The Devil's Playground

“I’m sorry I distressed you,” he said. “But, as I said before, telling you things rarely works. You needed to see that you would miss me if I were gone.”

  I knew it wouldn’t hurt him, but I couldn’t stop myself from hauling back and slapping him across his smug face. My palm stung and burned from the blow, but Lugh didn’t even wince. Of course not. The cheek I had slapped wasn’t real. The hand I’d slapped him with wasn’t real either, but Lugh could make it feel real.

  I cradled my hand against my chest. Something warm and wet trickled down my cheek, and I realized one of the tears I’d been desperately trying to suppress had escaped.

  Lugh sat up, and even in the midst of my anger and hurt, I couldn’t help glancing at his body. The sheet slid down and away, baring one leg all the way up to the hip, but a corner of the sheet still draped over his groin, kind of like a fig leaf on a statue.

  My temptation to look made me even more furious, and I hurled myself to the other side of the bed, meaning to get out and run. Not that I’d be able to go anywhere, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

  Lugh didn’t let me get that far. His hand fastened on my ankle, and he yanked me back onto the bed. I tried to grab for a bedpost, but even if I’d succeeded, Lugh was way too strong for me. Instead, I ended up sprawled facedown on the bed. When I tried to get up again, Lugh covered me with that big, strong body of his, pinning me in place. The hot, hard length of him nestled between my buttocks, and I realized I’d lost the pajamas again.

  “Get off me!” I yelled, struggling helplessly.

  He brought his mouth down to my ear, his tongue darting in for a taste before he spoke.

  “You don’t want to get rid of me,” he whispered. “You like me. You want me, even if you won’t let yourself act on that want.” He wiggled his hips against my butt to emphasize his point, and my body betrayed me with a pleasurable shiver.

  I could have argued with him, but really, what was the point? I could only feel my feelings; Lugh could understand them. My own personal, highly invasive therapist.

  Tears continued to drip from my eyes, soaking into the silk pillowcase. But I stopped struggling.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I said, my voice a tear-strained whisper. “I told Brian no.”

  Lugh brushed his lips against the side of my neck. “I know. But not for the right reasons.” His tongue trailed a path across my shoulders, and I had to bite my lip to keep from groaning.

  I was in love with Brian. I shouldn’t want Lugh so badly!

  “I fulfill different needs than Brian does,” Lugh whispered against my skin. His hair tickled my sides, but I didn’t have the slightest urge to laugh. “You can want me and love Brian at the same time.”

  I couldn’t talk—my throat was too tight—so I settled for shaking my head violently. The evidence that Lugh was right was overwhelming, and yet I refused to believe it. I was a firm believer in monogamy, and, damn it, I wasn’t about to change my mind!

  But Lugh wasn’t finished talking. “Just as I can want Brian and love you at the same time.”

  His words took the last of the fight out of me, shocking me into immobility. I lay still and passive beneath him, painfully aware of every minute point of contact between us, of the heat of his body, of the dominance of his position, and of my utter lack of discomfort with that dominance. And I tried to convince myself he hadn’t said what I thought he’d just said.

  “You heard me,” Lugh said, then started trailing kisses down my spine. The farther down those kisses trailed, the more freedom of movement I had. And yet, I didn’t move.

  Could it really be true? Could Lugh really love me? I’d always interpreted his interest as casual lust, but maybe that’s what I’d wanted to see.

  The kisses began to travel upward again, his skin stroking sensually against mine as he moved. God, he felt good!

  His cock slid into the valley between my buttocks once more as his mouth returned to my ear, and against my will, I found myself arching into him. Desire clouded my mind, and I wondered if it would really be such a bad thing if I were to let Lugh make love to me. It was, after all, just a dream.

  “No,” Lugh whispered in my ear. “You’re not ready to let me make love to you yet. You would regret it afterward, and that I cannot allow.”

  The truth of his words pierced the cloud of lust, and though my body was still all for a boisterous roll in the hay, my mind recognized it as the mistake it would be.

