“Adam?” Looking up from the couch, I flung away the blanket I’d been curled up with, racing for the door to hurl myself into his arms, roses be damned. “Where have you been?” I demanded, kissing him before he had a chance to answer. The roses forgotten, Adam wrapped his arms around me, hauling me up close to his body to kiss me enthusiastically.
“I had some business to attend to.”
“Business? What kind of business?”
“Sadly, the kind that kept me away from you, my love. Did you miss me?”
“You think?” I smirked, giving him a much more thorough kiss to convey my longing. Adam didn’t skip a beat. Lifting me into his arms, he carried me into the bedroom, never tearing his lips from mine. When I felt the bed at my back, I scooted to get more comfortable, pulling back to smile up at him. “I did miss you, where did you go?”
“We can talk about that later, there are more important things to tend to now.” Adam buried his face in my neck, blazing a trail of kisses up towards my ear.
“No, really, where did you go? You could have left me a note or a text message or something. I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. Adam that tickles…” It was difficult to concentrate when he did his level best to distract me, but he was acting a little weird and I wanted to know what was up.
“Don’t worry your adorable head about it, my love. What does it matter now that we are together?” Rolling above me, he swallowed my next question with a passionate kiss that stole my breath away. As much as I enjoyed the attention, I couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t right.
“Hey, slow down, we have all night, right?” I pushed at his shoulder, gaining myself a breath.
“But I’ve missed you so, and I know you missed me.” His hand slid up my thigh, questing higher and I shifted my hold from his shoulder to his hand.
“Seriously, what’s the rush?”
“I… don’t know how much time I’ll have here with you, and I want to make the most of it. Is that so wrong?” Renewing his attentions, he kissed along the curve of my jaw. “You are so delectable…”
Warning bells were going off like crazy, but I wasn’t quite sure why. “Adam, what’s the safeword?” I asked, turning my lips away from his.
“You’re perfectly safe with me, Merceline, you know that.” Undeterred, he kissed down the side of my throat towards the valley between my breasts even as I scooted out from under him.
“I’m dead serious, what’s the word, Adam?”
Adam rolled onto his hip to face me, annoyance written all over his features. “What are you going on about now?”
“You’re not Adam, are you?”
“I’m whatever you want me to be, my love.” Adam’s features rippled and then Azazael lay on the bed beside me. I scrambled out of the bed like a shot, wanting as much distance between us as possible. How could I be so stupid? There were a ton of signals and I’d missed them, because I wanted it to be Adam coming back to me.
“When are you gonna get it through your head? I’m not your love, I’m not your anything!”
“I think it is you who is mistaken, you and I share a bond, whether you like it or not,” he slid off the bed, stalking towards me slowly. “The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.”
“No, the sooner you accept that I’m not gonna roll over and spread my legs, the happier I’ll be,” I retorted, holding my ground. “Adamiel!” I called, in a last ditch effort to get him to come to me, hoping the urgency in my voice brought him from wherever he’d been hiding out lately.
“He can’t hear you, I made certain of that before I came.”
“What did you do to him?” My eyes narrowed dangerously. If he’d hurt Adam, or worse…
“I didn’t have to do anything to him. He left voluntarily, completely of his own volition.”
“Where is he?”
“In a place where he won’t hear you call,” he shrugged, taking another step, but I was ready for him that time. With a flick of the wrist my sword appeared, shining deadly sharp in my hand. “You don’t truly want to stab yourself again, do you? That can’t have been very comfortable.”
“It’s not for me this time, it’s for you.” I was hoping, praying I was right, that my real physical sword could be called into the Ether the way Adam had drawn his sword the first time he’d stood against Azazael. If not, then I was in a world of trouble.
“I thought we covered this before. That won’t work against me here.” With a negligent wave of the hand, he tried to dismiss the sword and his brows knit together in puzzlement when it didn’t disappear. It was all I could do not to whoop for joy as that confusion turned to frustration when he tried again and the sword remained firmly in my hand. “Interesting.”
