“I took Neely last night, after I heard that Andrew had recovered.”
The hand with the Taser started rising again almost like it had a will of its own. “Then that poor bastard Adam found in the alley last night really was your former host.”
Raphael looked puzzled. “No. I’m not sure who you’re talking about, but I can guarantee no one has found my former host in an alley.”
Andy made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, and Raphael gave him a penetrating look. “No, I didn’t kill him, if that’s why you look like you swallowed a live frog.”
Andy managed to look scared and skeptical at the same time. “So there’s someone out there who knowingly summoned you to the Mortal Plain, knowingly transferred you into an illegal host, and has lived to tell the story?”
Raphael’s ice blue eyes fixed on Andy in a chilling stare. “He won’t be telling anyone anything, but not because I did him any harm. Amazingly enough, it’s possible for someone to host me for a couple of days without hating me.”
Andy’s lip curled in a sneer. “Or becoming an animated turnip?”
For someone as scared of Raphael as Andy seemed to be, he had quite an attitude, but I had the feeling I’d stepped into the middle of a long-standing feud. I figured it would do no one any good if I let the hostilities escalate, so I interrupted before Raphael could retort.
“All right,” I said, “so the vegetable Adam told me about wasn’t your former host, and you hate each other’s guts. Why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re doing here? Or is that a deep, dark secret? Because if you’re here just to pick fights with my brother, I’m going to pump you full of electricity and let him work out some of his hostilities on you.” I pointed the Taser for emphasis.
Raphael gave me an unfriendly look. “You really are a cast-iron bitch, you know?”
“Your point being?”
That drew what sounded like a reluctant laugh. He shook his head and quickly sobered. “When I returned to the Demon Realm, I told Dougal that you were no longer hosting Lugh. I told him you’d managed to ditch him into a different host, one whose face I never saw.”
“Oh, thanks a lot!” I said, appalled. “Now I’ll have every demon in existence after me.”
He shrugged. “I had to tell him something. He was mad enough at me already for not just letting his people summon Lugh into the sacrificial host. If I’d refused to tell him who I’d chosen to host him, I wouldn’t have been in any position to help you right now.” I supposed he had a point, but I still didn’t like it. “Dougal’s sent me back to the Mortal Plain with a twofold mission—to find out from you who’s now hosting Lugh and to eliminate Andrew, who by all rights should have been dead the night I left the Mortal Plain.”
My Taser hand sprang back to the ready, but Raphael showed no sign he was about to attack.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to do it. You may find this hard to believe, but I do respect Lugh, even if he and I will never be the poster children for brotherly love. If you would let him surface, I know he’d command me not to kill your brother, and I would respect that command.”
I snorted. “Yeah, like you respected his command to tell him what the hell you know about Dougal’s activities?”
He shrugged. “I have my reasons for that.” He turned his head to look at Andy. “Besides, Andrew knows me well,” he said with what I could only describe as an evil smile. “I’m sure he has some idea what the consequences would be if he said something inadvisable.”
Of course, Raphael had been living in my brother for ten years before he’d fled back to the Demon Realm, which meant he should have known me pretty well by now, too. While he was giving Andy the evil eye, my finger tightened on the Taser.
I didn’t consciously decide to shoot him, but somehow the pressure on the trigger became just enough. The Taser popped, and the probes rocketed across the room and buried themselves in Raphael’s back. He screamed and collapsed, his muscles quivering helplessly. I worked hard to resist the urge to go beat on him some more while he was down.
Over the distance between us, Andy’s and my eyes met, and he smiled faintly. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
“Too late,” I quipped back, ejecting the Taser cartridge and reloading while I waited for Raphael to pick himself up and dust himself off. It would take a while. Demons take Taser shots even harder than humans do. “That was a gentle warning,” I told Raphael, who glared at me as he lay twitching on the floor. “Not only are you forbidden to hurt my brother, you’re forbidden to threaten him.”
