He brushed his lips against her cheek and throat; his breath was warm on her ear. He seemed to like to do that, and she liked it, too—it made her shiver every time. Which of course he knew. He’d been seducing women for thousands of years, and Grace doubted that her erogenous zones were that unique.
“It is to my heart, Gracie. You wound me through and through.” His mouth settled on the pulse in her throat.
“You don’t have a heart,” she whispered.
He maneuvered her weak and aching body to suit his pleasure. He was holding her hands above his head with one hand, but the other was now free to roam. It found her breast again. His skin was rough, something that still surprised her. He was a Crown Prince, so were there no moisturizers in Hell? Were his fingers rough from honest labor before he’d been damned? Who
was
Caspian, aside from the man—no, demon—that was making her so very wet?
“Caspian, please,” she begged.
“Please, what?” he asked as a thumb and forefinger taunted her nipple. “Please make you scream? Please fuck you hard? Please what, Grace?”
“I can’t,” she cried out, though her hips angled forward and she arched into his touch.
“Oh, I think you can,” the demon said.
“I’m still sore,” she pleaded, but she was caught up in a spell. She was ensnared in a web of desire, and Caspian was the spider.
A spider. It wasn’t a romantic image. In fact, it terrified her. But not only was this a matter of not being able to resist, she didn’t want to try. The danger only made her hotter. That’s how she’d gotten tangled up with Michael at first, and a demon was certainly more dangerous than a Russian mobster. He’d also proven better in bed, which was hard to do. Although Michael was a shit in all other aspects of his life, he was a generous and talented lover when he chose.
Caspian claimed her mouth, his lips brutal against hers. “A little pain can be fun,” he said, his voice a physical force. It was a caress, as if it were a corporeal being sliding over her.
Inside
her.
“Caspian, I mean it.” But Grace didn’t sound like she meant it to even her own ears.
“How about a gift?” he asked as his hand drifted lower, past the filmy lace of her new “dating” knickers. He pushed one finger against her clit, inciting a divine pleasure-pain that was almost too much to bear. Grace didn’t know what she would do when he moved that finger; she might not be able to stop herself from screaming, which would bring who knew how many people into the dressing room.
Caspian whispered something that sounded like Latin. “
Everto Iucunditas.
I give you the gift of demonic pleasure, regeneration, healing.”
Grace panicked, wondering what he would demand in return. “I don’t want to pay for it!” She was already worried about her soul.
“Oh, you’ll pay, my Gracie. But not in the way you fear.”
Grace felt something solid beneath her, but it wasn’t Caspian. Something ethereal raised her up; her new knickers vanished to dust and manacles closed about her wrists and ankles, spreading her wide to his ministrations. Suddenly, she was afraid again. She was bound in the Avenue dressing room, awaiting the pleasure of a demon who’d just gifted her with the power of regeneration. What was he going to do with her? Hell, what was he going to do
to
her? What had she gotten herself into?
To make things stranger, there were quiet sounds of pleasure coming from the other dressing rooms: women masturbating to fantasies that they couldn’t explain. They’d been overwhelmed by a sudden need that emanated from Caspian’s presence, from the sex-magick he’d given her. But instead of turning her on, as it might have in other circumstances, this only made Grace feel more alone.
“Are you afraid, Gracie?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Are you aroused?”
She didn’t have to answer; with her womanhood displayed before him he could see the evidence of her desire and could smell it on her. But she didn’t know if this was some kind of test, if he was going to hurt her. Had she made a mistake by summoning him? He was far too powerful. A lower-level demon she might have put in his place, might have banished back to Hell, but Caspian was too strong, and he had command of her flesh.
“Tell me to stop,” Caspian said as he dipped his head to taste her. His tongue laved her clit.
It felt good enough to set her on fire . . . No, she was already burning. Grace ached to be filled by Caspian, to be possessed by him. Maybe not possessed in the traditional demon-human relationship, though. She hoped he hadn’t heard that.
“Stop,” she whispered, even though it felt so good.
He raised his head and drew back. “I thought this was what you wanted. I’m sorry, Gracie. Your body, it speaks to me. Your fear, it makes you wet.” Caspian shrugged.
“You’re stopping?” she asked, a little unsure of his intentions because she was still manacled.
