The Sexorcist (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five—Stormy Weather

By the time they arrived back at his house, Rodriguez had come to two conclusions.

One, he was definitely in love with Brittany Hylton-VanDeere.

Two, being in love sucked.

His heart felt like it had stopped beating and refused to restart when he saw the melted umbrella on the pavement. It would have been so easy for the damn demon to hurt her. He hadn’t been there. He’d been off chasing dead ends when she needed him. It was only dumb luck that he decided he’d had enough of getting rained on and headed back to get her at Karmic in time to scare off the demon.

What if he had gotten there five minutes later?

Mischief demons usually weren’t aggressive, but that was no guarantee.

Fear chilled him from the inside out, even as the wind and rain worked on him from the outside in. The only thing keeping him from becoming one big block of ice was the knowledge that Brittany was okay. Nothing had happened to her.

Nothing was going to.

They parked in his driveway and Brittany climbed out of her car, soggy and sweet and so damn beautiful he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He would do whatever it took to keep her from getting hurt.

Now if only he could make the same guarantee for himself.

He’d never been so vulnerable to a woman before. He hated giving all of the power in the relationship to her, but that’s exactly what he would be doing if he admitted he loved her.

She used words like
fling
and
affair
while he was tangled up in
forever
and
marriage
. Sure, she acted like she cared for him, but this was Brittany. She cared for everyone she met and probably a bunch of people she’d never even laid eyes on.

He wasn’t used to being the one who cared more, the one putting his heart on the line. He may be a man of faith, but he wasn’t in the habit of taking leaps of it. Believing in Brittany was a risk.

But it was also a need. Walking away wasn’t an option. She had too strong a hold on his heart.

They didn’t speak as he unlocked the front door and held it open for her. He shut the door and hit the light switch. Nothing happened.

He flipped the switch up and down a couple times before the unusual darkness up and down the street registered on his brain. “The storm must have knocked the power out,” he said inanely.

She made a little sound that might have been agreement before lapsing back into silence. Their breathing was the only sound in the shadowy foyer. She wrapped her arms around her middle, shivering in her damp clothes, but she made no move toward the bedroom where they both had dry things. She stood and looked up at him. He couldn’t read her eyes in the darkness.

He wanted to touch her. She stood there bathed in the dim, bluish light of the storm and she almost didn’t seem real. Like she was just a mirage. He needed to touch her, just so his fingers could feel the truth of her.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, his voice coming out gruff and low. He brushed his fingers softly across her jaw and she leaned into the touch.

“A little rattled,” she admitted. “But okay. Not a scratch.”

“We should go get dried off.”

Brittany nodded, but neither of them moved.

The storm rumbled closer outside. Rain drilled against the roof in a rapid staccato. The air was thick with promise—as if the pressure had been slowly building all day, drawing to this point. Lightning flashed and, in the sudden strobe of white light, Rodriguez saw the naked want on Brittany’s face.

He groaned and reached for her. They came together in a rush. Hands and lips were everywhere. Luis lifted her and pinned her between his body and the wall. She locked her legs around his waist and shoved at his jacket until he yanked it off and threw it aside. His shirt and then hers quickly followed.

His breath caught at the sight of her nipples pressing against the transparent silk of her bra. He bent and rolled one over his tongue. She gasped, her hands scrabbling over his shoulders as if looking for purchase, something solid to hang onto.

Her skirt had bunched up, but he shoved it higher, out of his way. His fingers slid beneath the elastic of her panties. The slippery heat there made his eyes cross with a sudden stab of lust. She was so wet. So slick and hot and ready. He had to get inside her
right now
.

Rodriguez fumbled with the fastening on his jeans. “Goddamn zipper’s stuck,” he grunted.

“Let me.”

She wrapped one arm around his shoulders, hitching herself up and bracing her hips back against the wall to make enough space to reach between them.

The first gentle brush on his cock through the layer of wet denim nearly killed him. He swore viciously and flattened his hands on the wall on either side of her head, trying to stay upright. She eased the zipper down an inch then paused. Her fingers fluttered over his length. “
Fuck
, Brittany.”

“
Sí, señor
,” she said impishly in a god-awful Spanish accent.

