Jessa Slade: Vowed in Shadows

“Moby? Ah, the snake. Curious choice of names. The obsession angle works, but I can’t picture you dancing with a white whale around your shoulders.”

In the gloomy hall, her eyes glimmered with only human reflections. “Mobi as in Möbius strip, going round and around, always ending up back in the same place.”

The brooding tenor of her words struck him deep.

Before he could speak, she ducked behind a curtain. He followed her into the closet. The VIP lounge lacked any features that might have identified it as important or a lounge. A wooden chair faced into the corner, as if it had been pushed hastily awry. He yanked the shabby red curtain closed.

She spun the chair toward him. “The only Mopey Dick I expect to see here is yours. And I can make that all better.”

Jonah took a pull off the Slug. The sweeteners and caffeine buzzed through him as his demon-boosted metabolism dealt with the chemical brew. At least the task distracted the creature of evil inside him from its impotent seething.

He wished he hadn’t thought “impotent” just now.

Nim plucked the can from his hand and tossed it aside. The spilled liquid fizzed. Under the lone lightbulb, her small smile was hard enough to dash hearts upon, were any careless enough to somehow find their way to this place. “So, tell me what you want, Cap’n.”

Jonah sat and crossed his arms. He needed her demon ascendant before he made his move. She wouldn’t believe his story otherwise. “Dance for me, Nymphette.”

Physical stress triggered the demon’s rise. Dangerous, but necessary, since the newly possessed needed to find a way to balance the demon within them. Males traditionally drank and fought their way through the other-realm emanations coursing through their bodies. He’d been told it worked differently with the females. Just as well, since his balance was shot.

“Call me Nim.” Her voice turned husky, not with the demon, just a generic come-on. She swayed closer. “Nymphette is such a mouthful. And maybe you want me to save my mouth for . . . other things. Right, Cap’n?”

“Don’t call me Captain.”

Her fake tarantula lashes narrowed at his brusque tone, but she didn’t speak. She sidled toward his chair and slowly sank to her knees between his legs. Her gaze rested straight ahead, and his flesh, already strung tight, lifted like a marionette. Her mouth—that wide, generous mouth—was such a short distance from his zipper. He ached all over at her closeness, his erection straining toward her, his jaw locked hard against giving in.

She unwrapped the snake from her shoulders and laid it over his feet. The weight of the beast as it wound around his ankles was surprisingly heavy and hot through the leather of his boots. He couldn’t stifle a grunt of dismay.

Nim grinned, a crooked chink in her seductress armor that revealed the first hint of honest emotion he’d seen: amusement, at his expense. “Don’t want you sneaking away early, like you’ve been doing all week.”

“Hadn’t planned on it.” Anyway, not until her demon was firmly anchored in her soul and she’d been drawn into the league as its newest possessed fighter.

She rose, so close between his thighs that he felt the passage of air, faintly scented with patchouli. But she never touched him. The way she used her body was sinful, but he had to admit, she kept it as brutally honed as any warrior maintained his weapons. A demon could choose worse than to take such a dwelling.

Within the confines of his spread knees, she turned and set her back to him. She ran her hands up her torso, over her shoulders, and through her dreadlocks. With a single twist, she bound her hair into a thick knot at her crown.

She leaned to one side, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from following the sinuous curve of her spine, down between the points of her shoulder blades to the twin dimples framing her tailbone. His hand twitched to test whether his spread fingers would span the distance.

Just as well it was the missing hand.

She glanced over her shoulder. “No touching.”

“So you said.” He hadn’t given himself away. Couldn’t, considering his maiming. But she obviously didn’t think that would stop him.

Her fog-on-the-water gaze traced him. “You aren’t here with flesh on the mind. No lusting man could have lasted that whole week. Definitely couldn’t last now.” She straddled his knee, again without touching him, and dipped low in a slow-motion grind that never quite brushed his jeans. “You’re so strong. Crazy strong.” Her voice was a purr. “Is that because of the ring?”

His left hand, tucked against his ribs, clenched against his will, but the gold band on his third finger was too worn to bite into his flesh. “No. Not because of the ring.”

She tilted her hips and smoothed one hand over her haunch to ride above the shadowed cleft between her buttocks. Where he’d wanted to put his hand. “Because of the hook?”

The metal tip drove into his biceps as he drew even tighter into himself. How could she ask so casually? “Aren’t you supposed to be dancing?”

She bent backward, an impossible contortion without making contact. And yet she managed to keep even her hair suspended above his lap, teasing but not touching. She stared at him from her inverted pose. “You’re supposed to be pulling something out.”

“You said no touching. Presumably that also means myself.”

“Your wallet is exempt from the no-touching rule.”

He sighed, aggrieved, and uncrossed his arm to shift to one hip and reach for his back pocket. “At least this is on an expense account.”

“All business. I like that in a man. We’re practically soul mates.”

Anger, cold and jagged, wrenched like the hook through his chest, dragging the demon to the surface. “Don’t say that.”

“Bosom buddies, then.” She turned again to straddle his other leg, facing him. Her arms, crossed in a low X across her belly, pushed her breasts into tempting handfuls. Another supple writhe brought her down low, so low and close her nipples would’ve grazed his lips. If not for her oft-stated no-touching rule, of course.

“You have no idea how close we’ll be,” he said.

He’d meant to sound as flirtatious as any of her customers, but a faint hint of alarm crinkled her brow. When he opened his billfold, though, the wary look in her eyes evaporated with a spark of simple avarice. He wouldn’t bother making mental bets about the weakness in her soul that had made her vulnerable to possession.

“Let’s see, then. Shall we?” She edged closer and propped her foot on the chair seat between his legs. “I bet that big, shiny hook scares the good girls away, doesn’t it? Well, not me. I don’t easily scare.”

“Because you’re a bad girl.”

“Just like you wanted.” Her bare toes grazed his crotch, such a glancing touch it might have been an accident, except he suspected she didn’t make such mistakes. She fancied herself fully in control of the situation. Of him.

His body didn’t exactly disabuse her of the notion. The surge in his jeans kindled a flare of victory in her eyes. As if this was a battle she planned to win.

No way for her to know she’d already lost.

Pity chewed at his defensive anger. “Ah, Nim. Was there no one who cared to turn you from this path?”

Her eyes widened, and a streak of violet shot across the whites. “Shit. You’re one of those? Come to save me from myself?”

“No.” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “I couldn’t dream of saving you.” Maybe once, he’d believed himself the man for such a task. Not anymore.

“Good, because I like what I do.” Her lashes fluttered like a Venus flytrap closing on unsuspecting prey. “And I can tell you like it too.”