“I don’t want an unwilling partner.” He paused when he saw the look in her eyes. “Before you go and make me out to be something all goody-goody that I’m not, unwilling is boring. I’m not some redeemable antihero,” he sneered. “Don’t make that mistake.”
“Are you going to take these chains off?” Grace asked.
“Do you really want me to?”
Grace realized she didn’t. This was suddenly fun again, now that she knew she had ultimate control, now that she knew her surrender was just a game. And her body was no longer sore. That demonic regeneration must really be working, whatever it was. “No, not really.”
“Can I continue my meal then?” He didn’t wait for her answer but bent to slip his tongue back inside her.
Grace wanted the last word. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Caspian was nothing if not polite. He kept his mouth full and didn’t say another word—at least, not while he was licking what he’d called her “passion flower.” He could talk so hokey, but
oh,
could he ever use that tongue for better things.
She strained against the cuffs that held her tight to the wall at her wrists and ankles, wishing she could move, wishing to torture him the way he was torturing her. No, scratch that. This was bliss. She wanted him to keep doing what he was doing. His tongue was amazing. It felt as if it were sliding inside her at the same time as it ghosted over her clitoris. For all she knew, it was. Demon sex was going to ruin her.
He made a sound of pleasure as if he’d heard her thoughts. Grace would have said something suitably sharp-witted had he not suddenly started using his fingers. That deliciously masculine, calloused hand began working her along with his tongue. She couldn’t get close enough, and she couldn’t push herself away. Caspian continued to manipulate her swollen flesh, continued to lap at her with that wicked tongue.
She wanted to fight it, wanted to draw the pleasure out, but soon all she could do was submit to another mind-shattering orgasm. Grace came, stifling a scream that would have been drowned out anyway by cries of pleasure coming from the women in the rooms next to hers. It went on for some time.
Her body still trembling, she suddenly found herself on some sort of divan in what she imagined the Halls of Olympus would look like. Her restraints had disappeared as if they’d never been. She found herself splayed before Caspian like some sort of virginal sacrifice that gods knew she hadn’t been in years. The velvet sheath of her slit was still shuddering with aftershock waves of pleasure.
“Scream here if you like, no one will hear you,” he promised.
He claimed her mouth, and she could taste herself on him. That made her hot, to taste what he tasted, the sweet honey his mouth had coaxed from her. A shiver ran through Grace as he brought their bodies together. He entered her and she was instantly full—full of sensation, full of him—until he moved. Then it was like something inside her shattered, and she dug her nails into his shoulders, and raked his back. That inspired him to thrust harder, to lift his forearm and angle her hips up to meet his thrusts so that he hit the core of her again and again.
Grace was suddenly screaming, but the words were unintelligible. In the back of her mind she wondered if this was what happened to cause a body to speak in tongues—or maybe this was just speaking with Caspian’s tongue. Wave after wave of ecstasy took her, and soon she couldn’t feel her flesh anymore; she couldn’t feel anything but the surreal, endlessly spiraling sensation. Her orgasm was like a portal to other joys where every touch rippled new pleasures like a stone dropped into a pool.
It finally ended. Her surroundings shimmered, and she saw the walls of the dressing room again. Grace knew then that she’d been changed irrevocably, without a doubt. In the heat of Caspian’s arms, she couldn’t find the strength to fear—or worry about facing the other occupants of the dressing room.
C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
New Management
T
he Baba Yaga paced around her quaint little nowhere cottage and huffed and puffed. Some days she wondered if she should have taken that wicked-witch gig and got the gingerbread house with the really big kitchen.
It was all very frustrating to only be able to watch the goings-on of the real world from another plane of existence. She was stuck in a place out of space and time—a safe place to be sure, a place to grow her power and practice her skills, but entering the mortal realm had proved to be a real problem. Helping people was easy, but meddling in the lives of her immediate family required invocations and summonings on their part. Seraphim Stregaria hated that Grace thought she was dead, and she missed that child like nothing else, but her departure had been part of the sacrifice for the greater good—the world’s as well as Grace’s.
Seraphim wasn’t sure if she dared another peek into the swirling black depths of her iron cauldron. The last time she’d checked, she’d had to drop her shawl over the top.
Really, she didn’t need
that
image of her granddaughter. Or the one before that. And definitely not the one before that!
