A Devil Named Desire (17 page)

He cried out, as did she, his neck arching as he raised his face toward Heaven. Nothing could’ve prepared him for this, for as his flesh joined with hers, it was as though he’d found a part of himself he’d never known was missing. As her body received him, his soul soared, much as it had when he’d soared above the clouds, weightless and filled with glory, yet this was glory of an entirely different kind.

Hope’s arms were around him, her lips against his chest, her breath warm on her skin as she moaned and gasped in time with the movements of his body. His hips had a mind of their own, pressing his hardness forward into her softness, over and over again. It seemed to go on forever, yet was over all too soon, for he felt her tighten and shudder, crying out against his throat. Her inner passage rippled and throbbed, squeezing his cock to near-bursting, and then burst he did, in a flood of ecstasy that shook him to his core, flinging him into the cosmos with a showering of sparks and holding him there, suspended, before letting him fall, her name on his lips.

Chapter Sixteen

“I
t’s a bit cliché, don’t you think?”

Samael the Fallen, onetime angel and full-time devil, studied his reflection in the mirror, adjusting the hooded cowl of the black robe that covered him from head to foot. “Every year, year after year, brought forth by bell, book, and candle for a bit of bloody theater and a night of shameful abandon.” He gave a small snort of disgust. “As if humans needed my permission
or
my presence to engage in their depravities.”

“Traditions are important to your followers, Master.” Nyx answered him a bit stiffly. “Particularly when it comes to the Black Mass.” He twitched a fold of the black robe into place on his master’s shoulder, always a bit fussy during Sammy’s fittings. “Humans are easily confused by anything that doesn’t fit their conception of evil.”

Samael sighed. “Evil has its limitations,” he said cryptically. “Take that stupid goat mask, for instance—how ridiculous that
I
should be the one portrayed as a beast, when humans are the ones so mindlessly eager to offer their necks to the sword.”

Nyx said nothing.

The Great Shaitan, High Lord of the Abyss, turned to regard his right-hand man. The fire that crackled in the bedroom grate cast no light over the still, dark figure, but Sammy knew his servant well, and noted how the tips of his black-feathered wings quivered slightly, a sure sign of disquiet.

“Is there a problem?” Samael asked, his voice deceptively smooth.

Nyx hesitated, keeping his gaze downward, toward the gleaming hardwood floor.

Throwing back the hood of his cowl, Sammy cocked his head, regarding his minion questioningly. “Well?”

“This sudden aversion to the Mass . . . surely you’re not considering canceling it?”

“What I do or don’t do is none of your concern,” he told the demon sharply. “How dare you question me?”

“I’m worried about you, my lord,” Nyx replied in hushed tones. “You’re not yourself these days.”

His Satanic Majesty suppressed an urge to snarl like the beast he’d just denied being. Turning his blond head to once again regard his reflection in the mirror, he answered calmly enough, “You think you know me so well, do you?”

Despite his eight-foot wingspan and menacing aspect, Nyx was the one who seemed to cringe, becoming smaller at his master’s cool tone. “I speak only out of love and devotion, O Dark One.”

“Love,” Sammy sneered. The black-robed man in the mirror—blue-eyed, blond, and impossibly handsome—sneered right back at him. “I’m sick of the word. I gave you no emotion save that of loyalty when I created you. Love should be anathema to you, as it is to me.”

“Perhaps emotions can grow over time.” Nyx kept his gaze on the floor, but Sammy was not fooled by the diffidence in his voice. “Perhaps the created can take on aspects of the Creator, without ever meaning to.”

Samael’s hand lashed out, and the demon found himself gasping for breath, the long, pale fingers of his master like steel around his neck.

“What are you implying?” growled Satan. “I have no loving aspect for you to possibly emulate.”

Unresisting, unable to voice his dismay, Nyx opened wider his red eyes, two burning coals of fear that seemed only to feed his liege’s fury.

“Perhaps you merely repeat what you hear,” Samael said between his teeth, never raising his voice. “Like a black-winged parrot with no mind of his own.” He shoved Nyx backward, releasing him.

