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Suddenly I was holding a helmet. I hadn’t even noticed Jude had gone back into the house for helmets. Too busy drooling over his pretty bike. He zipped up his leather jacket and straddled the motorcycle while strapping on his helmet. He nodded to the tiny seat behind him and grinned.
“Saddle up.”
I am well aware that Jude Delacroix is not dating material. One does not bring a demon hunter home to Daddy or do dinner and a movie with the likes of Jude. I doubt seriously that the word “dating” is even in the demon hunter vocabulary.
Jude seems to have one mission in life—seek and destroy. Oh yeah, and protect.
Now, a man has needs, and he is fully equipped to fulfill those needs with pretty much whomever he wants. I mean, seriously, God was a poet the day he made Jude. But I was slowly realizing that whatever a Dominus Daemonum was, it wasn’t completely human; therefore, he didn’t fit into the category of regular men.
Having given a full disclaimer on all the reasons why I shouldn’t be attracted to him, let me now confess how utterly and totally euphoric I felt riding behind him on one of the fastest motorcycles in the world, my thighs gripping his hips.
On top of that, he continued to shield me with his illusion, wrapping me in an otherworldly shell. Mind-blowing—zipping through the streets of New Orleans with my arms strapped around his waist and my chest pressed against his back. The experience was exhilarating. The man was divine. And the ride home was all too short, probably because we exceeded the speed limit the whole way. He pulled up close to the door.
Begrudgingly, I shifted off from behind him and removed my helmet.
“Hang on to it,” he told me when I offered it back, removing his own. “Bring it to class on Monday.”
“You’re picking me up?”
“Do you honestly believe I would let you wander through the Quarter to my place unaccompanied? Your ability to cast illusion is growing but would only fool a lower demon.”
I nodded. I resented the fact that he was becoming my keeper, like a babysitter, but I also didn’t have a death wish. After meeting Dommiel, I in no way wanted to encounter one of the big boys on my own. Black-belt skills wouldn’t help me there. I thought of Dommiel on his knees before Jude.
“Dommiel was terrified of you.”
“As he should be.”
Geez. Okay, Mr. Modesty.
“You told Dommiel that one of his brethren had broken the rules by coming into his territory. I thought they all had to follow the rules.”
“They do. It’s a compulsion greater than their desire for evil.”
“Then how is there another high demon roaming in his territory? How is our phantom stalker able to break the rules?”
“Even within their aristocracy, there is an order of importance. Those on the lower levels are always subject to those higher up.”
Stunned for a second, I asked, “Do you mean there are higher demons within the high demon category? There’s like someone worse than Dommiel?”
I realized my voice had risen to a screechy level, though I didn’t yell for fear Mindy would come bouncing out here in her pink undies just to meet and drool over Jude.
“Dommiel is an arch-demon, the lowest in their aristocracy. The fact that someone has disregarded him in his own domain means we are dealing with either a duke or a prince, not one on his level.”
I knew my mouth was gaping, but are you fucking kidding me?
He gave me a small smile. His demeanor was so light tonight. Mine was leaden, weighted with all I’d discovered, all I still didn’t know, and the fact that my world was irrevocably changed forever. My life as an English major at Loyola with dreams of becoming an editor for a savvy magazine suddenly seemed ridiculously stupid. Now my dreams were to keep my ass alive for one more day.
“Don’t worry, Genevieve,” he said, reaching out to slide a stray lock behind my ear. He let his palm linger along my jaw, his thumb brushing close to my lips. With a sudden movement, he pulled away and strapped his helmet back on. “Not even a dark prince is a match for me.”
He gave me a wink. A fluttering burst inside my belly.
Poor prince, wherever he was.
I went to the door but couldn’t help myself. I glanced over my shoulder to watch him zoom off into the foggy gloom, feeling a slight pang of regret that it wasn’t a sleepover night.
9
Sunday was the day Mindy visited her mom, and I visited my dad. It was the day we clocked out of college/apartment life and went home to get spoiled for a bit. This was also the first Sunday after my new discovery that there really were monsters in the world, and a good many of them were hunting me. Still, it was Sunday, a holy day, so I was off-limits according to the rules.
