Kinky Boots (Mischief Books) (5 page)

‘I’d like that too, Jill,’ Finn responded. ‘But not until I’m sure that’s what you want, and not Eleanor.’ He’d barely settled her onto the couch and managed to shove himself back in his jeans before the shakes hit, and she felt like they would break her apart.

But Finn pulled her into his arms and held her until they let up, then he tugged a blanket from the end of the sofa and placed it around her shoulders.

‘Wait here and try to relax.’ He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of water, which she drank like she had been in the desert for a week.

He studied her for a long moment, then he heaved a sigh. ‘Jill, what I’m going to tell you won’t be easy to hear, but if you listen to me, if you pay attention, if you listen to yourself, you’ll know that I’m telling the truth.’

‘Who’s Eleanor?’ she asked again, feeling rude about being so blunt but not caring much under the circumstances, plus it was still an effort to keep her hands out of her knickers. ‘And what’s she doing inside my head?’

Finn scooted closer to her and tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. The look that crossed his face was too swift to read, but he squared his shoulders and sat down, holding her gaze. ‘Jill, Eleanor’s a demon.’

Jill blinked twice. ‘A what?’

He shifted and looked rather embarrassed, almost as though she’d just caught him masturbating in public. ‘A demon,’ he repeated. ‘Eleanor’s a demon.’

Before she could even laugh at the absurdity of Finn’s statement, the voice inside her head said, ‘Honestly, Finn, why do you always insist on using that word “demon” when you know what it makes people in this day and age think? You make me sound like some sort of head-spinning, eye-bulging, pea-soup-vomiting monster or something, and I’m not like that at all, Jill. In fact, there was a time when the word “demon” meant something much nicer. It used to mean deity, divine power, lesser god, guiding spirit, take your pick, no head-spinning, no pea-soup-vomiting. That’s just disgusting.’

Jill slapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. The words had indeed come out of her throat as quickly as they had come into her head. And they definitely weren’t her thoughts. Her views on demons had always been pretty much bog-standard
Exorcist
stuff. Her views on demons! Hell, she didn’t even
have
any views on demons. ‘Oh, Jesus! Oh, God! Oh, fuck! You’re joking, right?’

‘Damn it, Eleanor, stop trying to help,’ Finn said. And it was so bloody confusing because he was looking at Jill, addressing her, and yet the part that daintily gave him the finger was most definitely not her.

‘Look, Jill,’ Finn was now saying. ‘It’s not all that bad. Eleanor’s right, she’s not a demon like you think of in the
Exorcist
sense of the word. She’s not anything like that. As far as demons go, well, Eleanor’s not that bad. Really she’s not.’

‘Not that bad? Not that bad!’ Jill was nearing hysterics. ‘How can a demon be not that bad?’

‘Well, it’s like this …’ Finn laughed nervously. ‘You see, there are lots of different kinds of demons and they aren’t just evil or good, nothing that simple. It’s a sort of continuum, if you know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t know what you mean.’ Jill pulled the blanket tighter around her and glared at him.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Spit it out, Finn,’ Jill found herself saying. ‘I’m a lust demon.’

And bloody hell, the second she’d said it Jill’s nipples were as hard as pebbles and she felt as though raw heat was scorching the crotch out of her knickers. She noticed immediately that Finn’s cock was standing at full attention in his jeans.

And just like that, without giving it a second thought, Jill slapped him. She slapped him hard enough that she was sure it hurt her hand at least as badly as it hurt his cheek. ‘You shagged me because of her, you bastard!’

It pissed her off that she heard Eleanor chuckle inside her head. It wasn’t funny. She was really angry.

Finn recoiled from the impact, sucked a harsh breath, then sat rubbing his rosy pink cheek, eyes watering. ‘I didn’t! I wouldn’t! I swear to you, when we were together last night I had no idea Eleanor was on the loose, and it was totally you that I wanted.’

‘And today?’

He shifted nervously on the sofa.

‘It was still you I wanted. It was just that …’

‘Just that if I were in residence and he did you, he’d know for sure I was there,’ Eleanor said.

Jill slapped him again.

This time he recoiled with a curse. ‘Goddamn it, Eleanor, stop trying to help.’

‘So if she wasn’t in me at our gropefest last night, then when?’ Jill asked.

‘The boots,’ they both said at the same time.

‘She came into me when I put on the boots,’ Jill added, and in her mind’s eye Eleanor nodded confirmation.

