Kinky Boots (Mischief Books) (7 page)

A stupid thing to say, she thought, since she’d already fucked his brains out twice. ‘The rent’s paid till the end of the month. After that you may have to share my park bench.’

‘You won’t need to sleep on a park bench, Jill. We’ll see to that,’ Finn said.

‘Yes, we’ll see to that.’ A voice spoke inside her head. It was the first time she’d been fully aware of Eleanor since the failed exorcism.

Then she remembered the run-in with her boss, and a chill ran down her spine. ‘My BlackBerry. The recording. Where’s my BlackBerry?’

Jill pushed herself off the sofa and fled to the kitchen, where someone had hung her jacket neatly over the back of a chair.

Sure enough, she found her BlackBerry in the pocket. There was a text from Vivie asking what her plans were for the night. She ignored it.

‘What’s going on? What are you doing?’ Finn called from the doorway, where he’d followed. Meinrad and Chelsea crowded in next to him as Jill hit playback and her voice filled the room.

What do you want me to do, Mr Devlin?
Jill heard. She fast-forwarded until she heard her boss say:

Unbutton that lovely silk top of yours and give me a good look at those tits you’re always pointing at me. And when I’ve had enough time to –

She stopped the recording, relieved that it was still there, that she hadn’t imagined it, and embarrassed that all of Sole Alliance had heard her humiliation.

Finn moved to her side. ‘That son of a bitch!’ He slid a protective arm around her shoulder. ‘Good thing you had the presence of mind to record him. You’ll have Human Resources eating out of your hand and that fucker will be lucky to work at McDonald’s’

Jill shivered. ‘I didn’t have the presence of mind to record him.’

She’d barely got the words out of her mouth before Eleanor spoke. ‘Oh, but you did. Trust me, darling, you didn’t do anything you didn’t have a deep-seated urge to do already. I just cheered you on a bit.’

Jill was suddenly trembling again. ‘And the things I said? What I did?’

‘You were totally in the driver’s seat, Jill,’ the voice in her head said. ‘I wouldn’t deprive you of that pleasure.’ There was a soft laugh. ‘If I had been in the driver’s seat, we would have kneed the bastard nice and hard in the balls, and with strong, well-muscled legs like yours I reckon he wouldn’t have forgotten us for a very long time. Goodness! For a second there I sounded almost like a vengeance demon, didn’t I?’

Jill became aware of Meinrad and Chelsea staring at her as though she had two heads. Not that far from the truth, she thought.

‘What, Jill? What’s going on?’ Finn asked.

‘We’re discussing who’s in the driver’s seat,’ Jill said.

A look of disbelief passed between Meinrad and Chelsea. ‘She’s talking to you? Eleanor’s talking to you?’ Meinrad said, as though the whole idea were shocking.

Jill nodded. ‘Why?’

Chelsea stepped forward into the room. ‘Because the only one she ever talks to is Finn.’ She looked up at Meinrad. ‘The two of us, we know she’s there, and it’s always obvious what she wants, but she never actually talks to us.’

Jill suddenly felt weak-kneed. Finn pulled out a chair and guided her into it. Inside her, it felt as though Eleanor was settled in comfortable silence, the kind of silence shared between two really good friends. That in itself was disconcerting, especially as the last memories of the failed exorcism came back to her strong and clear. Now that it was over, now that it was all safely behind her, she vividly recalled hanging on for dear life just before she lost consciousness, hanging on as though what was about to happen was something she couldn’t let slip away. She was possessed by a demon, for God’s sake! How could it be that she wanted to hang on? And yet there was no denying that she had. In her head Eleanor placed a finger on her nose like they’d been playing charades, like Jill had just won the game. There was a smile and a laugh that no one heard but her, and, though Jill figured it should be otherwise, Eleanor’s presence felt completely comfortable.

With his rucksack slung over his shoulder, Finn followed Jill up to her flat on the seventh floor. The tour took thirty seconds. The flat was only slightly more than a studio, with a small bedroom and a bathroom off from the open living area. Jill had stretched herself to be able to afford it, and had lived very frugally in order to have her privacy. The possibility of losing her little island of solitude was one terrifying thought among many in the madness that stretched endlessly before her. She forced a smile as the two stood facing each other in the centre of the makeshift lounge. ‘Home sweet home.’

‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘It suits you.’

‘Drink?’ she asked. ‘Wine, beer, coffee, tea?’

Finn shook his head. ‘Nothing for me. It’s late.’ He put his rucksack down at the end of the sofa. ‘Do you have a blanket or something? I’ll sleep on the couch.’

The words felt like a slap in the face. Sleep wasn’t really what Jill had in mind.

It was as though he’d read her thoughts. ‘You’ve had a rough day, Jill, and you’re exhausted. You don’t realise it at the moment. That’s what having Eleanor in residence does to you. But even she understands that in order to keep her host healthy, rest has to happen.’ He tilted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘I’ve had her in me, Jill. I know what I’m talking about. I know how she is, what she can do to you.’

Jill’s tummy gave a tight little quiver at the thought of the very feminine Eleanor, nestled in some inexplicable part of her, residing in that same inexplicable part of the very masculine Finn. But before she could follow that intriguing train of thought, Finn brushed a kiss across her lips and nodded to her room. ‘Now go to bed. The next few days will be very demanding.’

Sullenly she brushed her teeth and took off the make-up she’d put on hours ago before she’d quit her job, back when the only thing she had to worry about was impressing a shoe-shop clerk enough to get him to shag her. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she noticed another text from Vivie, but she just couldn’t face that now. She was about to slip into her nightshirt when she thought better of it and crawled in between the sheets naked. It felt lovely. It would have felt even lovelier if Finn had slid into bed next to her all hard and ready to play.

She could hear the shower running in the bathroom, and maliciously she hoped it was a cold one that had nothing to do with being dirty. She turned off the lamp on her night stand and rolled over on her side, still trying to get her head around the events of the past twenty-four hours.

And suddenly she wasn’t alone. Suddenly the demon presence filled all the space beneath her skin and expanded beyond to wrap around her like silk. Once again she felt the full roundness of femininity wriggling close to her, nuzzling up to her, embracing her, and she couldn’t hold back a moan at the feel of tight nipples against her spine and soft pubic curls nestling up to her bottom. It didn’t matter that they weren’t physical. They felt stunningly real, and powerfully arousing. The warm breath against her ear was sweet and comforting. ‘Don’t feel bad, darling,’ a female voice purred inside her head. ‘He’s afraid, that’s all. He’s afraid I might damage you somehow.’ A hand cupped her breast, a thumb raked her hardening nipple.

‘Will you?’ Jill spoke out loud almost before she realised it. ‘Will you damage me?’

‘Of course not, my sweet Jill. Your flesh is precious to me, more so than you know. I would never harm you. Never.’

‘What do you want from me, Eleanor?’ This time Jill was careful not to speak out loud. For the first time since he sidled up to her in the pub, she wasn’t so anxious to draw Finn’s attention. This was her chance for a little girl talk. Girl talk with a lust demon. Jesus, the insanity of her situation was astounding.

‘All I want is to share your body, Jill. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve experienced so many things.’ Jill felt the brush of warm lips against her nape. ‘So very many things, and yet there’ve been long passages of time in which my consciousness has had no place to anchor. Oh, Jill, it’s such an empty space, eternity, when there’s no flesh in which to express consciousness.’ Eleanor snuggled still closer and a hand that wasn’t physically there moved down to rest against Jill’s pubis. She quivered at the touch.

Eleanor continued. ‘But you, my darling, have flesh, lovely, voluptuous, delicious flesh. And yet with it you’ve experienced so little. You fear the lust that partners flesh, what it longs for, what it’s capable of, what boundaries it may move beyond. I feel the ache in you, the need. I felt it before I took you. That ache to experience what you’ve not been brave enough to allow is what drew me to you, what I felt when you stumbled into Finn’s shop. You were like light shining into darkness. I could see nothing else. I wanted nothing else. But you.’

