Of Witches and Warlocks: The Demon Kiss Page 12

  “So let’s think of a company name, and I’ll get a business card printed up for Stacey real quick,” Dad said.

  Everyone began to throw in their suggestions. We ended up choosing one of Hal’s ideas.

  The fake company would be called International Tourist Treasures, and Hal even volunteered to be Mom’s boss, putting his phone number on the card just in case anyone decided to check out her references.

  Dad printed out about five of the business cards in the end to make it seem more believable.

  “What do you think about this?” he asked, when he was finished, handing a card over to me.

  I took the card and it read:

  International Tourist Treasures

  Hal Breck and Associates

  Maria Sanchez, Administrative Assistant

  1-800-555-5353

  It also had a small decorative set of maracas in the lower right corner.

  “It looks really good,” I replied, handing the small paper back to him. “Not overly flashy but very business-like.”

  “Good,” he said, turning to look as Mom re-entered the room. “Wow,” he added after he saw her.

  Mom had her dark hair all piled in a chic looking knot on the top of her head. She was wearing a very smartly cut pin-striped suit in a dark gray, with nylons that were just a shade lighter, along with pair of comfortable but sassy gray heels with a pretty silver buckle.

  “You brought that outfit with you?” Dad said eyeing her up and down. “What could you have possibly felt you might have needed it for?”

  “A woman always comes prepared for any situation which might arise,” she said with a smile as she did a quick pirouette for him.

  “Well, that explains the four suitcases you had to bring,” he replied, a little under his breath.

  “Hey! Be nice!” she responded, with a playful slap to his shoulder.

  “I was being nice,” he replied. “I didn’t add the rolling tote and three purses you insisted on packing also.”

  “You can never have enough purses,” Mom said as she looked at his hand. “Are those the business cards you were making?” She reached out so Dad could place them in her palm.

  “Yes,” he replied as she checked them out. “Vance, I was wondering if she could borrow your car. It probably says ‘money’ a little better than anyone else’s. No offense to the rest of you,” he added with a quick glance around the room.

  “No problem,” Vance replied, reaching into his pocket to pull out the keys and toss them to Dad.

  “All right,” Dad said with a sigh, and I could feel the tension running through him. “Is everybody set?”

  Everyone nodded their heads and began heading to their respective vehicles.

  Dad turned toward Vance and me, as we started walking toward the door, opening his mouth to speak.

  “Don’t even say it, Sean. I already know the drill,” Vance said interrupting him with a sigh. “Portia and I are to stay here and man the phones.”

  “Good boy,” Dad replied, patting him on the shoulder before turning to run out the door after the others.

  “I’m really starting to dislike your Dad,” Vance said facetiously, as he turned and wandered back down the hall into the living room to sit on the couch.

  He picked up the remote and turned on the television.

  “Well, there’s one good thing about all this,” I said as I sat down and sidled up against him.

  “What’s that?” he asked, without looking at me

  “They left us all alone,” I replied.

  He did look up from the TV in interest then.

  “They did, didn’t they?” he said with a small smile as he reached his arms around my waist and pulled me onto his lap. “It seems like a long while since I had a good kiss from my girl, too many prying eyes.”

  He tilted my face up next to his and kissed me passionately. After a moment he pulled away from me when the phone suddenly started vibrating in his pocket. He shifted a little so he could dig the phone out.

  “Hello?” he said with a sigh at the interruption.

  “No hanky panky!” I heard my dad’s voice come loudly over the receiver, followed by what sounded like laughter.

  “Dad!” I yelled, as Vance snapped the phone shut and threw his hands up in the air.

  “I can’t catch a break today,” he said, in frustration, as he slouched back against the sectional.

  “Don’t even worry about it. Just kiss me,” I replied, placing his arms back around my waist. “Now where were we?”

  I leaned my head in, and he met me halfway as we resumed what we had been doing before the annoying phone call.

  “How are you doing?” I asked, as we pulled apart from each other a couple of minutes later.

  “I’m okay,” he said, and I believed him as his eyes were still his normal startling color of blue.

  He kissed me again then, this time much more passionately than he had the first time.

  I reveled in the feel of him.

  He had one of his hands tangled in my hair, his other around my back pushing me closer to him, while his mouth ravaged mine.

  Shifting, he moved sideways so he could lay me over onto the sectional without breaking our kiss. My arms wrapped around him trustingly as he followed after me.

  His lips moved expertly over mine, and I could feel the intensity level of our exchange start to rise. It was always like we couldn’t get enough of each other. I opened my eyes to stare straight into the red demon eyes that looked back at me this time, but I didn’t stop.

  I let him leave my mouth to trail his kisses down to my throat, and he licked the now fully healed, light scar on my neck where he had bitten me before. I sighed slightly at his touch, and I ignored the warnings that ran through my head when I felt his teeth grazing there, moaning softly as he placed a small nip there.

  And then, of course, he was gone, leaving me to stand at the window, looking out at the deep blue sea.