All the silly girl was supposed to do was ask the demon for the truth, not shag him until his brain spewed out his . . . Well, she wasn’t supposed to shag him, anyway. Though, the Baba Yaga supposed, with all of the nonsense Grace had put up with from that hell-spawn Michael, the darling child deserved a treat. And Caspian was definitely a treat. Not that Seraphim knew from actual experience, but she knew someone who did. That witch had been ruined for mortal men for all time, forever and ever, amen!
Of course, all the demon shagging in the world had to be secondary to thwarting Nadja’s machinations. Seraphim knew the woman had lived a hard life, but that was no excuse to be such an evil bitch. None at all. Seraphim had been enrolled in the school of hard knocks, too. In fact, they’d come from the same impoverished little village. But though Nadja was younger than Seraphim, she had more hate in her heart.
It was strange, in some ways. Seraphim had survived Auschwitz. She
still
didn’t understand what a soul could do to earn torment like what she’d seen there, what she’d lived through. She didn’t think there was anyone in the world who was evil enough to deserve
that
—unless those responsible were forced to live their deeds again and again, each time suffering another life that they themselves had destroyed.
When she’d first learned she could become the Baba Yaga, she’d been determined to use all her new power to make sure that the last of those responsible for the Holocaust would pay the ultimate price. She’d learned, however, that it wasn’t her place to make such choices, not even when vengeance was in her grasp and her heart told her it was the right thing to do. Every person had a destiny, a wheel of rewards and trials that were his or hers to live. This had ended up being a comfort in the darkest parts of the night, when memories were newly sharpened daggers. She hadn’t quite found it in herself to forgive, but Seraphim surrendered to a higher power. She took comfort in the fact that whether she called it God, the Goddess or both, the Universe knew better than she and everything would balance out.
Seraphim couldn’t stand it anymore; she gave in and peeked into her cauldron. Thank the Goddess her granddaughter and Caspian weren’t naked anymore. But what she saw was just as bad. In fact, now that she looked, Seraphim would have rather seen them naked and mid-frolic. This was horrible. It was the worst thing that could happen, and Seraphim couldn’t see how she was going to straighten out this tangle of thread that Fate had wrought. The grandchild for whom she’d had such high hopes, the one for whom she’d do anything, was staring up at a Crown Prince of Hell with stardust in her eyes.
Stardust,
damn it!
As if it couldn’t get any worse, not only did the demon appear to like it, but he was holding her tenderly, looking down at her with the same foolishness. Seraphim was feeling nauseated, was sure she was going to spray her lunch in Technicolor disapproval all over her cauldron.
She was so mad she could cuss. So she did. “Fuck on a knock-kneed mare. Can you say rebound?” she muttered. What else could this be, after all? You take a demon used to shagging inexperienced virgins and an experienced woman used to shagging selfish mortals . . . ? It was a recipe for disaster.
“Oh, sweet bleeding damnation.” The enormity of what was occurring had just hit her like a brick. No,
two
bricks. Grace wasn’t a virgin. The impact of these coital relations could be catastrophic. Seraphim was sure she had taught Grace better.
“Ask and he shall appear,” said a deep, sexy baritone.
Seraphim raised her hands, her power gathering in great, crackling halos. “How in the hell did
you
get in here?” she asked the newcomer.
“Hell is right, Sera darling.”
“Sera?” she practically shrieked. What gall! She let fly a bolt of pure white energy at the intruder. It was a shame to have to fry him like a pan of bacon; he was as handsome a thing as she’d ever seen. He was tall, with jet-black hair and smooth pale skin. He had an immaculate, devilish-looking goatee, and he looked kind of like a vampire, with shoulders to die for. He also looked kind of familiar.
She was surprised to see him still standing there as the energy faded, but Seraphim prepared herself to strike again. She’d try something more like lightning. Still, it was a shame. Just because she was old didn’t mean that she was dead. She could still appreciate a fine piece of meat.
He laughed, a rich sound that touched her in places that hadn’t been touched for years. She was tempted to change form, to become the voluptuous seductress and have some fun of her own, but she rather liked wearing the shape of the crone. She could get away with more. No one suspected the grandmotherly type—no one but those from her part of the world, anyway. They could see her coming a mile away.
“Ah, Sera. I see you don’t remember me.”
