The Sexorcist (10 page)

“My toes are fine. They had a great time tonight.”

A wave of fizzy happiness crashed through her. “They did?”

“I don’t know how anyone could avoid having fun with you,
cariña
. You enjoy everything so much. It’s impossible not to enjoy it with you.”

Brittany twisted around in his arms so she could meet his deliciously black eyes. “That is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me.” And it was only amplified by the fact that he’d called her
cariña
. He had a nickname for her. She was tempted to ask what it meant, but she wanted to hold on to the mystery for a while longer. As long as she didn’t know, she could pretend it was the mushiest of endearments. Brittany was not above pretending.

Rodriguez shrugged, unaware of her raptures over his
cariña
. “It’s the truth. You love dancing. You love the music. You love everything. That’s your word, Brittany.
Encantada
.”

She beamed. “I take it back.
That
is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me.”

His eyes studied her face, like he was looking for secrets there, but Brittany didn’t have any secrets.

“I can’t figure you out,” he said gently, his soft accent warming the words. “How does someone get to be like you? So open. So in love with the world. So completely untouched by cynicism and boredom. What makes you like this?”

Brittany was tempted to ask what it was about the world that made everyone else so cynical and grumpy all the time, why everything had to be a catastrophe, when so few things in life really deserved that designation. A missing bridesmaid dress was just a story to tell. The highs and lows of life were only as magical or tragic as people wanted them to be. She wanted to ask Rodriguez how the entire world got to be the way it was, but he wasn’t asking about the world. He was asking about
her
and she wanted to keep the broken world out of it. This moment was just about them.

So she shrugged and simply said, “My heart.”

Chapter Fifteen—A Heart to Heart

A small surge of irritation went through Rodriguez. Was she blowing him off? He’d really meant that question. He’d asked it because he really was trying to figure her out—in a way he’d never been tempted to figure anyone else out before. And she was just going to fob him off with some platitude about having a good heart?

That was what he got for going all sentimental.

Then she continued and his entire world narrowed down to her words.

“I was born with a bad heart. Congenital heart disease. I wasn’t expected to live past a year, but my parents don’t give up easily. There are a lot of heart specialists out there and my parents flew them in from all over the world to give their specialized opinions on my heart. Thanks to a series of experimental treatments and dangerous surgeries, I survived to age five, then ten. By fifteen, we had exhausted just about every option, but then a miracle occurred. I got to the top of the transplant list.”

Brittany took his hand and placed it above her heart so he could feel the strong, steady beat. She smiled. “That’s my new heart.”

Rodriguez felt his own give an unsteady lurch.

“It changed everything,” she said. “I could walk up a flight of stairs without passing out and being rushed to the emergency room. I could
do
all the things I’d never been able to do. I love salsa dancing, but before tonight, I didn’t know that, and ten years ago it would have probably killed me. When the world suddenly becomes an open door with a thousand possibilities in every moment, how can you not love every second of it?”

He’d heard of people getting a second lease on life, but how long could that initial euphoria possibly last? “You’ve loved every single second of the last ten years?” he asked skeptically. Even Mother Theresa must have had a bad day now and then.

“Maybe not every single second,” she admitted. “But most of them. I was an optimist even before I got my new heart and then…well, how can you not be when you get the one thing you’ve always wished for? How can you not believe things will work out? It reaffirmed everything I’d ever believed.”

“You were an optimist even when you were dying?” His arms tightened around her involuntarily.

“Yes, I was. And I didn’t die.” A flicker of something darker crossed her face. “I’ll admit there were times it was hard to be optimistic, but those were the times when I felt like I had to be. My parents worried so much and had been through so much for me. I couldn’t let them see that I was scared. That I had doubts. I had to stay positive for them. No matter what.”

He cradled her jaw in his hand. “Did you let anyone see you were scared?”

She shook her head, her loose hair whispering over the back of his hand where he still cupped her jaw.

“You were allowed to be scared, Brittany. And you aren’t required to be happy all the time now. You can be sad or angry or grumpy, just like anyone else.”

“I don’t feel like I’m
required
to be happy,” she protested. “I’m just grateful for the chance. And I
do
love new things. I love working at Karmic Consultants. I love how Karma pretends it’s just a business and she doesn’t love all you guys to bits. I love how the clients call in panicking for one of a thousand reasons and we set things right again. And then they call back and we’ve made them so happy. It may not be heart surgery, but it’s something. It makes a difference in people’s lives.

