Satan (12 page)

“Oooh. Look. It’s snowing again.” Wooden salad bowl in her hands she stared out the window, her expression both dazed and entranced. “Can we step outside after we eat? Just for a few moments?”

Nothing, not a single tear-wringing movie, story, or ad could’ve been more adorable than Angel at that moment. Her blue eyes had gone all wide, dreamy, and glowing. The rapt expression on her face beguiled him.

She whirled around, caught him gawking, scuffed her bare toes on the tile, and ducked her chin. “Guess you don’t get excited about a stupid snowfall.”

“I would if it was the first time I saw snow falling. I’ll do you one better. We’ll go for a ride on my snowmobile after we eat.”

“No way! Omigosh. This is soooooo exciting.” She bobbed from one foot to the other, her excitement and delight both palpable and contagious.

“How come you’ve never seen snow falling?” The microwave dinged, he opened the door, retrieved the steaming rice, and placed the bowl next to the stove. When he checked, she was at the table tossing the salad, half her attention on the lettuce, and half on the flakes drifting to the white mounds carpeting the deck.

She shrugged. “We went on holiday during school summer vacations. My father preferred cruises of either the Caribbean and South America, or the Mediterranean. I went to the University of Miami after high school and then I went back to Trinidad. No snow there. I’ve sort of had my shoulder to the grind since I graduated college and been super-focused on my career.

“When my nonna died two years ago, she left me a letter telling me to take the time to smell the roses. That was when I went to Europe. When I was there, I saw the Alps. You know the whole cable car tourist thing. Since that trip, I really haven’t had the desire to travel.”

Satan heard the regret in her tone and knew she was thinking about her parents’ murders. He opted for a conversational topic change. “Did you try Rösti and Cervelat?”

“I don’t even know what those are?” She crinkled her nose.

“Rösti’s the Swiss equivalent of hash browns. Cervealt is a frankfurter-like sausage popular in Switzerland.” He spooned the basmati onto her plate.

“Oh. I saw the Alps in France. Never been to Switzerland.”

The oven timer went off just as he finished piling rice on their dishes.

“I’ll get the rolls.” She dumped the salad tongs, strode to the oven, reached for a pair of black oven mitts and donned them before opening the door. “O.M.G. These smell so good.”

“They are. I hope they’re the jalapeno ones. Those are incredible.” He lifted the lid off the pot and salivated when the tasty, tangled aromas of cinnamon, garlic, ginger, and gamey lamb hit his nose.

“All of a sudden, I’m famished.” She popped the tray out of the oven, hipped the door shut, and placed the tray on a burner. “Shall I put them back into the basket?”

“Sounds good.” He set the lid handle-down on the counter, ladled the fragrant stew over the long grains, and carried two deep bowls to the table.

She ambled over to his side, positioned the basket in the middle of the table, and arranged two pairs of knives and forks on the green-olive patterned placemat. The lighter auburn strands of her curls took on a golden hue when she bent and reached for a couple of napkins from the ceramic holder. She moved with a lithe grace making the simple act of stretching appear both sensuous and lissome.

He enjoyed even the smallest of her habits especially how she absently rubbed her big toe up and down the length of her other foot and tapped the corner of her mouth when puzzling through something. “A dollar.”

“What?” She whipped around to frown at him. “A dollar?”

“For your thoughts. Figured they were worth more than a penny.” He lowered a bowl to each placemat.

“Weren’t the placemats brown before?” He helped her into the high chair.

He checked out the mat. Shrugged. “The decorator must’ve switched them out.”

“Decorator?” Her brows jackknifed and her eyes went wide.

He repressed a smile, dropped a kiss on her ear, and sat. “I had the master bedroom redone today.”

She gave a tiny headshake and stared at him slack-jawed. “Today? On Christmas Eve? Why?”

“Figured you wouldn’t relish sleeping four nights in my grandmother’s clutter.” He curved his hand around the wine glass. “Shall we toast?”

“I guess.” She picked up her glass. “That must’ve cost a fortune, Satan. You didn’t have to do that just for me.”

“I should’ve done it before I moved in, but I hadn’t planned on living here for long. To four days of monkey sex and fun.” He had intended to toast new beginnings, but she had gone all serious and remote about him redecorating, and knew it was time to return to their light bantering.

