Incubus Moon Page 9

  Under different circumstances, I would’ve headed over to introduce myself. That was when I spotted Mark through a rift in the crowd.

  Halfway over to him, I froze in mid-step. Sitting on the living room sofa was our new neighbor chatting with a striking brunette. He stopped to fix me with an unreadable stare.

  “Hey, look who decided to show.”

  I turned to find Mark standing in front of me and dressed in the charcoal Prada suit he’d picked up on our trip to Rome. Too bad it was ruined by the deep scowl he was also wearing.

  “Look, if you’re pissed at me for going to see Suzie, I get it,” I told him. “But right now it’s really important that I talk to you and Christie.”

  This is it. No more hiding. I’m going to tell them everything!

  “My ex?” I didn’t care for the urgency with which he grabbed hold of my arm, hustled me away from the main flow of guests, and into an alcove off the dining room. He’d also positioned me in a near-perfect sightline of the neighbor.

  The man was studying us from the living room.

  When Mark turned to see what had caught my attention his shoulders visibly tightened. “Fuck Suzie. The dude over there told me everything about your little visit to his house.”

  Maybe Mark was right to be angry with me over that, but there was some serious supernatural bad on the way and I didn’t have time to defend my reasons for trespassing.

  A passing waiter offered me a glass of red wine, which I readily accepted and downed.

  Mark waved him away. “He could’ve pressed charges, Austin.”

  “For what?” I hit back, my own temper on the rise. “Welcoming someone new to the neighborhood?”

  Mark’s eyes widened. “What? So now you’re the goddamned social director of the neighborhood—my neighborhood?”

  His voice had grown loud enough that several people close by were beginning to take an interest. Coming here was a mistake. I couldn’t talk to him about what had happened to me and why I had to leave. Not at a party and not when he was like this.

  “Answer me!” he said, jabbing a finger into my chest.

  Mark could be a volatile drunk under the right set of circumstances. Given his aggressive behavior and the dark edge in his voice, I’d say that set of circumstances had been met.

  Be that as it may, the ground beneath his feet was getting shakier.

  I knocked his hand away. “Careful, Mark.”

  “Whoa!” The word came out slurred. “You suddenly grow a pair?”

  He’d never spoken to me like this. Ever. We’d had fights before, but this one was reaching new and ugly heights. I turned to leave before it could escalate into something we both wouldn’t be able to take back. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

  “You’d damn well better,” he said, grabbing me by the arm again. “Or else you can pack up you’re your shit tonight and get the fuck off my property!”

  Whatever Mark saw reflected in my eyes, he instantly let go of me.

  I took a step closer and let him feel the full heat of my anger. He didn’t realize it, but he’d just made things easier for me. “I’ll be gone by morning.”

  I snatched up a fresh glass of wine and strode through the curious onlookers toward the kitchen at the rear of the house. Along the way, I passed Christie talking to a handsome, middle-aged man. She looked surprised that I’d stumbled upon them in a darkened hallway.

  “Austin!” She smoothed the fabric of her short, floral cocktail dress down over her thighs and offered a tense smile. “I’d like you to meet Jean.”

  So this was the world famous chef for whom Mark and Christie had designed the new restaurant. Looked to me as though Jean had other designs in mind.

  “Enchanté,” I said, continuing on my way to the kitchen and rear service door. “And thanks for the invite, Chris,” I called out over my shoulder. “I’ll send you a postcard!”

  I got as far as the pool, flopped onto a deck chair and let out a shuddering breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I was grateful that neither Mark nor Christie had followed me outside.

  “Fucking asshole!”

  “I suspect that I deserve that.”

  My head snapped up to find the neighbor standing there, a casual hand slipped into the trouser pocket of his elegant suit, the top two buttons of his dress shirt undone so that just a hint of dark chest hair showed. In my current state, I wasn’t certain whether to apologize for my intrusion the other day or get up and kick his ass for ratting me out to Mark.