‘How could this happen?’ Jill said. ‘I mean, all I did was come into Kinky Boots. I never even planned to buy anything. And really, me a suitable home for a lust demon? I mean come on. I can’t even dress myself without Vivie’s fashion advice.’

Inside her head, Eleanor practically doubled over laughing, and Finn wasn’t much better. ‘Are you kidding?’ he said. ‘Jesus, woman, you’re sex on heels. In those boots, in Vivie’s fuck-me shoes, hell, even barefoot, it was all I could do to keep from sucking your sexy bare toes and licking my way up from there.’

Inside her head, Eleanor positively purred.

‘I’m possessed by a lust demon,’ Jill said. ‘This is hardly funny.’

‘Look, I’m not laughing about that, Jill,’ Finn said, forcing a serious face. ‘Believe me, I know this is serious, but I agree with Eleanor. You’re an obvious choice.’

‘You knew about her?’ Jill asked.

‘Yes, I knew about her. In a way I suppose you could say she’s my ward,’ Finn said.

The voice in her mind offered a disparaging grunt along with a couple of choice invectives, spoken in quiet ladylike tones, of course.

‘Your ward? Well, Finn, I’d say you’re not doing a very good job keeping track of your ward, are you?’

‘Oh, but I’ll be ever so easy to keep track of now that the two of us are together, Jill,’ Eleanor said.

‘Eleanor’s the last of the lust demons, as far as we can tell,’ Finn said. ‘And I’m not exactly her minder. It’s more like an agreement between equals. It’s an agreement between her and the Sole Alliance, an arrangement I was able to broker. So naturally when anything goes wrong, I get the blame for it.’

‘Oh, poor you,’ Eleanor said. Once again it was only Finn’s raised eyebrow that made Jill aware she’d spoken out loud.

‘Sole Alliance?’ Jill asked. ‘What’s a Sole Alliance?’

‘They’re a nasty coven of mean witches and rabble intent on spoiling my fun.’ Again Eleanor spoke out loud.

‘Bloody hell, can’t you make her stop doing that?’ Jill said. But before Finn could respond, she said, ‘A coven of witches? Oh, give me a break! What’s next, ogres and trolls?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ came Eleanor’s response, ‘there are no ogres and trolls, at least not in London.’

‘Make her stop that, damn it!’ Jill fought back the urge to get hysterical. ‘And get her out of me. Being possessed is not on the list of ways I planned to screw up my life. You get the blame from this Sole Alliance coven thingy, and now I’m blaming you too. I want her out. Can you do an exorcism?’ Even as she said it she felt as though someone had just hurt her feelings in the most inconsiderate way. ‘Look, I don’t want to upset you, Eleanor –’ and sure enough, she’d said it out loud ‘– but you came uninvited. The one thing I don’t need in my life right now is a demon.’ The word felt strange as it slipped from her lips, and she felt like a part of her was suddenly pouting. Then she turned her attention back to Finn. ‘This is crazy. I don’t know what’s going on or how the hell you know about demon possession and all, or how you know about this Eleanor, but I want her out, do you understand? I want her out.’

Strangely enough, Eleanor made no comment, and for the moment, at least, Jill felt alone in her head. Before she could dwell on it there was a knock on the door, and a man the size of a mountain shoved his way in followed by a woman who was his total opposite, tiny and small of bone.

‘This is Chelsea and Meinrad, the rest of Sole Alliance,’ Finn said.

Meinrad, who had an unruly mane of white-blond hair and a colourful network of dragon and Celtic-knot tattoos ascending from his ham-hock-sized hands up both enormous biceps, gave her a nod and a grunt. He dwarfed her in his nearness, and in that close encounter it was easy to see there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man.

The tiny Chelsea was as dark as he was pale. She wore her hair in dreadlocks that hung to her shoulders, and her small braless breasts pressed enthusiastically against a thin green T-shirt. One hand was covered in silver rings, and one wrist was armoured in bangle bracelets halfway up to her elbow. She squeezed in next to the big man and nearly crushed Jill’s fingers in her firm handshake. ‘Pleasure,’ she said in a gravelly voice that sounded as though it should belong to a much larger, much rougher-looking woman. ‘We’re here to do the exorcism,’ she added. Then she offered a tight-shouldered shrug. ‘Hopefully it’s not too late.’

Before Jill could question further, Chelsea motioned to her to get up. ‘Come on, come on. Time’s wasting. Meinrad’s prepared the space. If we’re gonna do it, we need to do it now.’