Her saucy grin reappeared. She clinked his glass. “To four days of glorious monkey sex and fun. We’re sure off to a fantabulous start.”

She sipped the wine. “Very nice. I like.”

He liked her. Plain and simple. His hold on the goblet tightened at the unexpected recognition. To cover his surprise he exaggerated the classic wine tasting steps, held the crystal up to the light, and swirled the scarlet liquid. He brought the rim to his nose, inhaled, slugged the merlot, and swallowed. “Agreed. Nice depth to it. Did you bring a ski jacket?”

“No. I don’t own one. This is my first winter. I just have the one coat that I was wearing before. Does that mean our snowmobile ride’s out?” Dismay laced her question.

He hated having to cause her disappointment. “For tonight, yes. You’d be drenched, and we don’t want you catching a cold.”

“Oh well. Not the end of the world. We can still go outside, though right?” She picked up her knife and fork and thoroughly mixed the stew and the rice.

He assessed a few alternatives and came up with a substitute certain to please his Angel. “Tell you what. Sinner, my buddy and partner, and Destiny’s husband, has a sleigh. I’ll borrow it tomorrow, and we can go for a sleigh ride. Destiny will loan you one of her jackets. The day after we’ll buy you a ski jacket and some waterproof pants and do the snowmobile thing. Sound good?”

Her cutlery clanged onto the table. She flung her arms around his neck and peppered his mouth and cheeks with kisses. She froze, drew back, and a frown formed on her forehead. “But, where will we get the horses?”

Dazzled by those few moments of her brilliant, radiant happiness, he had to concentrate to answer her question. “It’s motorized. No horses necessary.”

“Oh.” She blinked and her hands returned to the knife and fork. “I didn’t realize such a thing existed.”

“They don’t commercially. Sinner and his brothers built one.”

“No, kidding? They must really be into Christmas.”

Satan tried to remember the current count of Sinner’s nieces and nephews and gave up. “Trust me, they are. Still want to go sans horses?”

“You bet. It’ll be fun, I’m sure. And a sleigh ride wasn’t even on my winter to do list.”

Satan decided right there and then to scour the depths of Long Island until he found a horse-drawn sleigh. “What else is on that list?”

“Ice-skating, skiing, making a snowman, having a snowball fight.” She punctuated each activity with a wave of her knife. “I know I sound like a kid in a toy store.”

“You sound like someone who’s determined to fully experience winter. Crap. I just realized this must’ve been your first fall. It was, wasn’t it?” He’d have relished taking her to Vermont, walking through the forests together, and seeing the brilliant fall colors through her eyes.

“It was. Jess and I took a long drive upstate. We had lunch at a charming country inn and I trashed all the piled up leaves. When no one was looking, of course.” She forked another pile of stew into her mouth, lowered her lids, and moaned.

His dick hardened, and he had the insane compulsion to lift her over him and drive into her hot pussy.

She finished chewing and opened her eyes. “Omigod. I have to get Destiny a thank you present. This is awesome. I love the contrast between the sweetness of the cinnamon, the pungency of the cumin, and the heat of the peppers.”

He couldn’t drag his stare away from her. “Are you sore?”

“What?” Her lashes fluttered at him.

“Is your pussy sore?”

“No.” She fixed her focus on his tented sweats, dropped her knife, and snapped her fingers. “Just like that? You’re ready again?”

“What you do to me, Angel. You like giving head?” He ate with mechanic precision, aware of the delicious taste of the stew, but not really relishing the different flavors.

“Well.” She lifted her glass and took a swig of wine. “Poetic, you’re not. There’s only one way you’re going to find out, mister. Keep up this version of sweet talk and I just may have to drive back to the city. Why do you want to know on both counts anyways?”

“I want to make love to you tomorrow morning, but I won’t if you’re sore. The other question was pure selfishness on my part.”

A crucial tactical error. He back pedaled by changing strategy, and bent down to retrieve the gift bag he’d placed at the table’s foot before they decorated the tree.

Surprised when he glimpsed his phone lying on the tile, he frowned, picked it up, and slid it into his sweats’ side pocket. He handed the Santa-themed bag to Angel. “My bad. Thinking with my dick. How about I make it up by reading you whatever you want from this?”