  Instead, it was the light from the pool rippling across his chiseled face that held me rapt.

  It caught in his eyes and danced there, making them appear to glow. I found myself inexplicably drawn to how very green they were in this light, how the flecks of gold captured within their color produced a wonderfully hypnotic effect. As if they had their own internal source of illumination.

  “No,” I responded a little too quickly. “Maybe. Whatever.”

  The neighbor gestured to the lounger next to mine, and then sat down. “I fear I must bear some of the responsibility for what transpired inside.”

  “You caught the show, eh?” I knew he had.

  He nodded and extended a hand. “I forget my manners. Dimitri Ravello.”

  Of course. The slight British accent infused with the other I wasn’t able to isolate before. Ravello was such an obvious Italian surname. “Austin Iverson. Nice to meet you…again.”

  The cool touch of his hand in mine sent that same ripple of excitement through me as it had at our first encounter. Only this time, it generated a strange field of energy around me that hummed just above the surface of my skin, making his eyes no less remarkable but diminished their capacity to fascinate.

  “Apology accepted?” He smiled broadly, teeth luminous in the near darkness. “My intention was not to cause a rift between lovers.”

  I choked on my own saliva. “Mark isn’t my lover.”

  “Yet something tells me he feels more than friendship for you.”

  What was this guy’s deal? He’d been bold enough to direct the barrel of his loaded observation at a near-perfect stranger. Why not come right out and ask if I took it up the ass? “Trust me, Dimitri, they don’t breed ‘em any straighter than Mark Gold and I.”

  He regarded me with indulgence. “Men are complex creatures. Seldom do they let you see into their hearts.”

  Okay. I was officially done with our little meet and greet. About to get up and head home, my body shuddered violently and I pitched forward.

  In an impossibly fast movement, Dimitri reached out to brace me, the blood in my veins hot and alive and screaming with need where he gripped me by the upper arms. His touch, the very proximity to him now, had awakened incubus lust in me like never before.

  I sprang up to a standing position, bringing Dimitri with me. The raw, explosive desire in me wanted out. No. It wanted him.

  “What’s going on out here?” a female voice demanded.

  The brunette Dimitri had been talking to earlier was striding toward us from the pool entrance, her clingy red dress punctuating the dark night. As far as my incubus was concerned, she was equal parts threat and something wonderful to eat.

  I lunged for her, but Dimitri blocked my momentum, his grip intensifying on my biceps. He was strong—inhumanly strong—and the move paid off. The crushing pain in my muscles forced me to focus on something other than burning hunger. Soon my ability to reason returned.

  Question was: Would it last?

  I relaxed enough that he cautiously released me and took a step back, as the woman came to a stop beside him. “I asked what’s going on?”

  Her possessiveness could only signify that she was either Dimitri’s wife or girlfriend.

  He smiled and bent to kiss the side of her neck. She rewarded him by pressing against him. “Andrea, I believe our friend here has had a bit too much of the grape this evening.”

  I followed his lead, praying that incubus lust w
ould not reignite. “Good thing your guy has quick reflexes,” I said with a strained smile. “I almost fell on my ass.”

  She wasn’t buying it. In fact, Andrea was sizing me up the way she might another woman trying to snake her turf. “Lucky for you he happened along, huh?”

  “Lucky for both of us.” Dimitri slid a protective arm about her waist and pulled her closer. “See you soon, Austin.”

  Andrea cast one final, disapproving glance at me over her shoulder, and then allowed him to steer her toward the pool exit, out onto the driveway, and into the darkness beyond.

  What the fuck just happened?

  CHAPTER 16

  “Gimmie a minute, would ya!”

  The screen door to the kitchen swung open and the rock singer stepped down onto the narrow landing in her black mini-dress and high-heel pumps. Holding a cigarette in one hand, she was shaking her clutch in irritation out in front of her with the other.

