CHAPTER

EIGHT

I was still figuring out the whole “now that you’re in charge of Hell you can teleport to and from there even though you were an ordinary human for most of your life” thing. (It sounds totally made up, right? Right.)

But for whatever illogical reason, it was true. To focus my will, my subconscious obligingly produced Dorothy’s silver slippers from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.3 When I’m wearing them, I just think about Hell and I’m there. Or vice versa. (It sounds easy. It’s not.)

But the ability was dependent on my mood and my intent. It had taken me five minutes to will myself into Hell for the meeting today, because I just wasn’t keen on going. But now I really wanted to go home. And I really wanted to fuck the king of the vampires.

And like that: I was there. Even better: Sinclair was, too. He was better than there; his six-feet-many-inches frame was stretched out in the middle of our emperor bed, the dark sheets a deep contrast to his pale skin (he’d hated losing his farmer’s tan when he died). He had one hand behind his head, the other on his cock, and he beckoned me closer without moving, which was a wonderful trick. (He might be hypnotizing me with his dick. If so, I genuinely can’t think of an objection.)

“I’m back!” I cried unnecessarily. I was already starting to tug at my clothes, stupid clothes, stupid stupid stupid clothes, there should be a law, I would make a law, Sinclair should only be naked and I should make a law about stupid—

“Wait!”

Eh? Annoyed, I rounded on the voice. “Marc! Can’t you see we’d like some privacy?”

“You teleported us in here with you, shithead!” Marc kept trying not to stare at Sinclair lolling nudely

(nudely!)

and failing. “Bad enough you’re the luckiest shoe addict on the continent, you have to flaunt your no-doubt epic sex life, too?”

“I’m fond of you, Marc,” came Sinclair’s voice in a sort of rolling deep purr that made me want to bite him everywhere, “but I won’t share Elizabeth—”

Marc was peeking at him through his fingers. “She’s not exactly my—”

“—and she won’t share me. Run along, there’s a good fellow.”

“I’d like to! But your skank wife is between me and the door!”

“Not for long.” I took a big step and bounded onto the bed with Sinclair, hitting the mattress hard enough to jar his hand loose from his cock. That was fine, he could touch me instead. Screw raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens; a naked Sinclair was one of my favorite things.

“Oh, Eric, really,” Tina said, sounding like a fond elderly spinster aunt. Which she was, come to think of it. It’s just, she was hot, also.

“You’re still here, too? What the hell, you guys?” I bitched. “Go the fuck away, I mean it!”

“You brought us here.”

Tina took Marc’s hand and they walked to the door. “Never mind, Marc.”

“Never mind? But—they—she—ugh—”

“Do you want to watch season three of Sherlock again?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You love ‘The Empty Hearse.’”

“I do. How come a dead woman from the antebellum South is the only one in this house who understands me?”

“Out!” Sinclair and I roared in unison.

“We’re going, shut up. Tina, honest question: flushing my eyes with bleach won’t cause permanent damage, right?” Marc was walking so fast he was now leading them both (I’d never realized how big our bedroom was before), and Tina tripped a little to keep her balance. “If I only do it for five minutes or so?”

The door slammed on her answer. “Ugh, sorry,” I said. What little clothing I still had on was getting rapidly ruined as I yanked and tugged. “They really don’t get boundaries.”

“So inappropriate,” Sinclair agreed, dark eyes gleaming. His brunet hair was cut short and neat, and he had what appeared at first glance to be eight miles of limbs. His broad shoulders were sleekly muscled—he’d been a farmer’s son in life, before a vampire destroyed his family—and tapered to a narrow waist and tight abdomen. You know how people joke about bouncing quarters off abs? You could bounce a rock so high off his you’d be in real danger of losing an eye. “And though I derive much pleasure from disrobing you myself, watching you shred your clothing in a frantic bid to get naked for me is easily as erotic.”

“. . . stupid . . . buttons . . . passing a law banning them . . .”

“As you wish, my own, so long as you don’t—ah.” I’d yanked too hard and started to tumble off our bed; Sinclair’s hand shot out, grabbed my wrist, and hauled me on top of him.

“Oh,” I said. I smiled down at him. “This works.”

He grinned back, showing teeth. “Show me.”

I did. For a lovely long time. Reason #27 not to let Sinclair have the run of Hell: if the vampire king was there, it wasn’t really Hell.

At least, not to me.