Finn helped Jill to her feet and before she knew it Meinrad had thrown open a door next to a bookcase full of leather-bound volumes, a door she could have sworn hadn’t been there before. The next thing she knew, she was being led down a steep wooden staircase into a cavernous cellar that looked hewn out of solid rock.

‘Normally we would have a full coven, but the rest of the gang is on summer hols,’ Finn explained, as though it were just a part of everyday conversation. Oh, the rest of the gang couldn’t make the exorcism tonight. Shame, really, them missing out. Christ! Had she just dropped into Nutterville?

‘Eleanor’s usually quite well satisfied with sharing the three of us,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know what came over her last night.’

‘Full moon,’ Meinrad said. ‘That’s what came over her.’

‘She shares the three of you?’ Jill said. ‘As in possesses all of you?’

Meinrad blinked and looked at her as though she had just asked the stupidest question ever. ‘Not at the same time.’

There were candles all around the room – black and silver. And in the middle of the space there was a heavy wooden table that looked like it could seat a dozen people. The table, however, wasn’t set for Christmas dinner. It contained only a pewter chalice and a mean-looking bone-handled dagger. Finn moved close to her and slid an arm around her shoulder. ‘Jill, we need you to lie down on the table.’

‘Fuck!’ A wave of cold fear struck her hard in the chest and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. With a yelp of panic, she broke and lunged toward the stairs. No way was she being the sacrificial lamb! But Meinrad blocked the way, and running into Meinrad was like running into a solid wall.

Finn followed her gaze to the knife on the table. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jill, you can’t really believe that …’ He ran a hand through his hair and then picked up the dagger. ‘It’s an athame, a ceremonial knife used in magic, and trust me, it won’t be used to draw blood.’

Chelsea offered her an elfish smile that was probably meant to reassure her, but it felt just this side of laughing at her. ‘No human sacrifice necessary, we promise.’

Then Meinrad moved forward until she was once again nose to chest with him, and finding it impossible not to notice that the flexing of tattooed biceps made the dragons appear to be breathing. ‘Look, do you want to be rid of Eleanor or not? Because time’s wasting.’

‘I do,’ Jill said. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Then lie down on the altar and let us get on with it, will you?’

Feeling self-conscious and still not overly keen about the mean-looking dagger, Jill did as she was told. When she was flat on her back, Finn smoothed the hair away from her face and smiled down at her. ‘Don’t worry, Jill. It’ll be all right.’ He was so sincere, so why didn’t she believe him?

She’d had nothing to eat since breakfast. She felt groggy, disoriented, as though she were experiencing the world through a fog. She doubted the tequila had helped the situation much, and she was thankful that Finn had stopped her before the count of shots had escalated. But then again, how sober did she really want to be for an exorcism?

The three members of Sole Alliance were saying some strange stuff about the four directions, and something about calling in the powers that lived in those directions, and Finn raised the bad-arse knife over her head. It was possible that she might have screamed – just a little – before he calmed her with a soothing touch and put the athame-jiggy aside. When the stuff about the four directions was finished, Chelsea passed the pewter chalice around, and everyone had a sip of whatever herby-smelling concoction was inside. Jill felt like she was being bathed in champagne with bubbles effervescing and bursting all around her, and the majority of them were nuzzling and caressing her still-aroused pussy.

Then the chanting began. She thought they were speaking English, and yet she couldn’t understand a word. She couldn’t focus. She couldn’t think. She might have drifted in and out of a weird dream state, a state in which she felt as though she were lying on the table in the arms of a woman. She woke with a start expecting to find Chelsea nuzzled up against her, but Chelsea was still in her place, standing at Jill’s left side, her eyes closed, her lips moving rapidly. And yet Jill felt the strange embrace. She could see Finn standing at the head of the table, looking down on her. She could hear his voice in the chanting chorus, and it sounded somehow like there were more than just the three of them. It made no sense, and the woman’s embrace was still there, pillowing her head against soft full breasts that she found herself longing to suckle and caress. But there was no one there, only her, laid out on the table like an insane person.

Insane she might be, but she could see every bead of sweat breaking on Meinrad’s forehead. She could see the shape of his erection straining to attention in his trousers, and she couldn’t help wondering if it were in proportion to the rest of him. She had a feeling that it was. In fact she was certain of it, though she didn’t know how she knew. And she didn’t know how she knew that it was thoughts of plunging into her that were making him so hard and uncomfortable. Jill had to admit the thought of riding something so big was not at all unpleasant.