Where Demons Fear to Tread (15 page)

Screw waiting. He’d flung those words out carelessly, because there was nothing else he could say. He stared at the ceiling, still fully erect and frustrated on more than just a physical level. He wanted her, no, he
needed
her in more than just body. He needed her in
soul.
That is, if he even had a soul anymore.

Briefly it crossed his mind that he had a key to her door, and that he was fully capable of using it. In the past, he would have done so without remorse. He would have gained access to her room, and easily overcome her faltering willpower.

But now? What was stopping him?

Absolutely nothing.
Rising from the bed, he opened the door and paced out into the living room. Went to stand by her door, listened for noise from within. Heard only silence. His hand, holding the plastic card key, hovered over the doorknob for a very long moment.

A single swipe of the key would open the lock. One small push of the door would open it.

The only thing that prevented him from going in was a promise.

He marched back into his own bedroom, bolted his own door shut, turned off the lights and cursed the thoughts that rushed into his mind.

Somewhere along the line, although he didn’t know where or when, this had stopped being a game of seeing whether he could seduce an angel. She was no longer just another passing conquest, or a challenge to alleviate his boredom.

He was dangerously close to falling in love.

Who ever heard of a demon in love?

Lust, he could handle. Lust could be easily slaked by any number of women who would be more than willing to satisfy his needs. No, lust was not the problem. By far the more disturbing emotion was a vague feeling throbbing in the center of his chest, infecting him like a virus integrating itself into his body. Perhaps it
was
too early to call it love, but if left unchecked, Julian was certain that this emotion would develop in that direction. Love was a sentiment for weak-minded fools. He’d been a fool for love during his human life, with Luciana, and it had not ended well. Certainly, he’d succeeded without love for the past two centuries. In fact, he’d dedicated himself to destroying love wherever he found it.

The most obvious solution was simply to release the girl—let her go home untouched and innocent, with her faith in the goodness of the world intact. But at the idea of it, every muscle in his body clenched, and his mind screamed against it.

No.
He would keep her for the week she had pledged to him. But if he resolved not to seduce her, he would spend the next six days battling his desires, with the likelihood that the frustration he’d felt last night would mount to a fever pitch. And where was the fun in that? He was not particularly fond of masochism; he did not wish to submit himself to that particular kind of torture.

He must pour all of his energy into accomplishing her seduction. To destroy the innocence about her that was driving him to such distraction. Once rid of that innocence, her appeal would be gone and he would no longer be at risk of falling prey to the affliction of love. Mastering her sexually would mean recovering his power not only as a man, but as a demon.

Because he needed to get back to business. Tonight, Luciana had tried to poison him. He had put himself at considerable risk in order to save Nick. Exposing his potential weaknesses to the other demons was not acceptable. He needed all of his energy, with no distractions and no vulnerabilities.

Yes, bedding Serena would be worth the risk.

But he realized now that she had a high level of immunity to physical pleasure. His little angel had a will of iron. Tonight, he had worked her supple body into a passion that he was sure matched his own. Her self-discipline was admirable, but her defenses were not impossible to overcome. However, he would have to approach her seduction from a different angle.

Coercion had only gotten him so far. If he continued to threaten her, she would eventually surrender her body, but he wanted more. Appealing to her body had gotten him past certain barriers, but he sensed that if he wished to go further, he would have to appeal to her mind. He would have to dig deep into his most powerful tactics.

He would have to convince her that she was saving him. That was the only answer, the only possible way she would allow herself to be seduced. All angels believed in the healing power of love. If she thought that making love to him might lead to some kind of redemption, she would surrender herself to him.

It was a process that would break her. Once he was finished with her, she would be fallen, like him, relegated to the demonic world. If he tired of her, he would simply abandon her. But as they said, misery loved company. If there were still some inkling of interest after he’d stripped her of her angelic shine, she might make a fine companion in eternal damnation.

Three floors up, Luciana and Corbin lay in his magnificent bed. Luciana stretched luxuriantly, arching her back to show off her lush breasts, slick with sweat from their lovemaking.
“Così bene, caro,”
she said with a little sigh of pleasure. She was so convincing he almost believed it.

“You should have told me, darling,” Corbin said in a conversational tone, tracing a fingertip idly between those luscious orbs. “It would have been useful to know that you and Julian had been lovers.”

She looked up at him with a doe-eyed innocence that she might have counterfeited from Julian’s little angel. “You’re not jealous, are you,
amore mio?
That was ages ago. Julian completely slipped my mind. He’s nothing to me. Especially not now that I have you.” She reached up to kiss him, her tongue snaking its way into his mouth.

