by Sylvia Day
Turn the page for a peek at one of the stories in
SO I MARRIED A DEMON SLAYER,
featuring Kathy Love, Angie Fox, and Lexi George—
Angie’s “What Slays in Vegas” …
Sunlight stung her eyeballs even though she hadn’t opened them. Shiloh covered her eyes with her arm and groaned. She felt dizzy, weak. Her head throbbed with the worst hangover since that three-day wine binge through Sodom, Gomorrah and Zebiom.
And she hadn’t even had any alcohol last night.
She stretched, sore from last night’s activities with Damien. At least one thing had gone right. Damien had been exactly what she needed.
In fact, he was amazing.
So why’d she feel like hell?
She blinked against the bright morning, wishing she could lie in bed for the rest of eternity. Maybe she’d just close her light-blocking shades and go back to bed.
She didn’t even remember making it home last night.
In fact, she didn’t remember anything after that blinding orgasm. Strange. That had never happened to her before.
A flutter of a grin crossed her lips. If she was going to remember one thing, let it be her night in the Lust room.
She groaned into a sitting position and threw one leg onto the floor, stopping short when her toes came in contact with carpet. Her bedroom had hardwood floors. Shiloh’s eyes flew open and she gasped as she saw a nicked wooden end table. A white ceramic lamp. Beige curtains. She was in a hotel room.
Out the window, she could see the roller coaster at the New York-New York hotel. Oh thank Hades. She flopped back against the pillow. She was in Vegas. Okay. She placed a hand on her chest. She was a few blocks from home. No need to panic.
Breathe.
Although something on her left hand didn’t feel right. It was like a heavy weight on her finger. She glanced down to the hand on her chest and shrieked. There, on her left ring finger, was a gold band with a diamond on it the size of Switzerland.
She stared at it like she’d never seen one before. In all fairness, she hadn’t. At least not on her hand.
From her right came a bellowing snore. She scrambled off the bed and stood staring down at Damien, tousled and wickedly naked.
What the hell happened last night?
She didn’t remember a thing.
She rubbed her temples. Think, think, think.
Okay. She went to work, bribed the fairy, practically mauled Damien. That part had been a lot of fun. She’d felt her power flow out of her in an amazing orgasm and then … nothing.
Just a cheap hotel room, a hot man and a diamond ring.
She yanked at the gold band. It was big enough to slip off easily, but it refused to budge. The obnoxious diamond clung as if it were welded onto her.
It glinted in the morning sun, mocking her.
She couldn’t be married. Succubi didn’t get married. Ever.
Her eyes stung and she rubbed at them. Even if she wanted to get married, she couldn’t marry a client from the Lust floor. It didn’t matter that he was the best sex she’d had in a thousand years.
And how dare Damien sleep at a time like this?
“Get up!” She crawled across the bed and yanked him onto his back. Her heart stuttered when she saw that he wore a gold band on his left finger too. Oh Hades. She’d been afraid of that. “Wake up. This is an emergency!”
He threw his arms up over his eyes. “What’s the … ?”
“Damien”—she yanked his arms down—“what did you do to me?”
He gazed at her with bleary eyes, confusion tumbling across his features. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice gravelly and a bit too indignant for her taste.
She smacked him with her pillow. “That’s what I want to know.”
He sat up faster than she expected. She could see he was still woozy. “Don’t touch me,” he warned.
“You sure didn’t mind it last night,” she shot back, pleased when a flush crept up his neck. Bull’s eye. “Now fess up. What did you do to me?”
With the grace of a cat, he was out of bed. He strode toward a shiny silver suitcase on a luggage stand, displaying his frustratingly perfect butt.
He yanked the case open, his eyes on her the whole time. “I didn’t do anything to you.” He reached inside with one hand and grabbed hold of something she couldn’t see.
Frankly, she didn’t care. “You made me pass out. Want me to show you what happened next?” Maybe he had some memory of it. She shoved her obnoxiously ringed hand at him. “You married me.”
He blinked twice and slowly removed his hand from whatever was in the case. “I couldn’t.”
She planted a hand on her hip. “Check your hand, sweetie.”
