Jenna Black - The Devil's Playground

The living room was a relatively neutral setting as long as I wasn’t lying on the couch and there was no fire in the fireplace. That meant he probably wasn’t making an attempt to seduce me, as he would if he’d conjured his bedroom, nor was he going to try to cow me with his authority, as he would if he’d conjured his throne room.

Lugh was sitting on his favorite couch, which was upholstered in the softest leather I’d ever encountered. I’d been hosting him for several months now, and I’d seen him—at least, I’d seen the image of himself he created in my dreaming mind—more times than I could count. But that didn’t stop me from feeling a tug of attraction every time I set eyes on him.

He’s about six foot five, with long, raven-black hair, golden skin, and a body to die for. He was eye candy from head to toe, and he liked to dress in such a way as to show off his masculine beauty.

The black leather pants and the knee-high black boots were practically a uniform for him, but what he wore—or didn’t wear—on top changed with his mood. Tonight, he wore a black tuxedo-style shirt, the tiny buttons undone to about the middle of his chest. He smiled at me—the smile that reminded me he knew exactly how I responded to him, no matter how much I wished that I didn’t.

I folded my arms over my chest and declined to sit down. It got incredibly tiresome to talk to someone from whom you could hide absolutely nothing.

Lugh’s smile broadened. “And it gets tiresome to always feel like you have something to hide.”

I answered through gritted teeth. “You know the one way to guarantee that any conversation between us will go badly is to start it by responding to my private thoughts, so why do you do it?”

He didn’t answer me, merely fixing me with a steady stare. He’d told me before that he responded to my thoughts just to remind me that they weren’t really private. It was a form of honesty I could do without, although he had a point when he said I’d resent it if he allowed me the illusion. The illusion wouldn’t hold, and when it faded, I’d feel like he’d lied to me.

“I suppose that’s your justification for butting in with Brian earlier,” I grumbled. “That he’d feel deceived if the status quo continued.”

Lugh’s chin dipped in a barely perceptible nod. “It was time to acknowledge that you cannot have a relationship with each other without having a relationship with me. You’ve accepted me. Now it’s time for Brian to do the same.”

I plopped heavily into a cushy love seat across from Lugh. I’d spent two months living in the land of denial, and the universe seemed determined to tear the carpet out from under me. First with Shae’s ominous news, then with Lugh’s latest machinations.

“Is it a coincidence that you decided to butt in on the same day Shae came to talk to me?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“I’d been meaning to do it for a while,” he said, “but I’m afraid I was growing a little complacent, too. After Shae’s visit, I realized I was procrastinating, so I decided to get it over with. I have never been anything but honest with you, and I owe Brian the same courtesy. When he makes love to you, he makes love to both of us. If he can’t learn to deal with that, then it’s best to find out sooner rather than later.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I didn’t have a headache, but after that little speech, I should have. Lugh had never lied to me—that I knew of—but that wasn’t quite the same as being completely honest. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know there was more to this story than he was telling.

“If it was best that he find out sooner rather than later, then why did you wait until now to make your point?”

He flashed me a rueful smile. “With all the troubles you and Brian have had since I’ve been in residence, do you really think he’d have been in the proper state of mind to deal with that dose of reality?”

I wished I had a snappy comeback for that, but none leapt to mind. There had been a lot of bumps in the relationship road for Brian and me, and I doubted things would ever be easy. But we loved each other, and though I don’t believe love truly conquers all, it conquers a hell of a lot. Could it conquer Lugh?

“I’m not the enemy,” Lugh reminded me, and I scowled at him.

I tried to remember what it was like in the days before I had Lugh in my life, but they seemed impossibly distant.

I blinked, and suddenly I wasn’t sitting on the love seat anymore. I was sitting on the couch beside Lugh. I hated it when he did that, but there was no point in protesting.

He laid a hand on my shoulder, the touch innocent and yet strangely intimate. “Brian will come around,” he said. “He’s fought too hard to keep you to give up because of me.”

“You can read my mind. You can’t read his.”

Lugh’s mouth quirked into a grin. “I can make an educated guess. And my guess is that he’ll come around eventually. It’s just going to take a little time and … adjustment.”

I regarded him suspiciously. “You think he’ll ‘come around’ to the idea of you trying to seduce me, too?” In Lugh’s mind, there was no competition between himself and Brian, because I never had to choose between the two of them. Lugh could only interact with me as something other than a phantom voice in my head when I was asleep. Brian could only interact with me while I was awake. Therefore, in Lugh’s opinion, no conflict.

“That might be a little harder for him to accept,” Lugh admitted, startling me. This was the first time he’d ever indicated that he thought there might be a problem with his cozy little plan.

Once again, he answered my unspoken thoughts. “After seeing his reaction when he thought you’d had an affair with Adam, I can hardly pretend that I don’t know he’s the jealous type.”

I laughed halfheartedly. “You say that like it’s unusual, like most men would have no objection to their girlfriends having sex with another guy. If that’s what you think, then you don’t understand humans anywhere near as well as you’ve pretended to.”

To my surprise, Lugh leaned back on the couch, cocking his head and seeming to give my words serious consideration. “It’s not that I don’t think other men would be jealous. But there is a certain …

territoriality to humans that is foreign to the demon experience. Still, perhaps my lack of a separate physical body would lessen the strain on most men. There is no one he can lay his hands on and fight, if that makes sense.”

Perhaps to Lugh, but not to me. “So if demons aren’t ‘territorial,’ as you call it, about their lovers, then that means Adam wouldn’t mind if Dom screwed around on him.” Not that Dom ever would, but I had no doubt that Adam would object vociferously. After all, he was already at least mildly jealous of Saul, who had resided in Dom’s body when he and Adam first became lovers.

“Walking the Mortal Plain changes us. It’s hard to live within our human hosts, knowing their deepest thoughts and feelings, without being influenced by them. That’s part of the reason why my brothers were so eager to develop a less intelligent host. Raphael said it’s because he doesn’t like hearing his host’s opinion of him, but I suspect he’s more concerned with how his host’s opinion might influence him.”

“So Adam has become territorial because his host is territorial?”

“That would be my assumption.”

“And yet you haven’t absorbed any of that territoriality even though I’m not your first human host.”

He shrugged. “Humans aren’t all the same. Surely you don’t think demons are.”