My Demon Saint

Dedication

For Cookie—Love is the reason. And to Beth, who always inspires me. To my Divas and Smutketeers, who keep me motivated even when I don’t want to be. And for the readers who wanted Saint’s story, this is all because of you. Thank you.

Chapter One

Boredom was a worm burrowing in his head, playing Perry Como’s greatest hits as it went. Or was that Hell? Saint would have to ask next time he ran into the sperm-donating incubus he liked to call Dad.

The penthouse apartment that had been his haven until now was mocking him with a silence that jarred his spine and set his teeth on edge. No thoughts but his own. No company but his own. As scintillating a conversationalist as he could be, it was saying something that he was at loose ends. But there it was.

It had been like this ever since Thomas had moved into Margo’s place. It seemed he was trying to set new records for how many times a cat shifter could claim his mate without coming up for air. And Mac? He’d made a sudden decision to go on one of his I-live-for-eternity-and-I’m-so-alone walkabouts to God knew where before he had to deal with the repercussions of his decision.

The film. He still couldn’t believe Mac had agreed to do it. It was his gift to Thomas and Margo, he knew. But Saint had to wonder about the fallout for Mac with the elder vampires. No one loved to keep a secret more than an old, thin-skinned blood sucker.

Saint sighed. Putting off Margo’s boss, the conniving Darcy Finch, and the producers who wanted to start filming
Shifting Reality: The Movie
had been easy. He was good at manipulating people. Especially greedy people. But without any new distractions, he was having a harder time restraining his dark side, the part that was restless. The part that wanted to create the kind of havoc his human mother had spent her short, harried life trying to keep him from.

He walked to the windows, looking down at the city below. Hollywood. A demon could get into an endless amount of mischief in this town. Even a half demon. A man with his talents could own it all.

But then, that sounded boring too. He chuckled. His desires didn’t lean toward consumption, just the occasional chaos. It was a craving usually satisfied by the RPG game he’d created,
Demon Saint
. Thousands of minds connecting him to what it meant to be human, even as they chose avatars that were anything but. His creation had taken on a life of its own, but it was a life he had total access to, and total control over. It was where he got to play.

If only it were still enough.

He should go search out Mac and find a way to fuck with him, the same way he’d messed with Thomas. Of course, it might turn out the same way too, with Mac finding a woman to do more than nibble on. Then neither of them would have any time for their roommate. And there would be no one to keep Saint out of the dark.

Despite that possibility, Saint wasn’t sorry. Not that he’d gotten Thomas hooked on vlogging, not that his roommate had decided to tell the world about himself, about shifters and vampires and demons through the online weblog,
Shifting Reality
. Damn fools thought it was a show. An act. The same way they thought his game was just a game, instead of a piece of him.

His own global therapy session. That fact tickled him to no end.

His online world was, for the most part, a recreation of one of the darker times of his life, when he was flung from his normal existence and tossed into a testing ground where time and space kept changing, and only sin remained. Demon trials. He supposed it was an evil version of finishing school. And it had
not
been pleasant. Luckily the humans couldn’t seem to get enough. And through their experiences, he’d made a modicum of peace with it as well…with a little help.

If he hadn’t come across Mac, how long had it been, a hundred years ago?—then he may have been lost to temptation. It was Mac who showed him he didn’t have to fall prey to either side of his family tree. He had a choice. He could take his own path.

And then, much later, Thomas had come along and the two roommates had given Saint a feeling of family he’d never had before. He owed them. Which was why he’d helped Thomas with Margo. She was one classy number, perfect for his cat-shifting friend.

Hell, between the three of their sorry, supernatural asses, one of them deserved to be loved. The errant thought made him gag. He
wasn’t
a romantic. He was the devil’s imp. He needed to do something bad to make himself feel better.

He heard the floor creak and smiled. An opportunity. “For a wolf you’re acting a lot like a nervous Chihuahua, Liam. I was wondering if you were going to chase your tail in the lobby all night.”

When no quick response was forthcoming, Saint turned around and grimaced. Liam wasn’t holding up that well. “I heard it was worse for canine shifters, but I had no idea. You’ve got it bad, don’t you, puppy?”

Liam bared his teeth, but Saint knew it was more frustration than threat. He could sense the repressed desires inside him. And he knew exactly what the shifter wanted.

Julie Wu.

She’d been a contestant on
Shifting Reality
’s big finale, brought to the castle in Scotland to meet the “cast” along with Margo and a few other fanatical humans. Liam had agreed to play cameraman, but as soon as he’d seen the petite Asian beauty he’d been worthless. Apparently he still was.

Liam nodded, his jaw clenching. “I need your brand of help, Saint.”

Saint raised an eyebrow, inwardly baffled. “
My
brand of help? Why don’t you sniff her out with your super snout? Or look in Thomas’s computer. He has all the personal info and addresses of the contestants. Better yet—” he smirked, “—read one of her dirty books. That might give you a little insight into how to sweep gun-shy Julie off her feet.”

Liam started to pace—his large, muscled body rippling with repressed power. “I can’t. She’s so fucking small, so fragile, and I don’t trust myself. I just need to know where she is right now, if she’s okay. What, or
if
, she thinks about me. Please, Saint. You did it for Thomas. And I’ll owe you one.”

Saint sighed. “Matchmaking? Well, it is something to do. Not the something I wanted of course. And you
will
owe me. I’m not a damned Cupid. Those morons act like they have velvet-tipped arrows up their tutus.”

Even as he said it he reached into the pocket of his jacket for the Blackberry, his fingers caressing the screen and connecting. This was his gift. All demons could read inner desires, and there were a few species he could sense that traveled the spidery trail the way he did, but he liked to think no one did it better.

