Her Dangerous Desires [Notorious Nephilim 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (10 page)

The slight tremor in his voice betrayed the words, but Paige didn’t have the strength to respond. Instead she simply snuggled closer to him and put her arms around his waist. He held her silently until Demetrius came into the room. The smell of food made Paige’s stomach rumble.

“Had to wake up a couple of staff members to get this,” he said. “Sorry it took so long.”

“Damn kitchen’s supposed to be open all night,” said Gregory.

“It’s not too often anyone tests that. Paige, can you sit up?”

“Sure.” She sat slowly this time, and then perched on the edge of the bed. Demetrius placed the tray on the nightstand and picked up a large plastic pitcher.

“I’ll get fresh water.”

When he left the room again, Gregory sat beside her. “Thanks for what you said before, Paige.”

“I meant it.”

He propped his elbows onto his knees and rested his chin in his hands to watch her eat.

“Do you ever wish you needed to eat?” Her mouth was full, and she didn't care. The turkey and cheese sandwich tasted like manna. “I mean, it must be weird not having to. Can you taste food?”

As she waited for him to answer her question, she took a bite of the potato salad and moaned. “This is amazing. If I lived here, I’d weigh four hundred pounds because all I’d do is eat.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Demetrius and I would be fucking you all the time.”

She almost choked on her food as she laughed.

“I’m not kidding.”

“I believe you, Gregory.”

He sighed deeply. “Yeah, we can taste it. But when we don’t eat or drink we don’t miss it or crave it, or anything like that.”

“And what about sex? When you don’t have it do you still want it?”

He grinned. “Yeah, that’s a constant need, Paige.”

“And I don’t imagine you’ve ever been without it for long, have you?”

He almost looked embarrassed. “No, not at all.”

“Here we are.” Demetrius came into the room and placed the pitcher of water on the nightstand. “How’s the food?”

“It’s great. Thank you.”

“Paige was asking if we missed food or sex when we didn’t have either.”

“Oh really?” Demetrius’s expression grew playful as he pulled over a chair and sat in front of Paige. “And what did you tell her?”

She swallowed the food in her mouth as the two grinned and exchanged a glance.

“I told her sex was a constant need, but food and water, not so much.”

“That’s about right.”

“Why all the questions?” asked Gregory.

“You’re both fascinating. I want to know everything. What you feel, what you think, how you came to be.”

Demetrius gave her a thoughtful glance. “I don’t know if we have all the answers, Paige.”

“Were you sent on other missions?”

“Oh yes. Plenty of them.”

“Did you fulfill them?”

Gregory chuckled. “Yes, but we’ve always liked to play as well. Just never got caught before.”

“What happened this time? What went wrong?”

A shadow of pain passed over both their faces, and this time Paige knew she hadn’t imagined it. She put down her sandwich and fork. “Please tell me. I really want to know.”

“It’s not pretty,” said Demetrius.

“Okay. I’ll consider myself warned.”

“We were betrayed.”

“By who?”

“One of our own.”

* * * *

Paige was fascinating. He’d never met anyone like her. Gregory didn’t miss the fact that no one had ever asked them this question before. At least, not that he knew of. Not only that, but no woman had ever taken such a personal interest in him. He was an arrogant ass. He knew that, and he didn’t care. The women who liked it went along with it because they wanted to be treated that way. The ones who didn’t he simply left alone.

“His name was Erion,” said Demetrius. “He was part of another group sent along with us on the same mission.”

Her pretty face was filled with compassion. “Why did he betray you?”

Gregory let Demetrius speak because he couldn't right now. This woman would be his undoing, and he couldn’t let that happen. He just couldn’t.

“Because he was jealous. Plain, simple jealousy. He’s fucking ugly and couldn’t have convinced a woman to fuck him if he’d had to, and he was jealous of us.”

“You’re kidding.” The slightest hint of a smile graced her eyes, as though she thought they might be teasing her.