The embrace tightened and Jill found herself writhing against the mattress, grinding her bottom back against the demon femininity pressed next to her. It was then that she realised the hand she felt between her legs was not the imagined one but her own, fingers circling her clit and dipping in between the swell of her, still wet from the evening’s heat, still vibrant with the scent of Finn. And for a second she resented him washing the olfactory evidence of their lovemaking down the drain, covering himself in the unnatural scent of soap and deodorant, when she wanted him to smell of her, when she wanted him to smell of them, super-heated and driven, in the throes of a hard animal fuck. She inhaled deeply the smell of him on her body, inside her body, and contemplated the way her scent wrapped around it, mixed through it, enhanced it, made it smell like it belonged there, closer to her than any other scent that wasn’t her own. The imagined arms tightened around her and another warm kiss brushed her nape, feeling as real as anything she had ever felt. The circle and thrust, circle and thrust of her fingers intensified. She felt desperate for the release that was demanded by thoughts of the man now naked in her shower and by the fondling and cuddling of the demon woman whose caress, non-corporeal or not, felt urgent, insistent, needy.

‘What do
you
want, Jill Hart? You can have it, you know. You’re not Finn’s prisoner. As long as I’m inside you, you’ll never be anyone’s prisoner. If you don’t want to sleep, you don’t have to.’ She laughed softly. ‘I’m not as stupid as Finn thinks. I know exactly what your body’s capable of and what would most pleasure it, both things you would like very much to know. Isn’t that so?’

Jill nodded her response into the darkness. Then the voice felt closer still. ‘Get dressed, Jill. We’re going out.’

‘But what about Finn?’

‘Nobody knows Finn better than I do, sweetie,’ the voice came again. ‘Trust me, I know how to give him the slip. In fact I know how to give him something even better than the slip.’ She tsk-tsked. ‘Of course I’m not going to hurt him, you silly goose. I would never hurt our Finn. I’ll just give him a little something to think about. Go on now, get dressed. That’s a good girl.’

* * *

Thirty minutes later they were dancing in Juno. Jill was wearing the skirt she’d borrowed from Vivie, a black vest that showed plenty of cleavage, and the fabulous boots. Her hair was down and the make-up was minimal. Clearly not from the same school of fashion as Vivie, Eleanor had assured her that, in her case, less was more.

Jill was dancing, something she would never have been brave enough to do without Vivie there to egg her on. Vivie, Eleanor, what was the difference, she wondered. She still wasn’t brave enough to strike out on her own. ‘Neither is Vivie,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘That’s why she drags you along.’

And, in truth, this time was considerably different. Jill had danced with three different blokes since she’d arrived, and the one she was dancing with now looked like he might play rugby or something equally physical when he wasn’t shaking his very nice booty on the dance floor.

‘Mmmm,’ Eleanor purred against her ear. ‘He definitely fancies you, and I detect wood developing below deck.’

Jill wasn’t sure if the improvement in her peripheral vision came from being demon-possessed or simply from the fact that she’d never needed to sneak a peek at a man’s crotch before. But Eleanor wasn’t wrong. The guy’s fly was filling out very nicely indeed. The thought that Jill could be fucking him very shortly tightened her pussy in the tiny gusset of her thong, already damp with exciting possibilities. The knot in her stomach tightened in empathy at the thought of actually letting this bloke, this stranger, ride her. Before her encounter with Finn in Kinky Boots, she’d never even come close to picking up someone in a bar.

As the music changed to a slow beat, some song that Jill, with her total lack of interest in pop culture, didn’t recognise, the man pulled her into his arms. He wasn’t as big as Meinrad, but he was plenty big enough, and for a second she fought the urge to flee as strong arms closed around her and a hand settled low on her back just above the swell of her bottom.

‘It’s all right,’ Eleanor assured her. ‘He’s OK.’

The man, whose name she didn’t know, bent and brushed a kiss across her ear. ‘You smell so good,’ he said.

She smelled like Finn, she thought, and suddenly she felt guilty, which made her angry. She had no reason to feel guilty. She didn’t belong to Finn. She was nothing to him, other than the duty he’d been saddled with because the demon he was supposed to be controlling got out of hand. She expected some tart remark from Eleanor at that thought, but the demon said nothing.

Before she could think too much about it, the man’s mouth found hers in an awkward hunchback of a position that his added height required. The kiss was sloppy, too wet, too much tongue, too suffocating. He lacked Finn’s finesse in the lip and mouth department. The fact that she was making comparisons made her even more angry, but she was too nervous to press the issue and take back control of the kiss. Instead, she managed to level a palm against his chest to give herself a little breathing space. He mistook her effort as mutual attraction and guided her hand inside the open top buttons of his shirt to rest against a sweaty pec. ‘Come on,’ he panted, ‘let’s get out of here.’