She hesitated, but accepted the sack, dug inside, and retrieved his rare edition of Bryon’s major works. “It’s beautiful. And the paper’s onionskin. It’s a wonderful gesture, Satan, but I can’t accept this. I will, however, take you up on reading my choice of his work.”

“I want you to have it—”

She silenced him by planting two fingers on his mouth. “No argument, okay? I won’t change my mind on this.”

He had a hunch her stubbornness rivaled his. He nodded.

“Now. Can we finish this tasty stew before it congeals?” She reclaimed her cutlery.

“Yep.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then she slapped a hand to her forehead. “Damn it.”

He chewed fast and swallowed. “What’s wrong?”

“We forgot the salad.” She gestured to the wooden bowl.

“I like my salad after the entrée, but feel free.” He hadn’t expected her to reject the gift. Protest the flamboyancy and value of the book maybe, but not her obdurate refusal of the present.

According to Jess, she came from a wealthy background, but had sunk a good part of her inheritance into the foundation, Haven. With her stunning looks, she must’ve been showered with elaborate, come-fuck-me enticements. Why would she be so adamant about not accepting the book?

“Oh yum. I love Rocket salads.” She dished a portion of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, pine nuts, and parmesan onto a corner of her plate.

“Rocket?” He glanced at her.

“You call it Arugula. It’s Rocket in the U.K. Even though we’re American in terms of business practices, we Trinis use a lot of English terminology. You know, like aluminium versus your aluminum. We spell favor and color with a u, and plow is P-L-O-U-G-H. That kind of stuff. Course it doesn’t help that we also bastardize the pronunciation of many words. I always demonstrate that point by saying Trinis put the emph-fa-sis on the wrong syl-la-ble.”

He chuckled. “That’s cute to the point of being sickeningly cute.”

“My mispronunciations used to embarrass me to death, but one of my college friends thought it was funny, and she made that up. I ‘take in front’ with it when I have to speak to an audience—sorry didn’t mean to chatter on.” She gulped down the rest of her wine, shoved a clump of lettuce leaves into her mouth, chewed, and concentrated on the view from the picture window. “The snow’s stopped falling.”

Puzzled at the color washing over her face and her abrupt change of topic, he shot the deck a quick glance and refocused on her. He noted the slight tremble in the fingers holding her fork, a few beads of sweat above her upper lip, and the careful way she focused on her plate.

What the hell had she let slip to make her so obviously guilt-ridden?

“I’m stuffed.” She patted her stomach. “That was an amazing meal. It was too more-ish, and I just couldn’t get the stew to rice ratio right. Lordy, I think macowell syndrome’s setting in.”

Angel repressed a relieved sigh when Satan frowned and looked at her as if she had gone totally loco. Her declaration was meant to distract him from her blunder not moments earlier and it worked. She had almost blurted out her occupation in a roundabout way.

She had to keep her guard up, but it was becoming more and more impossible to be anything but relaxed with him. And even worse, she yearned to tell him the truth. Self-disgust swamped her. She so dreaded his anger and contempt when he discovered she was a talk-show host, the third most detestable occupation on his worst list.

“More Trini words? More-ish? Stew to rice ratio? Macowell syndrome?” He refilled their wine glasses. “It’s like we don’t speak the same language.”

She gulped down a couple of large swigs in the hopes of shedding her burgeoning remorse and forced herself to concentrate on what he’d said.

“More-ish means that something’s so good you just can’t help but have more, and more, and more. Stew to rice ratio—at first I didn’t have enough rice to sop up the stew gravy, so I added more, and then I didn’t have enough gravy for the additional rice. And so on and so on.

“Macowell syndrome is a tich more obscure. There’s a Trinidadian snake that eats its prey whole and then can’t move for two days while it digests the prey. The name of the snake is actually spelled M-A-C-A-J-U-E-L, but in another Trini mispronunciation we say macowell. So Macajuel syndrome means I’ve eaten two much and need to sleep or laze about until my food digests.”

He snort-laughed and shook his head. “How come I never encountered any of these Trini words when I was there last year?”

“Trinis are super-polite. We’d never embarrass a visitor with our colloquialisms.” She covered her mouth with her hand to hide a wide yawn.

“Still want to go for a walk?” He stood, twined her hand with his, and tugged her to her feet. “You’re looking mighty sleepy all of a sudden.”