Page 59 of Devil Bound
Mitch was talking about champagne and how it was named after a region in France, while I was working my way through Jade Dragon Fins, which was an edamame cucumber salad with chili, sesame seeds, and soy sauce.We’d just started on our second cocktail.Mine had champagne in it, and I wasn’t sure why I’d thought that was wise.Then again, it had allowed Mitch to show off his geography knowledge.
“Gods, your arms look great,” I blurted out.Blame that on the tequila from cocktail one.
Sexy Mitch let one of his hands fall below the table and ran his fingers up my thigh.“Thanks.”
Gods, I wanted to rub my forehead on his strong shoulders.I blinked, double-checking I hadn’t said that out loud, but Mitch was still looking at me expectantly while twirling the rim of his still mostly full cocktail.
Yeah, this was happening.Sexy Mitch was going to get naked with me, and we were going to do unspeakable things.Then maybe we’d have a glass of water after and go for round two, try even less speakable stuff—the beast with two backs and then some.
I inhaled half my cocktail, the second half of it, and signaled the server for a third before I put the glass down.Just thinking the word “beast” brought Lucifer’s damn spice and campfire scent back, and I needed to remain focused on Mitch.The Devil was amnesia, and I couldn’t think about that anymore.
Mitch of the sexy arms.Was I interested in armpits?Not overly, but maybe I should make it an experience.With Mitch.
“You seem to be handling this well,” Mitch said.“Getting taken off the case, I mean.”
Work?Nooo.We were not talking about work.“It’s a reasonable decision on Christine’s part.Didn’t you want to talk about magic?”I asked.“One more of these please,” I told the server when she came to collect my empty glass.
As she left, I licked some cocktail off my lips, tasting the pineapple juice in it.Juice.Mmh.I could think of things I wanted to suck more than a cocktail straw, but I could not think about any juice cleanse I’d recently been forced to undergo.I knew I had that fortitude of mind, and the champagne from somewhere in France would definitely help.
Mitch leaned on his elbow.The move made his forearm flex.“Do you enjoy doing it?Raising dead things?”His leg moved under the table, his calf touching mine.
“I don’t like reanimating those that have been dead for long,” I told him.“But the power itself, letting my magic flow through me to bring life back to something that lost it?”I inhaled deeply, desperate for a whiff of his cologne so I wouldn’t remember the scent of fire.“It’s nice.”
Was I slurring?Had I been slurring that?Why was I even telling him that?I really shouldn’t.The non-magical types like him might react badly to my professional necromancer candor.
Sexy Mitch looked kind of hungry though, and not in the food sense.Heavens.I was feeling so light, like I was floating.On Jade Dragon Fins.
“Wow.You’re such a powerful sorcerer, Hawkes.”
“Necromancer, and call me Nell—I mean, Lionel.Call me that.Lionel, with an…L.Did you see that video of some amateur necromancer making their own Fiji Mermaid and reanimating it?”As I said that out loud, I realized I should not have ordered the fins.Silly train of thought, that mermaid.
Before Mitch could answer, his eyes went up, focusing over my right shoulder.
With a clunk, someone put a chair between Mitch and me, forcing Mitch to pull his leg back, thus removing his cozy calf from my cozy calf, breaking up the good thing that had been going on under the table.In the next moment, Lucifer, the fucking Devil his own damn self, was sitting his oh-so-pretty ass down right next to me.Close to me.I could smell him.Even over the champagne from France.Woodsmoke and spices.Damn the Devil’s ass and his Devil scent.
“Nelly,” he said, sniffing a long-stemmed rose he kept twirling between his fingers.“You ran away.”
Oh, fuck him very much.
33
Lionel
Iwassober-ishenoughto realize I’d had two cocktails on a nearly empty stomach.This meant I was also sober-ish enough to realize that Lucy, the fucking Devil his own damn self, was here to ruin me getting laid by Sexy Mitch several times tonight.
This, I knew, had to be prevented.I needed Mitch and me to bump nasties because I needed to get Lucifer out of my head.I could smell woodsmoke, cloves, and cardamom blended over a fire, imagine hands lined with cinnamon running over bare skin… No.
Just no.I needed to get Lucifer out of my system, not let him worm his way deeper with his spicy scent.Had no one ever given him boring cologne he could use to mask his musk?
Mitch cleared his throat.“This is a friend of yours?”
Mitch was obviously taken aback by Lucifer’s arrival, because of course Lucifer’s hair was perfect.That just wasn’t right.How did he do the perfect hair all the damn time?Did he have a stylist imprisoned in his Devil Mansion?Maybe he sacrificed baby kittens as a regular styling routine.I didn’t want to know, because I was as interested in the Devil’s personal grooming as I was in the immortal himself.And that was not at all, I reminded myself.
“Nope, no.Not a friend,” I told Mitch.
Lucifer paused his rose smelling.“Nelly’s my—”
The tequila had amped up my reflexes.I had become, while in the pleasantly drunk zone, my own superhero guarding my plans for this evening, and guarding my dragon fins as well.Metaphorical dragon fins.I was guarding my virtue against the Devil.And there were dragon fins.And I was drunk, but that was secondary.First was getting laid.By Mitch!
