Enslaved (The Inbetween Novels) (11 page)

“Shayla—”

“—and bought a dress that doesn’t fit over my ass and hips like a burlap sack. No wonder I haven’t had any dat—“

“Shayla!”

Startled, Shayla dropped the phone in her lap. She retrieved it. “What?”

“You called me at two o’clock in the morning to bitch about the fact that you don’t have clothes to wear for a date three days away?” Kelly yawned.

Feeling guilty, Shayla crawled over to the closet doorway and looked at the clock on her nightstand. Kelly was right; it was far too late at night to discuss a wardrobe crisis. She sat back against the doorframe.

“I’m sorry. Time got away from me. Go back to sleep.”

Kelly laughed. “I’ll try. Look, we’ll go shopping sometime this week and take care of your problem, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You forget you even have my phone number if you ever find yourself awake in the middle of the night. Unless your house is on fire, of course.”

Shayla smiled, glad Kelly had such a good sense of humor. “I promise. No more wake-up calls. I’ll see you at the office.”

“With coffee in hand.”

“Yes, of course. Goodnight.”

“Night.” Kelly hung up.

Shayla tossed her phone onto the ground beside her and surveyed the damage done to her bedroom. She’d be up for hours putting everything back where it belonged.

“Screw it.”

She changed into an Eeyore dorm shirt and purple pajama pants. Grabbing the duvet, Shayla dragged it off the bed and watched all of her clothes fall onto the floor between the bed and the window. She shimmied the comforter free and tossed the blanket back on the bed. She’d deal with the mess after work and dinner. Sleep was far more important. A woman cannot run on caffeine alone.

The incubi compound was crowded. Each of the numerous pantheons had at least one or two incubi from their bloodline holed away within the small compound’s gates. Wherever one turned, he ran into another handsome face. The gods, in their immense vanity, only pulled their male offspring with potential for great beauty to enter the service. The rest remained in the human realm to live out normal lives. Most of the demi-god offspring left to mortality were considered “gifted.”

Deryck thought they were damn lucky to have been beaten with the ugly stick.

In the back of the dining hall was a well-furnished kitchen. The males were allowed access should they decide to make their own food. Considering most of them only cared about when they’d be summoned next, the space remained virtually abandoned. Which made it an ideal location to pry more information out of Wolfrik.

The blade of Deryck’s chef knife sliced through a large yellow onion. His nose ran and the pungent scent burned his eyes. Across the prep table, Wolfrik cleaned and skinned a fish with a level of skill professional chefs would be insanely jealous of.

Wolfrik paused, lifting the fish skin with his knife. “Do you have any clue what people actually do on a date, aside from anticipating sex at the end?” The skin fell into a bowl they’d been using for garbage. “Which, by the way, you won’t be doing.”

Deryck’s knife slipped. He jerked his hand out of the blade’s path and met Wolfrik’s serious gaze. “Why wouldn’t we have sex? It’s perfectly normal for two people to come together if they want to.”

“First, most women won’t have sex on a first date. Second, your powers are still active in her realm. If you sleep with her before you are released from your incubi powers, she is in danger.”

Deryck’s stomach dropped into his sneakers. “I’d never hurt Shayla.”

“It is something that cannot be helped.” Wolfrik used his thumb and the sharp edge of his knife to pull the pin bones from the fish fillet. “Where are you taking her?”

Shrugging, Deryck dumped the chopped onion into a large pot of fish stock for the soup base and grabbed a potato. “I haven’t planned anything yet.”

“Don’t dismiss it, Deryck. Dates are important to mortals. Think of them as tests a female puts men through to determine if she wishes to venture into a relationship with him.”

Confused, Deryck set his knife down so he wouldn’t accidentally cut himself while he sorted the whole thing out. “But she is the one destined to free me.”

Wolfrik’s knife made quick work of cutting the fish into bite-sized chunks. “Shayla must reach the decision on her own, through her own terms. She is fully capable of freeing you; however, you must convince her it is worth the risks involved.”

“Risks?” He did not like the idea of Shayla getting hurt because of him.

“You’ll learn them in time. Right now, you must focus on wooing her.”

“You should have mentioned this courting business before.”

