A Demon Bound Read online

Chapter 2

  Moments later I left the row house with the back three months rent, plus four months forward on their lease. I really don't understand why Brad would have let those two stoned guys on his couch have guns since they were far too impaired to use them. How they were supposed to join in on a threesome rape in that condition was beyond me. It was all rather anticlimactic.

  I headed toward my car and grabbed my cell phone. It was just after noon, and I was pleased that I had wrapped this up so early. "Michelle, I'm done and three fifty one is paid through December."

  Michelle is my property manager. I've been through quite a few property managers over the last four decades, but Michelle is a keeper. Our partnership has profited her, too, and she now owns her own company - although she still continues to manage my properties personally.

  "Woohoo!" Michelle cheered. "Are you coming by? We can grab lunch."

  Michelle's eagerness to see me had less to do with our friendship and more to do with the fact that she got an under-the-table cut of all cash payments. A large amount of my business was off the books, and Michelle whole heartedly supported this.

  "I can't," I told her. "I'm going to just grab a bag of tacos and get home in time to ogle the lawn service."

  "You go girl!" Michelle said. "It's Friday, meet us at The Wine Room for happy hour. You know, your hottie neighbor will wrap up mowing early so he can hit the clubs tonight."

  I hated The Wine Room.

  "Wait," I hesitated. "Will they let me in? After last time?"

  "Yes, they will let you in," Michelle sighed. "But no more groundhogs. That thing bit a waiter."

  "It wasn't me," I lied. "I told you it wandered in off the street."

  I'm a terrible liar. I don't think she believed me.

  "All the girls will be there, and a real estate agent whose been pestering me to meet you. She's handling that block by the canal on the south side," she said. I was grateful she dropped the groundhog subject.

  Most of Michelle's friends didn't like me but she always asked me to join her for social events. Our friendship gave a gritty edge to her very businesslike reputation, but this time I was sure she just wanted her cash before the weekend. No hurt feelings on my part. I'd show up dressed inappropriately, and see how many people I could make uncomfortable in an hour or so. The real estate agent was a mild draw, too. I really wanted this block of canal houses.

  "Sheesh, Michelle," I complained. "I don't want those dilapidated pieces of crap. And you know the bank will want fair market value because they loaned some idiot twice that five years ago on spec".

  "Come anyway," she said. "She'll buy you a Cosmo to try and get on your good side, and you can scare all the suits at the bar."

  I hated Cosmopolitans with a passion, but agreed to be there at five.

  "Any problems, Roberto?" I asked my young car watcher.

  "Some weirdo was giving it the eye, but they left when I told them it was Satan's car," he said.

  It was a huge stretch to refer to me as Satan. The appropriate term would have been Ha-Satan, The Iblis, or The Adversary, but no one had held that title in over a million years and my actual level in the hierarchy was far below that. Ah well, whatever got the job done was Okay with me.

  Roberto took in the growing bruise on my chin and the red staining my shirt. "You have some trouble, Ms. Martin?"

  "Nah," I told him as I looked carefully over my precious car. "I bit my tongue. You should see the other guy though. He'll be pissing blood for days."

  I thanked him and handed him a twenty.

  The noontime sun was intense and the pavement shimmered in front of my car with the radiated heat as I slowly edged my way through downtown traffic. A jay walker darted across the road and I swerved, barely hitting her big purse with my rear view mirror. It sucked that I hadn't hit her properly, but my mind was on other things. I kept thinking about the energy I used to break off the table leg. It wasn't much. It wasn't like I'd converted or anything. It probably wasn't enough for any angels to sense. Hopefully.

  The city gave way to farms interspersed with one-street towns. Cows huddled under scrub trees to escape the heat, and the crops drooped in the blistering sun. I was hoping there would be some heat lightning this afternoon. Enjoying the gorgeous day, I cranked the air conditioning with the windows open as my tacos made a mess on my lap.

