Save My Soul (27 page)

Her whimper was answered by a rumbling chuckle. They fit together perfectly. The part of her brain that would have reminded her he was a shapeshifter, and perfect fits weren’t shocking, had shut off.

Water sloshed over the sides of the tub as she rode him more aggressively, finding a rhythm. He seemed content to let her pick the pace, not pushing, just quietly urging her on with pleased little growls that set off a series of aroused flips in her stomach.

As they made love, she wasn’t sure if certain images or feelings were actually happening or were just in her mind. Emotions and tactile sensations blended together until it was hard to separate reality from fantasy.

As soon as her orgasm started to build, he began to feed. She couldn’t stop the soft sighs and moans and vowed she’d share this man with anyone as long as he didn’t stop touching her.

Anna convulsed around him as he kissed and nibbled the side of her exposed neck. When she slumped, boneless, he lifted her into his arms and carried her out of the tub.

“Luc,” she whispered, feeling a little drunk.

“I’m not finished with you yet.” He pulled her down to the floor, so she was on top, straddling him, her hands gripping the furry white rug beneath them.

“Come for me again.”

“I can’t. I just . . . ”

He didn’t have to say anything else; the look in his eyes was enough. She nodded and started moving again. Anna wasn’t sure where this sudden stamina came from. She was a one orgasm per visit kind of girl and had never understood women who could have four or five in a row. Still, she kept going, and that’s when she figured out what the fuss was all about.

A second orgasm built, this one from the inside. Then she felt Luc let himself go, feeding fully now. The tiny tugs suffused her entire body with a pleasant, tingling warmth. If he’d asked for her soul right then, she would have gladly gift-wrapped it for him, too lost in sensation to be able to think past what he was doing to her. She felt as if she were floating when she came again.

***

Sun filtered through the windows, but the warmth Anna felt came from the male body pressed to hers. He’d pulled her up against him in sleep as if unwilling to ever let her go, his arms wrapped around her in a vice. She couldn’t decide if the feeling was comforting or claustrophobic, but settled on the former.

She’d secretly feared the reality of an empty bed at sunrise. How could she feel like anything but his whore if she didn’t wake with him beside her? She knew he didn’t sleep overnight with the harem and wondered what else would be different between them.

As she contemplated this, she realized she hadn’t dreamed.

Well, she’d dreamed. Something about a circus monkey and needing to find Monopoly money so she could buy bananas from a corner grocer with a Haitian accent. But she hadn’t had one of the surround-sound fully lucid but can’t control anything or wake up kind of dreams she’d had every night since Luc had formed the bond with her. She felt him tense.

“Anna, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . ”

She racked her brain to figure out what it was he didn’t mean to do. Then she remembered she hadn’t been there for the afterglow because she’d passed out. The sex had been great, really great. It had been Anna, you’re so stupid you could have been doing this for over a week now great. But somehow she doubted that was why she’d fainted.

“I took too much,” he said, confirming her suspicions.

Anna rolled to face him, surprised by the pain and guilt in his eyes, and even more surprised that she wasn’t at all freaked out that she could have died. So maybe she trusted him a little. She ran her fingers through his bed-tousled hair. “It’s okay. You stopped.”

Luc climbed out of the bed and went to put his jeans back on. Her eyes hungrily drank him in as she watched, causing her to wonder if sex with an incubus had addictive properties.

Finally, he turned back to her. “No. It’s not okay. I haven’t lost control like that for a long time. If you had been hurt . . . ”

For once, Anna was unconcerned with her nudity as she moved to embrace him. Luc’s arms went around her, clutching her.

“Maybe it was the spell,” she said. “Maybe it took too much out of both of us. Next time it’ll be different.” She’d officially lost her self-preservation instinct. She was already thinking ahead to next time .

He pulled away. “I just wish you would give me . . . ”

“No.” She’d never give him her soul. Trusting him enough to share his bed wasn’t even in the same league as that type of request.

He growled. “Fine. What are we going to do about getting me out of the house?”

The subject change gave her emotional whiplash, and she tried not to feel hurt that he was already concerned with how to get away from her. “I don’t know.”

The demon was scrutinizing her now, and the nudity that hadn’t mattered five seconds before was becoming increasingly problematic. Anna opened a drawer and pulled out the first jeans and t-shirt her hands could close around.

She struggled to cover herself and glared at him. His gaze never wavered from her body. He could at least look away. Yeah, just like you didn’t stare at his ass while he was putting his jeans on two minutes ago.

“You know you’re going to have to burn it down. We’ve tried everything else.”

“If I do, are you going to leave me?” She knew she sounded needy, like she had to keep a man locked in her house for him to want to be with her.

Luc’s eyes shot up to meet hers and narrowed. “So, you want to keep me as a pet now? Did you decide Beatrice had a good idea after all? You can have your very own sex slave. Only twice a week, but it’s quality not quantity, right? After all, I don’t even have to touch you to make you come. I just have to think the right thoughts in your direction.”

“Luc, that’s not what I meant. I don’t want to keep you trapped. I just . . . you’ve been here fifty years . . . can’t you give me a few weeks to work up to the possibility that I might have to burn the house down? Maybe there’s still another way.”

Anna knew it was unlikely but she wasn’t about to set her house on fire if there was even the remotest chance she didn’t have to. She wasn’t ready to become an arsonist.

He grunted.

The phone on the bedside table rang, preventing her from obsessing about his I just have to think the right thoughts in your direction comment. What Pandora’s box had she just opened?

“Yeah?” Anna said, grateful for the interruption.

