Freudian Slip (14 page)

K
ATE LAY ON HER BED
, naked, listening to Jules's voice. She had never felt so beautiful. Not ever.

You're perfect, Katie Girl. Can you feel me touching you? I could spend an hour on your thigh, right here, just worshipping you. This spot is heaven.

“I feel cool where you touch me,” she breathed. All around her candles flickered, casting the room in a soft, warm glow. The night was warm, and she felt deliciously sexy.

Lie still. Lie perfectly still. That way you'll feel the slightest touch. Okay?

Kate shut her eyes. She did feel him, like butterfly kisses, on her thighs, then her belly, then her nipples. She moaned. She so wanted to be able to feel him harder, skin to skin, but the sensations were delicate and erotic.

We'll have to be creative.

She smiled. “Creative?”

Shhh, just lay still, angel.

Kate breathed deeply, feeling little shivers all over her body. It was erotic, but she longed to hold Jules. To see him. She felt his breath at her ear.

Touch yourself, Kate.

She blushed, a flush of red ascending from her neck to her cheeks.

“Jules,” she whispered. “I don't know if I can do that in front of you.”

I'm touching myself. I swear to you. I'm touching myself at the same time. I want to see you come, Kate. I have to be with you when you do. Touch yourself. Please? Trust me.

Kate slid her hand down her belly. Then she took a deep breath and touched herself.

Jules whispered to her.
You're my soul mate, Kate. I adore you. Now, feel me on top of you, pressing against you?

She did, and felt her body rising toward an orgasm.

“Jules,” she said, breathless, body tense.

Yes, Katie Girl, I'm here. Let go, let go with me, Kate.

When she came, she heard Jules moan, and his guttural sound sent additional tremors through her body.

She breathed heavily for a minute or two.

You look beautiful when you come, angel. You
look so pure and perfect and…I could watch you forever.

Kate smiled, opened her eyes, and rolled onto her side, facing the middle of the bed. “Jules?”

Yes?

“That was beautiful. It wasn't…I can't describe how much I long to hold you and feel you and see you. But that was intimate, and I did feel close to you.”

Don't ever leave me, Kate. Don't ever send me away.

“Never,” she breathed. “Talk me to sleep, like you do, Jules.”

I adore you. And I love you, Katie Girl.

Kate heard him whispering over and over again, and knew she wanted that voice, her Jules, there every night. Forever.

“G
US
!” J
ULIAN
S
HAW
stood in the middle of Kate's living room while she slept in the next room. Julian shouted at the ceiling. “Gus, God damn you. And yes, I said God damn you. Materialize! Come here! Wherever you are, get your ass down here.”

A short time later, Gus appeared, a pint of Guinness in his hand.

“Where the hell have you been?” Julian demanded.

“I was in the middle of a game of darts when I got an urgent call from my boss, actually.”

“The Boss called you?”

“No.
My
boss. My immediate supervisor. Seems you have been misbehaving with Kate. Like one of your kinky porn DVDs.”

Julian lunged at Gus. “Shut the fuck up!” He swung at him and missed, sending the Guinness careening to the floor.

“All right. Perhaps it wasn't kinky shagging. But Caseworkers are not—most definitely not—supposed to be having relations with their cases. This is against every rule in the universe. How are you
helping
Kate? How? You were instructed to discern what she needed and then help her. Not shag her like one of your two-bit tarts.”

Julian pushed Gus. “Don't make me hurt you, old man. 'Cause I will.”

“Julian, you have never sustained a relationship in your entire life, from the moment you lost your virginity at thirteen to your babysitter.”

“I forgot you guys know all about me. All right, so at thirteen, I was too old for a babysitter.”

“Your parents were going to be gone for an entire weekend.”

“Well…that was apparently a little too much time for Missy Conrad. She was a hot college student with a thing for virgins.”

“Listen to yourself, Julian. Fine, from Missy Conrad on…you tried to get in the pants of every girl in high school—you even kept a secret
list
under your mattress.”

“Can I help it if I liked to keep score?”

“Shall we move on…College. You were uniformly reviled by women. Love 'em and leave
'em. Your radio show was a slightly tamer version of your current one. The administration was constantly after you. And then…the show.”

“My show is entertainment. That's all.”