  In thirty minutes I was pulling carefully down the long rural lane toward my house. I passed by my neighbor, Wyatt's house on the left. Wyatt had bought the place a few years back when it had gone up for tax auction. I'd bid on it, but he was willing to pay a bit more than I was. It was one of those old, Cape Cod style houses that had suffered from fixed income elderly owners, and neglect. Wyatt hadn't done much to fix it up, but he didn't seem to have a lot of money. He constantly played computer games and did odd jobs to keep him in Ramen noodles. That's how he came to be in charge of my lawn mowing, stable care, and pool care.

  When I saw what an incredible specimen of maleness had moved in next door, I had promptly trotted over a basket of baked goods along with a six pack of beer and introduced myself. We'd struck up a friendship based on my continued bribes of alcohol and food, and my willingness to let him treat my house and property as his own. Early on he had offered to do barn work and it had progressed from there. He tended to do the lawn mowing without his shirt on, so I ensured he had to do it several times a week. Everywhere else lawns languished in the drought, but my grass grew like it was on steroids. Wyatt never mentioned how unusual this phenomenon was.

  I'd razed the old farmhouse when I bought this place. Instead I'd built a sweeping contemporary with stone and cedar. There was a seldom used front porch with Adirondack chairs and lots of glass windows that looked mirrored from the outside and clear from the inside. It was around the back of the house where I spent most of my time. Huge two story windows and sets of double French doors looked out from the kitchen and bedrooms to a lovely patio and pool. From the front and back of the house, wide pathways lead to the barn, horse pastures, and a little landscaped garden with a fountain and private spot to sit. I'd become really fond of this home. Especially the pool.

  I parked in front of the house and headed around to the barn, hoping I hadn't missed the lawn mowing peep-show entertainment of the afternoon. Wyatt was pushing in an empty wheelbarrow as I walked over. He had on cut off shorts and a wife beater. His dirty blond hair was sun streaked and hung around his ears in front and in back to his shoulders. Wyatt always looked like he was a few months late for a haircut. It was a good look for him. His was the sort of broad shouldered, lean musculature that comes from lifting hay bales, not dumbbells. He grinned as he saw me and I caught my breath at his fineness.

  "Hey, Sammy," he called. "I mucked the stalls, but am waiting to let the horses out to pasture until later since it's so hot. I'll put a round bale in the feeder, then I'll weed eat." He peered at me closer. "What happened? I thought you were just collecting rents, today. Did someone give you a hard time?"

  "I bit my tongue." I really needed to fix my wounds. My jaw was throbbing and my tongue hurt so bad that I couldn't eat or drink without pain. Eating tacos on the ride home had been an agonizing experience.

  "Looks like you took a face plant into someone's fist."

  "Yeah, that too. I beat the shit out of him, though." I turned to walk into the house. "I'm going to chill by the pool with a beer. Come join me when you're done."

  I had only taken a few steps when he called out.

  "Sam, have you seen Boomer? He hasn't been around all day."

  Boomer was my Plott hound. He hunted at night and pretty much slept in the barn all day. Wyatt was always after me to contain him somehow, to curtail his nighttime wanderings. He was worried that Boomer would wind up a stray collected by Animal Control, or possibly full of buckshot from a neighborhood farmer. I knew my hound could take care of himself. I reassured Wyatt that he'd be back eventually, and ran in to change out of my taco stained jeans and into a swimsuit.
First I stopped by the kitchen to throw some beers and ice into a cooler, and then headed up the stairs, stripping as I went.

  Throwing on my itty bitty powder blue bikini, I raced out to the pool. The water looked cool and inviting on the hot day, but I didn't want to miss the entertainment by swimming. I'd pop in later. Outdoor piped music on, cooler with beers beside my lounge chair, shades on. I strategically placed my chair to watch a shirtless Wyatt weed-eat and hoped he didn't wonder why my back was blocking the sun.