“It’s Tam. I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the coven’s behavior yesterday. They’ve never been around an incubus before. I should have prepared them better. And they could sense how much you didn’t want them there.”

“So it’s my fault?”

Tam sighed into the phone. “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

Luc leaned against her dresser, his arms crossed over his chest, making no secret of eavesdropping.

“Sorry,” Anna said. “I’m just cranky. Is that why you called?”

“Yes and no.” There was a pause on the line. “I need you to meet me at the coffee shop. There’s something I have to talk to you about.”

“There’s this wonderful invention called a telephone where you can speak to someone without them being physically present. Oh, hey look, we’re talking on one now.”

“Anna . . . ”

“You can’t just tell me?”

Another pause. “I can’t talk about it on the phone. It’s important.”

“Fine. Give me an hour to get ready.”

***

Tam was tapping her brightly-painted fingernails on the surface of the table when Anna walked into the coffee shop. Her blonde pixie cut had been sharpened into spikes with gel, and there was glitter in her hair.

When Anna reached the table, Tam shot her an irritated look. “You’re thirty minutes late. I called you at nine o’clock. You said, one hour. It has now been ninety minutes. Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Why are you late?”

Anna slid into the booth across from her friend. “I didn’t realize this was a White House luncheon. I got tied up by Luc.” She felt a mixture of indignation and flattery that it had been so hard to get him to let her leave the house. He’d been worried for her safety.

“Really? Maybe my news can wait.” Tam perched on the edge of the booth, leaning toward Anna like a scavenger waiting for her to die so she could eat.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Well, damn. I thought for a minute you might have gotten laid.”

“I did.”

Tam couldn’t reply because the waitress arrived with two chicken salad sandwiches and mochas.

“Chicken salad for breakfast?” Anna asked.

“We’re calling it brunch. It’s ten-thirty.”

Anna didn’t miss the accusation, but ignored it in favor of the sandwich. “So what was so important and mysterious you couldn’t just tell me on the phone?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. You slept with Luc. Spill.”

“It was nice. And I’ll tell you what I told the harem on my way out this morning. It’s personal. Now, once again, what was so important you had to drag me all the way down here?”

The witch had become interested in her own sandwich.

“Tam!”

“Okay, jeez. I think I know why none of the spells and rituals to get Luc out of the house have worked.”

She had Anna’s full attention now. “You mean besides the fact that we know how to break the curse, but I stubbornly refuse to do it because if I did, it would make everybody’s life so much easier, and I’ve never done anything easy?”

Tam smirked. “Yes, besides that. I hope you know I fully support you on not setting the house on fire. We need that kitchen for the business.”

Anna sat with her arms crossed and stared at Tam, not impressed with her stalling tactics.

“Fine. The coven thinks it’s possible Beatrice is still in the house.”

Anna shoved her plate to the side and dropped her head on the table. “I hate my life. So ghosts are real, too?”

“Remember, originally I thought the house was haunted? I might have been right. It’s possible both Beatrice and Luc are trapped.”

Of all the things Tam could have told her, a ghost interfering with the magic wasn’t one she’d been expecting. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t Luc know she was there? Why wouldn’t she try to be with him?”

“Just because he’s a demon doesn’t mean he senses everything. Beatrice may be keeping herself very well hidden. We felt her essence when we were doing the spell, and she may be blocking it. Or she may not even be there. It may just be residue. We’d have to do a séance to be sure.”

Séances were just another level of ick Anna didn’t want to have to go through. “I’d really rather not.”

Tam rolled her eyes. “As to your second question, she couldn’t be with him even if she wanted to. As a spirit, she’s non-corporeal. And since her soul wasn’t tied to him before she died, there’s no way they can be together.”

“Kind of like Romeo and Juliet, except where you hate Juliet and are kind of glad she got what she got?” Anna said.

“Not bitter are we?”

“Who me? Not at all. I have absolutely no rage against the psychotic witch who made my life about seventeen more levels of complicated than it ever had to be. Why doesn’t she just leave ?”

Tam shrugged. “She may still be trying to punish him. Or she could have become trapped by her own spell. And before you say she wouldn’t try to stand in the way of magic that could free her . . . you’re thinking like a person not a ghost.”

Anna had been about to say that. “Huh?”

“Ghosts become shadows of themselves. They can get trapped in a loop and repeat the same things over and over, forgetting they’re doing them. She may not realize she’s impeding the spell or she may not know she’s trapped. Either way, we need to get her out of the house before we can break the curse to get Luc out.”

“You couldn’t tell me all this on the phone because . . . ?”

“Because if she does know what she’s doing, it might piss her off to find out we’re on to her.”

To say nothing of all the women sleeping with Luc right under her nose.

“Won’t a séance give that away?”

“Yes, but we’ll put up safeguards so once we call her spirit we can bind her until we can expel her.”

Tam went back to eating her sandwich. For the first time all week, Anna wasn’t thinking about the best brands of lighter fluid. She might be able to save her house after all.

It was only a few days until the moon and planets would be in the right phase and positions. Then the coven would return. Anna and Luc had made love another six times since the first night three weeks before. He always slept in her bed, though, after showering to wash off the scent of the others.

When Luc held her at night, it kept the dreams at bay. The bond seemed satisfied as long as they were in some way connected. It didn’t matter if she dreamed about him or if his body was wrapped around hers.

She’d started sleeping naked. Luc had threatened to stop sleeping in the same bed with her if she didn’t stop tempting him with what he couldn’t have every night. But she’d persisted. He’d responded by wearing pajamas to bed.