Jessa Slade: Vowed in Shadows

A few men hooted as told; a half dozen others sucked at their drinks as if suddenly very thirsty.

She stepped onto the stage, bare as the day she was born. Barer, since even newborns slid into the world with more body hair than that.

Jonah snapped his eyes closed. Too late. Under the harsh lights, her dusky skin glowed, sleek as the snake threaded across her outstretched arms. The shine off her shoulders, the snake’s coils, and—ah, dear God in heaven—the fullness of her breasts burned on the insides of his eyelids. Unfair that she could invade his defenses with nothing more than . . . nothing.

The costumes earlier in the week had been bad enough. Layers of vinyl and gauze, links of chain, strings of white lace from another century adding insult to injury. And he’d suffered injury aplenty, with every knock of his cock against the backside of his zipper.

At least the ridiculousness of the schoolgirl kneesocks, the maid’s apron, and a kimono, of all things, had allowed him to steel himself—in more ways than one—against the inevitable flesh display.

He might as well see his oncoming destruction. He opened his eyes.

She glided across the floor toward him, her bare feet silent on the parquet. But she timed each footfall for every other beat of the music, so even though her approach was slow, his heartbeat quickened against his will to echo the incessant bass.

Exactly how repentant was his demon?

She moved with a liquid grace that ignored gravity and time and entropy, as if she had no care for the rules of the universe. Sweat glistened across the skin of her chest, but her arms spread, unfaltering under the forty pounds of reptile. Only her rounded hips marked the cadence.

After the gyrations and jiggling of the others and the gleeful flinging of G-strings, her prolonged tension tightened every nerve in the room. Where was the teasing smile? The bustier and the stockings? Here were the tits and ass they had come for, and yet this was not their fantasy. This was too raw, too wild.

Jonah stiffened against the sharp twist inside him of the demon reacting to the first whiff of menace.

Her dreads slid across her breasts, hiding, then revealing her dark areolas, and the blunt ropes lashed the upper curve of her buttocks. Achingly slowly, she raised her arms, and the snake eased from her shoulders to spiral across her torso. The scales in shades from chocolate to sand rippled down her body. Its blunt diamond head poised for a moment like an earthy jewel centered above her navel, then continued lower.

Her hands tracked its descent, easing over her breasts, lingering at the flare of her hips. She tipped her head back, throat exposed, and her dreads swung loose as the snake coiled down her thighs.

It pooled at her feet like a shed skin. Unfettered, she stood exposed, her taut curves the same tawny brown as the middling tones of the scales, an illusion of snake to woman. Hell on the herpetological half shell.

Jonah’s pulse ricocheted through his body, tearing ragged holes in his calm, and he realized he hadn’t taken a breath in too long. When he finally did, it sounded like a gasp.

In the middle of the stage, the lights were aimed at her with such salacious focus that not a single shadow remained, not the faintest female mystery was left to the imagination. And yet he knew he wasn’t seeing all of her. The purple smudges around her eyes seemed to suck down the light, but her gaze fixed on him, still and predatory behind the unnatural thicket of her lashes.

The demon was rising in her, and it called to him, teased him to reach out.

His fingers twitched in anticipation, and he clenched his fists.

Fist. His missing hand burned as if he held it out toward open flame. Rather like he was doing with the remains of his soul by coming to her now.

The djinni that had taken his hand six months ago had taken with it his belief that their fight for good would prevail. To tip the balance in favor of his shaken faith, he was willing to do anything.

He stared at the Nymphette.

Anything.

The beat of the music stumbled from one song to the next, and she knelt to retrieve the snake, but instead of beginning her next dance, she crossed toward him and stepped out onto the bar that surrounded the stage. Another step and she was standing on a bar stool. The gawkers rumbled, a sound somewhere between approval and consternation at the break in their routine.

The three-legged stool wobbled. At his table, Jonah planted both feet on the floor, half rising to catch her, and rocked his own chair with his haste. But she crouched, one hand steady on the bar, the other on the snake, and slipped to the floor to continue toward him, as if she hadn’t noticed the near fall.

Dimly, he heard the deejay squawk for the next dancer, the Nymphette having naughtily abandoned the stage. Though her hands busily rearranged the snake across her shoulders, her violet-tinged gaze never left his.

He’d been stalked before, but this made every hair on his body prickle in alarm.

She glided up to him, right between his legs. He leaned back, arms still crossed, thankful the height of the stool gave him a vantage point to look down at her.

She didn’t touch him, but the heat of her naked body radiated through his jeans and sank into his thighs. “You want a dance, Cap’n?”

Her low voice hummed through his bones. The scent of the snake—a sharp, loamy tang—made him shudder.

“Assuming you can swing it.” Her gaze angled down to his crotch. “The price, I mean.”

She had no idea what this was costing him. “In private, if you’d oblige.” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.

The league’s leader had explained what would happen, in a conversation as excruciatingly embarrassing as that heard by any bride on her wedding night. Not that Jonah wanted to compare this moment in any way to his wedding night.

The sacrilege tightened his fist another notch, and the rage-curdled tension brought his demon screaming from his depths. The demon’s power rebounded through his body, but it recoiled from the brimstone-scorched scar tissue that had been his weapon hand. Surely even her nascent demon would sense the danger, the thwarted violence, and she would withdraw.

Instead, she canted her head forward, a dare. “VIP lap dance? Well, look at you, coming on strong now.”

He stood abruptly. “Yes, that’s me. Coming strong.” He took her arm.

The long-forgotten sensation of soft flesh beneath his fingers swept him in a hot tide, and his pulse raced ahead of the demon’s seething temper like spindrift on the crest of a killer wave. His breath tumbled through his chest.

She jerked away. “Don’t touch,” she hissed.

“It’s a strip club.” But when the snake hissed too, he let her go—the better to restrain the rampant wickedness inside him.

“And I’m stripped, in case you hadn’t noticed. No touching.”

“Ludicrous,” he muttered. He waved her toward the hall that led to the private rooms he’d scouted earlier.

She eased around him. “You paid eight bucks for a Power Slug. You’d know ludicrous.” She nodded to the bartender, who popped the tab on a small aluminum can and slid it across the countertop toward them. “Have another. I get a percentage of the bar.”

Jonah took the energy drink as they passed. In the hallway, the pounding music dulled to a merely irritating headache. The AC pushed the stale odors of cigarettes and damp cardboard boxes, but did little in the way of cooling. “Are you always so . . . honest with your patrons?”

“Not on the first date. But you and me, we’ve been dancing around this thing for a week now. Time for flattering lies is long past.”

“A week is a long time?”

“You owe me for all those hungry stares. All that looking and no paying is giving Mobi a complex.”