“I love planning Lucy’s wedding, seeing how excited she is to be marrying the man of her dreams. I love keeping her from strangling Jo when things go wrong and they both want to rip their hair out. I love fixing things for people.”

The slow smile that had been building as she talked about Karmic and the wedding burst out in full, radiant force. “And I
love
salsa dancing, motorcycles, and leather.” She leaned close until her nose was nearly touching his, the sparkle in her eyes challenging. “You got a problem with that, Rodriguez?”

“Call me Luis.”

He didn’t make a conscious decision to kiss her, but then his mouth was on hers. Her arms wrapped around his neck as his hands sank into her hair. She tasted sweet, with the lingering hint of strawberry and lime from the frozen margarita she’d had earlier.

Her mouth opened softly and he stroked his tongue inside. Desire spiked hot in his blood, searing every nerve ending.

She had confused the hell out of him from the second he’d met her. Her bright-eyed enthusiasm had seemed so illogical. Over the last few days, he had come to enjoy her and miss her smile when she wasn’t around, but he still hadn’t been able to understand her. She’d been a cheery enigma until tonight. Now he felt like he had the keys to figuring her out.

She was a real person, not just an automaton of happiness. She had come face to face with more life-and-death fear in her life than he’d ever imagined, and she’d faced it smiling. She had seemed so fragile, but now the strength he saw in her awed him.

The thought of her fear—the fear she hadn’t been able to acknowledge, even to her parents—made his chest constrict. He wrapped her tight in his arms as if he could protect her from the memory of it. And he kissed her until the only thought or feeling there was room for in his body was need.

She broke away with a gasp, her breath choppy.

“Priests don’t kiss like that.”

He laughed, dropping his forehead against hers. “I certainly hope not.”

“You would have been a very bad priest,” she murmured throatily.

“You’re telling me.”

She frowned, her brown eyes flashing sternly. “I was kidding. Why did you sound serious? You would have been an excellent priest. Except for the celibacy stuff.”

He shifted her carefully on his lap so she wouldn’t be confronted by the evidence of just how badly he was doing at the whole
celibacy stuff
. “I’m too selfish to make a good priest.”

She shook her head, curls whipping around her shoulders. “You’re lying again, but this time you aren’t doing it for me. Man up, Luis. Why aren’t you a priest?”

Making out to interrogating in five seconds flat. Only Brittany.

She had been honest with him about her heart, fearless in her sincerity. He owed her the same consideration.

“I was scared shitless.”

Her eyebrows arched at his choice of language, but she didn’t question his truthfulness this time. Because this time he was telling the truth.

“I was twenty-one years old and the idea of being responsible for anyone else’s life, let alone the immortal souls of an entire parish, scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t imagine a single scenario in which I wouldn’t fuck up and send my poor parishioners straight to hell.”

She threaded her fingers through his hair and he tried not to think about how much that little touch was turning him on. They were talking about the Holy Church, for Christ’s sake.

“That’s probably a very normal fear,” she said softly.

“That’s what my mentors told me. That, and that I should pray for guidance.”

“Isn’t it possible that the fact you were so worried about messing up meant you were taking it seriously enough to be a
good
priest?”

He shrugged. “Whatever it meant, I prayed my ass off, and when my guidance came, it came in the form of a mischief demon someone had sicced on the chapel where I was praying. I exorcised it, without any help, and felt like a real badass. The thought of being responsible for so many people other than myself made me break out in hives, but the thought of kicking demonic ass for the rest of my days sounded pretty damn good. So that’s what I did.”

“Do you ever regret it?”

He caught her hands and shifted her on his lap so she could feel his erection against her hip. “Why? You wishing I’d taken that vow of chastity right about now?”

He could see her blush even in the dim light on the rooftop. “No,” she said, pressing closer, in case he had any doubts about her sincerity, “it’s just a lot to walk away from. It was more than just a job you once thought you might be good at.”

He was talking about the priesthood while a dirty film reel ran through his head, starring Brittany Hylton-VanDeere in a series of very creative positions. He was going straight to Hell.

“It was more than a job. But so is what I do now. I don’t regret it.”

“None of it?”