“But Julian, you've used the show to funnel sex into your own life from porn stars to impromptu orgies. And now…now you've been forced—and I'll admit it…you don't have too much choice here, free will aside, the Boss wanted you on the case, but forced, coerced, whatever you want to call it to spend time with Kate.”

“My Kate.”

“But Julian, have you thought perhaps it isn't so much Kate but the fact that you've for once slowed down and spent 24/7 with another human being? With a woman? Stopped seeing a woman as an object? Gotten to know her as a vulnerable person? Watched her sleep? All the while unable to indulge in some of your usual peccadilloes?”

“No. Kate is special.”

“I know that. My boss knows that.
The
Boss knows that. But I don't know if you know that, Julian. Not really. If you believed that, you would want the best for her, not want to be selfish and use her for a shag.”

“She's not a shag. Kate isn't like that. She's not like that at all.”

Gus backed up. “Julian…you can't believe that you are what she needs. You simply cannot.”

“I am!” Julian shouted.

“Stop being selfish for once in your life. This isn't about Julian Shaw. This is about Kate.”

“I'm what she needs. I love her.”

“Julian, you can't have her. She's mortal. And you are…”

“I'm what? I don't even know what I am. A disembodied soul. I'm still me—Julian. She needs me.”

“Julian, she needs to move on with someone she can have a life with. A real life.” Gus's eyes were soft and pale, pitying. Which made Julian hate him more.

“She can have a life with me.”

“She can't. She would never be able to have children, to create life. She would shut herself in this apartment with you and be lost to the world of the living. You can't want that for her, Julian. These walls and no more. You don't want her to give up on the world, Julian.”

Julian hesitated. “It wouldn't be like that.” Already, in his mind, he imagined them having a child—using a sperm bank. Raising the child together. Creating a world away from the nastiness outside. The nastiness he had been part of. They would be different.

Gus stared at him. “You've fallen for her.”

Julian refused to answer. “You know who I am. I'm a shock jock. I don't fall in love.”

“This is preposterously and completely unacceptable.”

“Yeah, well, fuck your unacceptable. You dumped me here with no real instructions. How was I supposed to know anything? I've done the best I could. And she is so much better off now. She smiles. She laughs. She falls asleep without crying. She listens to me, and I listen to her.”

“She makes love with a soul. You are not flesh and blood, Julian.”

“So what? I'd think the Boss would approve of soul mates.”

“Julian…”

Gus's face was stricken, and Julian felt panic.

“Gus, you have got to go to bat for me. Let me stay in Neither Here Nor There. I'm good here. I'm fine with her. Let me stay here.”

“Julian, you don't get to decide that. The Boss does.”

“Well, fuck the Boss.”

“You don't mean that,” Gus said.

“I do. I mean it with every bit of my soul. You don't screw with people like that, Gus. You don't throw two souls together and then when they have
actual feelings, when they find something between them, something they've never known before, rip them apart from one another.”

“You don't understand how it works.”

“Don't I? Look at poor Kate. Look at 9/11. Where was the Boss in all that? Where was She when the towers went down?”

Julian felt a furor pulsing through him that he had not felt since arriving in Neither Here Nor There. That he had never felt. His rants on the radio were about things he read in the papers or ideas he had, but not anything that was important to him. Not in the way Kate was.

“It's the Plan.”

“What fucking Plan?”

“A Plan too grand, too huge for us to understand.”

Julian stormed toward Gus, backing him up farther. “You know what, Gus? You know what? That just sounds like a load of fucking crap you feed us to keep us from questioning the Boss. Well, I for one don't think She knows what the hell She's doing. And if She does, then She's messing with people's hearts. It's bullshit.”

Gus held his hands up. “Please, Julian, calm down.”

“No! You go to the Boss. You tell Her I'm not leaving. I can stay in that God damn coma forever.
Twenty years. People do that, don't they? They do that all the time. I have no one who would fight to pull me off life support. I can lay there forever, for all I care. I'm not leaving her.”

“You don't get to make those decisions, Julian.”

“Tell her!” Julian screamed. “Tell the Boss. Then get out of here. I'm going back to lie down with Kate. She needs me.”

Gus shook his head sadly. “Julian…try to think this through.”