He lifted it out of the case and went white as he stared at the gold ring on his finger. “I can’t be married,” he said to his hand.
She had to smile. Briefly.
Oh, who was she kidding? This was a mess.
Shiloh stalked toward the window, wanting to get as far away from him as she could. This was too much. It had to be a mistake. Getting married meant giving her power away. Seducing only one man for the rest of her life. She couldn’t do that. She had a job. A career. Her boss was going to kill her.
She stumbled over an empty champagne bottle as she scanned the room, trying to make sense of what had happened the night before. A gigantic pink teddy bear with an I Heart Vegas button sat next to a half-empty room service tray and what appeared to be her wadded up dress.
He slammed his suitcase closed. “What did you do to me last night?”
She turned to find him glaring at her, menace in his eyes.
“You were the one with the fancy shot, you jerk. You drugged me.” Which proved he was a fool because drugs didn’t work on her.
“You were the one who drank it,” he said, yanking a pair of jeans from the closet.
Did she ever. She watched him pull on a pair of worn Levi’s and remembered just how she’d drank the cocktail off of him. She felt a delicious tightening between her legs. “Fess up. What was in it?”
He sighed and drew a hand through his hair. “I suppose it doesn’t hurt to tell you now.” He placed his hands on his hips, which only made his abs look better, damn him. “I gave you truth serum. It was supposed to make you cooperate.” His jaw flexed. “Instead, you seduced me.”
“That’s my job!”
“You made me pass out,” he accused.
“Me too. I don’t remember anything after our screaming orgasm.”
He looked like he could grind marbles with his teeth. “Don’t say that word.”
“Orgasm?” she asked, watching him flinch. “What are you? A prude?” She felt something slippery below her foot. “Oh,” she gasped as she realized she was stepping on a photograph of her and Damien posing with a minister.
She snatched it off the floor.
There she was, radiant in her gold dress, smiling like it was her wedding day. She had both arms wrapped around Damien, who had a hand on her hip and a rose in his teeth. They stood under a trellis with a red and gold sign that read The Hitching Post Wedding Chapel.
“Yeek.” She tossed it back on the floor.
He’d found photos too. Stomach tumbling, she hurried over to where he was sitting on the edge of the bed, flipping through a stack of pictures. She gasped at the proof of their post-wedding limo ride. Shiloh and Damien kissing underneath the Las Vegas sign. Shiloh and Damien pretending to be tigers outside the MGM Grand. Shiloh and Damien inside the limo, kissing like the ship was about to go down, while long-haired, painfully skinny members of a rock band cheered and toasted them with bottles of Captain Morgan. He squinted and studied the last picture closer. “Who are these people?”
And don’t miss UNWRAPPED,
a sexy holiday anthology from Erin McCarthy,
Donna Kauffman, and Kate Angell,
coming next month! Turn the page for a sample of
Erin’s story, “
Blue Christmas” …
“Santa can suck it.” Blue Farrow kept an eye on the highway and tried to hit the buttons on the radio to change the station. She was going to grind her teeth down to nubs if she had to listen to Christmas songs for another twelve hours. It was like an IV drip of sugar and spice and it was making her cranky.
Was she the only one who thought a fat dude hanging around on your roof was a bit creepy? And why were those elves so happy in that Harry Connick Jr. song? Rum in the eggnog, that’s why. Not to mention since when did three ships ever go pulling straight up to Bethlehem? She wasn’t aware it was a major port city.
Yep. She was feeling in total harmony with Scrooge. “Bah Humbug,” she muttered when her only options on the radio seemed to be all Christmas all the time or pounding rap music.
Blue had never been a big fan of Christmas, never having experienced a normal one in her childhood since her flaky mother (yes, flaky considering she’d named her daughter after a color) had done Christmas experimental style every year, never the same way twice, disregarding any of her daughter’s requests. The trend on feeling tacked onto her parents’ Christmas had continued into Blue’s adulthood, and this year she had been determined to have a great holiday all on her terms, booking herself on a cruise with her two equally single friends. She had turned down her mother’s invitation to spend the holiday with an indigenous South American tribe and her father’s request to join him with his barely-legal wife and their baby girl, and instead she was going to sip cocktails in a bikini.