He bared his teeth at me like a dog. He was either growling at me or gritting his teeth in pain. I hoped it was the latter.
We all waited in silence until Raphael regained control of Dr. Neely’s body. “That was unnecessary,” he said when he had the breath to spare.
“Maybe. But it was fun.”
He shook his head at me and sat up. “You’re supposed to be pleased I’m not here to kill Andrew. Instead, you shoot me.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
He sighed. “I suppose not. Do you want to hear what else I have to say, or would you rather punish me some more?”
I couldn’t claim to be real anxious to hear anything else he might have to tell me, but I figured it wasn’t something I could avoid. “Why don’t you just shoot me an e-mail?” I grumbled, but he knew I was caving.
“It wasn’t me who left an empty host behind for your buddy to find.”
“Adam is not my buddy,” I retorted, though I knew how unimportant the distinction was.
Raphael gave me a knowing look. “Whatever. It wasn’t me.”
“I heard you the first time.” Then I noticed the concerned look in his eyes, and I frowned. “Are you telling me you know who it is?”
“I have a suspicion.”
That worried the hell out of me. “Who is it?”
He smiled condescendingly. “No one you know.”
“Do you want me to shoot you again to loosen up your tongue?”
The smile faded. “You and Lugh make a great couple. I saved your life, remember?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “You don’t get credit for saving my life when you’re the one who put it in danger in the first place, asshole. And you tortured my boyfriend, and God only knows what you did to Andy in the ten years you were with him. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”
It didn’t look like he appreciated that at all. He scowled at me, then rose to his feet despite the fact that I’d rearmed the Taser.
“Fine,” he snarled, moving toward the door. “Maybe I don’t owe you a goddamn thing, either. You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Tell me who just entered the Mortal Plain!” I demanded, but Raphael kept moving toward the door.
“Fuck you,” he said, and jerked the door open.
My finger twitched on the trigger, but I stopped myself from shooting him again. Yeah, it might get him to hang around, but somehow I didn’t think it would inspire him to talk.
“I’m sorry,” I said, belatedly realizing I should have kept a muzzle on my temper.
In case I didn’t get the message the first time, he gave me the finger. And he slammed the door behind him when he left.
Chapter 7
I had a hell of a hard time falling asleep that night. Too much on my mind, I guess. Too many secrets hovering outside my grasp, too much turmoil in my heart, too much fear for my future. And not enough trust to fill a thimble. Andy was lying to me. Raphael was only marginally one of the good guys. Adam tolerated me only for Lugh’s sake. Lugh—nice as he was, for the most part—would do whatever was necessary to further his cause, no matter what happened to me or those I cared about in the process. And it had been over a week since Brian had made his last overture. It looked like he had finally given up on me.
Which was exactly what I wanted, I told myself as I flopped around in my bed and punched the pillow. He had suffered enough on my account, and I hadn’t
been good for him even before I’d acquired Lugh.
My chest tightened as a wave of loneliness crashed over me. I’d known almost since the first time I’d met him that I was in love with Brian. I’d known it would hurt like hell to let him go. But no amount of knowing could have prepared me for the desolation I felt now as I realized I might well have gotten my wish.
Eventually, sleep dragged me down, but I wasn’t at all surprised when I found myself in Lugh’s living room. I almost wished I could communicate with him while I was awake, just so I could get a good night’s sleep. But if I could communicate while awake, it would mean he was gaining more control, and that wasn’t something I allowed myself to wish for.
He was wearing the S&M getup with the black leather straps again. My hormones hummed their approval, and it felt like every cell in my body was straining to cross the distance between us.
“You lied to me,” I accused, hoping an argument would keep my cravings under control.
He looked surprised. “About what?” And then he must have gleaned the source of my annoyance from my mind. “Adam was wrong. I don’t know my brothers’ True Names.” He grimaced. “I thought by not forcing them to reveal their True Names when I took the throne, I might mend some fences.”
“Huh?”
