taken shelter. Nate, the male she had saved. Shuli, his best friend…
Her sadness at the gallery was such that Rahvyn lifted a hand to her sternum and rubbed at the physical pain. Nate’s face was especially difficult to see, given all they had gone through after he had been shot… all she had done unto him.
The letters continued to shift, and currently, the visages alarmed her. No civilian males were these. One by one, the Black Dagger Brotherhood appeared. She knew not all their names, yet they were not the kind of thing that was easily forgotten.
And now… the last portrait.
Her heart stopped. The male had long black hair falling from a widow’s peak, and a visage that was both aristocratic and cruel. Dark lenses—which she had learned were referred to as wraparounds—covered his unseeing eyes and added to the menace he presented, a threat that was alleviated not in the slightest by the deep, ferocious furrow between his brows.
Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, the great Blind King—
Those glasses were slowly removed by a steady hand… and then those strange, nearly pupilless, eyes stared straight out upon her.
With a hiss, Rahvyn jerked back. Yet they could not see her surely? This was but a rendering, and in any event, the male had no sight upon which to call.
The lips began to move, as if he were trying to tell her something—and then from the four corners of the open folio, a black tide rushed into him, the roiling letters overtaking him as he began to scream. The tight swirl of utter darkness consumed him… and then an explosion wiped all of it away, leaving only blank pages.
In horror, Rahvyn sat back and covered her face with her hands. When she finally collected her wits enough to look once again, she saw that single letters were falling from the top of the open pages to the bottom, like rain.
No, it was snow. It had to be because the flurrying symbols collected at the base of the book’s display, the level growing higher and higher.
“I am not a savior,” she whispered. “I cannot—”
A portion of the Book’s pages curled up and then blew out one side, like a tongue: Pffffffffffffffffffft.
A sense of impending doom tightened her throat. “What happens if I leave here? I do not know if it compromises you in some way—”
The Book closed itself abruptly. After which its gnarled, ugly cover pulsated, as if it were flexing.
“You can take care of yourself,” she murmured.
The sharp clap was an affirmative if she’d ever heard one.
“But I should rather stay here with you—”
The Book flopped itself open and the windowpane reappeared, Lassiter’s face not as something created by an artist’s hand, but as a photographic representation of the fallen angel, a flickering light playing over his grim features.
He was before a fire, she guessed, and as she tracked the way the golden illumination made his eyes shimmer, she realized that the wall behind him seemed to be some sort of rock. Had he taken shelter in a cave for some reason? She had overheard someone saying that he lived with the First Family and the Brotherhood.
Why would he be alone in the wilderness? Was he in danger?
“The angel is wrong,” she said roughly. “I am not the Gift of Light.”
The Book clapped again and did not stop, the urgency of the two sides impacting and falling back like a military drummer’s beat.
She thought of the portrait of the King, consumed by evil.
And the two males she did not recognize.
Then Lassiter.
“Their destinies are all connected.” When there was no reply, she looked over with even more dread. “Tell me.”
Before there was a reply, Rahvyn was already getting to her feet. “Where do I find—”
The collection of letters flooded forth and made another drawing out of the scramble. But what was shown to her… made no sense at all.
“The golden arches?” she said with confusion.
CHAPTER FOUR
Caldwell Insurance Building
13th and Trade Streets
Downtown Caldwell
The demon Devina shot up off her satin pillows with a scream trapped in her throat. As she panted in the dim glow of her lair, she put her hand to her heart. Behind her sternum, the pounding was so heavy, she felt like a fifties cartoon who was in love. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.
Where the fuck was he—
Instantly, she was calmed.
Against the backdrop of her racks of haute couture clothes, standing tall, proud, and incredibly naked, her one true love was facing away from her and focused on the display of her Birkin collection. As usual, the ass view of him was every bit as delicious as the full frontal, his blond hair gleaming under the subdued ceiling lights, his shoulders marked with bright red claw marks from her nails, his tight little tuchus a perfect set of buns fresh out of the oven.
And just as delicious.
Which explained her teeth marks on the golden globe to the left.
Just a dream. It had only been a dream, she thought as she eased back against the headboard and pulled the covers off her bare breasts. Her nipples were red and swollen from him working on them and her sex was a low-level throb between her legs.
She had black-and-blue marks in so many places.
From when he’d held her down.
He was a demon lover, for sure, and not just in descriptive title. The male was everything she had ever wanted, all but custom designed to her specifications, and for a moment, she glanced down her racks of blouses, skirts, dresses, and trousers… to the far corner, where a municipal trash bin sat, lonely and out of place.
She had put the Book on top of the thing because that collection of incantations had been insolent and unresponsive and had needed a reminder that but for her pulling it out of the remains of that house fire, it would have ended up in a landfill. Goddamn, that entity had been a pain in the ass.
But she’d needed it.
And hey, the spell had worked, hadn’t it. To get her true love, she’d had to project how she wanted herself to be adored and then she’d had to go out into the world and ruin someone else’s love. Both parts had been really simple, as it turned out. And the fact that Lassiter had been the one that she’d fucked while fucking him? A very satisfying BOGO.
Who knew that taking someone’s virginity could rob him of—
“Why the hell are you keeping this one?”