“Apparently you think he’s disposable,” he said when they finished the kiss. “But you should have asked for my permission before you tried to poison him.”

Tonight, for the first time in the many months since he’d met Luciana, he saw her clearly. She was a whore and a liar, willing to do almost anything to get what she wanted. She was trying to use him. That much was obvious. He should have known the moment she’d appeared three months ago, just after the press release had announced the plans for Julian’s nightclub. His mind worked back, searching for other signs he’d missed, blinded by the pleasures of the flesh she offered, and by her exorbitant praise. That oh-so-pleasurable flesh writhed beneath his fingers now, the cadence of her honeyed Italian whispers dripping into his ear.

She would have to learn that Corbin Ranulfson was no fool. But first, he would destroy Julian.

What a shame. Once, it had seemed that Julian might be a true ally, someone with whom he could collaborate. A man whose tastes and opinions were not unlike Corbin’s own. But lately, Julian had been getting too big for his britches. Oh, there was no end to the ambitious young demons who aspired to challenge Corbin’s leadership. But Julian was different. Julian made him nervous. Julian was strong. In Corbin’s many centuries of demonry, he had rarely seen another demon so powerful.

It was time to cut Julian down to size.

“I’m going to help you destroy Julian,” the Archdemon said. “He’s a fool for trying to protect Nick, but we can use that against him.”

“What about that little bitch who ruined our fun tonight?” Luciana pouted. “
Tesoro,
I want you to get rid of her.”

“Don’t worry, darling. I’ll take care of her.”

Oh, yes, he would take care of her, although perhaps not quite in the way that Luciana meant. So young, so vulnerable, the little blond angel Julian had picked up as a pet. What fun it would be. And perhaps he would keep Serena afterward…after he’d tired of Luciana and thrown her to the Gatekeepers.

Nobody crossed Corbin and got away with it.

He was rising again, aroused by the thought of the two women at his mercy, begging for their lives. He reached for Luciana, kissed her deeply, imagined he was kissing Serena. The night was still young, and there were infinite possibilities to explore.

Chapter Nine

D
awn. The rising sun stole over the city and blossomed, for a brief instant more glorious than the bright lights of the city. Julian stood at his bedroom window, glowering into the brilliance of daybreak. Sleep had proven elusive last night. Serena had left him aching and tormented by the feeling of her supple body arching beneath him.

The night had been torturous, but he had survived it.

Several times during the night, he’d stood at her door on the verge of unlocking it. But each time, he concluded that it would only serve to break the tenuous thread of trust hanging between them. And with Serena, he was finally beginning to realize that trust was the real key.

He opened his bedroom door and went into the living room, surprised to see her there, practicing yoga on the bare marble floor. Leaning against the doorway, he watched her drop backward from a standing position, her supple body arching as she reached back to land on her hands. Her skin gleamed with the dew of perspiration in the morning sunlight. He wondered how long she had been out here. Wondered if she, too, had been unable to sleep.

She caught him watching and straightened out of the pose immediately, pulling herself up to standing. A pretty blush washed over her cheeks. “I wouldn’t have come out here if I’d known you were up,” she insisted, her cheeks staining a deeper shade of scarlet. She patted her face delicately with a towel. “But since you’re here, we should talk about last night.”

“Haven’t you heard the saying? Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” he said, mustering a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

“Somehow I don’t think that rule applies to angels,” she grumbled.

“I swear, it will never happen again if you don’t want it to,” he said.
Oh, but you will want it to,
he thought. He had reawakened her body to pleasure last night. She might protest that she was immune to his advances, but her body told a different story.

There was more truth in the way she’d trembled in his hands last night than the words that came out of her mouth this morning. The memory of her curves undulating beneath his palms made his cock twitch.

It was imperative that they get out of the suite immediately. If they stayed here, he would be sorely tempted to drag her into his bedroom and bury himself in her. With a little coaxing, she might be willing. But his instincts told him to wait. With enough patience, she would come begging for it.

“Get ready in fifteen minutes,” he said, aware of the gruffness in his voice. He made an attempt to gentle it. “I have some work to do at the club, and you’re coming along.”

She blinked up at him with wide-eyed innocence. “I’d rather stay here. I’d like to check on Nick when he wakes up.”

“Nick is probably still sleeping off his hangover from last night. He won’t be awake for hours. You’ll spend the day with me,” he said, leaving her standing in the living room with no opportunity to argue.

With a handful of days to go before the opening of Devil’s Ecstasy, the club was buzzing with painters, designers and delivery people. Julian settled Serena in a corner booth, resentfully reading a magazine. Then he took a walk around, watching as the workers hung curtains from the ceiling, put the final touches of paint on the trim, stocked the bars. Upstairs, a team of trainers from his other clubs instructed the new staff, teaching the bartenders how to juggle bottles, the shooter girls how to flirt outrageously, the bouncers how to control the opening-night frenzy.