  Still reeling from my freaky encounter with Dimitri Ravello, an image flashed in my mind of the singer tumbling down the short flight of steps onto the concrete and brick patio. In that same instant, I experienced an intense pulling sensation at the center of my chest, which was when the night became a blur around me.

  One minute I was standing at the pool entrance, in the next I was at the base of the stairs as she tripped and fell screaming into my arms. This was new.

  Hulking shadows filled the screen door. It burst open and smacked back against the stucco house. Two men from the singer’s entourage rushed us. The tallest of them jostled her out of my arms, while the second man held my arms from behind. Setting her down, the tall guy made certain the singer was uninjured before wheeling around to confront me with a raised fist.

  “Back off, guys!” she said. “He didn’t do anything.”

  “Then why’d you scream?” the one with the fist poised to clock me wanted to know.

  “‘Cause I almost fucking ate it on the stairs, okay? If this dude here hadn’t caught me,” she nodded in my direction, “I would’ve. Go on now. I’ll catch up with you inside.”

  The bodyguards shot me their best intimidating look and were anything but pleased at being dismissed like this, but they did as she instructed and left us alone.

  “Sorry about that. I pay’em to be badasses.”

  More petite in person, she was even prettier than in her music videos. Beneath the glam eye makeup and spiky blonde hair, the cool tattoos and hip nose ring, I perceived a sweet vulnerability mixed with a familiar heat that caused my pulse to quicken.

  The singer bent to remove the one shoe that had managed to stay on during her fall. “Nine-hundred-dollar death traps,” she sighed, holding up the stiletto pump with its vibrant red sole. Then she spied her clutch on the ground near the matching shoe.

  I helped her to retrieve its contents scattered across the patio. “Yeah, but you look really great in them.”

  “You always this nice to damsels in distress?”

  Incubus lust flared again. Unlike my earlier experience with the next-door neighbor, I was in complete control of the heat building beneath my skin. It was familiar to me. I welcomed it.

  “I could be nicer…”

  We made it as far as the upper landing of my carriage house with our clothes intact when full on incubus energy poured out of me and slammed into the singer. Her breath caught in her throat when I leaned in to kiss her, every inch of me burning to be inside her; my tongue, my fingers, my aching cock.

  Big-time evil was after me. Mark had told me to pack up my shit and get out. I was also fairly certain that I’d just outed myself to the mysterious and probably dangerous Dimitri Ravello, a man who was decidedly something more than human.

  Color me insane for not being a freaked out mess, but there was nothing I wanted more right now than to be inside this woman.

  The singer’s eyes widened beneath her dramatic makeup. I could feel unrestrained desire suffusing her body, compelling her hands to travel the lean muscle of my chest and stomach beneath the dark gray sweater. I fumbled to unlock the front door, bumped it open with my hip, and then maneuvered us through the living room and into my bedroom.

  When I lowered the singer onto my bed, the thin straps of her dress slid off her shoulders and down around the tops of her ivory arms, the fine material covering her breasts exposing a black lace bra that revealed just a hint of pink nipples.

  She gazed up at me from the mattress, all semblance of rocker cool vanished. She was a woman and I was a man, and every fiber of her being demanded that I slide her dress the rest of the way over her bra, across her firm stomach and down past her hips, where I guided it to land on the tops of my bare feet.

  I took in the singer laying there, breasts heaving in the delicate black lingerie, her body calling to me. My cock twitched in anticipation of feeling her warmth wrapped around me, welcoming me inside her and squeezing against the length of me. So I stripped off my sweater and stood before her bare-chested, focusing on the lacey black triangle covering the valley between her legs; the one thing keeping me from satisfying my hunger for her.

  She smiled up at me and I dropped to my knees, tearing her panties away to reveal the soft, smooth folds of her excitement, already swollen and begging me to bathe them with my tongue.

  The instant my lips touched her, she stiffened and took in another quick breath.

