Dance with the Devil Read online

  "Got you," he said. "C'mon. It's all right."

  Outside on the filthy sidewalk, she sidestepped a puddle of something horrific and shrugged off his grasp. But no, shit, the task had been to let a man seduce her, and one she found specifically in that hotel pub. It was the task the devil had set her, and she had to accomplish it or else pay the price. It didn't matter how many of the devil's duties she'd performed, what tiny atrocities she'd committed to help keep the world always on the verge of breaking. Each time was the only time that mattered.

  "Can I call you a cab?" Jake's hand, still warm, caressed the small of her back for a moment before he shifted to curl his fingers around her hip.

  "I can walk." She stood straight, not looking at him. "Thanks for the drinks."

  "I'll walk you."

  Kathleen looked at him. "You don't have to. I just live….

  He waited for her to finish, and something shifted in his expression when she didn't. "I'm not letting you walk by yourself, not in your condition. So I can call you a cab, or you can let me walk you, but there's no way I'm going to let you leave without making sure you get home safely."

  It had been a long time since there'd been anyone to care where or how she got home, but that, as the devil would've said, had been her choice. So this was her choice, too, here and now, to let him take her by the arm and walk with her. It wasn't much of a seduction, when you got right down to it, but she figured it would do.

  "Fine," Kathleen told Jake. "Come home with me."

  6

  She woke to the smell of coffee and toast with butter, and her stomach rumbled even though she hadn't been hungry in the mornings for as long as she could remember. She also hadn't woken this way, softly, her eyes easing open to the golden gleam of late afternoon sunshine. She stretched, joints crackling. Arms, legs, everything going wide like a starfish before she curled onto her side with the pillow tucked into her arms like a lover.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the softness. She'd brought that stranger back here to her apartment, something she never did. She’d go to their place, or a hotel, but never home.

  She remembered serving him a few glasses of her finest bourbon, but then not much beyond that. Kathleen pressed her face deeper into the pillow, waiting to feel ashamed, but as with everything else the devil asked of her, last night's seduction seemed to have left her without much of an emotional response beyond numbness.

  She should've been sick, not from the whiskey she could remember drinking but from the drinks she could not recall. Also from whatever she'd done in that bed last night, because surely there'd been more than simply sleeping going on. Yet all she felt was well-rested and hungry.

  Kathleen grabbed her silk kimono. The devil had told her to buy it for herself in Tokyo. She'd never found out Lucifer's purpose for the task, but it didn't matter. She loved it. Belting it now over her nakedness, she went out to her kitchen without bothering to do more than brush her teeth and pull her tangled hair into a messy bun at the nape of her neck.

  "Morning." His name was Jake, she remembered that much.

  Silently, she sat at the island across from him. He smiled and filled a mug -- her favorite, the one with the Queen Bee design, how had he known? He added sugar and cream, just enough. He put the mug in front of her.

  Kathleen wrapped her fingers around the warmth. "I didn't expect you to be here this morning."

  Jake put a plate of buttered toast in front of her. Cinnamon toast. Also her favorite.

  Kathleen's throat closed. Nausea now twisted her stomach, but it had nothing to do with a hangover. She looked at him.

  "I'm not hungry."

  "You should eat something," he said.

  "I despise cinnamon toast," Kathleen lied through her clenched teeth. "It's disgusting."

  Jake's smile faltered for a moment before he shrugged and pulled the plate toward him. He picked up a slice of toast and crunched it, letting his tongue slide along his lower lip to catch the glistening butter and the crumbs. His eyes never left hers.

  Her stomach rumbled, and she put a hand over it. "Look, I'm sure last night was a grand old time, but you need to go."

  Jake finished chewing the toast and swallowed. Then nodded. "Sure, if you want me to."

  "Of course I want you to," she snapped. "What the fuck do you think this is?"

  "A really nice apartment." He looked around the kitchen, then back at her. Another of those damned smiles. "Breakfast."

  She cupped the mug again, though the porcelain burned against her palms. She swallowed, hard. "I don't bring people here."

  "I know you don't, Kathleen. You told me."

  Eyes narrowed, she looked at him. "You don't know anything about me other than what I like to drink and what I look like naked. So how about you just stop with all this morning after bullshit and just...go."

  "Yeah. Sure. Okay." At least she'd wiped the smile off his face. Jake shrugged and took his mug of coffee to the dishwasher, though he left the plate of toast behind. With his back still to her, he said, "I can find my own way out."

  She was already off the stool to follow him to the front door. She gestured, a flick of her fingers, toward the living room. For a moment, one breathless fearful moment, she was sure he wasn't going to go. That she had indeed made a mistake by taking a stranger home.

  He’s going to hurt you, Kathleen Murphy.

  The thought hit her like a nail hammered between her eyes, so hard she had to put out a hand to keep herself from stumbling back. A real and physical pain slivered in her chest, forcing her heart to skip a beat before it settled into pounding so hard she put a hand over it. Her fingers curled into the gap in the silk robe, finding her bare flesh beneath. Her nails dug, making pain. Kathleen blinked, focusing.

  At the door, Jake turned before opening it. "I slept on the couch. Just wanted you to know that. We didn't..."

  “What happened,” she said without thinking, cruelty by now a second, if hated, nature. “Whiskey dick?”

  In reply, Jake gave her a small, slow smile and a shrug. He stared at her steadily until she couldn’t stand it any longer and had to turn away. “Get out.”

  He opened the door. She lived in the penthouse. Her neighbors were on the other side of the elevator. Nobody would hear her if she screamed -- she knew that for a fact, because she'd screamed plenty in the apartment without anyone ever coming to her rescue and more tellingly, no complaints to management about the noise.

  This man will slaughter you.

  This, the devil's voice, a whisper in her ear so soft only she could hear it. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second as she fought the floor from coming up and smacking her in the face. She'd often wondered when what the devil asked of her would lead to her death. She'd imagined it at the end of a gun or knife or with an overdose of pills and booze, but now she knew without the shadow of a doubt it was going to come from this man's hands.

  He would touch her, and it would kill her. At least it would kill the parts of her that made it possible for her to live. And in that moment, she almost went to her knees in front of Jake, right there on the marble floor of her foyer, so that he could do it. So he could kill her, and she wouldn't have to worry about any of this any longer.

  Instead, Jake turned away. She didn't understand the sadness in his eyes any more than she'd been able to comprehend why last night he had looked at her as though she were important to him, but there was no time to figure it out because he stepped through her front door and closed it behind him.

  At the click of the lock, everything that had been keeping her upright dissolved. Kathleen buckled, reaching for a chair as she had earlier in the kitchen when her knees threatened to give way, but this time her fingers slipped and she went to her hands and knees with silk puddled all around her. Shaking, she let her forehead rest on the cold marble. Her mouth opened.

  It would've been better to puke right there than to make this noise, this long and low and keening sound of grief that ripped its w