Kiss & Hell (15 page)

Though, seriously, what would a peek—just a quickety-quick glance—hurt? It was, after all, just a butt. Everyone had one. And while she noted that she definitely didn’t want to see everyone’s and she was overly curious about his, seeing Clyde’s wasn’t against the law. Her eyes, with a will of their own, cast downward.

Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat.

Everyone
didn’t have one like
that
.

Holy ba-donk-a-donk. Woo to the hoo, baby.

Her face grew hot, her cheeks flaming though the water had grown cool. She darted her guilty, prying eyes back to his broad back just as Clyde stepped up and out of the tub, forgetting to let go of her hand and pulling her out behind him.

The wet slap of flesh as she lost her balance and fell into him, knocking him forward to the floor, was sharp, Clyde’s grunt when he hit the floor with her on his back, sharper still.

And then they were pressed together in a mass of crooked, bent limbs on her tiny bathroom floor.

Naked.

All this nekidity might have been redundant but for the fact that lying front side down on Clyde’s big back was, for the tiniest of moments, hawt, hawt, hawt.

His skin was supple, firm, slick with droplets of water. Delaney’s cheek fell to his shoulder, her nostrils flaring with the heady scent of man. She didn’t care that his neck was at an awkward angle, jammed up against the vanity, and she cared even less that his foot had been left hooked on the edge of the tub. It wasn’t every day she was able to indulge in the raw sexuality of a man. For as totally wrong as that thought probably was, she just wanted a moment . . . to linger . . . on top of Clyde . . .

“Delaney?”

“Hmmm?” Yes, she could fully acknowledge that was her voice doing a breathy Marilyn Monroe imitation.

“Please don’t take this as an insult, but I can’t breathe, and I think I might have broken my toe. So do you think you could get up? Please?”

Like now? When she was just getting the taste of her first real, live man in years? How selfish. But, an inner voice, scathing and derisive, reminded her,
He’s not a live man, horn dog. Demon, remember?

She popped off of Clyde’s back, once more silently thanking Pilates for her core strength—for any strength that allowed her to unglue herself from him and his tasty bod.

Her hands fumbled for a towel, yanking it off the rack with hasty fingers and wrapping it around her. She turned her back to him, handing the other towel to him over her shoulder. “Put this on.”
And make it snappy,
she thought, or all this pent-up sexual energy was going to become a long-ignored, libidinous shitstorm worthy of the apocalypse.

Clyde’s groan signaled he’d untangled himself from her shower. The dogs began to whimper their love for Clyde’s return with whining joy. He cleared his throat. “I’ll wait in the bedroom.”

With the sound of the bathroom door closing, she covered her face with both hands. She’d just plastered herself to a demon—and had liked it. There was nothing about this that was good. Nothing.

Squaring her shoulders, she wiped the condensation off her bathroom mirror so she could untangle the mess her hair would surely be in without having been conditioned. She frowned at the reflection peering over her shoulder, perfectly cool, perfectly blonde. “Ah, Miss I Vant to Be Let Alone, now isn’t a good time. I’m taking a page from your book. I’m a sopping-wet, half-cleaned mess, and I’m sure you wouldn’t have been caught dead looking like this—even at your worst.” When a girl really wanted to experience low self-esteem, all she had to do was get a little visit from Ms. Garbo to set her straight. Whenever she appeared to Delaney, she was permanently the bodacious babe of her 1920s fame.

Her ruby red lips moved before the whisper of her voice flitted to Delaney’s ears, the striking clarity of her cheekbones adding to the stunning entity, paling Delaney in comparison. “
Flesh and the Devil
,” was her less than remarkable, but suggestive advice.

Delaney wrinkled her nose at Greta. It’d taken some time to understand exactly what her otherworldly celebrity clientele were trying to tell her, but once she’d figured out they all spoke in reference to their famed movies, it had made conversations much easier to participate in. What Greta was suggesting was—was—gasp worthy. There’d be no getting a freak on with Clyde just for the pure pleasure of freaking. “You bet your silent movie bippy he’s the flesh of the devil. And I know exactly what you’re thinking when you suggest such a thing, you risqué broad. No. Absolutely not. I work for the other side. There’ll be no hanky-panky with his flesh—especially because it’s from the devil’s.”