“Yeah well, as long as you find internal bleeding interesting too, keep coming closer, by all means,” I taunted him, feeling much more confident with the blade in my hands despite my skill level in wielding it. Azazael stood there for a long moment, maybe weighing the odds that I could seriously hurt him if he rushed me. I assume he recognized the fact that he couldn’t disarm me or he would have tried it. The real question was, could he summon his sword to the Ether as well, or had it been stripped from him when he was imprisoned?
“Well then, it seems we are at an impasse.”
“No, I’m pretty sure this is where you decide to try something else to get out of jail.”
“There
is
nothing else to free me,” his eyes blazed with fervor and I took a step backwards.
“Look, I’m sorry you’re bound or whatever. But this isn’t so bad, right? You can do anything you want in the Ether, that’s better than most prisoners have.”
“While my body suffers eternal torment? No, thank you,” he muttered sourly, sitting on the edge of the bed, running his fingers through his hair. I almost felt sorry for him, except for him being a violent psycho who attacked me the last time we met up.
“New prophecies are coming out every day, right? Maybe you’ll find another loophole? I’m not even convinced it would have worked through me anyway. Besides, did you really want to go through childhood again? The tweens suck, and being your own father has got to be a mindfuck.”
“You still don’t grasp it, do you?” he looked up, his blue eyes flashing. “
You
are the key, I can feel it in my marrow. I will never let you go. Never. I will chase after you until the end of days.”
“Yeah, okay, we’re done here.” There I was trying to be nice and comforting and he went off threatening me again. I don’t know why I even bothered trying to be nice to him in the first place. “I tried reasoning and it got me nowhere, so let me try something you might understand. Don’t come after me again. I will not hesitate to cut you down where you stand, do you get me?”
“You can’t kill me here in the Ether,” he smiled.
“Maybe not, but it’ll still hurt like hell when I cut off your balls,” I bluffed, and I was gratified to see the color drain from his face. “Now get the hell out of here before I feel like playing shish kabob.”
“I can see I’m going to have to be a lot more creative in the future.” Azazael rose from the bed, a speculative gleam to his eyes. “But make no mistake, we will meet again.”
“Bring it, I’ll be ready,” I replied with more confidence than I felt, breathing a sigh of relief when he disappeared. Feeling like I’d dodged a bullet, I spent a worrisome night in the Ether, unable to relax for fear Azazael might come back.
When I woke up late the next morning I had a pounding headache. You know, the kind where it feels like you spent the night before with your neck in a vice grip? Sam was nowhere to be found, and I assumed he was out with Daphne somewhere. Nelo tried to be helpful, fetching and carrying anything he thought could be of use. But the little guy started to wear on my nerves, and after I got snappish with him, he retreated to the closet where he was more comfortable during the day anyway. In the end, my natural healing ability softened the edges of the headache but it didn’t completely go away.
There was a small sense of relief in knowing I’d been able to repel another of Azazael’s attacks on my own and the sword had worked like a charm. His threat to get more creative the next time he came after me was worrisome, but there was no point in borrowing trouble, I would have to deal with it when it came. The question still hung heavy in my mind. Where the hell was Adam?
Chapter Nineteen
I decided to go into work a little early, craving familiar surroundings where I’d be surrounded by people I knew and trusted. Parker himself was behind the bar and Jilly chatted amiably with Chris the DJ up in the booth. Not a whole lot was going on out on the floor but it was early yet for the after dinner crowd.
“Just because you came in early doesn’t mean you can leave early if you have a hot date planned for later,” Parker said as soon as he saw me, and I gave him a sour look.
“I don’t have a hot date later, I thought you could use the help around here. I guess I thought wrong though,” I mentioned, looking around the empty club. “Has it been this slow all night?”
“It’ll pick up,” he said defensively. “It always does after prime time is over.”
“I know,” I replied in a mollifying tone, taking a seat across the bar. I didn’t feel right putting on an apron and clocking in when he didn’t need the help. “How about a soda on the house for your oldest friend?” I gave him a winsome smile.
“I never said you were my
oldest
friend,” he smirked, filling a glass with diet soda. “Of course, my oldest friend isn’t talking to me anymore.”