Every time Julian asked whether anyone needed instruction, the answer was always the same: “No, Mr. Ascher, everything is under control.”

In short, everything was running smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that there was nothing for him to do.

In the past, opening a new club had been a real challenge. He’d enjoyed diving into his work, always ready to learn something new. But this time, there were no surprises, nothing new to learn. He’d done this dozens of times before in other cities across the country. Vegas was just another place on Julian’s long list of clubs.

He looked at Serena, sitting cross-legged in the booth, flipping idly through her magazine. Even with her hair in a makeshift bun, she drew interested glances from the male workers bustling around her. Serena was oblivious to their attention.

From across the room, Julian watched as one of the carpenters finally got up the nerve to approach her. She looked up, surprised, her face beaming with a platonic smile. Julian didn’t need to hear their conversation to know what was going on. The guy was hitting on her.

Julian crossed the room in long strides. “We’re leaving,” he said to Serena. He shot the carpenter a territorial look that all beta males understood. There was a moment of hesitation while the mortal deliberated whether he should stand his ground. Serena was worth fighting for, but the man took another look at Julian and scuttled off without a word.

“I thought you needed to be here to supervise,” she said, clearly unimpressed by his rudeness. He didn’t care. He just wanted to get her out of here, away from the prying eyes of others.

“Harry can supervise,” he said. His personal assistant could certainly be trusted to oversee the minutiae of the club.

The only thing Julian wanted right now was to be alone with Serena.

The only thing Serena wanted right now was to get away from Julian.

“I’d rather stay at the hotel,” she said as they walked through the hotel lobby toward the main entrance. “I can go back up to the suite if you have somewhere to go. I won’t try to escape, I promise. Get one of your Gatekeeper demons to guard my door if you don’t trust me.”

He leaned down, captured her chin lightly in his hand. “You have a choice,” he said, his voice low and silken. “Either we spend the afternoon as I had planned, or we can spend it tucked away in your bedroom. Which would you prefer?”

His face was poised inches from hers; she could feel his breath on her face, the caress of his strong fingers along her jawline. The thought of spending an afternoon in bed with Julian was so delicious her mouth started to water. But it would be wrong. So utterly wrong, she reminded herself.

“I’m not leaving Nick,” she said, standing her ground.

“By all means, let’s go check on him together,” Julian said with a little smile. “I can guarantee you he’s not awake yet.”

He was right. When they knocked on Nick’s door, there was no answer. She didn’t ask why Julian had a key to her Assignee’s room, but when they opened the door, Nick was tucked safely in bed, snoring loudly.

“See? There’s no use in you hanging around here while he sleeps,” Julian whispered with obvious satisfaction. “I’ll make sure my employees look after him.”

They stopped by the kitchen to pick up a picnic basket containing a lunch the hotel staff had packed. From there, Julian led her up to the roof. On the circular helipad, a helicopter waited, black-and-silver metal sparkling in the morning sun.

She hesitated, wondering where the pilot was and where they were going. He saw her face and grinned. “Don’t worry, angel. We’re just going for a little joyride. Today, I’m going to show you that demons can fly, too.”

Him.
He was going to pilot this thing. She hung back, eyeing the helicopter with skepticism. He loaded the picnic basket into the back. He settled her into the jump seat, next to the pilot’s seat, buckling her in and putting a headset over her ears. He flicked on the flight controls, starting the engine and the rotation of the blades. The vibration of the helicopter sent a shiver down her back. He launched them from the pad with a sudden lift that left her body weightless for a moment. The shadow of the helicopter receded on the pavement beneath them. As they rose, she forgot that she had ever been afraid.

They flew high above Las Vegas, soaring over the Strip in the noonday sun. From above, she watched in wonder as the man-made volcano blew. The sun glinted off the gigantic hotels lining Las Vegas Boulevard: the pyramid of the Luxor, the enormous artificial lagoon of the Bellagio, the Eiffel Tower of Paris. Behind them, gigantic azure swimming pools were crowded with people lounging in the heat of this perfect July day.

Julian veered east, away from the Strip, as they flew over neat rows of suburban houses. Then they were out of the city, leaving it behind them, a man-made mirage shimmering in the desert. He narrated through the headset as he flew over hills of scrub-covered earth, pointing out the dark brown-and-black volcanic rock that lay in the folds of the valleys. Heading over the famous Hoover Dam, Serena marveled at the blue-green surface of Lake Mead, separated into two different levels by a miracle of engineering. Time seemed to collapse as she peered down at the wonders far below.