  “So all of this has been one big tease,” I managed to say. I guessed demons didn’t suffer from blue balls–especially not when their host didn’t actually have balls—but I was pretty sure I was about to experience the female equivalent.

  Lugh’s weight shifted above me. “Would I do that to you?” he asked, then turned me over onto my back.

  He was smiling down at me, his amber eyes glowing faintly with a demon light, his hair forming a dark curtain around our faces. My breath came in shallow pants, and my mouth was dry with desire. Lugh had gotten me off before with some very naughty visual aids, and I wondered what he had in mind this time.

  The fire in his eyes glowed more brightly. “No props this time,” he said, his voice husky. “Just me.”

  He lowered his head slowly, giving me time to turn my face away again if I wished. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wanted his kiss too badly. Our relationship wasn’t exactly what I would call chaste, but for all the sexual energy that surrounded us, we’d rarely kissed. I didn’t have it in me to regret that that was about to change.

  His lips touched mine, and it was like my body went up in flames. A decidedly unchaste moan escaped me, and I wrapped my arms around him, my hands buried in that gorgeous, silky hair. His lips were soft and warm, but there was nothing soft about his kiss. If he’d kissed me any harder, it would have hurt. His tongue thrust into my mouth, and I moaned again, loving the taste and feel of him.

  I think I could have kissed him forever, forgetting the outside world existed, but he used his knee to nudge my legs apart, then settled in between them. My pajamas had reappeared, but Lugh was still nude, that thin layer of silk all that separated my flesh from his. He pressed himself hard against me, and my hips bucked against my will.

  I desperately wanted to rip off the pajamas, to feel him inside me, but I kept my hands buried in his hair to resist the temptation as his hips began to move, his cock stroking me hard over the thin pajamas. It shouldn’t have felt so amazing, not to a mature woman who was used to having sex with her boyfriend on a regular basis. But feeling him thrusting against me, his cock hitting my clit just right with each stroke, had me on the verge of orgasm in no time.

  I arched up against him, wanting to take that next step into bliss, but he slowed his pace and lightened his strokes, tormenting me, playing with me, making me ache for release. I tried to hurry him along, but he would have none of it. And when I released his hair, meaning to hurry myself along since he wasn’t cooperating, I soon found my hands pinned above my head again. I’d have complained, but it was hard to talk with his tongue halfway down my throat.

  He kept me hanging there, right on the brink of orgasm, for what felt like forever and a day. The anticipation tightened every muscle in my body, and every once in a while I had to remind myself to breathe. But it also felt so good to be on that brink, knowing with total certainty that he would eventually push me over, and that it would be worth the wait when he did. I almost didn’t want it to end, though that didn’t stop me from straining my body up toward him.

  Just when I was beginning to think I couldn’t bear it for another moment, Lugh gave one last hard, perfect stroke, and the pleasure exploded through my body. I screamed something incoherent into his mouth as my back arched and my toes curled, and my heart threatened to hammer its way out of my chest.

  He kept thrusting against me until he’d milked every last spasm of pleasure he could out of me and I lay there completely limp and panting for breath.

  It was a while before coherent t
hought returned. When it did, I realized that as mind-numbingly good as it had been for me, Lugh hadn’t come. He was still hard as a rock against me. I opened my eyes—not even having realized that I’d closed them—and saw a contented smile on his face, rather than the sexual hunger I’d been expecting.

  He leaned down to kiss me again briefly. “Your body is my body,” he reminded me. “When you come, so do I. I just chose not to include a physical manifestation of it in your dream.”

  Sometimes, these dreams were so damned realistic it was easy to forget they were dreams. The body that was still pressed up against mine wasn’t real, and if he had an erection, it was because he chose to create that illusion for me.

  “So basically,” I said, still a little out of breath, “this is masturbation for you.”

  His eyes sparkled with something like mischief. “Another one of those human hang-ups that don’t make a whole lot of sense to demons. Besides, since I feel your pleasure, it gives me additional incentive to do a good job.”