Her thin, pencil-rounded eyebrow arched in mockery. “
The Kiss
.”

Okay. So there was that. It had been a stellar kiss even though the reasons for it were hardly based on anything more than necessity. “Guilty. It was fantabulous—he’s a consummate kisser, okay? Now quit making me feel worse than I already do, and while you’re at it, take your perfect size zero butt outta here. I can’t concentrate when you’re all looming over my shoulder being so coolly blonde and breathtakingly gorgeous.”

Greta smiled with warmth and sympathy, winking an eyeliner rimmed eye at Delaney before she faded.

A grip she hadn’t even realized she had on her sink tightened, then released, leaving the muscles in her hands jittery. She dried her hair, dragging a brush through it, fuming the entire way right up until she yanked her nightgown down from the hook on the back of the door.

Her behavior had been appalling, she acknowledged, reaching for the bathroom doorknob. But that was all going to change right now.

Clyde was on her bed, a pile of puppies surrounding him, wearing her pink bathrobe.

“If this keeps up, you’re going to owe me a trip to the bathrobe store,” she remarked before picking her discarded sweater off the floor and pulling it over her head.

“If this keeps up, I’m hoping we’ll find something that’s more suitable to my coloring,” he joked.

Laughter burst from her lips while weariness implored her to just give in. “Look, Clyde. I’m ass fried from our shenanigans. I don’t know that I believe your story, but if I’m honest, I will admit to having reservations about disbelieving you, too. I don’t know why, I just do. Don’t screw that up. We’re precarious here, you and I. We’re teetering on the brink.”

His whole face relaxed, the small lines around his mouth easing. “Jesus. That took long enough. If you’ll just look at this with some logic—”

Delaney scowled. “There is no logic to this. If I’ve learned nothing else since this ghost chat gig happened, I’ve learned there is no rhyme or reason to the spiritual world. If what you say is true and you can’t keep yourself from ending up back here, I’d have to wonder if Lucifer didn’t put some kind of binding magic to this assignment, so that you’d have no choice but to stay glued to my side. Or, if you’re telling the truth, so that Clyve would stay glued to my side like a thorn in my ass. But I’m too tired to care right now, and I’m too tired to explain binding. So you can sleep on the couch for tonight, and tomorrow I’ll try to figure this out. But by no means is this, in any way, shape, or form, me conceding total belief in you or your cockamamie story. I reserve the right to take it back and nail you, balls to the wall, with my prism if I have even the remotest hint you’re full of shit. Got that? You win the first round for wearing me to a frazzle—so take my bathrobe and just let me get some sleep. No arguments, no discussions. Deal?”

He clamped his delish lips closed for a moment, but no sooner had he done that than he opened them back up again. “Will I fit on the couch? It’s pretty small.”

“Will you find a couch, small or not, on that plane you keep ending up on?”

“Point.”

“But remember, I’m keeping my prism under my pillow and a box of salt under the covers. Don’t frig with the medium. Now, good night, Clyde.”

He rose from the bed, moving with caution around the side of it to avoid stubbing another toe. His face held a thousand unanswered questions, but for the first time since she’d met him, he appeared to find his shutoff valve. “Good night, Delaney.” Clyde turned on his heel, the width of his pink back disappearing out of her bedroom door when he pulled it closed behind him.

Dogs one through six sniffed the air, noting Clyde’s departure, and then the pitiful whine began. A whirring sort of hum peppered with the occasional yip.

They defected off the end of the bed, jumping like lemmings at the edge of a cliff, and headed straight for the door Clyde had just exited.

Dog number three, not known for her social skills, scratched beneath the gap of the door. Dog number six, using the one good front paw he had, joined her. “Heeeyyyy!” she whispered on a hush, kneeling down alongside her faithless pack, all lumped on top of one another in a ball of fur and whimpers. “You’re shitting me, you bunch of traitors. Is he the one who feeds you? Is he the one who cleans your puke up after you’ve snarfed down one of those damned rawhide bones like you’re rabid? Most importantly, did he save your asses from the guillotine? You’d all be kaput if not for me. I can’t even believe this is happening. What if he
is
a demon? Then where will ya be? Do you suppose old Clyde there is going to change your diaper?” she asked her BeDazzled canine. Her gaze turned to dog number three. “And if you think you have phobias now, miss, hah! Just you wait until Lucifer makes you his lapdog.”

