CHAPTER ONE
THE INCITING INCIDENT
Joe Bruno, virgin priest and occasional demon hunter, had been drinking straight vodka for roughly two hours. He was supposed to be helping his friends with a supernatural problem, par for the course in his field, but as usual, the whole planning party had descended into drunken idiocy, and Joe had consequently taken refuge in the kitchen, away from the rest of the boisterous group.
It wasn’t anything to do with the paranormal issue that had scared him into confinement and inebriation, as one might expect. It was a man—just a man—and nothing more.
‘Nothing more.’
What a joke.
Percy Ashdown was like no other man Joe had ever met. He was stupidly sexy, with wild dark hair, eyes (specifically) like the North Sea, a malicious darkness that terrified Joe, a sweetness that obsessed him, and a body, elegant yet powerful, that he wanted to lick from head to toe.
Percy was funny, cruel, selfless, and heartless in equal measure. He was walking sex, and his very existence had sent Joe into such a tailspin he didn’t have a clue what to do about itother than accept the drink that Anna James, suddenly at his side, handed him now, and down it like he had the rest.
It was Anna’s kitchen he stood in. Her gothic apartment in the picturesque surrounds of an elite university. Her fault he’d met any of the five others present that night, and, therefore, her fault he was obsessed with a man he should never have looked at twice.
Joe studied her as subtly as he could, while the clear liquor burned its way down his throat. On the shorter side of average height, attractive but nothing spectacular, funny (though she mostly laughed at her own odd jokes more than anyone else did), and unnervingly vicious when she needed to be. He wouldn’t have held any of that against her. In fact, he wouldn’t have even noticed most of it, least of all her admittedly spectacular eyes, unless Percy had called his attention to it roughly a thousand times. Because, unfortunately for Joe, Percy, the man of his dreams, had a loud and fierce crush on Anna.
And Anna just happened to be deeply in love with Percy’s brother.
Such was the mess Joe found himself in.
Joe had known Percy on and off for four months, ever since the day Percy had turned up on his doorstep with Anna to ask for help with an exorcism. He and Percy hit it off immediately, drawn together by a shared interest in the paranormal. Percy laid his cards on the table that very night and flirted with him mercilessly. But Joe, like an idiot, or more, like a Catholic priest, had thrown off every advance. He’d already pledged his life to God, and he wasn’t going to throw that away over one mortal man.
Even if that man was Percy Ashdown.
Even if Percy knew magic and killed demons.
Even if he was perfect for Joe.
Even if he was going to walk straight out of Joe’s life any day now if Joe did nothing, because just recently, the flirtinghad stopped. He appeared to have given up, and his interests had moved elsewhere.
Anna refilled their two glasses and flashed Joe a pretty smile as she handed one over. He couldn’t help but wonder what Percy would have made of that smile. And with that, an all-consuming, hot jealousy bubbled up inside him, and before he could stop them, the words spilled out of his mouth. “What’s going on with you and Percy?”
Her already wide eyes widened a little more, but once her surprise at the question passed, she said, firmly, convincingly, “Nothing. Not a thing with me and Percy.”
The time for being casual had already fled, but he tried his best to keep the desperation out of his voice. “So, there’s nothing weird with Percy going on with anyone?”
Anna put her glass down on the bench and dropped her voice to an intimacy. “No. Not like that. No more than usual. He’s Percy.”
Joe glanced towards the door as though Percy might come in any second, summoned by his name, like the devil. “I just really want to know because… he’s acting strange. And… and I want… I want to…”
“If you’re into Percy, you should tell him.”
Good old Anna. No appreciation for or understanding of the societal norms that usually stop people getting straight to the point like that. It was refreshing. Sometimes. It was, in its way, endearing, and he couldn’t help letting her see the vulnerability she had so easily exposed when he said, “I’m not the one Percy wants.”
Anna neither blushed nor beat about the bush. She knew about Percy’s crush on her, just like all their friends did, but she smoothed it over as though it were nothing. “I don’t think he knows that’s an option. Is that an option? You took that vow of celibacy?—”
“Yes. But it’s a big thing and I don’t know if I want to live like that. You know, maybe not forever?”
“You might stop being a priest?” She could barely hide her lascivious excitement, but he appreciated the fact that she tried to.
He clarified, “No, but I might stop being a priest who lives like that.”
“And maybe you and Percy could happen…”
“Maybe? I don’t know.” He felt like a teenager at the prom, too scared to ask the boy he liked to dance. Nothing like the capable, independent, twenty-four-year-old man he was supposed to be, and his stress made him throw all his latest considerations at Anna’s feet. “He’s so… different. And I can’t stop thinking about him, and—and he just looks straight through me. I thought he liked me before?—”