  “I love you,” I said, sitting up slowly, after a disappointed moment and running my fingers through my disheveled hair.

  “I love you, too,” he said, turning his bloodshot eyes toward me but not moving, keeping his distance from me.

  “So I have a very personal question I want to ask you,” I replied, looking at him seriously.

  “Shoot,” he said, turning to lean his back against the glass so he could look directly at me.

  “How will this bloodlust thing affect you when we do finally decide to … um,” I trailed off, searching for the right words to use, “you know … consummate our relationship?” I fumbled nervously with the bottom of my shirt, and when he didn’t answer immediately, I continued. “I mean is there some part of you that’s always going to be holding back from me? Will you be afraid you might hurt me? Because when we get to that spot in our relationship, I want to know I can be with all of you, not just bits and pieces.”

  His eyes never left me as he thought about my question for a minute.

  “Portia, I honestly don’t know the answer to that without having experienced it. I would like to think I could give you every part of my being and not be swayed to harm you in any way, but I really just don’t know.”

  “Well, then how is it now?” I asked, continuing to push this line of conversation. “Do you always want to bite me when you kiss me?”

  He sighed heavily, running a nervous hand through his hair.

  “Almost every single second of it,” he answered me honestly.

  “Oh.” I said, feeling bit dejected about that.

  “But you have to understand I felt that way to some extent even before I experienced all this demon conversion stuff,” he added.

  What he said was true. I remembered back to the night in my bedroom when he had trailed love bites down my neck for the first time. I had seen the red marks he had left on my skin in the mirror. His dad had drunk blood from him prior to that, but Vance had never been given any blood in exchange.

  “It is like the lus
t and the bloodlust are all tangled into one thing now. One thing always seems to activate the other,” he said a little frustrated. “I wish I could explain it better to you.”

  “I think I understand,” I replied. “At least I’m trying to.” I bit my lip for a moment before I continued. “So you’re saying that even after marriage, being together physically could be a hard thing for us.”

  He just sat and looked at me for several long moments, and I knew his answer before he spoke it.

  “Yes,” he said finally, staring at me.

  “So what do we do about it?” I asked, feeling completely helpless, wishing there was something proactive that I could do.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, pushing away from the glass to walk toward me. “I guess we’ll just carefully cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  At that moment, I actually wished that Damien Cummings was standing in front of me so I could lash out and destroy him, the same way he was destroying my life, Vance’s life, our life together. I shook with anger inside.

  “It will all work out somehow,” Vance said sitting down next to me, but not touching me. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I do worry. There are so many things we don’t know. Do demons ever father children? I mean I assume they can. Could the problems from this condition pass on to one of them? I don’t know enough about this, and everything I want for us could be hanging in the balance,” I said, feeling very exasperated.

  “Portia, you don’t have to marry me,” he said softly, and I could hear the hesitation in his voice as he struggled to say these words. “If this is going to be too difficult for you, then we’ll just be together, but not together. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do,” I replied. “And frankly that isn’t an option for me. We just have to find some way to help make you better. That’s the only choice there is.”

  I felt the relief at my answer flood through him. He stood then and pulled me up after him before bending to place an arm under my knee, swinging me up into his arms so he was holding me.

  He left the living room, carrying me into the master bedroom, laying me gently on the down comforter. He went over to the large window and closed the wooden blinds to darken the room, before coming back over to climb up onto the tall bed so he could lie next to me.

  “You’ve been tired today, and I’ve missed sleeping with you,” he said, gently changing the subject. “Let’s take advantage of the quiet time and take a little nap together while everyone is gone. Shall we?”

  I nodded my head in agreement as he moved up against my back, wrapping one arm under my neck and the other across my waist. I closed my eyes as I listened to the comfortable sound of his breathing mixed with the sounds of the waves as they crashed against the shore outside.

  “Mmm,” I whispered, softly. “I could lay here like this for the rest of my life and I would still die happy.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said, as he lifted a hand to stroke the side of my face and down my hair.

  “That feels good,” I replied with a sigh, relaxing completely against him.

  “So I have a personal question for you now,” he said softly, his breath whispering across my ear.

  “Okay,” I said, wondering what it was.

  “If you could have any one wish granted to you right now, what would it be?” he asked me, and I was surprised by it.

  “That’s easy,” I said. “I would wish for you to be completely cured of the things that you’ve had to go through lately.”

  “You’d waste your wish on me?” he asked, seeming truly astonished by my answer.

  I rolled over in his arms so I could face him.

  “I’m not wasting anything. I want you to be well more than anything in the world. I would even sacrifice my own life if it would accomplish that for you.”

  “Don’t even talk like that, Portia!” he said harshly, his eyes flashing at me. “I’m not worth your sacrifice. Besides, what good would it do to be cured if I had to live my life without you? I’d be miserable.”

  “I know exactly how you feel. I remember when I thought you’d die and I’d have to live my life without you. It was the most excruciating pain I’d ever felt. It encompassed my whole being. And you hated me because I wouldn’t feed you. I could feel your anger boiling over towards me.”