He gave me one of those penetrating looks of his, then decided to let me in on another closely held secret. “True Names are granted by the king. As Adam said, it’s a rare ‘honor’”—I could hear the quotes he put around the word—“granted only to the extraordinary.” He shook his head. “The hidden meaning behind the honor is that you’re powerful enough to be a potential threat to the king. So he grants you a True Name, which really is considered an honor—but it also allows the king to summon you from anywhere in the Demon Realm at a moment’s notice. A collar and leash, as it were. That it allows us to be summoned to the Mortal Plain as well is merely a side effect.”
It sure would have made our lives easier if Lugh had put that collar and leash on his brothers.
“As king,” Lugh continued, “I should know the True Names of all my subjects who have them. Most gave them voluntarily as soon as I took the throne. When my brothers refused, I could have used my power to force them to tell me, but I didn’t. Which probably cemented Dougal’s opinion that I was too soft to lead the Demon Realm.”
His image started to go fuzzy around the edges, like it did when I was starting to wake up from one of these dreams.
“Don’t wake up yet,” he urged, then blinked out of existence. I thought I was going to wake up despite his urging, but then some sixth sense told me where he was, only a fraction of a second before the warmth of his breath tickled the back of my neck. “I haven’t finished with you.”
His hands came to rest on my shoulders, his grip firm enough that with only the tiniest bit more pressure, he’d leave bruises. I tensed, but something in my center tightened in anticipation. The room solidified around me as his touch pulled me back down into sleep. His hands slid down my arms until they cuffed my wrists, and then he pressed his chest up against my back.
My throat went dry as I realized that somewhere along the line he’d lost his decorative leather straps—and I’d lost my shirt.
His skin was warm and smooth against mine, and the silky locks of his hair draped over my shoulder when he planted a soft kiss on the side of my neck.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, but though my mind urged me to pull away, I found myself holding very still, my heartbeat ratcheting up as my breath came suddenly short.
His chuckle tickled my ear. “I don’t think it’s terribly mysterious.” He emphasized his point with a little bump-and-grind action that let me feel the entire length and breadth of him. It seemed he’d lost his pants now, too.
I clenched my thighs together against the surge of my desire. I’d been attracted to Lugh since the first moment I’d laid eyes on him, but I didn’t dare let myself act on that attraction. Not because I was saving myself for Brian, I mentally insisted.
“Relax, Morgan,” Lugh whispered in my ear. “I’m not going to make love to you. I know you’re not ready for that yet.”
I tried to muster a protest at his use of the word “yet,” but my tongue appeared to be glued to the roof of my mouth, and I had too many brain cells focused on the pulsing heat at the small of my back to unstick it.
He rubbed his chin over the top of my head. I don’t think it was an accident that the motion caused his hair to sweep over my breasts, teasing my nipples into pebbles.
“But you’re desperately in need of some stress relief,” he continued. “I can give you the release you crave without making love to you.”
Once again, I opened my mouth to argue. And once again, not a sound came out. Lugh’s arms swept around my waist, holding me even more tightly against him.
Suddenly, we weren’t alone anymore. A sound finally escaped my throat, but it wasn’t the protest I’d been planning; it was a low, urgent moan.
Adam, bare-chested and wearing nothing more than a pair of shrink-wrap-tight jeans faded to white in some interesting places, flashed me one of his feral smiles as Dominic molded himself against his back. Already, Adam’s impressive erection strained against the confines of those tight jeans, threatening to burst through the thin fabric, but he visibly swelled even more as Dom’s hands slid down his chest, tweaking his nipples on the way.
“Stop it,” I managed to gasp, but I was swimming in arousal and suspected I would expire of frustration if Lugh really did stop the illusion.
I’d both seen and heard Adam and Dom having sex before. The time I’d heard them going at it in an adjoining room had been one of the most erotic forbidden thrills of my life, though I still hated to admit it to myself. The time I’d seen them had been entirely different. They hadn’t been willing, though Adam had managed to muster just enough enthusiasm to get the job done. Adam’s fury and Dominic’s humiliation had robbed the scene of all erotic potential for me, but I had a feeling Lugh was about to create a visual that would linger in uncomfortable fantasies long after this night was over.