“Not a second.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he wondered if they were true. He liked his life. He was proud of what he’d made of it, but he’d walked away from a mountain of responsibility and it had taken him a long time to realize there would be other consequences. Sure, he wasn’t responsible for anyone else, but that also meant he was alone. It had never occurred to him that being an island unto himself would be so damned lonely.

“Good.”

For a second, Rodriguez scrambled to catch up and get his bearings in the conversation. What had they been talking about?

Brittany tugged her hands out of his grip and wrapped her arms back around his neck. “Regrets are overrated. Live for today, that’s my motto.”

“Good motto. Do I get another kiss today?”

A slow smile curled her lips. “I think that could be arranged.”

Chapter Sixteen—Pipes Bursting (Not a Metaphor)

Blue balls were a new experience for him, but Rodriguez was having a hard time working up Brittany’s level of enthusiasm for new experiences in this case.

It had taken a supreme act of willpower, but he had dropped her back off at her car without laying a finger on her. He had suffered through her body clinging tight to his back on the entire ride back to Karmic. He had looked into the liquid warmth of her big brown eyes and seen her willingness to take it farther, but after a night of confessions, she was emotionally vulnerable and his conscience wouldn’t let him take advantage of the neon-flashing
yes
written all over her face.

Goddamn conscience.

So here he was, Monday morning, frustrated as all hell and waiting for the object of his infatuation to roll up in her pretty little silver car and amplify his misery a thousand-fold.

He hadn’t seen her in fifty-six hours and he still got half-hard thinking about her—stomping all over his feet on the dance floor with her eyes flashing with laughter, curled up soft and trusting in his lap with her guileless eyes locked knowingly on his, hanging onto the back of his motorcycle with her eyes closed in pure bliss. If it hadn’t been for her damn
eyes,
he might have been able to get his brain back on track.

Rodriguez winced. He’d officially reached a new low. He was blaming his preoccupation on the fact that Brittany had eyes.
Everyone
had eyes.

Then the silver Audi swung into the parking lot. Brittany didn’t park it, just pulled it up in front of the door where he was waiting and jumped out. She flipped the keys to him as she rushed around the hood. He caught them automatically then glared at the key ring in his fist.

“What am I, the valet?”

Brittany yanked open the passenger door. “You’re driving. Karma called me on my cell on my way in. She says she has a weird feeling about the reception venue.” She jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. She rolled down the window when he didn’t immediately hop to. “Come on. If we hurry, we might be able to catch the demon in the act. Banishment, remember?”

Part of him wanted to argue—probably the part of him that had been craving her all weekend, hoping she was just as strung out over him, only to see her bounce out of her car as bright as a daisy and utterly unaffected by anything resembling his crippling frustration—but he knew she was right. Karma’s
feelings
were downright scary in their accuracy. If she said the reception venue was demonic, they should haul ass to the reception venue.

“Luis?”

“I’m coming.”
If only
.

Still irrationally annoyed, he climbed into the silver car. He sank into the baby-soft tan leather and inhaled the new-car smell.

At least she’d called him Luis. She hadn’t called him Rodriguez since he’d told her not to. Right before he kissed her. So maybe she did remember Friday night.

Before he could put the car in gear, she put her hand over his to stop him. She pulled off the sunglasses covering her twinkling brown eyes, leaned over, grabbed him by the lapel and pulled him in for a quick—and oh-so-dirty—kiss. Her tongue flicked inside his mouth, but he couldn’t catch it before it was gone again. Pulling back, she tossed him a wink. “Good morning.”

“Hi.”

She clicked her seatbelt in place and dropped her sunglasses back on her nose. “Shall we go?”

Rodriguez’s brain jerked back into motion.
Demons, right.
He put the car in gear and followed the automated directions of the navigation system out of the parking lot.

They drove west through town and into a residential neighborhood.
His
residential neighborhood. He began to wonder if the whole reception venue story was a sham. Had she dug up his home address? Was she taking him back to his place to have her way with him?

She seemed excited, peering eagerly out the window and shifting in her seat. Every little shift made the skirt she was wearing today reveal another flash of leg. Between the competing images of her legs in the passenger seat and the ones his imagination was providing of those legs wrapped around his hips, he was having trouble keeping his eyes on the road.

Then the GPS bleeped and ordered him to turn. His brain climbed up out of his crotch and he recognized their destination. The country club with its private event pavilion was the only place in the area large enough to host a wedding reception.