The zipper finally gave up its death grip. His cock sprang up. Rodriguez forced the clinging denim of his jeans down to his thighs by brute force alone, taking his boxers with them. Brittany’s soft hand closed around his cock and he hissed a few words he wasn’t sure were part of any language he knew. She didn’t seem to care.

He didn’t bother taking off the rest of their clothes. He just jerked aside her underwear and fitted himself to her. He shoved inside, pressing steadily until he was seated deep. His brain felt like it was on fire, like he could be struck by lightning right now and not even notice.

Brittany made a soft mewling noise. Her inner muscles tightened around his cock like a fist.

He gave a slight pulse of his hips and she rewarded him with a ragged gasp. He braced one forearm beside her head. Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the open ecstasy on her face. His slid his free hand up her side to brush the curve of her breast as his hips pulsed a slow, deliberate rhythm into hers. Then picking up into a rhythm that wasn’t so slow or deliberate.

The pitch of her cries changed and the frantic edge tightened at the base of his spine. He was too close. He couldn’t stop or slow down. He hoped she was with him. If she didn’t get there he would make goddamn sure he finished her, but right now he couldn’t do anything but try to pound her through the wall with his cock.

Brittany screamed, her nails digging hard into his back.
Fuck, yes
. His orgasm slammed into him like a dozen lightning bolts, ripping the top of his head clean off and paralyzing him in place, his body locked against Brittany’s. Aftershocks still rippled through him in little twitches of electric energy when he was able to focus his eyes again.

The first thing he saw was the big brown eyes he wanted to fall into for the rest of his life. Luckily, his voice wasn’t working, or he probably would have asked her to marry him while he was still buried in her balls-deep.

She licked her lips. “Wow.”

He nodded, still not capable of speech, and took over the licking of her lips. God, she tasted fucking amazing. Summer rain and strawberries.

She kissed him back, sucking his tongue into her mouth in a way that incinerated all his higher brain functions. How had he never realized before that his tongue was directly connected to his cock? Every tug of her mouth got him a little harder.

He broke the kiss, trying to remember how to form words. “Bed,” he grunted. He shifted his grip on Brittany, bouncing her a bit so that she gave a little squeal, quickly followed by a moan when his cock shifted inside her. He’d never actually tried walking with a woman on his dick, but he was willing to give it his damnedest effort.

They made it about halfway to the bedroom before she started to slip. He had to juggle his grip a bit and his cock slipped wetly out. They groaned in unison.

Then Brittany, being Brittany, began to giggle.

“Hold on.” He hitched her higher and practically ran the last few steps. They fell onto the mattress together.

Side by side, they squirmed out of their remaining clothes. She turned on her side to face him as he struggled with the jeans that had a stranglehold on his ankles like Chinese finger cuffs. When he was finally free of his denim prison, he stretched out on the bed beside her.

She wound her arms around his neck and threw a leg over his hip. Her smile was so close and kissable, so he kissed it. The corners, then the full lower curve. The fierce bite of need was gentler now, but it didn’t take much shifting in their positions to slide into her again, so he did, pulling her close to press against every inch of her skin. Her hands skated gently across his back.

Again, the itch to tell her he loved her started in the back of his throat. He kissed her to shut himself up.

This time was slow and maddeningly sweet. Her eyes were open and her hands soft. They made love as the storm exploded around them, wrapped in an intimate cocoon where only the two of them existed.

Brittany Hylton-VanDeere believed in Love at First Sight. She loved easily. She always had. But she had never been
in
love before. This was so much bigger than anything she had ever felt. Rodriguez filled up every corner of her brand new heart. He filled up her life with adventure and love. He was everything.

Brittany lay in her lover’s arms while the storm rattled the windows and thought about Lucy’s wedding. She would call her parents’ country club tomorrow to arrange the reception. She would do whatever it took to make sure Lucy’s wedding was a splendid success. Every detail would be perfect.

Because on Monday she would walk into Karmic Consultants and resign. There would be other jobs. She might not love the other jobs quite as much as she loved working at Karmic, but that was okay. If she had to choose between Luis and Karmic Consultants, there really wasn’t a choice.