Nyx stumbled back, steadying himself against the wall of the bedchamber. “Your pardon, Master,” he rasped, raising a taloned hand to his abused throat. “I spoke out of turn.”

“Oh, don’t stop now,” Sammy snarled, feeling his rage and frustration build. Despite his rough treatment of Nyx, his anger was actually directed at himself; his confrontation with Gabriel had shaken him more than he cared to admit. “Do tell me what the great unwashed masses of the Underworld have to say.”

Cautiously regaining his feet, Nyx stayed against the wall, out of his master’s immediate reach. “I don’t listen to the rabble, O Great One. I know only that they, like the humans, are easily confused by anything out of the ordinary and are quick to seize advantage. The Black Mass is a reminder of how you are still revered and honored among the humans, and may help lay their cursed mutterings to rest. Blood sacrifice is always a morale booster for the troops.”

With a sigh, Sammy turned away. “There’s not enough blood on Earth to satisfy them.”

“Someone’s in a mood today.” Pandora strolled into his bedchamber, dripping with jewels, trailing exotic scent. Her choice of gown was a vibrant shade of rose, diaphanous with veils, yet clinging to her lushness everywhere it counted. “I could hear you growling and snapping all the way down the corridor.”

Nyx gave a growl of his own, clearly frustrated that Pandora managed to come and go as she pleased, much less dare criticize his master.

“Your pet needs a leash,” she said to Sammy, flicking her hand at the demon as she would a gnat.

For once, Sammy found himself unamused by her cheek. “What do you want, Pandora?”

Her lower lip, rouged to the same shade as her gown, thrust forward in a pout. Being no fool, however, she noted the dangerous gleam in his eye, and withdrew it. “I came to take Cain for a little field trip.” She shrugged a plump shoulder. “He’s been cooped up here too long. The fireflies are swarming in the Elysian Fields; I thought it might amuse him.”

“Master,” Nyx spoke up, gesturing toward the black robe Sammy still wore. “Perhaps it’s time to present the Dark Princeling formally as your heir, and initiate him into the mysteries.”

“Don’t call him a princeling,” Sammy snapped, “and absolutely not.” The boy was far too young to be present during a cold-blooded murder, unless it happened to be his
own
. During Cain’s stay in the Underworld, Sammy had certainly been driven to the brink of murder several times over. “Where is he?”

Pandora looked at Nyx, while Nyx looked at Pandora.

“I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” Pandora said, with another shrug. “I agreed to teach him some polish, not be his nursemaid. I believe that’s Tall, Dark, and Ugly’s job.”

“I’m no one’s nursemaid,” Nyx said hotly, but Sammy interrupted them both with a word.

“Enough!” Casting them both a disgusted glare, he tore open the black robe and tossed it over a chair. “You bicker like children.”

A screeching arose from the corridor outside, drawing their instant attention. Sammy sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, wondering exactly what kind of trouble his son had gotten himself into this time.

Nyx moved toward the door, but hadn’t reached it before a small gray whirling dervish swept into the room, hotly pursued by two winged Dronai guards, who stopped short on the threshold, flapping their wings and gnashing their teeth.

“Master,” screeched the dervish, “Master, you must come!”

To Sammy’s utter shock and surprise, the creature attached itself to his leg, evading Nyx’s lightning attempt to grab it. He looked down and saw a very damp, very agitated little fire imp, whose already bulging eyes were about to start from its very ugly head. “It’s Cain, Master,” the fire imp gabbled. It was his son’s now ever-present shadow, Tesla. “She took him!”

He went cold, raising a hand to prevent Nyx from touching the imp. “Who took him?”

“Galene,” babbled Tesla, “she pulled him down into the Sea of Sorrows.”

Pandora gave a gasp of horror, her hand going to her mouth.

“Show me,” Sammy said flatly, not wasting any time on questions, and took the imp with him into nothingness. An instant later they were on the seashore, gray and stormy, in the cove where’d he’d first seen the Nereid.