But Julian didn't want to hear anything Gus said. “Stupid Brit,” he muttered, and wandered back to Kate's bedroom. She was sound asleep, a serene look and a half smile on her face.

He lay down next to her. “Katie Girl, I won't let them take me away. We're good together. We are. Fuck 'em all if they can't see that. Fuck 'em all.”

He leaned in so close that he could see her pale freckles, even in the darkness of the room. He kissed her lips. This was what he was meant to do.

“Dream, Kate. Dream of me.”

And he kept watching her, knowing Gus was wrong, but worrying just what the Boss would do when She found out just how deeply he had fallen.

B
ALAM WAS ESCORTED
to The City Bistro's private room. The City Bistro sat on Madison Avenue in midtown, not too far a walk from St. Patrick's Cathedral—a haven for the Other Team. The dining room windows rose two stories tall, with the kind of hushed feeling a “power lunch” place possessed. Thick tablecloths and equally thick napkins sat on tables covered with the finest china and heavy silverware. He walked through the dining room, absorbing all the stares.

He always got the private room, and always as he walked through the crowded, leather and brass restaurant, diners scrutinized him. You had to be A-list to get the private room. A Bruce Springsteen, a Julia Roberts, a Justin Timberlake. Not even Paris Hilton and her ilk could get the private room. Too banal. Too low-class.

What the diners didn't know, of course, was that the maitre d', Tony, was on Balam's payroll.
Tony had a drinking problem, and when he'd hit and killed a pedestrian—and left the scene and never reported it—Balam was waiting with an iron-clad contract. No clause 17H for him. In exchange for his soul, Tony was cured of his thirst for alcohol—and never got caught for the hit-and-run murder.

There was no better person to funnel information to Hell than the maitre d' for The City Bistro. Graft, corruption, backroom power deals and underhanded business moves, powerful men wining and dining women other than their wives, powerful women backstabbing colleagues, affairs and clandestine drug use, it all happened at these tables. And Balam knew about all of it. The City Bistro was his favorite place to eat. It was utterly delicious and that wasn't even counting the food.

After seating Balam in the private room, Tony escorted a gorgeous redhead to Balam's table. Balam ordered a bottle of Italian wine—$300. Carpaccio—$47. Foie gras (screw PETA)—$80. Followed by a rare filet mignon smothered in truffles at $165. The baked potato with extra butter—$15. The demon's eye view of the dining room. Priceless.

In between the second appetizer and the main course, the redhead was on her knees under the table, servicing him. Tony poked his head in.

“Sorry to bother you, sir.” He handed Balam a slip of paper.

Balam just nodded. When Tony left, he opened the paper. And smiled.

Word in the Underworld was Julian Shaw had fallen hard.

And Balam knew one thing was positive about humans. If lust and greed made them stupid and reckless, love—real love—made them dangerous. He'd struck many a deal with those who loved the most deeply.

He'd have to tread carefully. Real love, which was difficult at times to delineate from lust, was a favorite cause of Hers. The expression “moved heaven and earth” was invented by Lucifer. It referred to the way the angels would do whatever it took for the cause of love.

He chuckled. One shock jock DJ. One broken-hearted woman. It was shaping up to be a real battle between his side and
Her
side. He put down the paper and rubbed his hands together. He had been finding it so easy to collect souls of late. The Internet (all those illicit Internet affairs and Webcams), E-Harmony (all those married souls pretending to be single), the media (he just adored the paparazzi)…it was just so utterly easy. A little battle might put a bit of fun
into his work again. A little lift to his stride. A challenge.

“That's it, honey,” he murmured to the woman under the table.

When she was finished—or rather he was—after he'd eaten his steak, he dismissed her and waited. He was patient. And finally, about the time he was finishing his second piece of cheesecake, he was rewarded.

Leslie, David and the vice president of a rival publishing house—one of the biggies—sat down to lunch. David had a manuscript in a soft-sided Italian leather briefcase. How utterly ironic that Kate had been the one to give it to him for Christmas. Leslie was smiling and patting David's hand on occasion.

He couldn't hear the conversation, but he could imagine it. They had ordered a round of martinis. Then another. Oh, he could imagine it all right.

He had a very good imagination.

All demons did.

He thought it was entirely possible to win the Hellbound Trifecta.

Julian. Leslie. David.

Three for the price of one.