“Not in the slightest,” he heard himself answer.
“Aw, Adrian.” She hopped off her perch and started walking over, all hip sway and then some. “Still bitter about your buddy?”
“No. What’s done is done.”
That pout of hers relented a little. “So phlegmatic. You aren’t going to therapy by any chance, are you? I’ve found it’s helped me tremendously.”
“With what? Coming to terms with the fact that you’re going to lose this game?”
She stopped about a foot away from him, and her no-bullshit voice came out. “Don’t be so sure, angel. This round is going to go my way.”
“Bet you said that about the other three you lost, didn’t you.” He leaned in toward her, even though it put extra stress on his bad leg. “Losing all those times must have come as a shocker.”
“I’ve got two flags.”
“Only one of which you’ve earned.”
Now she smiled, her luscious lips peeling off her sharp white teeth. “Both are still mine.” She pointed over to a stout oak door that had iron reinforcements all over it. “Cast your eyes on my decor.”
Sure enough, over that exit, there were two of the game’s flags, mounted on the jambs.
Man, that pissed him off.
“You’re angry at Jim, aren’t you,” the demon drawled.
“No.”
“Liar.” Rising up on her tiptoes, she licked across his mouth, her tongue lingering on his flesh. “Isn’t that why you’ve come? To get back at him?”
“No.” If that was the case, he’d have left the other angel high and dry.
“Oh, really?” Her hands went to his chest, palms flattening on his pecs as her hips brushed the front of his. “I think you did.”
His body revolted at the proximity, his skin prickling up, his shoulders tightening into steel cables, his gut twisting even more. And all that got worse as he looked past her falsely beautiful face to that table.
Impossible not to remember what she’d done to him on it.
Abruptly, he wondered if Eddie hadn’t been right. A long time ago, after Adrian had finally gotten free from down here, his best friend had warned him that that kind of abuse lingered not just in the mind and on emotional levels, but in the soul, in the bones, in the blood.
Ad had brushed all that off, of course, but now…
Staring at that table, he thought that Eddie might have been right.
“You know,” Devina said as her hands traveled down, down, down his torso, “sleeping with me would destroy him. He’s very jealous of me, possessive—it borders on stalkerish.”
Adrian refocused on the demon’s jet-black, glittering eyes. “What?”
“Jim’s obsessed with me. Violently so. It’s actually very sweet. And your best revenge is to f**k me. He’ll never get over it—his best friend with his best girl. Come on, it’s the stuff of movies, right?”
As her words sank in, Adrian’s brows popped. Yeah, wowzer. He’d thought Devina was a lot of things over the aeons they’d been going around and around with each other, but he’d never felt as though she was out of her mind in the more conventional sense.
Like in Stacy-from–Wayne’s World nutso.
Go fig.
“Did you say you were in therapy?” Adrian shook his head. “Does that also include medication or are you trying to go natural?”
“I don’t believe in anti-depressants. I think they cloud the mind.”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
She eased back against him. “Now, where were we?”
You were channeling the role of cray-cray-never-was-girlfriend and I was negotiating with my stomach to make sure all that toast from breakfast stayed put.
Devina slid her palm between his legs, and Adrian flinched, his eyes clamping shut, his head turning away.
God, they had hit this corner before, her coming on to him, him going along with it, them having sex because … well, sometimes he liked to feel the dirtiness on the outside of himself. It was the only relief he’d ever gotten from the stench she’d infected him with on the inside.
She’s in me, Jim. She’s inside of me …
Devina pressed that mouth of hers against the side of his throat as she rubbed him up and down, br**sts pushing into his chest, long leg sneaking around the back of his own.
“Don’t tell me that you don’t want this,” she breathed. “Because I know you do.”
Adrian opened his mouth to tell her the fifteen different reasons he in fact did not—and then it dawned on him. Yes, he was numb and disgusted with himself and her … but in the past, that had never discouraged his cock. Now, though?
The phone was ringing and nobody was picking it up, so to speak.
He was utterly flaccid. Which was the definition of impotence, wasn’t it.
Adrian glanced back over at that worktable and smiled. “You’re right, Devina.”
She let her head fall back and stared at him from under heavy, seductive lids. “I always am. So how about I get to work on you?”
“Okay. Yeah.”
The demon dropped to her knees and pushed her hands up his thighs. “You’re doing the right thing, Adrian.”
As she reached for his fly and slowly undid his pants, he helped her out, pulling his muscle shirt up his abs, staring down as if he gave a shit about what she was doing to him.
When his jeans hit the floor, there was a moment of pause, as if she were surprised with all he didn’t have to offer.
“I’m conflicted,” he said. “About Jim.”
“Ah …” She nuzzled his flaccid sex. “I can help with that.”
As her wet mouth engulfed his lazy cock, Adrian just looked straight ahead. He felt the suction, the warmth, the sensation of her reaching under and stroking his balls … but it was no different than someone brushing against his forearm or patting him on the back.
Before he’d done that little swaperoo with Matthias? He’d been capable of getting hard at a moment’s notice, even with Devina.
Now? Nada.
Devina retracted the suction, pulling back until his head popped out from between her red lips. As he just flopped back to a limp vertical, her brows dropped down like she was confronted with an anomaly of unimaginable proportions.
Adrian just shrugged to himself. Jim had asked him to keep the demon busy, and her trying to get him up was as good a time-passer as any. Rather amusing, actually—