Accidentally Demonic (22 page)

With reluctance, she held out her hand to him and vaguely wondered exactly what Wanda had said out loud. Why was Clay the only person thus far who could stop her levitation? She forgot about that when he took her fingers in his because she was fighting off the shiver, the warmth it brought her, the reassurance it gave. Those emotions were the emotions of an infidel. And after meeting Hildegard, she’d decided she valued her hair far more than she’d ever anticipated. Not to mention her life.

Unlife. Half-life. Whatever.

When her feet touched the ground, grabbing hold of Clay’s shirt collar, she stood on tiptoe while Wanda and Nina got into the backseat of the truck. “I’m acquiescing for now, but this isn’t over by a long shot. I don’t care what you say. Your story has more holes than Swiss cheese. So just because I’m doing what I’m told right now doesn’t mean it’ll last. Clear?” she finished, mocking his earlier order.

His raised an impervious eyebrow. “Like that’s a surprise? Get in the truck.”

“Get in the truck,” she mimicked in a mock imitation of his tone, swinging the passenger door wide, and climbing in. “I’m not answering any of your questions, Casey. My business is mine and yours is yours. I’m just here to be your personal thug and protect you. Blah, blah, blah.”

Entering the driver’s side, he smiled at her with a wink, hoisting himself into the seat. “I think we’ve reached that place called understanding. Took you a while, but here we are.”

“Oh, we’re here,” she muttered under her breath, scrunching down in the seat with the posture of a scolded two-year-old.

Clayton tugged at his earlobe before sticking the key in the ignition. “Vampire,” he pointed out, grinning wider. “I can hear you.”

“Then hear this,” she whispered. “You have no idea the grenade of whoop ass I’m going to launch at you.”

“Could you launch it with your fucking mouth closed?” Nina asked from behind her. “I never thought I’d say it, but all that banging around in that club, not to mention chasing after those two blond sticks on heels who think a Tic Tac is calorie-a-cide has worn me. Oh, and yeah, we can
all
hear you. So clamp it.”

“I hate to do it, Case, but I’m going to second Nina’s request. Hush. Please,” Wanda pleaded.

Casey slunk farther into the seat, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

But she was like a snake, waiting to strike her prey.

Yeah. A snake.

Hisssssssssssssss.

 

 

PULLING her blanket up over her, Clayton watched Casey and the slow rise and fall of her breasts in the moonlight.

Exhaustion, and no doubt the constant unruly hormonal shifts she’d been experiencing, had taken over, leaving her unable to make good on her threat to launch her grenade of whoop ass.

He could only duck those for so long.

She was right. To a degree, she deserved the truth. Not that an explanation would make any difference to her predicament.

Or his.

He was mated to Hildegard.

Against his will—without his consent—but mated he was, and vampire law was crystal clear. No matter your mate, vampire or not, you were in until someone was dead.

Tonight, more than ever, he’d wished to be free of Hildegard, and not just because she was like a knife in his fucking gut.

Rather, it had to do with Casey and that kiss.

A kiss that had stirred something in him he wasn’t aware he was capable of. It went beyond the lust of it, beyond the silken blend of her tongue with his. It even went beyond her hot, lush body pressed to his.

Butterflies.

Or some facsimile thereof. His smile was wry. He’d actually experienced what he supposed were butterflies. A strange shift of organs he knew rationally no longer existed. Yet there it was. A sharp surge of not just desire, but of longing. The longing to protect her, followed by emotions he didn’t know the first thing about giving names to because they were so long forgotten.

With more regret than he cared to admit, Clay knew the kiss initiated by Casey had more to do with the uproar her body was in, changing and adjusting to her new demonic state and those sexual side effects Darnell had talked about. He’d been an available set of lips for another set of lips that had not only grown adorably mouthy, but would have been satisfied planting themselves on any other man’s.

But that didn’t change what those lips had done to his.

It didn’t change how enraged he’d been when those men, drooling and guffawing assholes, had been howling like the dogs they were over her pole escapade.

It didn’t change how much he would have liked to have been that pole.

