Wicked Release (15 page)

His own global therapy session. That fact tickled him to no end.

His online world was, for the most part, a recreation of one of the darker times of his life, when he was flung from his normal existence and tossed into a testing ground where time and space kept changing, and only sin remained. Demon trials. He supposed it was an evil version of finishing school. And it had
not
been pleasant. Luckily the humans couldn’t seem to get enough. And through their experiences, he’d made a modicum of peace with it as well…with a little help.

If he hadn’t come across Mac, how long had it been, a hundred years ago?—then he may have been lost to temptation. It was Mac who showed him he didn’t have to fall prey to either side of his family tree. He had a choice. He could take his own path.

And then, much later, Thomas had come along and the two roommates had given Saint a feeling of family he’d never had before. He owed them. Which was why he’d helped Thomas with Margo. She was one classy number, perfect for his cat-shifting friend.

Hell, between the three of their sorry, supernatural asses, one of them deserved to be loved. The errant thought made him gag. He
wasn’t
a romantic. He was the devil’s imp. He needed to do something bad to make himself feel better.

He heard the floor creak and smiled. An opportunity. “For a wolf you’re acting a lot like a nervous Chihuahua, Liam. I was wondering if you were going to chase your tail in the lobby all night.”

When no quick response was forthcoming, Saint turned around and grimaced. Liam wasn’t holding up that well. “I heard it was worse for canine shifters, but I had no idea. You’ve got it bad, don’t you, puppy?”

Liam bared his teeth, but Saint knew it was more frustration than threat. He could sense the repressed desires inside him. And he knew exactly what the shifter wanted.

Julie Wu.

She’d been a contestant on
Shifting Reality
’s big finale, brought to the castle in Scotland to meet the “cast” along with Margo and a few other fanatical humans. Liam had agreed to play cameraman, but as soon as he’d seen the petite Asian beauty he’d been worthless. Apparently he still was.

Liam nodded, his jaw clenching. “I need your brand of help, Saint.”

Saint raised an eyebrow, inwardly baffled. “
My
brand of help? Why don’t you sniff her out with your super snout? Or look in Thomas’s computer. He has all the personal info and addresses of the contestants. Better yet—” he smirked, “—read one of her dirty books. That might give you a little insight into how to sweep gun-shy Julie off her feet.”

Liam started to pace—his large, muscled body rippling with repressed power. “I can’t. She’s so fucking small, so fragile, and I don’t trust myself. I just need to know where she is right now, if she’s okay. What, or
if
, she thinks about me. Please, Saint. You did it for Thomas. And I’ll owe you one.”

Saint sighed. “Matchmaking? Well, it is something to do. Not the something I wanted of course. And you
will
owe me. I’m not a damned Cupid. Those morons act like they have velvet-tipped arrows up their tutus.”

Even as he said it he reached into the pocket of his jacket for the Blackberry, his fingers caressing the screen and connecting. This was his gift. All demons could read inner desires, and there were a few species he could sense that traveled the spidery trail the way he did, but he liked to think no one did it better.

He could connect to any technology, move through the numbers and codes and find whatever and whomever he wanted in a heartbeat. The rush of it was exhilarating. When he was connected, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

“She’s in San Francisco. She purchased groceries about an hour ago, her cell GPS had her on the move, not toward home, somewhere else.” Saint chuckled. “On a side note, if her recent online purchases are anything to go by, you’ll have your hands full when you finally do get up the nerve to find her.”

Liam moved closer. “Why? What do you see?”

“Toys. She’s purchased a lot of sex toys in the last month, no handcuffs or cock rings though, so I think it’s all for…personal use. As in solo. Or research. But man, that one personal massager is hu—”

“You said groceries? But she didn’t take them home?” The wolf shifter interrupted him, frazzled and flushed, and Saint knew he needed to stop torturing the poor dog before he lost all his control.

“Chill out. Give me a minute. She just linked her cell to someone else’s computer. Downloading pictures.” Saint snorted. “Why do people always think babies are cute? Nothing but baldheaded monsters without teeth that spit foul acid from every orifice. Not my idea of cuddly.” He tensed. “Wait a second. I can see them.”