  “That wasn’t really me, baby,” he said softer now, his gaze relaxing. “I would’ve never treated you in such a way if I’d truly been myself. That was the talk of uncontrolled demon emotions. Please forgive me for hurting you that way.”

  “No. You were right. I fed you and ultimately that was what ended up saving your life,” I reminded him.

  “No. It was the binding spell and your healer’s magic that did it. Had you fed me any sooner, while I was stronger, I would’ve killed you. There’s no doubt in my mind,” he stated as he looked at me. “I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”

  “Let’s not talk about it any longer,” I said placing a finger over his lips. “It’s done now. We got our miracle. You’re still alive and you haven’t been converted into a demon. We can work with that.”

  “I agree,” he said, leaning in to kiss me, placing his hand against my cheek.

  This kiss was very sweet, almost chaste at first, but suddenly I felt an emotional barrier break and a sob catch in my throat.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” he crooned softly against my ear, as he rubbed his cheek up against mine.

  “We have just been through so much,” I choked out, feeling my carefully controlled emotions suddenly spinning out of control. “I can’t believe you’re really here with me sometimes. It’s like I’m dreaming and I’m afraid every time I go to sleep I’ll wake up and find you’re going to be gone again. I’m so happy when I’m with you, yet at the same time I see this dark looming cloud which is threatening our future.”

  “I’m really here, Portia, and I’m not going to leave you,” he said, as he pulled me closer, kissing me hard and passionately as if trying to drive his point home.

  He rolled me over onto my back as he leaned over the top of me. The kissing intensified so greatly at this point that I felt as if he were bruising my tender lips beneath his own.

  He broke away from me suddenly, looking deep into my eyes, and I could see several emotions pass through them.

  “Touch me, Portia. I’m real and I belong completely to you,” he said, breathing into my ear as he reached down to lift one of my hands to place it over his shirt on his chest, near his heart.

  I let my fingers run over the chiseled muscles that I could feel beneath, marveling over his physique.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, in confusion at his actions, not understanding what he was asking me to do.

  “I was wrong to leave you before,” he said, trying to explain to me. “I’m sorry. I just want you to know I am real and I am here with you right now. I’ll do everything in my power to always be with you. Please, please, forgive me for hurting you before.”

  He lifted my hand from his chest then and turned it so he could place a kiss in the center of my palm. When he opened his eyes, I could see the dreaded red streaks flaring to an all-new level in his irises as he struggled for some semblance of control once again.

  “Get some rest,” he said as he climbed off the bed, laying my hand gently back at my waist. “I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

  Chapter 12

  I woke up less than an hour later when I heard all the voices of the coven members entering the condo in high chatter.

  “Shhhh!” I heard Vance hiss quickly, from the other room. “Portia is sleeping.”

  “Sorry!” I heard someone whisper apologetically, as I was climbing down off the bed.

  “It’s all right. I’m awake,” I said as I walked out of the bedroom door, running my hands over my hair trying to smooth it. “How did things go?” I asked, as I looked around at their bright faces.

  “Have I ever told you how awesome your m
other is?” my dad said, smiling as he grabbed her around the waist from behind, leaning over her shoulder to kiss her on the cheek. “She walked in there like a pro, fooling everyone involved. She even snowed me, and I knew who she was.”

  “He’s blowing it all out of proportion,” Mom laughed as she waved him off. “I just met the realtor lady, walked in to look around, taking a quick minute to speak to a couple of the guys who were unloading the truck from Cummings Enterprises, and asked them how they liked the facilities. Piece of cake really.”

  “And she learned that the truck that was delivering to the warehouse was hauling the same long narrow crates we found at the other warehouses,” Dad added, giving a squeeze to her shoulders.

  “I only asked them if they found easy access to the loading dock,” she replied, shaking her head at Dad. “It just so happened that the truck was open while I was talking to them.”

  “Did the men seem suspicious at all?” Vance piped up, looking a little worried about it.

  “Not that I could tell,” Mom answered, looking at him. “They were very kind to me actually.”

  “That’s because they thought she was hot,” Dad said, with a knowing grin. “They were totally checking her out.” A stormy look suddenly passed over his face. “Dang it! I should have stormed in and punched them both!”

  “Easy, Dad!” I laughed, as I patted him on the shoulder. “Try to step it down a notch.”

  “Tell them what else you did,” Dad smiled, speaking to Mom again, giving her a little nudge of encouragement.

  “Well, I happened to be able to place a microphone on the premises,” she replied with a nonchalant shrug.

  “A microphone! She did it all on her own!” Dad exclaimed, sounding totally amazed. “I didn’t even know she’d taken one out of my briefcase. She’s a natural at this stuff!”

  Vance leaned forward then, placing his elbows on his knees.

  “So we’ll have audio with our video tonight?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow in interest.

  “Yes, we will,” Dad replied, nodding excitedly, as he continued to proudly pat my mom on the shoulder.