She would make the wedding perfect. Then she would walk away. With the man of her dreams.

Chapter Twenty-Six—Noah Was a Pussy

“We should be holding the wedding on an arc.”

Brittany started and spun toward Lucy, who waved at the window where she’d been gazing out at the storm. Sheets of rain poured down outside. Inside, the volume level rose steadily as the rehearsal dinner guests finished the dinner portion of the evening and started mingling.

And hitting the punch pretty enthusiastically.

Brittany eyed the pink liquid in the bowl. That was some suspicious punch. Was it too pink? Perhaps even a little red? Or was she just paranoid about demons?

The wedding was tomorrow morning. Less than twenty-four hours. And everything seemed to be in place. Brittany was an optimist, but she wasn’t stupid. She was braced for whatever the demon was going to throw at them next.

Lucy, looking adorable in a blue striped dress that screamed Sandra Dee, sipped at her punch and considered the deluge. “We could have the guests arrive two by two, leading the animal of their choice. That way we’re prepared if it never stops raining.”

“Isn’t rain on your wedding day good luck?”

“Fertility, I think. Jo Googled it. She is now convinced Jake and I are going to breed like bunnies.” Lucy slapped a hand over her mouth, glancing around nervously. “If my family hears me say that, we really are going to end up with diapers as wedding gifts.”

“I don’t think anyone heard.”

The rehearsal dinner had turned surprisingly raucous. They were tucked into a back banquet room at
Chez Louis
, but if the decibel level got much higher, they were going to get complaints from the posh restaurant’s regular clientele. A conga line was starting up over in the vicinity of the punch bowl, even though there wasn’t any music playing. Brittany frowned at the punch.

“I swear I’m not pregnant,” Lucy insisted. “Jake and I have decided not to have kids until we can figure out a way to ban the ghosts from certain parts of the house, like bedrooms and nurseries. We are in total agreement that certain ghosts are not good influences on small children and the odds are pretty good our kid is going to be able to see them at a pretty early age.”

“I used to see them,” Brittany commented. “When I was a kid.” Then she remembered the way her parents had reacted to that little tidbit and winced.

“Really?” Lucy asked. Her dimples flashed. “You must have some mojo of your own. Jo thinks you’re like a human good-luck charm.”

Brittany looked at Lucy, surprise yanking her out of her melancholy musings about her parents, the unending rain, and her soon-to-be-unemployed state. “Good luck?”

“Mm-hmm. We’re totally in awe that you’ve managed to actually fix things for the wedding. Have I thanked you enough yet? Because you should be thanked at least a million times. I know Rodriguez has been helping with some of the demon stuff, but it’s still pretty darn impressive. Before you showed up, none of the wedding planners could correct any of the things that went wrong—or if they did, they would only get twice as bad the next day. But you changed that.”

“And Jo thinks I’m a lucky charm?”

Lucy’s dimples made another appearance. “Magically delicious.” Then she glanced at someone behind Brittany and her blue eyes twinkled. “And speaking of magically delicious…”

Rodriguez appeared at Brittany’s side as Tall, Dark, and Gorgeous slipped an arm around Lucy, tucking her into his side.

Lucy looked up at her groom and beamed. “Hey.”

“Hey back.”

Jake wasn’t at all what Brittany had expected. She had thought Lucy would be with someone softer. Someone who radiated her same warmth—but all it took was one look at the way Jake watched Lucy and Brittany could see there was plenty of warmth in that relationship. He clearly thought the Sandra Dee ghost shrink hung the moon and stars.

He bent his head toward Lucy’s. “Wyatt mentioned marriage in front of Jo’s mother. Thought it was smart to get out of range before she started throwing things at his head.”

Lucy winced. “Bringing Aunt Betsy into it is a bold move, but I have a feeling it’s gonna backfire on him.”

Brittany looked back and forth between the bride and groom. “What’s going on?”

Lucy nodded toward the other end of the room where Jo could be seen in heated conversation with a dark-haired man in a grey business suit. “Jo’s Wyatt. He’s been more or less trying to blackmail her into marrying him ever since she rejected his first proposal.”