  The heat in my cheeks told me I was blushing—hard to believe I still had a prudish bone left in my body, considering what I’d been exposed to since Lugh came into my life, but there you have it.

  He rolled off me, and I finally gave in to the temptation to take a good look at his naked body, scanning him from head to toe. And, I must admit, spending more time than I should have studying parts in between. Another wisp of arousal stirred in my center, but I was still limp and satiated and doubted I had the energy for another go just yet. Even as I thought that, my eyelids felt heavy and sleep tugged at me.

  “Time to sleep now,” Lugh told me.

  “I am asleep, remember?” I murmured, but it was all I could do to suppress a yawn. How can I get sleepy when I’m already asleep? Beats me.

  “We’ll talk more about what to do about Brian later,” he added as if I hadn’t spoken.

  Actually, it was a good thing I was suddenly so overwhelmingly tired; otherwise, I’d have been alarmed by those words. As it was, my eyes slid closed, and I drifted away.

  thirteen

  I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING GROGGY AS ALL HELL and mildly embarrassed about my encounter with Lugh last night. It was hardly the most embarrassing dream he’d ever given me, but it was much more … personal.

  I zombie-walked to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, then stared at the pot as it brewed. It wasn’t until I’d finished my second cup that my brain cells started to wake up, and I noticed the glaring omission from last night’s conversation.

  When I’d woken up in Lugh’s bed, I’d gone into seduction alert, and that had pushed all thoughts of the real world and our much larger problem aside. Lugh flat-out didn’t do things like that by accident. He’d put me in that bed and distracted me with sex either because he didn’t want to talk to me, or because he’d been driving my body while I was asleep. Lugh usually had no problems with talking, so my money was on the latter, even though I didn’t feel queasy at all—I never did if I wasn’t conscious when Lugh took over.

  I talked to Raphael while you were asleep, Lugh confirmed.

  I wondered if maybe the silent treatment had been better after all. Time for more steam to come out of my ears. I really hated being used like that. “Couldn’t you have just told me what you were doing?” I fumed. I felt silly having an argument with a voice in my head, but that didn’t stop me from arguing. “Did you have to do the whole seduction thing and keep me in the dark?”

  He didn’t answer, but then, he didn’t have to. I knew exactly why he hadn’t told me he was driving my body around. Even though I could now let him take control when absolutely necessary, everything in my psyche recoiled at the idea. When I was awake for the process, I had to make a conscious effort not to kick Lugh out. When I was asleep, all it would take was a tiny knee-jerk reaction, and I would pop awake, thrusting Lugh into the background once again.

  I folded my arms across my chest stubbornly. “The last time you wanted to talk to Raphael like that, you let me wake up.” It had been hard as hell not to let my subconscious barriers go up when I awakened, but I’d managed it.

  That was before you started getting so sick from the control changes. You were already feeling sickly. If you’d awakened while I was in control, you would have felt much worse.

  I was running out of good reasons to complain about what he’d done, though I had to admit, the idea of Lugh and Raphael talking to one another while I couldn’t listen in wasn’t a comfortable one. I doubted they’d been reminiscing about old times.

  “Care to comment?” I asked.

  We were merely discussing our options, few though they are at this time.

  “And what did you decide?”

  We did not come to any firm conclusions. I heard an echo of laughter in my head. Strangely enough, Raphael and I had difficulty agreeing on anything.

  I couldn’t help a short burst of laughter myself. The two of them had gone a long way toward repairing their fraternal relationship, but I doubted they would ever see eye-to-eye. Still, at least it was better than the open hostility they’d started with.

  For now, we must content ourselves with finding Jonathan Foreman, the demon Cooper revealed as the leader of the illegal recruitment campaign.

  The mention of Cooper didn’t make me happy. If he wasn’t as much of a chickenshit as I thought, he could have spilled the beans already.

  That won’t be a problem, Lugh assured me, and something in his tone of voice set off all the alarms in my head.

  “What did you do?” I asked in a near whisper.