“There,” pointed Tesla, toward the outcropping of rock where he himself had sat to listen to Galene’s song. “We were just playing,” the imp gabbled, “picking up shells while she sang to us. She wanted Cain to swim with her, like he does with the water nymphs.”

Sammy felt the imp’s shudder, for he had yet to let go of Sammy’s leg.

“The two of you followed me here,” Samael said hollowly, not needing or expecting confirmation, and the imp didn’t bother to give it.

“I told him not to listen to her, I swear I did!” Tesla’s voice cracked, and he buried his face against Sammy’s knee like a child. “But he did, and then . . .”

The sea was stormy, gray tipped with whitecaps, mirroring the gloomy clouds overhead and the unspoken despair Sammy felt within his chest. Prying the imp’s long-fingered hands from his legs more gently than even he realized, he said, “Stay here, away from the water.”

And then he waded in, letting the waves crash against him, buffeting him with their force as he cut a swath toward the deep, on his way to the lair of the Leviathan.

Chapter Seventeen

H
ope lay in the darkened hotel room, her cheek on Gabriel’s chest and his arm warm on her back, his hand resting on her shoulder. Everywhere their bodies touched it felt so
right
, so magical, and it was a magic she never wanted to end. She was boneless and exhausted, but sleep was out of the question, for if she slept she might wake to find it had all been a dream.

Gabe was awake, too, for his fingers traced small circles on the skin of her shoulder, leaving tingles in their wake. “Are you all right?” he murmured. “Did I hurt you?”

Unable to help herself, Hope smiled. “I should ask you the same thing. It was your first time, after all.”

He chuckled, stretching. “Yeah, but I was pretty darn good at it anyway, wasn’t I?”

She laughed, and it felt so good that she laughed some more, tickling his ribs until he caught her hand and pressed her on her back. His hair, wildly mussed from her fingers, fell over his cheek, and she caught her breath at how beautiful he looked when he laughed, masculine grace in his every move. She thought about how wonderful it would be to see him like that every day, carefree and smiling, instead of carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“You’re outmatched, Miss Henderson,” he teased. “Better give up while you can.”

“I already have,” she told him softly, tucking his hair behind his ear, the better to see his face.

His smile faded as he stared down into her eyes. “I don’t know what the future holds,” he said, recognizing how her mood had changed. “I can’t promise you anything, can’t offer you anything, except my best efforts to keep you safe, and help you find your sister. Beyond that . . .”

The mention of Charity gave her a pang, for she hadn’t been thinking of her sister, despite what they’d gone through to find out where she was. Shoving guilt aside, Hope let her fingers trace the line of Gabe’s jaw, the curve of his lips. “That’s more than I ever hoped for,” she whispered, doing her best to memorize this man, this moment. “
You’re
more than I ever hoped for.”

He bent his head and kissed her, and she savored every second of it, wishing it would go on and on. He stirred against her thigh, and she couldn’t help but slide her hand down his lean hip and pull him closer, pressing against him as he grew and lengthened, then cupping him in her hand. He made a noise deep in his throat, half groaning and half pleading, but the thought was in her head that these stolen moments might be the only ones they ever had, and she didn’t want to waste them. So she squeezed and stroked and kissed him with all the unspoken love in her heart, until any thoughts of stopping were as far away as the moon.

This time, when she opened her thighs and took him inside, he slid into her gently, slowly, as though they had all the time in the world, worshipping her body with his lips and tongue as his maleness nudged and probed her very core. With a tenderness that stole her heart all over again, he made love to her the way she’d only imagined it could be done.

And when it was over, and they lay spent and gasping in each other’s arms, she bit her lip to keep from saying what she truly wanted to say, merely holding him close until he finally, reluctantly rolled away.

“We have to go,” he murmured. “It’s dangerous to stay too long in one place, and we have to start looking for your sister.”

“I know.”

She took his hand as he lay next to her, threading her fingers through his.

He held it for a long moment before he rose from the bed and started pulling on his clothes.

“Gabe?” She lay unmoving, watching him dress.

He paused, wearing only unzipped jeans, and gave her his full attention. “Yes?”

“Are you sorry?”