Jesus, Gunnersson
,
who the hell are you?
he mused, running a hand over his jaw. It was just a kiss. One kiss that could never happen again, if he hoped to keep Hildegard at bay.

But it’d been a helluva kiss, and it was keeping him from the sleep he knew he’d need if Casey still planned to launch her grenade of attack.

Stirring, she sighed, tucking the corner of the blanket beneath her chin while rolling to her side to burrow deeper into the mattress.

Watching her sleep dredged up some more as yet unlabeled emotions, and it mesmerized him, transfixed him. The slope of her hip, the curve of the underside of her breasts, made his mouth water, made his hands almost shake with the need to trail his fingers over her skin. To find out if the rest of her was as soft as her mouth.

He wanted to sit at the edge of her bed, push back the blankets, and drag his hands over the outline of her body. He wanted her to bury herself against him in the same way she huddled under the covers.

Yeah. This was some bad shit.

Shit he had to leave alone. He couldn’t allow his focus to shift. Not now. Not when he was so close to ending this charade with Hildegard.

But for whatever reason, he found himself hoping—hoping he could get his hands back on that elusive jackass who’d coaxed him to that bar the night he’d met Casey. Hoping he could find him in time to sever his bond to Hildegard without his ultimate demise.

Then maybe he might stand a chance at giving names to what he was feeling about Casey.

And a fucking kiss.

Let it go. He’d let it go and stay as far away as he could until he was sure she was safe.

So, in the spirit of letting go, what would one more minute spent watching her sleep while trying to figure out exactly what was so goddamned special about her hurt?

Or ten.

He could probably keep his eyes open for another ten minutes.

 

 

“WELL, it is a good picture of her, don’t you think, Wanda? I mean, just look at her legs—they’re gorgeous. All long and nicely toned. Plus your hair looks fabulous. I don’t know what came over you when you went from frumpy librarian to sex bomb, but you look fantastic.” Marty patted Casey’s leg with an approving smile and returned to running her fingers through the fringe on her admiral blue knit scarf, staring blankly off into the alleyway.

Nina peeked out from beneath the blanket that covered her sunshine-sensitive eyes, her long legs splayed in front of her. She tipped her head back to rest against the pile of boxes she leaned against. “Marty? Pipe down. There’s no somewhere- over-the-rainbow side to this. So quit with the chocolate-covered-goodness bullshit. And I can’t fucking believe I didn’t catch every one of those motherfuckers with cameras. Goddamn it, kiddo, I really tried.”

Casey nodded numbly. That Nina was apologizing made everything so much worse. It meant that even someone as hardened as Nina, when the chips were really down, could have a sympathetic bone. Which meant her chips were really down. Like, way.

Wanda grabbed the morning paper from Marty and slapped it on her thighs. “Okay—so we’re in a pickle.”

Blowing out pent-up air, Casey pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. The other held her beloved Shark, swirling impatiently in his goldfish bowl. “No.
I’m
in a pickle, Wanda. Not you, not Marty, not Nina. I appreciate everything you guys have done for me so far, but this is my mess. I’ll handle it.”

Wanda’s expression went from helpless to cross. “What about this don’t you get, Casey? We’re here to help you. I use the word
we
because you’re my sister, and I’m not going to desert you when you so obviously need me. I’ve included my friends because they’re just as willing to help. I know you’re all about your independence and taking care of yourself, but it really is okay to borrow my shoulder. This demon thing didn’t happen because you were foolish and reckless.”

“No, it happened because
I
was,” Clay, ever the accountable one, said. He leaned against a streetlamp, hot and rumpled from his rudely awakened vampire sleep. Thank goodness he’d only been out for about an hour, or there’d have been no waking him until twilight.

“And so did this.” Casey grabbed the paper, shoving it over her shoulder at Clay, who took it from her shaking hand. She set Shark down on the concrete to rise, yanking at her brown jacket and tightening it around her neck.

Though his face didn’t change, his eyes did. She could see just the corners of them from behind his sunglasses. They turned dark and his eyebrow lifted again. “I hadn’t seen the pictures yet. That sucks. I’m sorry.”