A low growl, menacing and distinct, sounded behind her. Her head whipped around in surprise as her dearly departed Rottweiler appeared from thin air. “Darwin. Finally, the voice of reason,” she said with a welcoming smile. “How are ya, pal?”

But he growled up at her again, his large jaw quivering. In life, Darwin hadn’t been very intimidating. In fact, the guard dog she’d hoped would defend her with a snarling, drooling intimidation factor to the
n
th degree was more likely to slather your face with his unbridled affection.

Confused, and knowing she couldn’t touch him, instinct still made her hold out her hand to him anyway, but Darwin snapped his deadly jaws with a sharp chomp and eyeballed the bedroom door. He blatantly ignored her hand, pushing his transparent, sleek, black bulk to the forefront of the pack, joining the rest of the clan as if he was still of this plane.

Her gasp of surprise was hard to conceal. “Noooo, not you, too!” she groaned. “Are you out of your gourd, Darwin? What kind of loyal companion are you? Even dead you’re still a candy-ass, huh? I’m not a little ashamed to tell you all, this—is—bullshit!”

The dogs’ scratching grew to a fevered pace, paws digging madly, their cries of desperation rising to a desperate pitch.

So there was nothing left to do with the little bastards.

With a cluck of her tongue so they’d hear her disgust, though clearly they cared little, she popped open the door.

In a massive collection of fur and riotous barking, they fled like they’d just been released from a puppy mill. She heard the customary “Oomph” from Clyde as she supposed they’d hurled themselves up and onto his stomach with the excitement once reserved for only her.

“You all suck!” she yelled out the door, slamming it with a satisfying thunk.

Clyde’s laughter trickled to her ears, amused and just a little neener, neener, neener thrown in to prove his “I’m not supposed to be in Hell” point.

Fine.

He’d find out what Hell was all about tomorrow in the morning when he had to keep all six dogs from eating each other’s poop.

eight

“Dellllaaaney?” someone singsonged her name while trailing a finger over the shell of her ear.

She waved a hand in the air to ward off whomever was ruining the bliss she’d finally found once she’d gotten over the epic betrayal her dogs had doled out last night. “Go away.”

“But I made tea. I’m not sure if all the stuff floating around in it is supposed to be floating because I don’t remember floaties when you make it, but it smells like the stuff you make. And it’s the effort that counts, right?”

Marcella. It was Marcella and she’d made tea.

Wait, she needed to run that past her demon-fried brain again. Marcella had made tea. Like, touched the stove. Omigod, that meant the world was coming to an end or her kitchen was torched. “It’s the
thought
that counts and you made tea? For me?” To hide her surprise would be a feat likened to the second coming.

“Who else would I make this stuff for?”

“You touched the stove? Oh, shit. I’m afraid to open my eyes. So which is it? Is my kitchen blackened Cajun style or did the world as we know it end last night?”

She clucked her tongue. “You’re such a pessimist. No, the world didn’t end, and yes, I touched the stove. Why can’t a BFF make tea for her BFF?”

Delaney pried her eyes open to find Marcella sitting beside her on the bed, her long legs crossed as she examined her fingernails, her glossy black hair sleeked back behind her ears. “Why would you?”

“Because I figured you needed it.”

Yeah. Yesterday had been a butt licker. She could definitely use some tea to soothe her weary soul. But Marcella had no idea yesterday had sucked big, fat hooters after she’d gone home. None. Marcella had no idea that Clyde had worn her to a frazzle until she’d finally given in and agreed to try to help him. She had no idea that Satan wanted to ruin her, and she wouldn’t if Delaney could keep her out of it. And as a final act of utter humiliation, Marcella had no idea her dogs had gone to the demon side, either. “Marcella?” She spoke her name with the greatest of hesitance.