  What had to be done.

  Heat rose in my cheeks—an angry flush, not a blush—and my hands curled into fists. “What did you do?” I repeated through gritted teeth.

  I didn’t do anything. But I did … approve Raphael’s plan.

  “Which was what?”

  Lugh hesitated, and for a moment I thought he was going to chicken out and not tell me. But unlike me, Lugh doesn’t run from conflict.

  Cooper could not be allowed to live. But we couldn’t afford to kill him when Adam might be a suspect. So Raphael went back and made sure it looked like a God’s Wrath attack.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned. There was nowhere to sit in my kitchen, so I leaned my back against the fridge and allowed my butt to slide down to the floor.

  God’s Wrath is the most militant of the anti-demon hate groups. They specialize in “purifying” demon hosts. By “purifying,” they mean “burning alive.” God’s Wrath didn’t care that an innocent host was killed when they burned these demons to death. According to God’s Wrath, only an impure person would allow a demon to take over his or her body. They considered that the case even with the most unwilling of hosts. They probably think rape victims were “asking for it,” too.

  Cooper was an obvious target for God’s Wrath. Probably was even before he was possessed.

  Certainly true. He was a high-ranking member of the Spirit Society, after all, and the Spirit Society might as well have been named the Satan’s Little Helpers Society as far as God’s Wrath was concerned.

  And since Raphael’s host used to be a member of God’s Wrath, he knew how to stage an attack and make it look real.

  I made another moaning sound. I hadn’t liked Cooper, but even if I’d been willing to kill him, it wouldn’t have been a death like that!

  Raphael assured me that he would kill Cooper quickly before setting the fire. It was infinitely more humane.

  Who wants to take bets on whether Raphael gave a shit about how humane Cooper’s death was?

  I care, Lugh said. And Raphael promised to follow my orders, even though he didn’t like them.

  “And you believed him?”

  Yes, I believed him. Weren’t you the one who was trying to convince me earlier that he had changed?

  Yeah, I believed Raphael had changed some since I had first met him. But he hadn’t changed that much. He would never be the soul of compassion, nor would he ever be the good little soldie
r and follow orders—unless he agreed with them.

  We would never know for sure whether Raphael had followed this particular order, kept this particular promise. Even if he did kill Cooper quickly before the fire, he would have done it in a way that the police wouldn’t be able to detect after the fact. If he’d broken Cooper’s neck, or done something else that left an obvious physical injury, then the police would have to start looking at possibilities other than a God’s Wrath attack, because God’s Wrath needed the demon’s host alive so the demon could die in the fire.

  I shuddered and tried to make myself stop thinking about it. I had come close to being burned at the stake myself, and sometimes I just couldn’t help putting myself in other people’s shoes. I couldn’t imagine what kind of pain Cooper must have been in when—

  Raphael swore to me that he would give Cooper a quick death. I can’t claim I trust Raphael in all things, but I believe his promise was sincere.

  That made one of us. Then again, maybe killing Cooper first would have made Raphael’s task easier, more foolproof. If Cooper had been alive when the fire was set, then there was always the chance he might escape. When I thought about it that way, it gave me a little more hope. The risks involved with Raphael killing Cooper first might have been less than those involved in letting him die in the flames.

  I wouldn’t believe Raphael had killed Cooper first because of compassion, or because of honor, or because he was following orders. I would believe he’d do it if he thought it expedient.

  But the ugly truth was, there was nothing I could do about it now.

  I was pretty damn pissed at Lugh, and I was glad he kept any further comments to himself. Regardless of how necessary Cooper’s death had been, regardless of whether Raphael had shown mercy or not, Lugh had lied to me. Perhaps not in words—after all, I didn’t think until this morning to ask what the hell he was doing with my body while he was busy seducing me—but a deception of that magnitude was as bad as a lie in my book.

  I went into my office for a couple of hours in the early afternoon. I still had paperwork to file on my last exorcism, and I hoped dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s would get me out of my own head for a while.