He could connect to any technology, move through the numbers and codes and find whatever and whomever he wanted in a heartbeat. The rush of it was exhilarating. When he was connected, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

“She’s in San Francisco. She purchased groceries about an hour ago, her cell GPS had her on the move, not toward home, somewhere else.” Saint chuckled. “On a side note, if her recent online purchases are anything to go by, you’ll have your hands full when you finally do get up the nerve to find her.”

Liam moved closer. “Why? What do you see?”

“Toys. She’s purchased a lot of sex toys in the last month, no handcuffs or cock rings though, so I think its all for…personal use. As in solo. Or research. But man, that one personal massager is hu—”

“You said groceries? But she didn’t take them home?” The wolf shifter interrupted him, frazzled and flushed, and Saint knew he needed to stop torturing the poor dog before he lost all his control.

“Chill out. Give me a minute. She just linked her cell to someone else’s computer. Downloading pictures.” Saint snorted. “Why do people always think babies are cute? Nothing but baldheaded monsters without teeth that spit foul acid from every orifice. Not my idea of cuddly.” He tensed. “Wait a second. I can see them.”

“Them?”

Them
. Two women, their foreheads bumping together as they laughed and oohed and aahed over the images appearing on the laptop screen. Julie Wu was there, smiling easily, her mind pushing aside its usual turmoil and insecurity for this one special moment with family. Her family. Her cousin Ume.

Ume, the woman beside her with the big, dark, bottomless eyes and exquisite features. Her fingertips slid over the pad, moving the cursor, and Saint swore he could feel the touch to his cock.

“
Fuck
.”

Liam growled. “What? Who’s with her? Is someone hurting her? Tell me.”

Saint couldn’t speak. He had connected. This was
her
computer. Her life. And he was being inundated with information. Ume, who lived alone. Ume who was a half-breed, like him. Born to a Chinese father and Japanese mother.

In a flash he knew where she went to school, that her inheritance from her mother’s side ensured she would never have to work, but she always had anyway. She’d even started several charities and relief funds in her deceased mother’s name.

Before the accident
. An accident followed by a slew of painful surgeries. Saint had a sudden, uncontrollable desire to kill everyone who’d caused her pain. The man who’d been driving drunk. The surgeon who had operated. Everyone. To torture them slowly until they screamed and begged for mercy. Begged for death.

Damn, he could feel her fingertips again. They soothed him. Aroused him. Made him crazy. He scrolled through pictures of her. She loved to dance. She climbed mountains. She surfed. She was taller than her cousins, her body lean and muscled, her skin golden. Her lips were full and always smiling. Or they had been.

There was something about her. In her eyes. Something…special.

A frenzied growl brought him back to himself, reminding him he wasn’t alone. He broke the connection, instantly feeling the loss. What the hell was going on?

Liam was shifting, changing into his beast. Shit. Saint held up his hand and sent a wave of seductive serenity, pulling the wolf back from the brink. “Julie isn’t hurt, big guy. And she’s not with a lover. She’s visiting her cousin. Relax.”

The larger man took deep breaths, reining his animal in once more, then met Saint’s gaze. “If nothing is wrong, why did your eyes turn red?”

They had? He knew it was true. Could feel the restlessness in him now focused, homing in on its prey. Poor little prey.

Saint smiled. “I’m going to help you, my shaggy friend. Help you control yourself. Be your Cyrano. The voice in your head that knows all the right words to say.”

Liam’s expression was a humorous mix of hopeful and wary. “Why? What do you want in return?”

He shrugged. “Can’t a demon do something selfless? Out of the goodness of his heart?”

“Not usually.”

“Do you care?” Saint stalked toward the shifter, his voice lowering hypnotically. “Does it matter what price is paid to win the heart of your mate? And she is your mate, Liam. You know it. I know it. What wouldn’t you do to make her yours?”

Saint knew the instant he’d won him over. Liam would do exactly what he said. Shifters were decidedly passionate about their mating habits. A trait that made him malleable to the whims of a hungry demon. He wasn’t sure who this Ume was, or why he was so drawn to her, but he would figure her out soon enough.

It was time to play.

“I can’t believe James and Cindy are pregnant again. Jinny is only one year old. Are they trying to start a baseball team?”

Ume heard Julie snort from the kitchen where she was making tea. “It does look like that doesn’t it? Still, if I’m going to be a spinster aunt, my brother and his wife have made sure I’ll have enough nieces and nephews to distract me in my old age.”

“Jules, all the children your brothers and sisters keep having aren’t a distraction. They’re an army.”

The Wu clan had always been known for having large families. Julie was one of seven children, and her father and Ume’s had been a set of twins, the oldest of nine children themselves. Ume was the only one her parents had had. Though since her father had moved back to China and remarried, he’d given her four half brothers.

Not that she heard from him much. She supposed it was because she reminded him of her mother, his Japanese-American bride. The one who’d made him a young widower by dying of a brain aneurysm a few days before Ume’s sixteenth birthday.

She looked over at Julie from the daybed she was confined to, as usual. At least he’d left her with family. Her cousins, especially Julie, had been her angels. They treated her like another sibling, teasing and harassing her and becoming completely tangled in her life. She loved it. She loved them.

But she hated being a burden.

Three years of this. Three years of being waited on. Of looking up at people from hospital beds and couches. No dancing, no running. Just resting and physical therapy. It was enough to drive a normal person crazy. But Ume knew she wasn’t normal. At least, that’s what her mother had always told her.

Special Ume, plum blossom, meant for greatness. Ume looked down at her slender, pale legs and laughed sourly. What greatness could she achieve locked away from the sunlight? From life?

“Oh, I know that face.” Julie plopped her tiny body down beside Ume’s long legs with a sigh. She set the tray of tea and snacks down on the table alongside the daybed and looked at her cousin. “Keep that pout going and I won’t tell you my news.”