  I let my gaze travel up the length of her body to meet her hooded eyes, watching me in eagerness as my mouth neared her pleasure center. Reaching up to cup the fullness of her breasts, I kneaded them gently through the lacy material, flicking my tongue several times over her swollen excitement before zeroing in on the hard, little protrusion at its crown.

  The singer gasped from my alternating between sucking and licking the slick, rigid button there, and rewarded my efforts by arching her back and moaning deep, her hips undulating to the rhythm of my flicking tongue, my hands leaving her breasts only to grab onto her waist to pull more of her against my greedy mouth.

  My cock ached to be inside her. But not until I’d brought her over at least once like this.

  She soon began to tremble, her fingers winding through my hair to press on the back of my head to further intensify her pleasure. She clamped her warm thighs around the sides of my head and squeezed. And when the dam finally burst, I experienced the intense shockwaves of fulfillment rippling through her body and funneling into a single channel—funneling into me.

  I clamped my mouth over her to capture the floodwaters, taking all of the singer’s release into me, all the while continuing to rapidly massage her clit with my index and middle fingers.

  She screamed her pleasure over and over, her thighs spasming around me. And only when her orgasm had begun to subside, did she fan her arms out across the bedding, a grin forming on her lips. “Damn. If I could bottle and sell you, I’d be the richest woman in the world.”

  I laughed and stood up, moving around to one of the nightstands. Opening the top drawer, I pulled out a square foil packet. Returning to the foot of the bed, I started to unbutton my jeans, my dick rock-hard and pushing at the zipper. “That was just the opening act.”

  “Yeah?” She rolled over onto her hands and knees, and then slinked her way up to my crotch. “‘Cause I know a whole lot about main attractions.” Pushing my fingers away from the top button, she undid it herself. Then she slid the zipper down to release my cock. “How ‘bout I give you one right now?”

  CHAPTER 17

  A chorus of nightingales determined to rival the loudest orchestra were singing in the trees beyond my open bedroom window. The room was dark, except for a thin shaft of moonlight pooling on the hardwood floor beneath that same window.

  The singer had left some time ago, but the memory of our intimacy still hummed inside me, her perfume mingling with the culmination of our sexual frenzy that lingered in the sheets and pillow cases and covered every inch of my skin. If she were still here, I’d make love to her again. Only this time, I’d let a s
low burn stoke our passions.

  But she wasn’t here.

  I rolled over to check the time. The digital clock on the nightstand displayed the hour in soft, fluorescent orange numbers. Three-twenty-eight. Between the birdsong, my horny on the rise once more, and Mark’s edict to pack up and get out, it seemed pointless to lie here in bed and prolong the inevitable. The monster that was coming for me wouldn’t care about such mundane matters. It just wanted me dead, or so I assumed.

  I headed into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water from the fridge, and then padded out onto the veranda, where I flopped onto the Moroccan daybed I’d bought last week. In a few short hours, my world would change forever…again.

  The material possessions I’d be leaving behind meant little to me. The realization that I’d be losing Christie and Mark was what left the deep hollow forming inside me. Stumbling headlong into an uncertain future was worth the price, though, if it meant keeping the two people I loved most safe. Dimitri Ravello was another matter.

  Twice tonight incubus lust had risen in me, and to an astonishing new degree. Of greater significance, it had outed me as something other than human to him; a man who just so happened to possess uncanny strength, hypnotic green eyes, and a cool, electric touch. I’d sensed he wasn’t ordinary at our first encounter. So what was he, another incubus, like me?

  With only the crickets and unseasonably warm night for company, I closed my eyes and inhaled the fragrant, wind-swept darkness. It felt better out here, the buffets of air caressing my nakedness and easing some of my restlessness.

  “End your suffering and come away with me …”

  My eyes flew open and I bolted upright. Lips might as well have brushed my ear for how closely those whispered words had been spoken.

  I twisted on the daybed to search the deeper shadow of the living room, my heartbeat a stampede in my throat. Nothing stirred. Peering over the balcony to the garden below, I half-expected to find some late-night party stragglers, but this too was still and silent.