No mid-morning quickie for him.

“There it is.” Brittany gripped the dash, leaning forward and squinting against the morning sun toward the building. “It looks fine. Do you see anything demonic?”

At this distance, with the sun in his eyes, there could have been a line of demons doing a can-can on the roof and he wouldn’t have been able to see them. “Not yet.”

He drove past the main building of the club and around to the event pavilion, set apart in its own little landscaped utopia. He parked the car in front of the building. The lot was empty, the pavilion abandoned on a Monday morning.

Brittany bounded out of the car and he followed, scanning the perimeter, but not seeing any red.

“It’s probably locked.” He gave the door an experimental tug and stumbled back a step when it instantly swung open. “Or not.”

He held the door for Brittany and she stepped past him, hitting him with a waft of that expensive perfume of hers. Her heeled sandals thwapped noisily on the floor as she walked to the center of the spacious, vaulted room.

“Do you sense any demons?”

“Still nothing.”

She turned in a circle, warily checking the corners. She thought she’d been chased by a corporeal demon, so her caution made sense, but Rodriguez still wasn’t one hundred percent sold on the demonic interference theory.

He believed Brittany saw a demon, or someone being possessed by one, but the idea that someone would bother to summon a corporeal mischief demon, expending the enormous amounts of energy necessary to do so and then
continuing
to expend the enormous amounts of energy required to keep the demon on this plane, just to stop a wedding? It defied logic.

There were too many wedding mishaps to be coincidence, but a curse-happy witch seemed more likely.

Though that wouldn’t explain how Brittany’s car had come to be possessed. Or why she had been chased through a flower market by a man who met the description of a corporeal mischief demon.

Rodriguez couldn’t figure out why anyone would bother to summon a demon to stop a wedding. Let alone who would want to stop Lucy and Jake from getting married. Everyone who knew them seemed genuinely happy for them. To the best of his knowledge, there weren’t even any disgruntled exes lurking in the wings.

“It seems like it’s waiting, doesn’t it?”

He turned to find Brittany, arms akimbo, in the center of the room. She’d apparently concluded her demon search and was now surveying the room like a designer considering the possibilities. “The demon?”

“The room.”

“The room is waiting for a demon to strike?”

She laughed. “No. It’s waiting for a wedding. Or a bar mitzvah, a sweet sixteen, or an anniversary party. I bet this time of year is packed with graduation parties and weddings. I think it knows it’s an event room and it’s waiting for the next event.”

“It’s a room. It doesn’t have thoughts.”

“Don’t be so literal.” She waved a hand at him dismissively. “Can’t you feel the anticipation? It’s empty now, but tonight or tomorrow or whenever the next party is, there will be chairs and tables. A platform for the bridal party, a stage for the band. Flowers and garlands and twinkling lights until it isn’t just a big empty room with a nice hardwood floor, but a fairyland.”

“Did Karma really tell you there would be a demon incident here?” he asked doubtfully. “Or did you just want to see the reception venue?”

“You’re very skeptical for someone who deals with the unbelievable on a daily basis.”

“Skepticism has nothing to do with it. I just have a different definition of unbelievable.” He quickly scanned the room then turned back to her. “Let’s go. There are no demons here.”

Before he finished speaking, there was a loud clanking noise overhead, followed by the groaning of the roof, as if it were complaining under the force of a heavy wind.

But the day was calm. No wind for miles. Rodriguez frowned.

Standing in the center of the room, Brittany tipped her head back to stare up at the ceiling. “That was odd.”

He followed her gaze and his heart stopped.

She couldn’t see it from her angle, directly beneath, but the ceiling was bowing down, warping under some weight. And giving off pulses of blood-red demonic energy. The timbers creaked and groaned as they bent and stretched in ways they were not meant to bend.

The ceiling was about to collapse.

“Brittany! Move!” He sprinted across the space separating them. The world seemed to be moving in slow motion. He could feel each individual muscle bunching and releasing in his legs as he ran.

He saw her look down from her consideration of the ceiling and toward him, a frown tugging at her brow and puzzlement in her big doe eyes. “What?”

The sound of splintering wood was explosive. Rodriguez tackled Brittany, shielding her body with his own as ceiling debris and a cascade of ice-cold water poured down on them. It was like being thrown under a waterfall.