“I wish I were, Paige.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been terrible.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” said Gregory, turning his body so that he faced her. “We simply don’t do that to each other. We don’t betray our own kind. What Erion did wasn’t just low. It was so unheard of that everyone else was shocked. In fact, I think it’s safe to say they were more shocked at his betrayal than at our behavior, since that wasn’t anything others weren’t also doing. We simply got caught.”

“What happened to him? To Erion?”

Gregory glanced at Demetrius. He wasn’t sure they should tell her this part, but they’d gone this far. Still, it might frighten her. Lilith’s silly prank had unsettled her quite a bit. The last thing Gregory wanted was for Paige to feel that way around either of them.

As soon as he voiced the thought, he averted his gaze from her beautiful eyes. What was going on with him? It wasn’t like him to consider anyone else’s feelings, at least not beyond basic comforts. Food, water, bathroom breaks. That was normally as far as his compassion went.

“You sure you want to hear this, Paige?” Demetrius fixed her with an ominous stare.

She nodded, but the look in her eyes didn’t indicate assent. Gregory held his breath.

“Before I tell you, I want you to understand we’ve never done anything like that since, and we never would again. We all regretted our decision and our actions. What we did helped contribute to the harshness of our punishment.”

Again, all she did was nod.

“You also have to understand we were all so damn sick of Erion. He was an annoying shit that no one liked. And he didn’t care that no one liked him.” Demetrius paused, and Gregory was about to chime in, but then Demetrius finally spoke again. “We used our collective powers to bind him. It’s not a literal bind like with ropes or chains. It’s more of a psychic state one supernatural being can place another in, provided the first is much stronger, or has collective help from other supernatural beings. Then we summoned a demon we knew would take care of him for us.”

Her eyes grew wide for a moment, and then she scooted back on the bed and hugged her knees. “So, they can be summoned.” She looked at the bedspread, not at either of them.

“Oh yes, but you have to know what you’re doing. And you have to be careful about what you offer in return for the favor you’re asking.”

“What does that mean?” She hadn’t yet made eye contact.

“It means if you were to do it and ask for a favor, you would get it, but the demon would demand some sort of payment.”

She finally raised her eyes. As she glanced at each of them in turn, Gregory’s heart gave a strange lurch. She wasn’t so much afraid of them as wary. He suddenly wished they hadn’t said anything about Erion in the first place. As far as he knew, none of them had ever told another mortal this story.

“The demon wasn’t Lilith, was it?”

“No.”

“What payment did you give this demon you summoned?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Erion.”

“And what was the favor?”

“We haven’t asked him for it yet.”

“So he owes you one—this demon, I mean.”

“He does.”

“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but didn’t you also then betray one of your own?”

Gregory bit back a smile.
Touché
. “Yes. We did indeed.”

“We’d never do it again,” said Demetrius. “It was the worst reaction imaginable.”

She nodded slowly. “An eye for an eye.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” said Gregory.

Paige fell into an easy routine with Demetrius and Gregory for the next week. She ate breakfast in the suite they’d spent the night in, and then took a nap while Gregory and Demetrius did whatever needed to be done around the resort. Both had told her that the others insisted they help out more now, so Gregory was put in charge of the housekeeping staff, and Demetrius was given charge over the front desk staff.

Neither job required they put in much work, as the place ran like a well-oiled machine. Their housekeeping and front desk staff had been with them a long time. They were loyal and worked hard.

The six remaining owners had hired Sofia’s uncle Jack to oversee the dining rooms and room service staff. They also hired Sofia’s three cousins Michael, Vince, and Jerry, and placed them in charge of maintenance and groundskeeping. Emmett had previously done both jobs, so he now joined Zach in accounting and payroll. Reeve and Niko now oversaw their contracts with outside vendors.

When Paige woke from her nap each day, Gregory and Demetrius took her out on the grounds. They walked in the woods, took a rowboat out onto one of the lakes, and sometimes fished. Often, they’d make love outdoors, and then take a break to eat from the picnic lunch they’d brought along. Her two angels always found new and interesting ways to bring her to the heights of passion.

Each evening they’d have dinner together, and then she’d spend the night with them both. By the end of her first week at Lilith’s Playground, Paige was sore and tired, but she didn’t care. She’d never had such an erotic and fun week. She also knew there was no way she could leave at the end of the following week.