  I was closer to Wyatt than I was with any other human. After he'd moved in, he'd immediately started doing odd jobs for me, but he also came around all the time to just hang out. He was over every day, sometimes several times a day. It wasn't unusual for him to be hanging out in my kitchen, or swimming in my pool. Every now and then I'd ask him to do some handyman kind of work, but most of the time he'd just take the initiative to do stuff like mulch the garden or clean out the fountain. Then we'd sit by the pool and drink, or cook something up in the kitchen, or relax and watch TV. He was over here a lot and I liked that.

  Of course, I'd wanted to have sex with him the moment I saw him, but I waited. Demons are not usually so patient. Humans have such short lives and they tend to crank through them quickly. It seems that in a blink of an eye they are dead and gone. So if you want one, you've got to grab him or her quick.

  There was also that pesky age thing. Wyatt was mid twenties in age and I was closing in on one thousand. If I did the math, he was slightly older than me in demon years. As Samantha Martin, I was in my forties, but for humans in this day that kind of age difference didn't seem to matter much.

  I saw women come and go from Wyatt's house without a repeat appearance and I knew he was a player. That wasn't something that bothered me at all. What did bother me was that I wanted our close friendship, I wanted sex with Wyatt, but I also wanted more. I liked him; I wanted him to be with me. I fantasized about having him for eternity; about Owning him.

  Maybe after I became bored with him, I'd Own him. The prospect was exciting, but then I'd think about our friendship and have doubts. I liked hanging out with him by the pool, talking about our day, listening to him go on and on about some video game he was playing. If I Owned him, all that would be gone. The thought of losing his friendship was a painful ache in my middle.

  Done with the trimming, Wyatt skimmed out the pool, then dropped his cutoffs and dove in for a cool down swim in his boxer briefs. I watched him swim long laps under water, my head moving back and forth like at a tennis match. How transparent would those boxer briefs be after a swim? They were pretty clingy before he dove in and I'd had a nice profile look and a breath taking view of his tight ass before he hit the water.

  Finally cooled off, Wyatt rose from the water in front of me like a Greek god and flung himself in the lounge chair beside me dripping streams of water in a path from the pool. Silently, I handed him a beer and he used the edge of the chair to pry off the cap. All this without one word to each other. I can't begin to describe the amazing warm contentment and sexual tension that I felt that afternoon. It was perfect. Better than anything I had back home.

  "You're looking better," Wyatt broke the silence with his cheerful voice. He reached over with a finger and touched my jaw. "Swelling and bruising are totally gone."

  "My tongue is healed too, see?" I stuck my tongue out and he leaned over to get a closer look. Romantic, I know.

  "Amazing how fast you heal," Wyatt drawled. "And your grass needs cutting every two days too. It's like everything is on hyperspeed at your house, Sam."

  "I'm special," I told him.

  "Yeah, I think so," Wyatt said. I felt all sorts of happy inside at the compliment. "You heading out tonight?" he asked.

  "Wine Room." I grimaced. Wyatt wrinkled his nose in sympathy. "I've got some business I need to do, and an agent wants to unload some bank owned properties on me. It's those canal row houses I told you I was interested in, so I probably need to meet her. You?"

  "I really need to work, too. Some zombies need killing," he said, referring to one of his video games. "I may hit the club early for some fun and kill zombies on an all-nighter."

  "Techno music, Ecstasy, and a curvy blond?" I asked ignoring the video game part of his comment. If zombies ever invaded the realm, I'm guessing Wyatt would save the world. He would totally be my go-to guy if I found an animated corpse wandering around my pasture.

  "I hate X," he replied, "but the dance club and the curvy blond sound good to me." He reached over and tapped my beer bottle with his own.

  What the hell was that about? I really didn't understand the subtleties of human interaction sometimes. I liked curvy blonds too, but was this action on his part supposed to mean that we were doomed to be only platonic buddies? Or that I was equally the player? Or that he thought I was a lesbian? Humans were so confusing, so hard to read. The anticlimactic afternoon with Brad had me craving sex, and having Wyatt so close was tempting beyond belief. I could take him now. Sex, body and mind, Own him as part of me forever. Then run like crazy for the nearest gate home, and hope I made it out of here before an angel caught me and tore me to bits. Instead, we sat for a moment in silence and drank our beer.