“She rejected his proposal? But it’s obvious she’s crazy about him.”

“She’s trying to convince him she doesn’t believe in marriage.”

Something about the way Lucy phrased that seemed off. “
Does
she believe in marriage?”

Lucy dimpled. “I think so. Wyatt certainly thinks she does. Jo likes to be anti-establishment, but she’s a house in the suburbs just waiting to happen.”

Unwittingly, Brittany thought of Luis’s house in the suburbs. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and caught him watching her. She couldn’t even tell him to be less conspicuous about it without drawing attention to the fact that he was watching her.

Brittany took a half step away from Luis, trying to put some distance between them in case Karma should look in their direction. Though really, how much did it really matter? She was quitting on Monday anyway.

“Mr. Rodriguez!”

Luis flinched before his conscious mind even recognized the voice. He knew instinctively that high-pitched coo was going to be bad news.

Katrina Sullivan—the orgiastic housewife herself—plowed through the crowd toward them, waving a full glass of punch in greeting. “Oh, Mr. Rodriguez!”

Lucy made a sour face and spoke in a rush before Katrina got in earshot. “I’m so sorry. She’s my cousin’s sister-in-law. Family. We had to invite her. If she annoys you, you have my permission to drop-kick her into the punch bowl. We’re all convinced she only married Sam for his money and is cheating on… Katrina! How lovely you could make it!”

Katrina Sullivan made a kiss noise in Lucy’s general direction then raked her eyes over Jake in a way that was far too ardent to be decent on the night before his wedding. Lucy was no fool. She suddenly saw someone she just had to speak to across the room and rushed off, pulling her fiancé behind her.

Katrina turned to lock onto Rodriguez with both barrels, so to speak. Her clothing bore slightly less resemblance to underwear tonight, but her nipples could still be clearly seen jutting from the artificially round spheres of her breasts. “Mr. Rodriguez, you naughty boy, we’ve been trying to hire you to exorcise us.”

Brittany muttered something about needing a lot more than holy water to purify her and Katrina’s gaze swung in her direction.

“Hello. Do I know you?” She downed half the glass of punch in a single swallow. “You seem terribly familiar.”

“Maybe my voice is familiar,” Brittany said, louder this time and with more acid in her tone than Rodriguez had ever heard there. “Called for any appointments lately?”

Katrina shook her head vaguely and sipped at her punch. “No, no, that isn’t it. It’s your face, sweetie, not your voice. The eyes.” She took another gulp and leaned in to squint at Brittany’s eyes. She snapped her fingers and rocked back drunkenly on her heels. “You’re a VanDeere! Just look at those eyes. Those are the VanDeere eyes.” Katrina almost bowed, her demeanor instantly taking on a degree of subservience. “We belong to the same club. I’m sure we’ve met there.”

A red haze settled over Rodriguez’s vision. “You belong to the same club?” he asked Brittany, his voice choked.

He’d known she came from money. Of course he’d known. He’d driven her damn car. But knowing she ran in the same circles as the Katrina Sullivans of the world wasn’t the same thing as having it thrown in his face. And now the slutty housewife was practically fawning. Just how important was Brittany’s family in that world?

Rodriguez felt the punch he’d drunk curdling in his stomach. They knew each other. Brittany knew Katrina the Slut. Questions insinuated themselves into his brain, sneaking in from all sides. Had she ever come right out and said she wasn’t just sleeping with him on a bet? Why was it so important to her that no one know about them? Why had he dismissed his initial gut reaction that she was a brilliant con artist? What had he been thinking? Or maybe more accurately, what had he been thinking with?

Katrina looked back and forth between Brittany and Rodriguez, a catty gleam entering her eyes. “Oh. My. God. You bagged the Sexorcist, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t—”

Katrina cut off Brittany’s attempted protest, her face twisted into a fake pout. “You dreadful girl! I wanted him for myself.” She winked broadly and reached out to squeeze Luis’s biceps, checking the livestock. He jerked his arm away, but Katrina didn’t seem to notice his disgust. “We all did, delicious boy that he is, but to the victor go the spoils.” She toasted Brittany with her punch glass, found it empty and gave a trilling laugh. “Oopsies! Time for a refill.”