It rained on the first day of her second week at the resort. Paige kissed both men as they left for work, and then she sat on the sofa in Gregory’s suite and looked through one of his many photo books. She was fascinated with the story these pictures told. Nearly one hundred years of history were in them, and she’d asked both men endless questions about the other owners.

She hadn’t been back to her own suite since the day they’d told her about Erion. She’d asked them to get her personal things and clothes, and the next day they’d shown up in Demetrius’s suite, along with a card key to both their suites so she could come and go as she pleased.

She’d never told them about the laughter she’d also heard the day she found the black rose, and finally she’d decided it no longer mattered. She rose from the sofa and stretched. There was time for a nap, but she wasn’t really tired this morning. Glancing around Gregory’s suite, she decided to dig in the piles of old papers and books scattered around the sitting room. Who knew what fascinating treasures she’d find?

One stack in particular was dustier than the others, so she started there. Most of the books were falling apart, and she took care to move them aside so the bindings wouldn’t disintegrate any further. She came to a sage green bound book that looked newer than the ones covering it. A chill ran over Paige’s body as she read the title.
Clavicula Salomonis Regis
.

“Impossible,” she whispered. She was afraid to touch it. The sound of laughter filled her head, and she whirled around, half expecting to see Lilith, but no one was there. The laughter hadn’t been real. It had only been in her imagination. At least, that’s what Paige told herself.

Demetrius and Gregory had both told her Lilith wouldn’t hurt her. They’d said she liked to play games—that was all. And surely reading a grimoire that explained how to summon demons or other spirits was harmless. She’d never seen a copy of the book, but had certainly heard enough about it over the years. To actually be able to hold it and read it…

Paige picked it up then placed it back down to wipe her palms on her jeans. She didn’t want to ruin the covering. When she picked it up again, she crossed the room and took a seat in the armchair. Curling her legs underneath, she began to flip through the pages carefully. They were made of something that resembled onionskin, and she didn’t want to tear them.

It was all there, starting with the descriptions of the demons Solomon was said to have summoned and placed in a brass vase or large jar then sealed with magic symbols. The book also contained the aerial spirits he’d called on, the names of the angels of the hours, the planets, and those who rule over the Zodiac signs, as well as how to deal with them. It described how to make the almadel and contained a collection of kabbalistic prayers and how to use them.

“It must all be true.” Why else would they have this book? Did its very existence not affirm that everything with which she’d been fascinated her entire life was real? Certainly the experiences she’d had this past week had already proven that, but if she needed more concrete proof than actually having sex with Nephilim, here it was.

The conversation she’d had with Demetrius and Gregory her second day here came back to her, when she’d mused out loud about summoning demons. They hadn’t seemed too keen on the idea. In light of what they’d told her about Erion, she could understand why, but she didn’t want to summon Lilith for any reason other than to ask her one simple question. Why continue this ridiculous curse?

Four of them were dead, and from what they’d said about Blade and Cristian, they were close to death. The resort was going to belong to strangers one day. Why not lift the curse and let them father children so they could at least pass it on to family? All they had were each other. Hadn’t they been punished enough already?

She tried to imagine losing her entire family and having no hope of them enduring, and couldn’t. But that’s exactly what Gregory and Demetrius were now facing, wasn’t it? And the others—Emmett, Zach, Reeve, and Niko—surely they felt the same way now.

But how would she accomplish summoning Lilith without Gregory and Demetrius knowing? She glanced around for paper and a pen, but didn’t see anything. Placing the book back on top of the others, she went in search of something to write with. Finally she found a legal pad with the crest of the resort embossed on the paper and a pen that looked as though it had been purchased in bulk at Kmart about twenty years earlier.

Shaking her head and chuckling at Gregory’s inability to throw out anything, she retrieved the book and sat down at the table. She began to leaf through it until she found several spells. She had no idea what she was doing. This was unchartered territory for her. The businesses she did work for stocked things like crystals and tarot cards. She’d had very little exposure to spells designed to summon demons or angels.