Devilishly Wicked

ALSO AVAILABLE BY KATHY LOVE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KATHY LOVE

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

“G
o ahead, beg. Beg for it.”

Tristan fought back a growl. Beg. Damn, he would so beg Peaches. He’d get down on his knees, without hesitation.

“Good boy.” Her fingers stroked Tristan’s coconspirator. Her black lacquered nails sank into his hair and it wasn’t the first time Tristan had been jealous that his fellow demon got to enjoy her touch. Her affection.

Tristan shifted, peering through the decorative shrubbery, and when she lifted her head and looked in his direction, he shrank back against the building, hoping she hadn’t spotted him. The brick wall was cold against his back, but did nothing to cool his ardor, or his imagination, which ran rampant with naughty, sexual scenarios. All of them included her hands stroking over his body like she’d stroked her “good boy.”

Damn, he was so hard. Painfully hard.

“Yes,” Tristan could hear her croon, “such a good, good boy.”

This time, he couldn’t suppress his groan. Even her throaty voice turned him on. He stepped forward again, peeking once more through the greenery.

Dear Lucifer, the whole scene had become even more arousing. Now she leaned over her “begging good boy,” the pose drawing her black leather skirt taut over her rounded ass and full hips. Her ample breasts swelled over the neckline of her corset-style top, her skin almost translucently pale against the black, brocade material.

Shit, she was like a gothic wet dream. Tristan’s wet dream.

“My good, good boy.”

Tristan reconsidered. He didn’t want to be her good boy. He wanted to be her very bad boy. But he did want that same kind of adoring attention from her, his sexy dominatrix with a sultry voice and a cherub’s face.

“Oh, no. What’s going on with your collar?” she cooed. “Hmm, this seems too loose. I don’t want you getting away.”

Tristan’s eyes locked on to her fingers back on his colleague, fussing with the collar around his neck. Her finger slipped under the collar and around the edge, testing the tightness.

How could Tristan find that simple action so sensual? He was a demon of lust, so in truth, many things turned him on. But there was something different about Peaches. And this scene.

Shit, what he wouldn’t do to be wearing that collar. And he sure as hell wouldn’t try to get away.

“Oh, yes, this needs to be tightened.”

Her nimble fingers worked the collar, slipping it open, then rethreading the end back through the buckle, pulling it tighter.

Tristan had to close his eyes again as she pushed the prong through the hole, that image too close to what he wanted to do to a part of her body with a part of his.

Demon of lust or not, the sight of someone tightening a collar had never affected him like this.

“There, that’s nice and snug. No getting away for you.”

His coconspirator would have to be an idiot to want to get away from this sexy woman. Tristan opened his eyes to watch her turn and lightly tug the leash she’d had hooked on her wrist.

“Come on, good boy. Come this way.”

She pulled the leash again lightly, but her action wasn’t met with the response she wanted.

“Oh, being a stubborn boy now, huh?”

She
tsked
and returned to her stubborn charge.

“No being naughty now, my dear,” she warned, her tone still gentle. “If you get me in trouble, then I won’t be so nice. So come on.”

She pulled again on the leash. Nothing. Still disobedient.

Tristan knew what he’d want her to do to him if he was disobedient. He groaned again.

This time, Peaches straightened, looking in his direction. He remained still. What would happen if she realized he was spying on her?

She wouldn’t punish him in any way he’d enjoy, that was for sure. She’d avoid him even more than she already did.

She stared in his direction for another moment, and then bent down.

“Come on, silly,” she said, her tone not as cajoling as it had been. “I have to get back to work now. The potty break is over.”

She scooped up his colleague, taking advantage of his diminutive size.

“I know you don’t want to go back,” she said to the little, white fluffy dog she cradled in her arms. “I don’t want to go back either.”

Tristan suspected he knew exactly why she didn’t want to go back to work. Him. The idea really didn’t please him, but Tristan knew Peaches always tried to avoid him. Not easy, since she was his personal assistant. But she did her best anyway.