Without hesitation, he leaned in one more time and kissed her lightly, saying only “No.”

And with that she had to be content. She got up and went into the bathroom, scooping her clothes from the floor as she went.

F
orty-five minutes later they exited a cab in front of Straight Up, a divey little bar in an apparently dicey part of town—so dicey, in fact, that the cabbie had seemed reluctant to take them there. “There’s lots better bars on the strip, man,” he’d told Gabriel, but Hope had just repeated the address and he’d shut up. He hadn’t lingered dropping them off, either, taking his fare and driving off before the door to the cab had barely closed.

It was midafternoon, and Hope was glad, because she wouldn’t want to be there after dark; the buildings were old and run-down, trash littered the streets. Used cigarette butts were all over sidewalk in front of the club, which had a neon sign of a martini glass in the window, the base of which was burned out.

“I don’t like this,” she muttered, but Gabe didn’t answer, keeping an eye on two men who were loitering down the block, watching them. He held the door open for her, and they went in.

The smell of stale cigarettes nearly knocked Hope over. Dimly lit, the place was bigger than it looked from the outside, with a stage to the right and lots of small, two-person tables, all of which were empty. Bad eighties music blared from the speakers surrounding the stage, and a long bar, studded with bar stools, dominated the left side of the room. The bartender, a beefy black man who could’ve been any age between thirty and fifty, eyed them briefly as they came in, then went back to reading the newspaper he’d spread out on the bar.

“Stay close,” Gabe murmured, and Hope was happy to do just that. The bar’s only patron was slumped on one of the stools, looking rumpled, drunk, and none too clean.

“What can I do for you?” asked the bartender, barely glancing up from his paper.

“We’re looking for a girl,” said Gabe.

“You and everybody else who comes here, man. You and the little lady want a drink, or what?”

It was then that Hope, glancing nervously around, noticed the steel pole in the middle of the stage, and was horrified to realize that she’d just brought an angel to a strip club.

“Not just any girl,” Gabriel told the bartender. “A specific girl, named Charity Henderson.”

“Never heard of her.”

Undeterred, Gabe pulled a picture from his back pocket and held it out. Surprised, Hope realized it was the picture of her and Charity by the fountain in Little Five Points; he’d obviously taken it from her apartment without telling her.

The man behind the bar gave it a cursory glance, then flicked his eyes toward Hope. “Quite a resemblance,” he said briefly, but offered nothing further.

Gabriel sighed, and pulled Hope aside. “He wants money,” he murmured, “and I don’t have any.”

Hope glanced around at the bar again. “I really don’t think Charity would ever set foot in a place like this, Gabe. We’re wasting our time.”

Gabe shot another glance at the bartender, who was studiously ignoring them in favor of his newspaper. “I didn’t spend all that time on the streets without learning a thing or two, Hope. He knows something.”

With a sigh of her own, she opened her purse, fished around in her wallet, and handed him several twenties, leaving the distribution of them up to him. It was only money, after all, and her computer business more than paid the bills.

“Maybe you could take another look,” Gabe said to the bartender, handing him both cash
and
the picture this time.

The money disappeared in one smooth motion, as the guy pretended to check out the picture again. “Your sister, huh?” he asked Hope, and she nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen her around. Come back tonight, around eleven. You might see her then.”

“We don’t have until tonight,” Gabe told him tersely. “Where can we find her?”

The bartender shook his head, handing the photo back. “Hey, man, I just work here. I don’t know where these girls live, and I don’t care.”

“ ‘These girls’?” Hope picked up on the inference, and didn’t like it. “Are you trying to say she
works
here?”

The guy gave her smirk. “If you call shaking your tail working, then yeah, she works here.”

Momentarily speechless, Hope looked him in the eye. “You’re lying,” she said, beginning to tremble.

He shrugged. “Got no cause to lie, baby. You come back here at eleven, you’ll see for yourself.”

Gabriel leaned in, addressing the bartender. “If she works here, then I’m willing to bet you can find her address somewhere in the back office.” He held up two more twenties, then added a third. “How much?”