  "Hey, do you want to ride the horses tomorrow morning? Early, before it gets hot?" Wyatt asked, turning to me.

  "Sure you'll be up to it, with your blond and zombie all-nighter?" I asked, more than a bit of bitterness creeping into my voice.

  "I have amazing stamina," he said grinning and wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "I'll be here at six to tack up. Think you can drag your lazy butt out of bed that early?"

  "Doubtful," I told him, taking a swig of my beer.

  "If you're not there, I'm gonna come up and get you," Wyatt teased. "And yes, I know you sleep naked. You've told me repeatedly."

  Maybe there was hope for consensual sex, after all. I daydreamed for a moment about Wyatt and I having sex in a field with the horses grazing nearby. Or maybe in the tack room on top of the saddle pads. Or maybe we'd never get out of my bedroom.

  We finished our beers, and Wyatt headed back to his house, announcing that those zombies weren't going to kill themselves. I went inside and studied my wardrobe to see what outfit might shock all the movers and shakers at The Wine Room. I decided to go with comfort and pulled on my faded skinny jeans with the strategic worn patch on the upper thigh. I made sure I had on a good push up bra for maximum cleavage then, thinking of Wyatt with his wife beater, I yanked a thin, tight, white tank top over my head. The scooped neckline barely covered the lacy edges of my bra. I added some worn cowboy boots, a blingy belt, and voila! Sexy country girl. I never bother with my hair or make-up, but for some reason tonight I went all out. Thick mascara, sweeping eyeliner, and deep pink lip stain. I piled my shoulder length brown mane high up on my head and let pieces escape to hang straight along my face and at the nape of my neck. I was very happy with the overall look. It was like one of the Petticoat Junction girls had come out of a good romp in the hay.

  I thought about driving my Suburban to complete the look, but parking that thing downtown was a pain in the ass. I only drove it when I was hauling the trailer or picking up feed. The Corvette was my true love.

  The Wine Room was as pretentious as you could get. It was purposely small, so it was always packed. Crowds of hopefuls waited to get in the door. Huge panes of glass covered all the exterior walls, so you could see and be seen. It was especially a nightmare to try and eat there since the bar crowd was inches away from the dining tables. Nothing was worse than trying to eat your eighty dollar prime rib with a gin-drinking lawyer six inches away and staring at your plate.

  The guy at the door recognized me and nodded me in once he checked to make sure I didn't have a large bag with a groundhog in it. Not that it mattered much. They normally ended up kicking me out within an hour of my entering, even without a groundhog.

  Michelle and her posse were in the usual spot. Theirs was the best location, and one they would hav
e had to arrive unfashionably early and fight for to score. From their special spot, they could see and be seen by passerby on Main Street. It was hard to see them from the door, but I knew they'd be there and wove my way among all the navy and black suited business people with their ties and sensible pumps. I made sure I rubbed my boobs and hands over everyone I could on the way back.

  Michelle had done her hair different. She normally had a mess of long black braids intricately arranged around her head, but she had taken the extensions out and had a pixie-looking straight do. I'm sure it was twenty times cooler in this heat than her usual style. She was tall and thin with high cheekbones and dark eyes in her ebony face. She grinned when she caught sight of me. She had a slight gap between her blazing white teeth that I found totally sexy. She was beautiful in an exotic, angular kind of way.

  "Samantha." She drawled out my name in a slight island accent as she took in my cowgirl attire. Michelle's mom was Jamaican or something. I could never remember. "Were you out riding that neighbor of yours? Where are your spurs, girl?" She gave me a hug.

  Spurs. Yum, what a visual.

  "I wish. Hey, you have any gum? I had tacos for lunch." I rooted in her bag without waiting for her reply, pulling out a stick of gum and placing the fat envelope full of cash under her wallet.