Maybe.
The road in front of her was barely visible, the snow crashing down with pounding determination, the highway slick and ominous, the hours ticking by as Blue barely made progress in the treacherous conditions. Planning to drive to Miami from Ohio instead of flying had been a financial decision and would give Blue the chance to make a pit stop in Tennessee and visit her old friend from high school, but the only thing heading south at the moment was her vacation. It was Christmas Eve, her cruise ship departed in twenty hours, and she’d only made it a hundred miles in six hours, the blizzard swirling around her mocking the brilliance of her plan as she drove through the middle of nowhere Kentucky.
She was going to have to stop in Lexington and see if she could catch a flight to Miami, screw the cost. Not that planes would be taking off in this weather, but maybe by morning. If she flew out first thing, she could be in Florida in plenty of time for her four o’clock sail time. All she had to do was make it to Lexington without losing her insanity from being pummeled with schmaltzy Christmas carols or without losing control of her car in the snow.
When she leaned over and hit the radio again and found the Rolling Stones she nearly wept in gratitude. Classic rock she could handle.
But not her car. As the highway unexpectedly curved and dipped, she fishtailed in the thick snow.
Blue only managed a weak, “Oh, crap,” before she gripped the hell out of the wheel and slid sideways down the pavement, wanting to scream, but unable to make a sound.
She was going to die.
If there hadn’t been anyone else on the road, she might have managed to regain control. But there was no stopping the impact when she swung into the lane next to her, right in the path of an SUV. She wasn’t the only idiot on the road and now they were going to die together.
Blue closed her eyes and hoped there were bikinis and margaritas in the afterlife.
Santa was the man. Christian Dawes sang along to the radio at the top of his lungs, the song reminding him of his childhood, when he had listened carefully on Christmas Eve for the telltale sound of reindeer paws. Tossing the trail mix out for the reindeer to chomp on, putting the cookies on a plate for Santa, the magic and wonder and awe of waking up to a ton of presents, those were some of his best memories.
Someday when he had his own kids, he’d create all of those special moments for them, but right now Christian was content to play awesome uncle, arriving on Christmas Eve loaded down with presents for all his nieces and nephews. His trunk was stuffed with spoils, and he’d brought enough candy to earn glares from his two sisters and potentially make someone sick. But it wasn’t Christmas until a kid stuffed his face with candy then hurled after a session on the sit and spin. That’s what home videos and infamous family stories were made of.
Unfortunately the lousy weather was slowing him down on his drive from Cincinnati to Lexington. He’d left work later than he’d intended anyway, then by the time he’d hit Kentucky, he’d been forced down to thirty miles an hour because apparently the road crews had taken the holiday off and had decided not to plow. He hoped his family wasn’t holding up dinner for him at his parent’s house.
If he wasn’t gripping the steering wheel so hard he would call someone and let them know he still had a couple of hours ahead of him, but he had no intention of reaching for his phone. A glance to the right showed a car next to him, but other than that, he could barely see the road in front of him. He needed Santa to dip down and give him a lift in his sleigh or it was going to be midnight before he arrived.
What he didn’t need was a car accident.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the car next to him slide, spinning out so fast that Christian only had time to swear and tap his brakes before he hit the car with a crunch and they went careening towards the guardrail. When his SUV stopped moving a few seconds later, despite his efforts to turn the skid, he had the other car pinned against the railing.
“Shit!” Christian turned off his car and leaped out, almost taking a header in the thick snow, but terrified that he’d injured someone. “Are you okay?” he asked, yelling through the howling snow as he peered into the driver’s side window.
The major impact of his SUV’s front end had been in the backseat and trunk, so he hoped if there was an injury it wasn’t serious. But with the snow smacking him in the face and the window plastered with wet flakes, he couldn’t really see anything.
He knocked on the glass and when it started to slide down, he sighed in relief.
“Are you okay?” he said again now that the person in front of him could hear him.
“Are you okay?” she said simultaneously.
He nodded.
She nodded.
And Christian became aware that he was staring at the most strikingly beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his whole life.
BRAVA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2011 Sylvia Day
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7424-3