She toddled off on her four-inch heels, bouncing drunkenly toward a couple arguing heatedly nearby, waving their own empty punch glasses at one another.

Brittany glared after her, her face tight and angry. “That woman…”

“Friend of yours?”

Her glare swung to land on him. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

He shrugged. “She seemed to know you pretty well.”

He knew he was being an ass, but he felt like an idiot. He’d been falling in love, but she was just playing him. Her secret fling. Her dirty little Mexican secret. The little rich girl slumming on a bet.

The only person in the entire damn room who knew he was with Brittany was a lush who’d been betting on whether or not she could get him into bed. They snuck around like they had something to be ashamed of—like
she
had something to be ashamed of—but who were they fooling? Certainly not Katrina Sullivan.

Brittany’s brown eyes—
VanDeere eyes
—narrowed. “Have you been drinking the punch?”

“Everyone’s been drinking the punch.” It was damn good punch. The craving for another glass burned in his stomach, but he didn’t move to get more. He glowered down at Brittany. “Don’t change the subject. How long have you been lying to me?”

A small, rational voice spoke up from some dark corner of his mind, reminding him she hadn’t exactly lied about her background. He’d known she came from money. But that little voice was quickly overruled by the red flash of irritation, telling him she’d lied by omission by not making their class differences more clear. He deserved to know if he was dating someone who thought of him as the goddamn hired help.

“I need to get rid of that punch.” Brittany tried to take a step past him and he caught her arm. She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “Luis?”

“We aren’t done here.”

Anger was a scarlet fog in his brain, clouding over all rational thoughts. He didn’t loosen his grip on her arm, though she was no longer trying to escape him. She wouldn’t get away from him. She couldn’t. He
needed
her.

“You’re drunk, or drugged, or possessed,” she said slowly.

The low, rational calm in her voice just made his anger spike hotter. “I’m finally seeing things clearly and you have some explaining to do.” He was slurring his words, from anger or drunkenness, he didn’t know which. Not even the realization that he sounded like Ricky Ricardo penetrated the red haze. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Katrina Sullivan?”

“Because I don’t know her!” Brittany exclaimed, literally throwing her hands up in frustration.

“She certainly knows you.”

“Oh, for crying out loud! She saw me once at my parents’ club. We have dinner there occasionally. That doesn’t mean I’ve been brainwashed into being some materialistic bimbo. Good things happen at that club all the time. Charity fundraisers.
Wedding receptions
. Are you seriously condemning me because someone saw me at a
restaurant I went to
?”

People were starting to stare, but Rodriguez was barely aware of anything outside Brittany and his rage. Questions were pounding in his temples, along with a bitch of a headache. “What’s with all the secrecy, Brittany? Why is it so important to you that no one knows we’re together? Why did it have to be such a big secret? Why don’t I know where you live and why haven’t you introduced me to your parents?”

“Because they would freak out!” she shouted at him, jerking her arm away. She stalked to the punch bowl and he rushed after her. She snatched up the bowl and turned to face him over it. “I
told
you how protective they are. They would lose it if they knew—”

“What?” he cut her off. “That you were
fucking a goddamn Mexican.
I’m not gonna be any woman’s goddamn
cabana boy
, I don’t care how fucking good you are in bed!” His voice rose of its own accord until he was bellowing the last few words.

He saw Brittany’s fingers tighten on the punch bowl. That was the only warning he had before gallons of pink liquid splashed across his face and chest.

She threw the bowl to the ground where it landed with a muted
thunk
against the now-pink-splattered carpet, and then turned and ran from the room.

Rodriguez was rooted to the spot, dripping wet. Why did they always have to get wet? What was it with this demon?

His reality slowly expanded, widening out from the tight spiral his rage had pulled him into. He stood in the middle of a rehearsal dinner after-party.

So much for secrecy. The room was stunningly silent and every single eye was locked on him with varying degrees of shock, disappointment, and pity.

The weight of those eyes made his vision flash red all over again. “What?” he snarled before stomping out the door.

When he got to the parking lot, he squinted through the rain, but Brittany was already gone.