Concern pinched Deryck’s brow. If he failed Shayla’s so-called tests, or dates, he’d be trapped as a slave until the gods determined it was his time to move on. No one knew what happened to an incubus who left the compound. One day they were there, eating oatmeal for breakfast with the rest of them. The next, the incubus was nowhere to be found in their little slice of the God’s Land. Did they simply cease to exist? The idea his existence could be so coldly ended sent white-hot anger through his veins. Deryck’s fingers clamped down around the handle of his knife and he took his frustrations out on a pile of vegetables.

“What day did you set the date for?” Wolfrik propped his hip against the prep table and wiped the blade of his knife clean with a towel.

“Two days from now.”

“And you haven’t figured out where you’re taking her yet?” The other incubus shook his head. “You have research to do. Are you capable of transporting to the human realm at will now?”

Deryck scooped up the vegetables and added them in on top of the fish and onion floating in the stock. “It hurts, but yes.”

Wolfrik set the lid on the pot of soup. “Good. Go back and observe couples out on a date. It will save you from embarrassing yourself.”

“Can’t you just tell me what to do, Wolfrik?” It’d be a lot easier if he could learn everything then and there, instead of playing stalker in another realm in hopes of figuring out how not to fail the human dating test.

How hard could it be? He’d seen some downright internally ugly men walking hand in hand with gorgeous women during his last few trips.

Wolfrik laughed and shook his head. “I have never been on a date. I’m in the same boat as you. Asking me for advice would be like asking a virgin to explain what it feels like to be inside a woman. In theory, he knows what it should feel like, but the gods know he is a long way off in his description.”

Deryck groaned. He dreaded the prospect of educating himself in so short a time span. He didn’t want to learn how to woo Shayla. He wanted to skip to the end of their story for the happily ever after. And the sex. Gods, he wanted to lose himself in Shayla, but the risk was too great for her. Deryck didn’t want Shayla to be another conquest, another nameless bed partner who used him and went back to her life.

For once in his life, Deryck wanted to lay with a female because he chose to.

Wolfrik cleared his throat. “Why are you still here, Deryck? You have nearly three thousand years of dating experience to make up for in two days. That is, if you do not wish to embarrass yourself.”

“You’d love to see that, old man.”

“Then you know nothing about me. I live for the day when none of us are enslaved to the whims of the gods.” Wolfrik motioned toward the door. “Go. If you are needed in the Inbetween, you will be transported from the human realm, same as you would here. No one will know where you are.”

Deryck nodded to his old friend and left the kitchen. He walked through the large dining hall. A handful of incubi sat clustered around a table sharing a large platter of fruit and cheese. His stomach grumbled, but he ignored it.

Wolfrik’s parting words stuck with him. So long as he bore the tattoos on his wrist, he could never belong to Shayla alone. Unwittingly, she was forced to share him with a world of women. The idea of betraying her in any way made him sick.

He left the dining hall and took a shortcut through the garden at the center of their compound to the koi pond. Luckily the bench beside the pond was clear. Deryck sat, glad the fruit trees at his back gave him some semblance of privacy.

Closing his eyes, Deryck tapped into his power. Stinging pain radiated from his incubi tattoos. The pain expanded, ran up his arms and covered his entire body until he swore he’d been covered in fire ants. When he thought his powers to transport to the human realm would fail, the bottom fell out of reality. Deryck’s stomach dropped. The world tilted and he was greeted with the sound of cars driving by.

“Thank the gods for small favors.”

The park outside the zoo was the perfect place to sit and relax. Huge oak trees provided shade throughout the grounds. A pond covered a quarter of the park, tucked in the western corner. Hundreds of ducks and geese called it home. Loudly. Their honking and quacking grew exponentially louder any time a child walked up with a loaf of bread in hand.

Grass soft enough to sink one’s toes into tickled the bottom of Shayla’s foot as she swung it back and forth over the edge of the bench she sat on. Kelly lay on a blanket nearby. Her likewise bare feet brushed the grass in circles, creating a series of tiny green whirlpools at the edge of the blanket.

An elephant from the zoo let loose a loud call. Sparrows, pigeons, and finches scattered into the air. A number of them landed in the tree shading Shayla and Kelly.

“If one of those flying rodents shits on my head, I’m going to be pissed,” Kelly said, glaring up into the tree branches.

Shayla laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Kelly rolled over onto her stomach and propped her chin on her hand. “So, are you ready for the date?”

“I am now, thanks to you. You’re a miracle worker, Kelly. How did you manage to find the one dress in this godforsaken city that doesn’t make me look like a cow?”