As her lover spoke up, Devina was not feeling the tone. But then her male twisted around on his hips, and the top half of him put in an appearance. His shoulders and pecs were Michelangelo-molded, and his six-pack was right out of Men’s Health. His face, though, was what really captured her attention. He was model-beautiful, with high cheekbones and a square jaw, his lips molded with a sensuous curl to the top and a prominent plumpness on the bottom, his brows arching in arrogance, his pale hair waving back from a broad, intelligent forehead.
His eyes were his most epic feature, however. Deeply set and heavily lashed, his pupils were an all-wrong, resonant blue, and what should have been a colored iris was a jet-black rim that seemed to crowd into the center.
They were unlike anything she’d ever seen.
Then again, so was the rest of him. And it wasn’t just the physical components.
It was the aura of evil that emanated from him.
“The purse is destroyed,” he said impatiently. Like she was stupid. “Why are you keeping it.”
Devina narrowed her eyes and curbed her enthusiasm.
No, the Himalayan Birkin 35 with the diamond hardware was not destroyed. Yes, it had been subjected to fire, its toasted crocodile skin still releasing a whiff of barbecue, its white, gray, and brown pattern mottled with ash, its handles no longer in a perfect set of arches. But the bag remained at the top of her collection of Hermès’s most exclusive purses.
“You should be more respectful,” she said in a tight voice. “That is what brought you to me.”
The Book’s spell had started with her having to choose something of great personal importance and stare at it with all the love she wanted herself to be regarded with—and she’d picked the ruined masterpiece not only because it was the holy grail of all purses, but because she was ugly, too. Marred. Nasty. How had T. Swift put it in the good ol’ days? A nightmare dressed like a daydream.
And all of the other men and males she’d ever wanted had known it.
So yes, the Birkin had been her object, and she’d trained her eyes on everything that was ruined—and let her heart fly with the soul-defining emotion she’d been cheated of.
“You should throw this out.”
As a flicker of fury tickled her urge to murder, she had to smile. Of course her one true love would have to have a set of balls, and not just anatomically. Spice was the antidote to boredom, and conflict kept her interested.
Up to a fucking point.
“Do you even know what that bag is?” she drawled. Like he was stupid.
Those unusual eyes shot over to her. “My mahmen had a collection of them. Even before Sarah Jessica Parker carried a Birkin on HBO in two thousand two.”
Utterly stunned, Devina could only blurt, “According to a Vogue article, that blue one was a fake.”
“My mahmen’s weren’t. She was on the list.”
A bloom went through Devina’s entire body, and it was sexual, even though he wasn’t touching her or talking about body parts and what he wanted to do to them or with them. That he knew about the list? From back when there was one?
And Sex and the City?
Dear God, he really was the perfect male.
“I will never throw that bag away.” She ran a hand through her luxurious brunette hair. “There is more value to it than its blemishes suggest.”
“How did it get burned?”
“I had a prisoner here. She tried to break out by lighting it on fire and triggering the building’s alarm.”
He glanced up at the ceiling. “I would have thought humans were no match for you.”
“The bitch’s plan didn’t work,” she lied.
His head turned back to her and his eyes narrowed. Something about the way he stared at her made her nervous, so she threw the covers completely off herself and rubbed her thighs together.
“Come here,” she commanded.
Her lover pivoted toward her, but he didn’t move. Well, didn’t come over to the bedding platform. His cock moved, for sure, the length hardening as he stared at her.
“I want to watch you touch yourself,” he said.
“And I want you to do all the work.”
As she arched back, her body slid slowly down the slick sheets until her head was on the pillow again. Looking over her taut breasts, she put her fingers in her mouth and started sucking the lengths in and out, the rhythm lazy, the intent anything but. With her legs sawing back and forth, and her nipples going even tighter, she stared across the distance between them.
He was trying so hard not to come over to her. She could tell.
And when his hand reached down to his hips and he palmed the enormous erection that had made such a spectacular appearance, she realized she had everything she had ever wanted. Her collection of designer clothing and accessories, all of it cherry-picked over time from the best of the best… her lair with its safety provisions that kept her insulated from the world at large… and this male who was never going to leave her—and would always love her even though she was only beautiful on the outside.
As her lover began to stroke himself in sync with the penetrations of her fingers breaching her lips and reemerging, a cresting pleasure shot through her with such force that her eyes rolled back and her body exploded with an orgasm so great, she felt as though surely she might shatter.
And he wasn’t even touching her.
When the demon Devina’s release faded, she sighed and floated inside her skin, enjoying the way the air moved gently across her nipples and her plump lips—and also her fingers, which cooled like ice as she allowed her hand to flop onto the sheets. In between her legs, she was swollen and slick, ready for him even as she remained sore.
She could will the pain away if she chose. She did not.
Lying there with her eyes closed, she imagined her male’s stare on her glorious nakedness as he continued to pump himself off. He hadn’t come, and she was touched by his forbearance. That he was willing to forgo his own pleasure so that he could enter her and fill her up? What a gentlemale—and no doubt his molars were gritted and his fangs distended as he fought against his urges, torturing himself in the best possible way.
