“I’m so shocked to hear that.” When she gave him her professional smile, she wasn’t surprised to see his jaw tighten. He really didn’t like it when she used her practiced charm. Maybe that was why she liked doing it, to yank his chain. But she wasn’t going to let him get that upper hand back until her pulse was steadier.
“You have glitter dust on you, too.” She used her thumb to rub it off his chin, showed it to him. “I usually play solitaire in the afternoon. It helps me relax, get ready for the evening company, gives me the chance to go over the last- minute to-dos in my head. On Monday nights, though, we’re usually in pretty good shape. I can handle a more distracting game.”
He passed his fingers over his chin, ensuring all the dust was gone. She suppressed a smile as he put a few sparkles back on himself. They’d transferred to his hands when he touched her breast. That thought took her smile, gave her something more important to suppress.
“Unless our demon arrives and requires annihilation, I’ll make myself available for a few hands,” he said at last. “If you make it interesting for me.”
“I’m not known for boring male company.” She sniffed. “And when you annihilate that demon, stay out of my rose garden. I assume Lucifer doesn’t expense damages?”
“He usually has strings attached to any payment.”
“Don’t they all?” It made her abruptly sad, and she wasn’t sure where the feeling had come from. She was feeling too much around him. When she rotated toward the door, he touched her arm.
“Raina.”
She let him turn her back around. Those long, strong fingers stroked her throat as he put his mouth on hers, moist heat he turned into a lingering press of lips before he lifted his head, stared down at her. “Last warning. Stop retreating behind the courtesan routine.”
“I was a courtesan,” she said evenly. “Before that I was a straight-out whore. For a short time, I was a ten-buck-a-blow teenaged hooker who hung out in alleys, so messed up and hungry for sustenance I left a couple bodies behind. Now I’m a madam. I enjoy men; I enjoy sex. You have a problem with that, you can go fuck yourself. Literally.”
7
DAMN IT ALL, WHY HAD SHE GONE THERE? PIVOTING, she closed her hand on the door latch once more, not at all surprised when he clamped down on it, his body pressed up behind hers, solid and resilient. His mouth brushed the side of her throat, but not in a mean way. It was a devastating caress at the pulse point, his hands settling on her hips to hold her there as his cock, hard and ready, pushed against her ass, making her quiver.
“You were being an arrogant bully,” she muttered.
“I am a bully. But I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She sighed, closed her eyes. “I opened that door, but I really want to close it, okay?”
Waiting on his decision was hard, her fingers closing around one of his at her hip. A moment later, his forefinger slid free, curved over hers. A reprieve. “All right. For now.”
“I need to get in there,” she said, relieved. “You can come if you like. You might enjoy it.”
“Your staff at a passion party? I expect it’s like setting a hive of bees loose in a honey shop.” He paused, though, still holding her. “Watching Gina…She was acting like a child, even when she was touching you. All of them act like that, to some degree.”
“You’ve never noticed that?” She tilted her head back on his shoulder to look at him. When he shook his head, something loosened in her chest. “You’ve never hunted an immature sex demon.”
His puzzled expression confirmed it, and she let out a breath. “All of my demons are like that. They reason and react like twenty-something human adults, but emotionally, they often respond like children. It’s an odd mixture, hard to classify, but anyone familiar with sex demons can tell the difference between one who’s transitioned to maturity and one who hasn’t.”
She turned to face him fully. “The box of toys we just received? They’ll play with them all morning, and not just in sexual ways. They’ll put the vibrators in a glass of water to watch the ripples; they’ll dangle the floggers in front of the house cats like balls of string. They’re sexual creatures, but their sexuality is very innocent.”
“Like a young tiger’s ability to kill a toddler during play.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“So how do they become what I’ve hunted?”
“They’ve fed and killed enough that they move into a higher, more adult level of thinking, but at a certain maturity level, a sex demon becomes more dangerous, savage. It’s harder to keep the energy lust from taking over, eclipsing all morality.”