The guy shot a nervous look toward the drunk who was slumped on his stool at the end of the bar. “Cain’t do that, man,” he murmured. “Not for no sixty fuckin’ bucks. Man got to work, and the owner of this here place likes his privacy, if you know what I mean. Besides”—he shook his head—“none of these bitches use their real names or addresses.”

Hope, listening to their conversation in a disbelieving daze, came to attention. “Don’t call my sister a bitch,” she snapped.

The man gave a short huff of laughter, looking her up and down. “Yeah, you her sister, all right. She a spitfire, too.”

“That’s it,” said Gabe grimly. “You tell us what we want to know or—”

“Or what, man?” The bartender stepped back, pulling up his shirt to reveal the butt of a gun, tucked into his waistband. “You and the little lady are outta your league here. Best get your asses out the door while you still can.”

“Now, Larry, is that any way to talk to paying guests?” A man stepped from a shadowy corridor to the left of the bar. He was dark-haired and muscular, too well-dressed for the dinginess of their surroundings, wearing gray dress slacks, a dark red Polo, and a black suit jacket.

Hope disliked him on sight, for his air of smug self-assurance reminded her too much of a certain blond-haired devil, though this guy was nowhere near as good-looking.

“Looking for Charity, are you?” the man asked. “Normally I’d tell you that charity is hard to find in a place like this, but you two happen to be in luck.” He smirked at his own joke, while the bartender gave a chuckle.

“Where is she?” Gabe took a step forward, semi-shielding Hope with his body.

The man eyed him up and down, making it clear he was unimpressed with Gabe’s bravado. “I don’t air my business in front of the help,” he said, “but if you’d like to step into my office . . .” He lifted his hand toward the shadowy corridor he’d just exited.

Hope became aware that the drunk on the bar stool at the end of the bar had straightened, and glanced that way to see that he was clearly not as inebriated as he’d seemed. He was watching them intently, one hand beneath his shirt, and she realized that he, too, had a gun hidden in his waistband.

Gabe saw him, too, but said nothing. He stepped aside to let her pass, placing a hand lightly on the small of her back to usher her wordlessly toward the corridor and the man who waited for them to enter his office.

She caught a whiff of cologne as she walked past the bar owner, keeping her head high and doing her best not to show the panic she felt. No one knew where they were; they could disappear from the face of the Earth with no one the wiser. Gabe’s presence was all that kept her from bolting toward the door—that, and the teensiest hope that if she just kept walking, she might find Charity waiting in the guy’s office.

When she reached a door at the end of the corridor marked P
RIVATE
, she paused. It was opened from the inside, the door handle being held by yet another muscle-bound guy in a jacket, who gave them an expressionless stare in lieu of a welcome.

“Go keep an eye on the front,” the bar owner told the goon. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

Once in the office, he shut the door and went to the other side of spotlessly clean desk, gesturing for Hope and Gabe to sit. Thankfully, once the door was shut, the horrible eighties music was cut off as though the room was soundproofed, which it clearly was.
Nobody would hear the gunshots
, she thought nervously.

On one wall was a row of security monitors, each with a view of a different part of the bar. In one of them, Hope could see the bartender, who’d gone back to reading his paper. Others showed the varying views of the stage, the front door, and the corridor outside.

“You look a lot like your sister,” the bar owner told Hope, by way of a preamble. “Ever do any dancing?”

Hope stiffened, her mouth dry.

“We’re just here to find Charity Henderson,” Gabe told the guy flatly. “Do you know where she is?”

“And you are?”

“My name is Gabriel.”

“Pleased to meet you, Gabriel. My name is Tony. Tony Menendez. Your girlfriend know how to speak, or do you plan on doing all the talking?”

“I can speak,” Hope said hastily, not wanting Gabe and the guy to get into it. “We’re not looking for any trouble, I swear. I’m just looking for my sister.”

Tony leaned back in his chair, eyeing her assessingly. “She told me about you, you know.”

Hope, still reeling from the idea that Charity could voluntarily be working in a place or for a guy as sleazy as this, swallowed hard.

“Says you’re the smart one, a real computer nerd or something like that, right?”