He flew as easily as he drove, holding the control stick steady between his knees with a light but expert touch. He was a man in command of his surroundings, manipulating the controls with the same deftness he’d used on her body last night. He concentrated on his task, calm but alert. A slight smile played on his lips as she considered his profile. His athletic body was relaxed—he obviously enjoyed flying.

Flight seemed to be, for Julian, an innocent pleasure, unconnected to any evil goals or motivations. She furrowed her brow, trying to reconcile this side of him with the demon who had threatened her loved ones. Even in bed last night, there had been a part of him that had seemed gentle, free of any demonic impulses. He had touched her with a tenderness that had almost seemed human.

But they were not human. He was not, and neither was she. She must never forget that.

She snapped her gaze back to the landscape below. They had been flying for about an hour when they flew over a mountainous rise, and on the other side of it, the land dropped away into the dramatic basin of the Grand Canyon. The layered rock walls rose in tiers around them. His voice came through the headset. “The canyon was formed by erosion, by water, ice and wind forcing the land apart over thousands of years. I’ve always thought she has a soul of her own.”

Julian guided the helicopter around the rim of the canyon, flying for another half hour as he pointed out the unusual land formations—pinnacles, mesas, buttes. “There are several peaks that are called temples here,” he noted. He pointed them out as the helicopter flew past—Shiva Temple, Buddha Temple, Zoroaster Temple, Brahma Temple. She gazed wide-eyed at the craggy rock formations that jutted skyward. How apt that they had been given spiritual names. The canyon was a place of profound tranquility, a place to meditate on the mystical. It was an odd place for a demon, though.

He landed on a plateau, a tabletop of bare rock thirty feet across, the sides of which sloped downward at a steep vertical drop. He switched off the helicopter and let the blades stop their rotation, turned to her as he removed his headset.

“This is the reason I brought you here,” he said, pointing to the gorge below them. “Bright Angel Canyon. There’s a Dirty Devil River in Utah that was named by the same explorers in the mid-1800s. They said they wanted to honor the good spirits as well as the bad,” he said with a grin. “There’s a lookout point at the Bright Angel trailhead, but it’s often packed with tourists. We have a better view of the canyon from here.”

There wasn’t another soul in view. The trip had taken over two hours, but this canyon might have been a universe away from Vegas. They sat without speaking for a few moments, simply staring at the grandeur of nature around them. Her gaze traveled along the stratified gray rock, layered with red, and below, to the greenish-gray waters of the Colorado River. For the first time in two days, she felt at peace.

Hopping out of the helicopter, he laid out blankets on the ground, began unloading the picnic basket. She followed, drinking in the clean canyon air. Wandering over to the edge of the plateau, she looked down, suddenly vertiginous at the drop where the cliff dove straight into the canyon below. She shivered, although it was far from cold.

There was a shuffling of gravel beneath her, and then his strong hand closed around her upper arm. A few rocks came loose from the edge and tumbled two hundred feet to the bottom of the gorge below. As he stood behind her, she felt safe. Instinctively, she knew he would never hurt her, that he would keep her safe from harm.

“Come away from the edge,” he said, his voice low in her ear.

He tugged her backward, toward the picnic blanket. He began to unpack the items the hotel staff had packed: an assortment of cheese and crackers, delicate roast vegetable sandwiches, a large bottle of cold lemonade. He poured her a plastic cupful of the beverage and she sipped its sweetness, wrapped her hands around it, cooling them.

He had brought her here, to this place of penetrating beauty. Unable to find words adequate to express her awe and delight, she said the least she could say. “Thank you.”

“It gives me pleasure to see you happy,” he said quietly.

He paced around the edge of the plateau, peering down and covertly watching Serena finish her lunch. She made a pretty picture sitting in the center of the rock formation, surrounded by the rising strata around them, with her sun-gold hair whipping in the wind and her cheeks flushed pink from the summer heat.

He had meant what he’d said—it gave him immeasurable pleasure to see her so enchanted with her surroundings. But it was terrifying to hear those words coming out of his mouth—more terrifying than if he were hanging from the plateau’s edge, about to plunge into the canyon’s abyss. The safest way to deal with those uncomfortable emotions was to cut them off before they could blossom any further, to stifle the tenderness that was beginning to bloom in his heart. He needed to change the subject. So he began to talk.

“The Grand Canyon was one of the places I came when I first arrived in this country,” he said, coming to stand at a point on the lip of the plateau. “I came from England on a steamship, long before I developed the power to dematerialize. It was the middle of the nineteenth century. London was in the middle of a cholera epidemic, packed to the gills with disease and poverty.”