Mikhael’s gaze turned to the window, through which she could see the succubi and incubi milling impatiently, waiting for her to arrive. Aiden and Ellen had been making comical faces at them through the window, but seeing his attention, they vanished behind Saul’s wide back. He and Li were arm wrestling while Ana tied ribbons around their wrists.
“Is Isaac in limbo?”
Her chin tightened, but she gave him an honest answer. “Teetering on the edge.” Not there yet, but close.
“Can it be stopped, for any of them? Doesn’t everything grow and mature?”
“It’s inevitable, but discipline and experience…They can impact it in a positive direction, with the right influences.”
“What I felt last night”—he tugged her closer with the robe tie—“was a fully mature succubus.”
“I’m part human and all witch. It helps me manage it.” She put her hand back on the door latch, quirked a brow at him as a chorus of strident Raiiinnnnaaa calls started up in the room, Cathair adding to the discordant music. “We can talk about this later.”
Pushing open the door, she was relieved when he let her slip away. Her outburst said his presence was taking her down paths she’d abandoned long ago. She knew better than to follow those roads. Having taken those journeys before, she knew exactly where they led.
AS MIKHAEL FOLLOWED RAINA INTO THE MAIN PARLOR, Cathair was having a grand old time, shredding pink and white tissue from the shipping crate in which the box had come. Raina fussed but didn’t really stop him, taking a seat on a stool Saul pulled out for her. As she gave them permission to open the box at last, Mikhael slid onto a stool behind her and leaned back against the mahogany and brass trim of a fully stocked bar.
It was like watching a party where all the participants were the birthday guest. They crowded around the box, pulling out a variety of things, shiny objects that kept the raven’s bright eyes darting about as he hopped up and down on his perch. Clamps, restraints, a variety of vibrators. Then Luke pulled out an alarming-looking anal probe.
“Awesome. My guys will love this. Especially Mark.”
“Luke,” Raina said reprovingly. “No names, even among ourselves.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes twinkled. “But he really will.”
“I’m sure.” Raina glanced back at Mikhael with amused exasperation. It seemed their enthusiasm had restored her mood. It had startled her, that slip in her composure. What surprised him was how much seeing her rally, regain her good spirits, improved his own mood. Even as he was mulling over what she’d inadvertently revealed to him.
“Would you like to give the anal probe a try, Mikhael?”
He met her devilish gaze. “Only if you bend over.”
“You got the nipple jewelry we liked!”
He was sure she said something uncomplimentary to him, but it was lost in the multiple exclamations that followed Catalina’s squeal of delight. She and Ana pulled out a thick handful of sparkling chains like Mardi Gras beads. Without hesitation, the females shed their tops and began modeling for one another, treating him and everyone else in the room to a panorama of breasts embellished by a variety of nipple treatments. Ellen put a clamp on one nipple, then ran the chain to a second clamp on Ana’s pert nipple. When two more pairs of the other girls did the same, along with one coed partnership of Li and Catalina, they raced one another across the room, like a bizarre three-legged race. Then they crisscrossed them, mixed colors and styles of chains and clamps.
Isaac was staring down at Isabella, bemused as she tugged off his shirt and put a set on him. Seeing his confusion, she laughed and curled her slim hand in the chain, tugging gently to test the pleasure-pain quotient until he kissed her. Smiling against his mouth, she drew him down, rolled over the floor and pinned him, like a couple of puppies.
More things were pulled out of the box. Li chased Gina with the flogger, twirling it over his head like a lasso, threatening to put her over his knee, while Ana and Min experimented with the dual-headed vibrator. They’d stripped off their jeans and the thong panties beneath to get in a Twister-like contortion on the floor, legs scissored together.
A miasma of sex demon energy was soon swirling through the room, such that Cathair was looking a bit dazed. When Raina took him to the door on her arm and set him aloft, his flight path was a drunken zigzag. She made sure he arrived safely in the branches of one of the live oaks, then left the doors open to the fresh air, mixing with the fragrance of pleasure.