  As I stuffed the gum in my mouth, Michelle winked at me and on impulse reached over to kiss my cheek. Michelle was straight. Not that that mattered. I'd considered many times assuming a male form and picking her up some night, but good business associates were hard to find. Especially property managers. I wasn't about to jeopardize that relationship for a night of sex. Besides, a conversion of that scale would be like sending up a flare for the angels to see.

  I turned to look at her friends. A few were trying hard not to notice me. Two stared at me in amazement, taking in my casual outfit and my bold freedom with Michelle's purse. I picked out the real estate agent right away. She was a walking stereotype. In a sea of drab suits, she had on a bright yellow skirt suit of all things, with a flowered shirt peeking out the jacket. Her blond hair fluffed out in a big wave. She was the most immaculately groomed person I'd ever seen. I met her eyes expecting to see vacuous excitement and got a shock. Shrewd brown eyes met mine in calculating appraisal. She wandered her eyes over the rest of me taking in the ripped blue jeans with a raised eyebrow and a twitch of her bronze lips before raising her eyes back up to meet mine.

  "Candy Star," she announced, reaching to shake my hand.

  I almost burst out laughing. It was a stripper name. What kind of bimbo mom names their kid Candy Star? She must have been horribly teased in school. Why in hell hadn't she changed it? I glanced at her left hand. Maybe Star was her husband's name. I never could understand the whole human thing of taking your husband's name, and this would have been a good reason to break that custom.

  "Hi Candy, I'm Samantha Martin," I replied in a bored tone. I didn't want her thinking I was excited to meet her. "I'm getting a drink, can I get you something?"

  "Oh, I was going to get you a Cosmo," she bubbled back, channeling a perky real estate agent personality that was in direct contrast with those shrewd brown eyes.

  "I hate Cosmos," I told her as I edged toward the bar.

  "Me too," she muttered under her breath and eyed the one in her beautifully manicured hand with disgust.

  I discretely threw my gum on the floor where someone would be sure to get it all over their three hundred dollar shoes and squeezed between two half-drunk lawyers at the bar. I brushed my hand and boobs against the one, and my rear across the other out of habit. They eyed me appreciatively. I seriously needed to take this much care with my appearance more often. I'd probably get laid a whole lot more.

  Standing up on the rail under the bar that you rested your feet on as you sat, I sprawled the upper half of my body across the gleaming mahogany showing cleavage to the front and sticking my rear out in the back. The bartender practically knocked down a waitress in his rush to ask my boobs what they would like to drink.

  The only redeeming quality of this place was that it offered a wide choice of quality vodkas, and did some cool infusions. Vodka was amazing. It was one of the best human inventions, ever. Back home, everyone drank dull old wine, sometimes warmed up, sometimes cold. It was Okay. Nah, who am I kidding, the stuff sucked big time, but - whoo-boy! - vodka was the shit.

  "Two shots of Van Gogh Double Espresso Vodka. The stuff in the freezer," I told him.

  The bartender poured the shots into equally chilled shot glasses, all the while managing to keep an eye on my breasts. No doubt in case one escaped and burst into full view. I tipped him well and made my way back to Candy and the other girls.

  "Here's to our future partnership," I said, handing her one of the shots. She looked at it nervously, grimaced, and tossed it down. Her eyes watered and she choked a little, sipping the Cosmo in her other hand in desperation. It was a shame because up until that moment I had thought she was kind of cool. Chasing the very elixir of life with that swill, how could she? Disappointing.

  I looked around the bar at the ocean of black and navy and thought about going home and watching X-Files reruns. Normally, I'd be inspired to start some trouble, but I just didn't seem to have it in me tonight. I was still worried that my energy usage earlier today may have exposed me. I was missing Wyatt and wondering if he'd found a curvy blond. Besides, this place really sucked. They got all stuffy and bent out of shape if you broke a bottle on some guy's head or threw your steak knives at the wall.

  Just as I lifted my glass to drink my vodka, I heard Michelle say in a soft worshipful voice "Ohhhh, look there. Just look at him."

  I glanced toward the door, because that tone was the most un-Michelle-like I'd ever heard. And I saw the angel.