“Well, thanks for the condolences. They mean so much at a time like this,” she replied, letting the sarcasm drip from her words, moving away from him to avoid contact. Fuckall, if she shouldn’t hate his guts right now. He was the one who’d landed her here, and still, that wasn’t enough for her to quell the tap dancer in her stomach, and douse the fire he created in her loins by just standing there. He wasn’t even doing anything interesting, for the love of.

“And he fired you for this? Isn’t that, like, the pot calling the kettle black? His daughters aren’t exactly the Virgin Mary. Or hasn’t he seen one rip off her clothes in public? I know you said you were going to quit, but I thought maybe that was just a heat-of-the-moment thing,” Clay said.

No, the notion hadn’t been heated by the moment. She’d meant to quit, but she’d hoped to do it without the kind of blemish this left on her résumé, and she’d hoped, for the girls’ sake, their father would finally realize the impact of their shenanigans had led to Casey, Miss Patience and Understanding, quitting. That could hardly be the case now, seeing as she’d behaved so badly. “Yeah, he fired me. In a loud, screaming, litigious way. And he’s right. I’m supposed to be a good example to them. This hardly constitutes good or an example of anything but blatant debauchery.”

Clay shrugged, his smooth skin wrinkling at the forehead. “I don’t think they’re
that
bad. . . . In this one here, your smile’s really nice.”

Her smile. “Uh, have you taken a good look at that picture of me?” She flicked the full-color photo of herself with a half-crazed smile and the caption “Naughty Nannies.” “See that?” She pointed to the pole her leg was wrapped around. The pole she’d hiked her leg so high up on you could see just a hint of the bottom of her left ass cheek. “That’s my ass. Oh, and look,” she said, pointing at the swell of her breast. “That right there—that’s the miracle part of the Miracle Bra. Works wonders for a B cup, don’t you think?”
Or have you forgotten the miracle of those puppies in your big, burly hands?

She gulped. Her life was in ruin and the best she could do was recollect the bliss of jamming her tongue down his throat.

Clay’s gaze fixed on her. She felt it even from behind his sunglasses—dark and stormy. But then he leaned down and said, “If it’s any consolation, you were definitely having a good hair day, and, in that one right there”—he pointed to the third of four pictures—“you exert exceptional control hanging on to the pole the way you did. I was impressed.”

As though that made everything better.

Wanda rose then, too, her face a mask of outraged anger on Casey’s behalf. “I cannot believe the audacity of that man. I wish you’d been able to quit before he fired you, so he’d know what train wrecks his children are! What a loud- mouthed hypocrite—the jackass. I can’t believe how rashly he behaved.”

Rash was an understatement.

At the very wee hour of 7 A.M. sharp, Calvin Castalano had arrived on her doorstep with steam coming out of his hairy ears while she trembled before him in her bathrobe and footie pajamas. Where her demonic temper at that point was, could only be chalked up to the kind of luck that seemed to have befallen her as of late. Then he’d reminded her that her job was to prevent little messes like these, not create them. Loudly. Obnoxiously. With vigor.

He hadn’t even given her the chance to say good-bye to the girls, and while they’d created the better part of this mess, she didn’t want to leave without at least telling them she wanted only good things for them.

Casey cast Wanda a tired glance, defeated. “You know what? It’s okay. I was stuck in a shitty job. Now I’m not. Maybe this was just the thing I needed to motivate me to move forward. So onward-ho.”

Shortly after Calvin’s tirade, much like any staff member who was dismissed, he’d sent in his hired henchmen to remove all traces of her from her cute apartment, leaving her and the girls and Clay on the sidewalk in the back alley.

The moving van her boss had hired, and would likely bill her for, pulled up with a grind of gears and tires.

Ah. Vinny and Guido, aka the hired movers, had arrived.

“Dude, if you break one fucking thing, you’ll be using prosthetic fingers to put all that shit in your hair,” Nina threatened the bulky mover with the darkly slicked-back mane.

Marty was up and at her side, a falsely bright smile on her face. She pushed an unbrushed strand of Casey’s hair out of her face. “It’ll all be fine. We’ll put your stuff in storage, and you can stay at our apartment here in the city—rent-free—no obligations. Until you get on your feet. Okay?”