“Them?”

Them
. Two women, their foreheads bumping together as they laughed and oohed and aahed over the images appearing on the laptop screen. Julie Wu was there, smiling easily, her mind pushing aside its usual turmoil and insecurity for this one special moment with family. Her family. Her cousin Ume.

Ume, the woman beside her with the big, dark, bottomless eyes and exquisite features. Her fingertips slid over the pad, moving the cursor, and Saint swore he could feel the touch to his cock.

“
Fuck
.”

Liam growled. “What? Who’s with her? Is someone hurting her? Tell me.”

Saint couldn’t speak. He had connected. This was
her
computer. Her life. And he was being inundated with information. Ume, who lived alone. Ume who was a half-breed, like him. Born to a Chinese father and Japanese mother.

In a flash he knew where she went to school, that her inheritance from her mother’s side ensured she would never have to work, but she always had anyway. She’d even started several charities and relief funds in her deceased mother’s name.

Before the accident
. An accident followed by a slew of painful surgeries. Saint had a sudden, uncontrollable desire to kill everyone who’d caused her pain. The man who’d been driving drunk. The surgeon who had operated. Everyone. To torture them slowly until they screamed and begged for mercy. Begged for death.

Damn, he could feel her fingertips again. They soothed him. Aroused him. Made him crazy. He scrolled through pictures of her. She loved to dance. She climbed mountains. She surfed. She was taller than her cousins, her body lean and muscled, her skin golden. Her lips were full and always smiling. Or they had been.

There was something about her. In her eyes. Something…special.

A frenzied growl brought him back to himself, reminding him he wasn’t alone. He broke the connection, instantly feeling the loss. What the hell was going on?

Liam was shifting, changing into his beast. Shit. Saint held up his hand and sent a wave of seductive serenity, pulling the wolf back from the brink. “Julie isn’t hurt, big guy. And she’s not with a lover. She’s visiting her cousin. Relax.”

The larger man took deep breaths, reining his animal in once more, then met Saint’s gaze. “If nothing is wrong, why did your eyes turn red?”

They had? He knew it was true. Could feel the restlessness in him now focused, homing in on its prey. Poor little prey.

Saint smiled. “I’m going to help you, my shaggy friend. Help you control yourself. Be your Cyrano. The voice in your head that knows all the right words to say.”

Liam’s expression was a humorous mix of hopeful and wary. “Why? What do you want in return?”

He shrugged. “Can’t a demon do something selfless? Out of the goodness of his heart?”

“Not usually.”

“Do you care?” Saint stalked toward the shifter, his voice lowering hypnotically. “Does it matter what price is paid to win the heart of your mate? And she is your mate, Liam. You know it. I know it. What wouldn’t you do to make her yours?”

Saint knew the instant he’d won him over. Liam would do exactly what he said. Shifters were decidedly passionate about their mating habits. A trait that made him malleable to the whims of a hungry demon. He wasn’t sure who this Ume was, or why he was so drawn to her, but he would figure her out soon enough.

It was time to play.

“I can’t believe James and Cindy are pregnant again. Jinny is only one year old. Are they trying to start a baseball team?”

Ume heard Julie snort from the kitchen where she was making tea. “It does look like that doesn’t it? Still, if I’m going to be a spinster aunt, my brother and his wife have made sure I’ll have enough nieces and nephews to distract me in my old age.”

“Jules, all the children your brothers and sisters keep having aren’t a distraction. They’re an army.”

The Wu clan had always been known for having large families. Julie was one of seven children, and her father and Ume’s had been a set of twins, the oldest of nine children themselves. Ume was the only one her parents had had. Though since her father had moved back to China and remarried, he’d given her four half-brothers.

Not that she heard from him much. She supposed it was because she reminded him of her mother, his Japanese-American bride. The one who’d made him a young widower by dying of a brain aneurysm a few days before Ume’s sixteenth birthday.

She looked over at Julie from the daybed she was confined to, as usual. At least he’d left her with family. Her cousins, especially Julie, had been her angels. They treated her like another sibling, teasing and harassing her and becoming completely tangled in her life. She loved it. She loved them.