“Should I? And don’t call me Sera. No one calls me that but . . .” She trailed off and almost zapped herself in the mouth as she clamped her power-infused hand over it to stifle a scream. She let the energy dissipate.
“Is it coming back to you, love?”
Hades, the onetime god of the underworld, had gotten another job with a spiffy new title in this current pantheon. He was now upper management. In fact, he was the Big Boss. He was what the mortals commonly referred to as the Devil. In her youth, Seraphim Stregaria had shown great power for a mortal. She’d summoned a demon, made her deal, and it was with this very demon. He’d not been so high up back then, had still been a Crown Prince. Even though she’d been a virgin, the laws of nature had been somehow twisted. She’d gotten pregnant with Aurora, Grace’s mother. Then the war was over and Seraphim came to the United States to give her child a better life. She’d never seen the demon again.
“Nothing from you for seventy years and you think I’m happy to see you?” Power gathered again at her palms.
“Ah, Sera, girl. Work’s been a bitch. Kept me busy. What can I say?”
“That you’re a thoughtless bastard?” she offered.
“That I am.” He flashed her a wicked grin, baring straight, white, and inhumanly lovely teeth. She wanted to knock them out.
“What do you want?”
“You.”
What? He could have knocked her over with a feather. Had his marbles rolled away from him and gotten lost in a fire pit?
“No,” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me. You think you can just disappear and leave me with a child and never ever help me and then—”
“I
did
help you. You survived a concentration camp. You came to me a virgin, and you survived with your baby. How do you think you found the way to this Baba Yaga power, hmm? Did you really think it was all by yourself? And why do you think Grace got Caspian?”
“Because that’s who I told her to summon.”
“And you think you came up with that all on your lonesome?”
“As a matter of fact—” Seraphim began.
“She’s my granddaughter. Of course, I—” he said at the same time.
Seraphim closed the distance between them, her form growing younger with every step so that she might stand upright and look him in the eye. “Then, why did you let Aurora die?” she whispered with a deadly calm. “You don’t care about your half-spawn. Not mine, and none of them from any of the other women you bred with.”
“You’re wrong, Sera. Life and death are not in my purview.”
“You’re the Devil!” she shrieked. “How can it not be?”
“That belongs to Fate.” He cast his eyes skyward. “Even
He
doesn’t twist those threads. There are some things that can be changed and some that cannot. Man is the maker of all the evil in the world, I just hold an office. My duties are to test Man, to show him the faces of adversity and horror. Not to kill, not to murder, and certainly not to resurrect. Her soul was gone, Sera. She wanted to go. I can’t put something back in a body that’s not there.”
Though he looked almost sad, Seraphim lifted her chin. “I don’t believe anything you say.” Demons were tricky.
Hades shrugged, as if he suddenly couldn’t care one way or the other. That only pissed her off more.
“You never answered my question. What the hell do you want?”
“You,” he repeated. Then he grabbed her around the waist and crushed her against him for a searing kiss.
“You wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t changed into the maiden,” she accused when she could breathe again.
“You think?” he asked, with a diabolically arched brow.
“Maybe not. You’re just perverse enough to do it. Now, get out of here. I’ve got things to handle.”
“Like, ensuring that our granddaughter doesn’t get pregnant from frolicking with a Crown Prince of Hell?”
“There is that, yes. And I need to stop her from falling in love.”
“That love thing you can’t interfere with, but number one I’ve already fixed. There will be no imps from this union. I have to tell you, I was kind of pissed when he demanded sex as payment for the deal. I saw it was time to come talk to you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re just making a booty call.”
“Oh, Sera. Listen to yourself, using terms like ‘booty call.’ You were always better at keeping up with the times than I. We’ll see how long that lasts before you’re tired of trying.”
“You aren’t denying it, though.”
“No, I’m not.” He grinned.
“It’s been so long for me, there’s nothing down there but cobwebs and dust. In fact, I’m sure the hinges would creak if you tried to open
that
door.”
Hades still hadn’t let go of her. “You don’t think I remember how to grease the hinges?”
“Now that’s just disgusting.”
“But you like it.”
“Not really. I—”
She was rudely interrupted by the Devil’s mouth again crushing her own. When he pulled away, he eyed her for a long moment. “I see it’s inherited.”
“What is?” Seraphim asked, breathless.
“Kissing shuts
you
up, too.”