Kim Harrison - Dates From Hell

“ Chica ?”

That voice trilled along my flesh like warm water in winter. Both familiar and foreign, I could listen to him all night.

“Did you touch me while I was sleeping?”

I hadn’t meant to ask that, but now that I had, I wondered.

Instead of an answer, he kissed me, and I forgot the question.

He was so tall my neck crackled as I leaned back, so good at kissing I automatically went onto my tiptoes to get more.

His mouth was soft, sweet. Now that I was closer I caught the tang of the cigarette he’d no doubt been smoking on my balcony. He must have chewed gum to get rid of the taste.

I shuddered as his tongue tested my lips. Opening, I let him all the way in. I wound my arms around his neck, and the quilt slid to the floor.

I’d never been kissed the way Chavez kissed me, as if I were the only woman in the world, the only woman he’d ever wanted. Foolish, I know, but that’s how he made me feel, and I began to wonder, in a far corner of my mind, exactly who was the sexual demon.

Even though my naked body was pressed against him, he did nothing but kiss me. He didn’t slide those big, hard hands over my skin, no matter how much I might want him to. In fact, when I ran my fingers across his shoulders, down his arms, I discovered he was clasping those hands behind his back as if to keep them under control.

I don’t know how long the embrace would have continued, how far we would have gone. I was certainly in no hurry to end it. But Chavez stepped back, shook his head when I would have followed, then snatched the blanket again and covered me.

“ Lo siento, ” he murmured. “I don’t know why I—”

He glanced away, and the movement pulled the collar of his shirt in a different direction. He did have a tattoo on his breastbone, but I still couldn’t see what it was.

My fingers touched my lips; they felt swollen, sensitive, needy. I craved the taste of his mouth.

Was not having had sex, ever, turning me into a nymphomaniac? Although I had to say that what I’d felt while kissing Chavez had been far and away better than what I’d felt with Eric. Then I’d been out of control; this time Chavez had been.

I liked that he had been fighting the lust. I was not the kind of girl who inspired it. When we weren’t talking incubus demon anyway.

“I shouldn’t—” he continued. “You’re a—”

I stiffened. “A what?”

“A job.”

My eyes narrowed, but he still wasn’t looking at me.

“I’m supposed to take care of you, not take you.”

“So why did you?”

His glance snapped back to mine. “I didn’t! I wouldn’t.” He sighed. “I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

Chavez’s lips twisted. “That’s not true, as you can easily see.”

My gaze lowered to his jeans. He definitely could.

“I mean I can’t and still live with myself. You’ve been influenced by an incubus. They mess with your mind. All you want is sex.”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Exactly.”

“The incubus hasn’t influenced you.”

“What?”

“ You kissed me . Why?”

“I couldn’t help myself. You were so small and lost.” He shrugged. “And those glasses…All those books.”

“I—what?”

“I never finished school. I don’t read that well. I like women who do.”

“You’re attracted to women who read?”

“Yeah.”

I shook my head. This was all still insane and so was he.

“Maybe you’re the one whose mind has been messed with,” I muttered.

He gave a short, humorless bark of laughter. “I haven’t had sex in a very long time. I kind of forgot how much I missed it.”

“Forgot?”

Even I, who’d never had sex, certainly didn’t forget about it.

“Until I saw you, on the bed, with him.”

I stiffened. “I wasn’t with him.”

That had been a dream, hadn’t it?

“He’s in your head now. He’ll haunt you. He’ll make you so insane with lust you’ll have no choice but to—”

“I don’t believe this,” I interrupted.

“I do.” He pulled a cigarette from his coat, which he’d laid on my unused exercise bike in the corner. “I’m going to—”

He nodded toward the balcony.

He seemed so sad, so defeated somehow. Even though I thought he was crazy, I still wanted to soothe him.

Chavez thought my glasses were sexy, my dumpiness cute, my penchant for reading on a Friday night attractive. No wonder I wanted to keep him around forever.

Which only made me as nuts as he was. But I was starting to wonder if that wasn’t the case.

“You want some coffee?” I blurted.

“Yeah.” He slipped out the doors and into the night.

Quickly I threw on my sweats, grabbed my glasses, and hurried through the darkened apartment. In the kitchen I reached for the light switch, and someone grabbed my hand.

I drew a deep breath to shriek, and another hand slapped over my mouth. This was happening to me with far too much regularity lately.

“Did you think I’d let you go?”

The voice wasn’t Eric’s. Come to think of it, the guy was too tall to be Eric. His body was pressed to the length of mine and then some.

Whoever he was, he really, really liked me.

I tried to speak, but he tightened his hold, pulling my neck backward until I thought he might break it. I went silent; I had no choice.

“You’re mine now. I need what only you can give.”

He kissed my neck, scraped the throbbing vein with his teeth. A weird lethargy came over me. My blood seemed to thicken and slow; my pulse beat in my ears as if I’d been running for miles, or making love for a long time.

I was suddenly free—to scream, to fight, to escape. I did none of those things. Instead, I turned around and flicked on the lights.

As I’d suspected, the man in my kitchen wasn’t Eric. I’d never seen him before. Taller, broader, his hair was dark blond, his eyes brown.

He shrugged out of his shirt. The garment slid down his arms and spilled onto the floor.

His skin was glaring white, like marble, the muscles shifting and bunching as he moved. I was seized with a sudden urge to lick every one of them as he rose above me, came into me, took me over and over, until I—

I shook my head, hard, tempted to slam it against the countertop until I found myself again.

“Wh-who are you?” I asked.

“You know.”

His fingers slid down his chest, caressing himself, lowering to the zipper that bulged over an erection my mouth went dry at the notion of seeing.

The sound of the zipper being opened made me start so violently my skin tingled.

“You’ll die willingly in my arms,” he whispered. “They always do.”

As if from a long way off, I heard his words, puzzled over them, discarded any unease. The sex would be amazing. I’d come screaming. I’d beg him to do me again, and he would. He’d keep at it until I was—

Chavez loomed behind him. His presence brought me back to myself, so when he snapped, “Get down!” I did, hitting the floor just as a sheet of flame streaked from his hand.

I cried out as the strange man in my kitchen, the one I’d been willing to screw seven ways from Sunday, became a burning ball of fire.

My smoke detector went off; the sprinklers rained water on us all. The man, whose name I didn’t know, stopped burning. There wasn’t a mark on him.

He stared at Chavez. “You again.”

“Me always.”

The stranger turned to me.

“We aren’t finished,” he said.

And then he disappeared.

“You believe me now?” Chavez asked as wedripped all over the carpet from the kitchen into the living room.