AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve seen the way you look at me,” Lucía purred. “You want me. I want you. No harm in giving in to that.”
The muscles in Bahram’s throat worked as he swallowed hard.
“Come on.” Lucía leaned in, her hand on his cheek. “Just one night. No one needs to know.”
Ha, Tallak thought as he polished a glass. Always seems like a bright idea until it isn’t.
“Aziz-e delam,” Bahram murmured, taking Lucía’s hand off his cheek and holding on to it, “you’ll never know how sorry I am. But I must decline, as I am indeed very fond of staying alive.” He kissed the inside of her wrist and then gently nudged her hand back toward her.
Lucía uttered a sound of utmost frustration and even stomped her foot. “I just don’t get to have fun, do I? I haven’t been laid in ages because every male runs for the hills when they get even a whiff of who I am. But I have needs! I’m not cut out to be a celibate!”
With a huff and a feline growl, she turned on her heel and stormed off.
Bahram watched her go with a look of deep longing on his face, then turned back to the bar and muttered something in what Tallak assumed was Persian.
“What’s that?” Tallak asked as he poured Bahram another generous glass of whiskey.
Bahram sighed. “I said, it’s a crime against the gods to deny that female pleasure.”
“On the other hand,” Tallak said, cutting some more lime slices, “it would be a crime against one god to give her pleasure.”
Bahram grimaced and drank his whiskey.
The incubus kept brooding over his drink while Tallak fulfilled the orders of a few patrons who had finally scrunched up the nerve to approach the bar. After finishing his sixth drink, Bahram slammed the glass on the bar.
He stared straight ahead at nothing for a moment, his face a mask of hardness, then he muttered, “Fuck it.”
Determination vibrating off him, the incubus rose to his feet, pivoted toward the crowd, and stalked off toward the booth where Lucía had settled in with her friends.
“It was nice knowing you,” Tallak called out after him. “What color do you want your headstone?”
* * *
Closing time was approaching, dawn only a few hours away, and most patrons had trickled out of the bar to either go home or let the night wind down somewhere else. A few demons and shifters lingered, though, still laughing and drinking and occasionally snarling at each other. Here and there a scuffle broke out; teeth and claws would flash before the argument was settled as quickly as it’d begun. Sometimes, the loser would limp away with a whine.
A normal night in a demon bar.
Tallak watched it all with an impassive eye. His mood had leveled out sometime during his shift. Manual labor always helped restore his equilibrium, helped him work through his thoughts and feelings. There was an almost meditative quality to cleaning shit, not to mention the satisfaction of removing dirt and grime to make something shine again.
A group of shifters left the Gluttony section, and Tallak’s gaze fell on the patrons who were sitting in the booth behind them, now visible after the shifters were out of the way. Three male demons knocking back drinks, and in their midst—Rose. A veritable armada of empty, upturned shot glasses covered the table in front of her, and she was in the process of downing another one to the cheers of her demon companions—different ones from those he’d seen her with the other night.
Holding up the empty glass, she swayed a bit in her seat, then turned it upside down and lowered it to the table to join the others.
The males around her whooped, and she grinned, her eyes glassy…before she slipped off her seat and collapsed under the table.
Tallak sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, that fucking knot in his stomach back again. All he’d wanted was one bloody shift without seeing that foolish girl get hammered beyond all reason, in questionable company, to boot.
The three demons pulled Rose out from under the table, and one of them threw her over his shoulder. With a grin and a laughing comment to his buddies, he carried her off toward the restrooms, his two friends trailing behind. Rose hung listlessly over the dude’s shoulders, out like a light.
Tallak’s eye twitched. Oh, no, they fucking don’t.
With an assessing look at the mostly peaceful bar, he stormed off toward the restrooms. His blood buzzed with violence as he slammed the door to the men’s room open, startling the demons inside. His gaze scanned the scene—Rose, limp and unconscious, bent over the bathroom counter, one of the guys behind her in the process of opening his pants, his two friends waiting in the wings—and pure red washed over his vision.
All tethers inside him snapped.
With a roar, he unleashed the nightmare powers from the lilu that still swirled in his veins, hitting all three demons with a surge of unadulterated terror that would have stopped a human’s heart. The demons screamed, hands pressing against their heads as if to stem the tide of horror flooding their brains. One of them fell to his knees.
That was the first one he gutted.