She nuzzled her cheek against the dog—the dog that was actually a hellhound and Satan’s minion. Never before had Tristan been jealous of a dog. Never had he been jealous, period. A demon of lust didn’t need to be jealous. There was always another piece of ass out there.

But he was pretty certain that the tight feeling in his chest accompanied by the general sense of irrational irritation was jealousy.

He was jealous of the attention a hellhound was getting on his pee break.

This wasn’t good. Peaches shouldn’t be avoiding him; Tristan should be avoiding her.

But something about his curvy, eccentric personal assistant fascinated him. Fascinated him too much.

Peaches—or rather Georgia Sullivan—was a distraction, and that made her dangerous. Very dangerous.

 

“You really think this is the woman who can help us?”

The two men watched as the woman in question walked up to the building in a pair of red patent-leather platform heels that were clearly intended as a fashion statement. No woman would wear them for comfort, although “fashion” might not exactly be the accurate term either. But they did make a statement. She carried the white fur ball that Gabriel recognized as Finola White’s little lapdog.

Finola wasn’t even her boss anymore, but she was still doing Finola’s bidding, obviously. Interesting. He guessed giving up the power she’d once wielded was difficult. Especially for someone like Finola, who had abused it with such delight.

“I’m telling you, Tristan McIntyre is highly attracted to her.” Elton, the Demon Intelligence Agency’s top seer, spoke with utter certainty.

Gabriel tilted his head, trying to understand what Tristan could possibly see in the woman. Not that he didn’t trust Elton. Elton was DIA’s best seer for a reason. He had an amazing ability to sense and see many things: demons, the possessed, the damned, even normal humans’ reactions to other humans. If he wasn’t so damned good, Gabriel suspected the older man would be long retired by now. But the DIA needed him, and he knew it.

Still—this woman?

She wasn’t ugly exactly. In fact, she was really rather interesting looking with her funky, dark-rimmed glasses and black hair streaked with both red and pink. She had an hourglass figure, although it definitely leaned toward the chubbier side. And in this world of high fashion, she would be considered downright fat.

Gabriel supposed she did have a certain style, in her black leather skirt and top that was somewhere between a blouse and corset.

The clothes, the shoes, the hair, and the bright red lipstick were over the top, and he could almost applaud her for embracing her own look in a world of fashion clones—all too thin, too dedicated to the trends, and too willing to do whatever they had to do to be a part of the fake, shallow, and soulless organization that was
Hot!
magazine.

Literally soulless.

Still Gabriel found himself saying, “I don’t know.”

“I’m telling you, she is the perfect one to be our mole. Tristan can’t resist her, and I can tell you she is trustworthy.”

Well, trustworthy was key. After recent events during which one of their demon slayers had been recognized and one of
HOT!
magazine’s editors had been whisked away never to be seen again, the demons now realized that someone out there knew who they were and what they were doing: trying to take over the human world via the fashion industry.

The DIA had to make a move quickly now, and they needed people on the inside to help. But bringing in a stranger would be impossible at this stage of the game. The demons, specifically the head demon, Tristan McIntyre, the newly appointed head editor of
HOT!
magazine, would be suspicious of any new face. And the DIA already knew he was watching the mail room with an eagle eye.

The DIA’s cover was perilously close to being blown. They had to move fast.

“But you said she doesn’t have a soul contract on her. What’s the benefit for her in helping us?”

Elton cast him a sidelong look. “Are you so jaded that you don’t think a human would be willing to fight evil without having something in it for them?”

Gabriel guessed that was a pretty jaded attitude. But unfortunately, he’d seen it to be true too many times. Everybody wanted something.

“Will she even believe us?”

Elton looked at him askance. “Well, you don’t have to tell her the demon situation from the start. But you
can
tell her that her boss is dangerous. Sticking close to the truth should work. You and Eugene are both smart. You’ll think of something.”

“Okay,” Gabriel said, knowing he had little choice but to trust Elton’s judgment. “I will go tell Eugene that I’m going to make my move tonight.”