But she hated being a burden.

Three years of this. Three years of being waited on. Of looking up at people from hospital beds and couches. No dancing, no running. Just resting and physical therapy. It was enough to drive a normal person crazy. But Ume knew she wasn’t normal. At least, that’s what her mother had always told her.

Special Ume, plum blossom, meant for greatness. Ume looked down at her slender, pale legs and laughed sourly. What greatness could she achieve locked away from the sunlight? From life?

“Oh, I know that face.” Julie plopped her tiny body down beside Ume’s long legs with a sigh. She set the tray of tea and snacks down on the table alongside the daybed and looked at her cousin. “Keep that pout going and I won’t tell you my news.”

Ume dragged herself out of her private pity party and lifted an eyebrow. “What kind of news? Were these baby pictures smoothing the way? Did more happen in Scotland than just dirty inspiration?”

Julie blushed and pushed on Ume’s shoulder playfully. “Ha ha. No babies. But it does have a little to do with my inspiration. My last ebook just became the bestselling paranormal romance of the year. My editor tells me its breaking sales records left and right.”

Ume squealed and Julie blushed deeper, looking down at her hands. Ume rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that good little daughter expression. You deserve to be proud. If your parents didn’t have to be kept in the dark about what you do for a living, I’d shout it from the rooftops. Luckily for you, neither one of them knows how to use a cell phone, let alone a computer.”

Julie giggled. “Which is one of the main reasons I decided to write online.” She glanced up at Ume through her lashes. “It
is
exciting.”

Ume nodded forcefully. “Yes. It is. And just think, all of this because of your secret obsession with those online webisodes. Now that I’ve read your story, I really wish you’d tell me more about your time up there. I mean, the parts I wasn’t watching live, of course. Did you ever find out how they did it?”

Julie’s brow wrinkled. “How they did what?”

“All those special effects.” Ume waved her hand expressively. “The ghosts, the strange goings on. How did they do all that live?”

“They’re real, Ume. That’s how they did it. I told you that.”

Julie sounded so confident, so certain, that Ume didn’t laugh—though she didn’t,
couldn’t
believe. There lay a slippery slope, believing that magic was real. A slope her mother had fallen down long before her death.

Julie seemed to have a similar imagination, but she’d made a career out of hers. The hardest part was Ume wanted to believe it too. Wasn’t that why
she’d
become obsessed with that ridiculous game around the same time Julie had started watching
Shifting Reality
?

Julie was still studying her. Waiting for her reaction. “So what you’re saying is, that werewolf in your story is real? Cause he was
hot
.”

Her cousin stood so quickly she almost spilled the drinks in front of her. “You’re changing the subject. But, yes. He’s real too.”

There was something in Julie’s voice. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Julie shrugged, her smile not quite disguising the regret in her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell. Because I wasn’t brave enough to take what I wanted. Story of my life.”

Ume reached for her cousin’s hand, her heart aching at her words. “Jules, don’t say that. I’ve never known anyone braver than you. You put yourself out there every day. You wanted to write, and you succeeded. You flew to Scotland to be on camera, having no idea what you were letting yourself in for.” She smiled charmingly. “And you’re the only one who can deal with me when I get all maudlin and bitter. If you’re not brave I don’t know who is.”

Julie squeezed her hand. “You are, Ume. If you’d been there, if you’d seen the man you wanted, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You would’ve jumped in with both feet and never looked back.”

Ume’s smile wavered. “Yeah. Look where that got me.”

She thought about Julie’s last abusive relationship, the controlling man who’d convinced her family he was the perfect suitor. And Ume had had her own brush with a wild, uncontrollable hellion who loved to drink more than anything. Including her. Ume may have deserved her fate for being so reckless, but Julie didn’t. She deserved to have someone love her passionately. Someone who didn’t want to change her.

Too bad the world was full of jackasses.

A few hours later, she leaned back against her pillows, emotionally worn out. Werewolf or not, it was obvious Julie had feelings about a man she didn’t believe she could have. Ume’s protective instincts had come out full force. If she knew where he lived she would drag him to her cousin’s house herself, and wrap him up for her in a neat little bow, shifter or not.