The Devil You Know (11 page)

Outside my bedroom door, I could hear the TV going as it no doubt had been all day. I’d come home to find Andy sitting listlessly on the couch, staring at the TV but not really seeing it. He’d snapped out of it long enough to ask me what had happened during my ill-fated break-in, but when I’d stopped talking, the animation left him and he was back to staring. I had to hope he had enough brain cells functioning to shoot anything that came through the front door.

I was in too much pain to deal with his issues, so I’d gone to the bedroom to lie down. But as I lay there failing miserably at my attempt to sleep, I couldn’t help worrying about him.

Andy might not be catatonic anymore, but he wasn’t exactly back to normal, either. He had a fragile vulnerability that was so not in keeping with my mental image of him. Had Raphael damaged him irreparably? Was there anything I could do to help?

Eventually, I realized I wasn’t getting to sleep without help. I raided my medicine cabinet and found an old, expired bottle of sleeping pills. I downed a couple, hoping they’d still be effective after the expiration date, then went back to bed and closed my eyes.

I don’t know how much longer I lay there awake, my mind cycling through my impressive list of problems, but eventually I drifted off. I hadn’t been sure if Lugh would talk to me now, or if he still thought I needed cooling-off time, but I awoke in another version of his dream world, one I had visited only once before, when he’d healed me after Adam had finished “playing” with me.

I lay on my back on a sumptuously soft bed, my body draped with a crimson silk sheet that clung to its contours like a wet T-shirt. Naturally, I was naked under that sheet, and I was keenly aware of the texture of the silk against my skin.

Lugh sat beside me on the edge of the bed. He’d toned down his wardrobe for this conversation, ditching the S&M getup for a plain black T-shirt that hugged his spectacular chest. He still wore his trademark black leather pants, but not the heavy black boots. One bare foot was tucked under the opposite leg, and I had the strangest urge to reach out and touch it. Then I remembered I was furious with him and nipped my arousal in the bud.

I glanced down at my body, noticing that despite my supposed anger, the thin sheet did little to hide my decidedly perky nipples. I scowled.

“Why do I have to be naked?” I grumbled. It was hard to have a good, knock-down, drag-out fight when you were naked as the day you were born. Then again, maybe that was Lugh’s intention.

He smiled at my anger. “Perhaps because I like you that way?”

I struggled into a sitting position, clutching the sheet tightly against myself. “Well
I
don’t! Put some clothes on me.”

His smirk told me in advance things weren’t going well. I no longer felt the sheet against the skin of my torso, but when I looked down I saw that I was wearing a barely there teddy in a sheer black mesh that didn’t exactly hide anything. I shoved the sheet away, fighting down my embarrassment.

“Fine!” I snapped. “If you’re going to be childish and take advantage of me again, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

His brows drew together. “In what way am I taking advantage of you? I reside within your body. I know what you look like naked. I even know what you look like in the throes of passion.”

My blush burned my cheeks. There was little about these dreams to help me remember they were dreams—even when lingerie suddenly appeared out of thin air. I crossed my arms over my chest, hiding my breasts while the sheet hid the rest of me. I was letting him distract me from the real issue.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” I asked, and there was no way in hell he didn’t know what I was talking about.

The teasing smile left his lips. “I needed to speak to my brother. Since you won’t let me in when you’re conscious, my only chance to do so was while you slept. But you started to wake up at an inconvenient moment, so I had to give you some incentive to stay asleep.”

I swallowed hard, trying to blot out the images in my mind of the distraction he’d conjured. “You could have just told me what you were going to do.”

He laughed. “You’re not fooling yourself with that argument any more than you’re fooling me. If I’d told you what I was up to, you’d have awakened in a heartbeat. I’m sorry for the deception, but it was necessary.”

He reached out and took my hand. I had the strong impression I should have tried to evade him, but I didn’t. His grip was strong and steady, an anchor in the midst of my tumultuous life.

“Besides,” he said, his amber eyes gazing into mine as he raised my hand to his lips, “you needed the release.”

Once again, I urged myself to take back my hand, to resist the temptation of his touch. But though I willed my body to obey, I remained motionless and unresisting as his lips brushed over my knuckles.

That velvet touch sent a shudder through every cell in my body. Desire swamped my senses, and though he’d made me come two nights ago, it had been with the touch of my own hand, and that wasn’t enough. I closed my eyes as his lips traveled from knuckles to wrist. Deep inside my belly, I ached for something I didn’t dare let myself have.

His scent flooded my senses, and my skin felt the heat that radiated from his body as he pressed closer to me. His long, silky hair tickled my thigh, and I realized the sheet seemed to have slipped down past my knees.

I almost let it happen. Almost let my desire override my free will. Until I wondered just what he might be doing with my body in the real world.

I jerked away from him, my heart rate accelerating, my breath coming short. My hormones screamed in protest, but I ignored them.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, and there was an edge of panic in my voice. I struggled to close my mental doors, but I was too freaked out to concentrate.

Lugh backed off, raising both hands in a gesture of innocence. “Easy, Morgan. I’m not doing anything. You’re just lying in bed, recuperating.”

I grabbed at the sheet, yanking it up to my shoulders and holding it there with both hands. “I don’t believe you.”

His shoulders drooped. “I haven’t done anything to earn your distrust.”

I laughed, a bit hysterically. “Newsflash for you—seducing me so you can drive my body uninterrupted is a violation of my trust.”

He cocked his head to one side, looking genuinely puzzled. “I might have had more than one motive, but I did not coldly seduce you for only my own purposes. You have to know that my attraction to you is genuine.”