His body covered her smaller one completely, but they were both drenched within seconds. Her arms wrapped around his head protectively as she huddled beneath him.

His brain couldn’t make sense of the water pouring down on them. It was sunny today, wasn’t it?

When the deluge diminished to a trickle, he realized he was pinning Brittany to the ground, where she was lying in two inches of icy water, shaking violently.

“Are you all right?” He levered himself off her, his eyes raking her for signs of an injury. When he got to her face, his concern morphed into irritation. “Are you
laughing
?”

Her silent snickering suddenly gained volume. Her shoulders were shaking so hard she couldn’t sit up on her own. Luis grudgingly assisted.

Her brown eyes sparkled as she gathered her hair in her fist and wrung it out. “I’m fine,” she said when she could stop laughing long enough to form words. “Luckily, neither water nor the impressive bruise on my butt are fatal. I’m more the Glinda type, but if the Wicked Witch of the West was here, she’d be toast.”

She plucked at her white, and now completely transparent, blouse. It was plastered to her body in an eye-crossing display. Rodriguez appreciated the view, aesthetically, but he was sitting in two inches of ardor-cooling ice water.

He was freezing and he’d just had the shit scared out of him, thinking the building was coming down around them. How could she sit there laughing?

“I think I still have the imprint of your shoulder on my stomach,” she said, rubbing the body part in question. “Have you ever considered trying out for the NFL? You tackle like a linebacker. Do linebackers tackle? I always forget what all the different players do.”

She was talking about linebackers. “You’re fine,” he grumbled, tipping his head back to study the ceiling. He half expected the entire roof to be missing after their bizarre Noah’s Arc moment. But there was only a small hole in the ceiling, probably not more than five feet wide. Water continued to dribble out of the hole to contribute to the lake they were sitting in.

“Oh, I’m more than just fine. I’m swooning with gratitude. That was downright heroic, Luis. The way you rescued me from the terrifying…
shower
.” She lowered her voice and uttered the last word in a horrified whisper.

“The ceiling was coming down.”

She picked up a piece of debris floating by her hip. He’d seen chopsticks that looked more threatening. “How can I thank you enough? You saved me from a nasty splinter.”

“Are you finished?”

“Just about.” She looked up to study the hole in the ceiling. “Burst pipe, I guess,” Brittany commented. “Is this a normal amount of water? It seems like a lot. Did a demon do that?”

A demon
. And he was sitting there like an idiot.

Rodriguez splashed abruptly to his feet. “Yes. And he has to be nearby. Mischief demons can cause accidents like this to happen, but they have to be able to see their target. He has to be close.”

His gut told him to run toward the rear exit, opposite where they’d parked the Audi. The demon wouldn’t hang around long. But Rodriguez couldn’t just leave Brittany. What if it was just a ruse to get him away from her so the demon could do something else?

He didn’t want Brittany anywhere near the demon who had given her his name, but he couldn’t leave her alone either.

“Come on.”

He tugged her to her feet and they splashed through the lake that had once been an event pavilion toward the rear exit. His shoes felt like lead weights and his jeans weren’t much better, absorbing more water with every step, but he kept running and he kept his hand wrapped tight around Brittany’s.

When he glanced down, he saw her bare feet splashing beside his. “Where are your shoes?”

“They were slowing us down!” Her eyes were bright with this new adventure. “Let’s get him!”

Of course she was enthusiastic. What had he expected? Brittany would probably wander through the apocalypse, commenting on how pretty the four horsemen’s outfits were.

Rodriguez threw open the door and they burst into the back parking lot with a tide of water rippling out onto the asphalt at their feet.

Just in time to see a man with shark teeth and glowing red eyes jump into a sedan. He tore out of the lot, burning rubber until he was out of sight.

“Shit.”

“That was him! The demon from the flower market,” Brittany exclaimed, pointing after the sedan.

“I figured.”

A real corporeal mischief demon. Someone was going to an awful lot of trouble—and through a shitload of power—to stop this wedding. All demons required energy to remain. That was why the lesser demons required hosts. They would drain the life energy from the host to maintain their presence, but a corporeal demon could only draw energy from one source—the summoner. Whoever summoned the demon had to sustain themselves
and
the demon. It was an enormous drain. Who could possibly want to stop the wedding badly enough to put himself through that kind of hell?