“Hm, I’m pretty sure that does qualify me as your oldest friend then. It doesn’t count if you’re not friends anymore,” I pointed out, taking a sip of the drink, wishing for a jot of rum to spike it.
“Shit, maybe it’s time to bury the hatchet and make peace with her, huh? Not that I think she’ll be up for it.”
“Your oldest friend is a woman, huh? Why am I not surprised?”
“Hey, I can’t help it if most men are intimidated and women are naturally drawn to me,” he winked, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.
“So, why is this best friend not your friend anymore?”
“Oh, I fucked things up, as usual,” Parker shrugged. “I made the age old mistake.”
“You slept with her?” I raised a single brow expectantly.
“Of course I did, but that wasn’t what screwed things up.”
“What did then? You didn’t want her the way she wanted you to?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he hedged.
“Meaning… what? You didn’t love her?”
“No, I loved her alright, it just wasn’t…”
“They same way she loved you?” I suggested.
“Specific enough.”
“Oh.” The picture came into focus then. “You screwed it up literally, and she caught you in bed with someone else?” It figured it would be something like that. I liked Parker a lot, but dating material… he definitely wasn’t.
“She didn’t catch me in the act or anything, but yeah, other than that, you’ve pretty much summed it up.” At catching my look, his hands came up in a supplicating gesture. “Hey give me a break, I was younger then and stupid. I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two about love since then.”
Thinking about his current love connection with Sharona, I wasn’t so sure. But I didn’t want to talk about her and how great she was, so I didn’t bring her up. Instead I lifted my drink to him in commiseration. “Hey, we’ve all done things we regretted in the past, I’m not in a position to judge you for anything.” Not with the messed up state my own life was in.
“Are you alright?” he asked suddenly, fixing me with a penetrating look.
“Yeah, I’m fine, why?” I brushed aside the question, there wasn’t much I could go into with him anyway.
“You seem a little… I don’t know, down. What are you doing in here so early for anyway? How come you’re not out spending time with Ben?”
“Things with Ben still aren’t…”
“You guys broke up then?” Something passed over his face that I didn’t recognize.
“It’s the inevitable conclusion. I have to assume that since he hasn’t returned my calls in days it’s pretty much over, even though we never officially had ‘the talk’. It’s for the best though, we were pretty incompatible in a lot of ways.”
“Who are you convincing, me or yourself?”
“What?” I snorted in disbelief. “I didn’t think you even liked him.”
“I’m not saying
I
wanted to date him but I thought he made you happy,” he shrugged and I realized he was right about that to some extent. Ben had made me happy, I just didn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved.
“He did, but it wasn’t…” I debated how much I could say to him without opening a can of worms into more questions than I was comfortable with. “Let’s just say, it’s not his fault and leave it at that.”
“No shit, you cheated on him?” That caught his attention and a broad smile settled on his face. “Well what do you know, you do have a bit of bad girl in you after all.”
I wasn’t sure what he was so happy about, and my brows drew together into a single dark line. “Keep it down, it’s not exactly something I like to advertise.”
“Is it that guy who hangs out here all the time? The weird one that stares at you the whole time?”
“Sam? No,” I laughed, not even able to picture myself going to bed with him. Okay, maybe I have thought about it once or twice before, but having to teach someone what to do from scratch wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, and there was another man who had stolen my heart. “Sam’s more like a friend and occasional bodyguard.”
“Him? He looks like he’s afraid of his own shadow.”
“You’d be surprised, I’ve seen him in action before and trust me, you don’t want to get on his bad side.”
“Yeah, okay,” Parker scoffed, pouring himself a beer. One of the benefits of being the owner, he could drink on the job if he wanted to. “Who is it then? Your new main squeeze. How come I’ve never seen him around?”
“Because he travels a lot,”
not a lie,
“and, he sorta rubs people the wrong way. I don’t think you’d like him.” Now that I thought about it, I didn’t think the two would get along at all, and I resolved to keep that from coming up for as long as possible.