One of Dom’s hands continued to play with Adam’s nipple, while the other smoothed over the bulge in Adam’s pants. Adam moaned in appreciation, his head falling back against his lover’s shoulder. Dominic gave me a saucy wink—which he never would have done in real life, being far less comfortable with public displays of affection than Adam.
“Don’t do this,” I begged Lugh, but we both knew how my body thrummed in anticipation.
“Just a dream,” he murmured in my ear as Dominic slid Adam’s zipper down.
Moisture trickled down the inside of my thigh when Adam’s enormous erection sprang free. My body clenched as I wondered what a cock of that size would feel like inside me, stretching me to my limits. Lugh’s tongue flicked out and tasted the shell of my ear, and I fought against a cry of pleasure.
“You’re allowed to enjoy this,” he whispered.
At that point, I didn’t have much choice.
Dominic wrapped one hand around Adam’s cock, stroking him from base to tip, milking out a shiny drop of pre-cum. My mouth watered at the sight, and once again Dominic gave me a very un-Dominic-like smile, a devilish glint in his eye as he brushed his middle finger over the head of Adam’s cock. I watched in spellbound fascination as Dominic brought that finger to his mouth and sucked it.
I knew what he was going to do then, and while a part of me still frantically fought my arousal, I was helpless against it. Lugh held me tight, his own erection a constant heat at my back, as Dominic positioned Adam for optimum viewing convenience then dropped to his knees.
I shook my head, but couldn’t muster any more strenuous protest as Dominic cupped Adam’s magnificent ass and then enveloped him in his mouth. Adam and I moaned in sync as Dom began to suck, his cheeks hollowing with each forceful pull. I licked my lips, and I could almost taste him in my mouth.
No. It wasn’t Adam’s taste that burst over my tongue.
It was Brian’s. The sensory memory overwhelmed me, and when I drew in a breath and let it out on a moan, I could have sworn I smelled Brian’s unique scent all around me. Watching Adam and Dom was almost unbearably exciting, but it was Brian I ached for, Brian I longed to have filling me.
Urged on by the grip of Dom’s hand on his ass, Adam began to thrust into Dom’s mouth. Dom showed every sign of loving it, his face awash with pleasure. I imagined Brian plunging into me as I watched them, and I almost came just from the mental image.
Lugh took my hand and guided it to the juncture of my thighs. I was still wearing a pair of jeans and some underwear, but the button and zipper were open. I fought against Lugh’s urging for about half a second, then couldn’t stand the arousal anymore. I didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to let Lugh win this mini battle of wills, but the stimulation was just too much. I felt like I had to come or I would break into tiny little pieces, never to be put together again.
Dominic was oblivious to me now, sucking Adam’s cock like his life depended on it. I slipped my hand into my panties and stroked myself in time to Adam’s thrusts.
Within the first few strokes, I erupted like Mount Vesuvius. I heard a howl start to rise from Adam’s throat as my vision flashed white with pleasure. The howl was cut off abruptly, and my eyes popped open to stare up at the ceiling of my darkened bedroom. The tail end of the orgasm rippled through me as I realized I was awake and one hand was between my legs.
Muscles quivering in the aftermath of the massive release, I lay on my bed and breathed like a runner at the end of a marathon. For a long, breathless moment, I gloried in the warmth of the afterglow, knowing I was going to feel humiliated when the glow faded, and not caring. Then I noticed the phone clutched in my other hand.
The warmth fled, and I sat bolt upright and stared at the evidence.
What the fuck had Lugh been doing with my body while he distracted me with sex? I glanced at the clock beside me and confirmed it was oh dark-thirty in the morning, but I hit the Redial button anyway. The number that was backlit on the phone was an unfamiliar one. Holding my breath, I waited for an answer.