The hysterical laughter wanted to come back, but I swallowed it. “I don’t
have
to know anything. You can know everything I’m thinking, everything I’m feeling, everything that lies hidden under my surface. And I can know what you tell me. That’s it! Am I just supposed to take it on faith that this isn’t all some kind of game?”

He smiled ruefully, but if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn there was a hint of hurt in his eyes. “I understand your point. And no, I would not expect you, of all people, to take anything on faith.”

And with that, I jolted awake.

I lay in my bed a good fifteen minutes after I woke up. My finger was back to normal, and though I still sported the bruise my father had given me, the bumps and bruises I’d gotten this afternoon had vanished.

Lugh’s words seemed to echo in my brain, as did the hurt look in his eyes. It made me feel like a cold-hearted bitch, and for a little while, I wallowed in my own inadequacies. Then I mentally slapped myself upside the head and sat up.

Lugh could lay all the guilt trip he wanted on me. The fact remained that he had seduced me under false pretenses. A familiar glow of indignation warmed my belly. I had every right to be upset with him!

Being possessed was such a pain in the ass.

I rubbed the remains of sleep out of my eyes, then taped my pinkie and ring fingers together. Probably more loosely than I would have if the finger had still been broken, but I hoped to leave myself at least a little mobility. Afterward, I wandered out into the living room just as my phone started ringing. Andy was still sitting exactly where I’d left him, CNN babbling unheeded on the TV. His eyes were on the screen, but there was a vacant expression in them that suggested he didn’t see a thing. My heart contracted in my chest. Had he slipped back into catatonia? He didn’t seem to be reacting to the ringing phone, even though it was about two feet from where he was sitting.

“Andy?” I asked, and I didn’t realize how rigid every muscle in my body had gone until he blinked, and the tension seeped out of me.

Without a word to me, he turned to the phone and picked it up. He exchanged about four or five words with the caller, then hung up.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Adam. The police found a catatonic man near the scene of the attack at Mom and Dad’s house.”

My knees felt a little wobbly, so I hurried over to the sofa and sat down. “Let me guess,” I said, my voice raspy. “Young punk, ratty clothes, lots of tattoos on his arms?”

Andy nodded.

“Well, shit,” I said, and that about summed it up. Der Jäger had now hijacked a new host. Which meant he could walk right up to me in an unfamiliar body, and I’d never know it was him.

A bolt of pure terror shot through me at the same moment pain stabbed through my head. The pain let up immediately—Lugh knew I’d come to the same alarming conclusion he had. Sweat suddenly trickled down the small of my back as I looked at Andy in horror.

“If you were Der Jäger, and you wanted to get to me, what would you do?”

I could tell from the pallor of his face the moment Andy figured out what I was thinking. “Since he doesn’t seem to care how many hosts he goes through, he’d want to take over someone who was already close to you.”

I was diving for the phone before the sentence was even out of his mouth.

I called Adam back first, fearing Der Jäger might go after Dominic. Then I retreated to my bedroom, the phone clutched in my hand, my heart hammering.

Maybe Brian was in no danger whatsoever. After all, I hadn’t seen or talked to him since Der Jäger had entered the Mortal Plain. But I didn’t dare take any chances. Mouth dry, palms sweaty, I dialed his number. I had to remind myself to breathe as the phone rang.

There was no answer. Brian often worked tons of overtime, so I tried his office number. No luck.

Finally, I resorted to dialing his cell phone. I hoped like hell I wasn’t interrupting a date. Of course, since I’d cut him loose, I should theoretically be happy if he’d moved on with his life and found a new woman.
Theoretically
being the key word.

The phone rang three times, and I was afraid I was about to be dumped into voice mail. Then the voice I’d missed more than I could express said, “Hello, Morgan.”

My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t even answer him at first. I tried to interpret the tone of his voice. Was he furious with me? In dire pain? Or had he found a measure of acceptance? I couldn’t figure it out from two words.

“Morgan? Are you all right?”

Five more words, and I still couldn’t figure it out. But I found a scrap of my voice. “Yeah.” I realized with a jolt of alarm that I had no idea what to say to him. Though he had suffered dreadfully on my account, he had no idea why. He knew only the police interpretation.

“Are you going to speak to me, or are you expecting a monologue?”

I cleared my throat, my mind still frantically searching for what to say. “Sorry,” I said. My voice sounded crackly, and I cleared my throat again. When in doubt, stall. “Look, something’s come up and I need to talk to you. Can you come over?”

There was a moment of silence as he processed that. “What kind of ‘something’?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.” I wondered if my nose was growing longer.

He chuckled. “You never tell me ‘all about’ anything. And I’m kinda busy right now.”

I hated the way my stomach clenched as I imagined just what “busy” might mean.
Please, God, don’t let him be on a date,
I thought, then hated myself for it.

“It’s important.”

He sighed dramatically. “You do love keeping your cards close to the vest. I still love you, but if you expect me to drop everything and come running without anything more to go on, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you.”

I couldn’t tell if hearing that he still loved me made me feel better, or worse. “It’s too much to explain over the phone.” Especially when I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was going to say. “But I think you may be in danger. I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt because of me again.”

He was silent for a long moment, and I held my breath. Then he sighed again and said, “I’ll be there in about a half hour.”

There was nothing more to say after that, so we hung up. When I wandered back into the living room, the TV was finally off. Andy watched me as I plopped down on the love seat and curled my feet up under me.