Elton nodded as if he’d known that would be his decision. Then again, right now, they didn’t seem to have too many options. They had a few operatives still planted in the magazine, but none of them was close enough to Tristan to get the real dirt and find out his demon weaknesses.

And this woman was Tristan McIntyre’s personal assistant. That placed her very close to him.

“Okay, I’ll go talk to Eugene now,” he said, still hesitating. He didn’t know what the head of the DIA was going to say about this choice. Somehow Gabriel didn’t think Eugene would be convinced either.

He sighed and levered himself away from the wall to head down to the mail room, where Eugene worked under the guise of manager.

“She will do it,” Elton repeated, obviously sensing Gabriel’s reticence. He was the seer after all.

“Okay.” Gabriel just hoped she’d be able to handle the task. A job like this would require subtlety and discretion. This woman didn’t exactly give the impression of embodying either of those traits.

He walked into the back employee entrance of the
HOT!
building.

He sighed and said softly to himself—or maybe he was sending his concern out to the universe, too—“Here’s hoping you are truly the right woman for this job, Georgia Louise Sullivan.”

 

The same two things always went through Georgia Sullivan’s mind as she stepped off the elevator and into the
HOT!
lobby. Why had she ever thought she was the right type of woman to work at a place like this? And if she thought she could find a job that paid half as well, she’d be out of here right now.

But today, she was also thinking that her feet were killing her, and she should not have eaten that pastry for breakfast. What was that saying, “Past the lips, straight to the hips”?

She looked over at the gorgeous, blond receptionist whose svelte figure suggested that she’d probably had a healthy breakfast. A half of a grapefruit or maybe, if she was feeling really famished, an egg white omelet, sans cheese or sausage or fried onions and peppers, of course.

The blonde stood to greet a man who approached her desk, and Georgia studied her tall, lithe body in her perfectly fitted pencil skirt and tailored blouse.

Forget that, this woman didn’t eat breakfast. She rolled out of bed and headed straight to the gym for Pilates or spin class or some other form of exercise Georgia had only read about in magazines like
HOT!,
but had never done in real life.

Not that she hadn’t felt pressured to go to classes like that—aerobics, Pilates, Zumba. She’d even signed up for a couple, only to find excuses to skip them. Of course, excuses weren’t hard to come by with this job. Overtime was standard.

But that still didn’t mean she couldn’t eat better, and work in some exercise every day. But there was the perverse side of her that was determined not to change to fit into this world. She was going to stay true to herself, which meant true to her taste, her style, and
her
size.

Which she had to admit was easier to feel confident about when she wasn’t surrounded by size two, super-gorgeous creatures who made her feel like Miss Piggy.

Not that she didn’t genuinely like her eclectic style, or Miss Piggy for that matter, because she did. She loved fashion—clothes, shoes, accessories. She’d even always dreamed of working in the fashion industry. But somehow she’d always imagined that she would singlehandedly convince the world that “real” women were just as fashionable and sexy as the half-starved models that filled the pages of
HOT!

How very naïve of her. Downright silly actually.

She didn’t fit in here, and hadn’t since day one, which made for an uncomfortable and rather lonely work environment.

Still, in some misguided attempt to bond with her fellow coworker, she smiled at the receptionist. The woman looked her up and down once, then turned her attention to her ringing phone without smiling back.

Georgia grimaced. Honestly, she should be used to this. She was the ugly stepchild of the beautiful
HOT!
family. And anyone who might be nice or interesting was overworked, harried, and too wrapped up in his or her job to be social. All in all, working for
HOT!
might be prestigious and pay well, but it wasn’t the fun dream job she’d imagined. And not just because she had junk in her trunk.

She hugged her only pal to her chest. At least, she could count on Dippy to accept her.

Georgia pushed open one of the large double doors that led to the offices and cubicles of the magazine’s other employees. She picked her way through the bustling hallways, not moving too quickly, even when her current outfit received a few more once-overs and raised eyebrows.