Demon Possessed by Stacia Kane Page A

Windbreaker?”
     
    “That’s the one.” Justine picked up her fork and twirled it in her red-tipped fingers. “Why, are you planning on joining them?”
     
    “No, I—no. No, I’m not.” Damn it! She should have told Justine to go fuck herself, something she’d been dying to do for some time. She’d never forgotten her first glimpse of the woman, though they hadn’t been officially introduced. It was the day Megan was forced to remember the Accuser, the demon who’d infected her with a piece of him almost seventeen years before. The day she’d been forced to watch Greyson tortured, chained, and whipped with an iron-tipped whip.
     
    Justine had been there. She’d enjoyed the show. Megan would never forget it. Would never forget that Justine had enjoyed the show despite the fact that she’d also enjoyed having Greyson in her bed at one time.
     
    Or several times. He’d never really given Megan details, and she’d never asked. It was enough to know that it had happened, and that it wasn’t happening anymore. Wouldn’t happen again. When he was Templeton Black’s second-in-command, Greyson had been called on to perform such acts, payback for favors, little treats to sweeten deals. As Gretneg he no longer had to.
     
    She supposed that was Carter’s job now. Although she preferred to think it wasn’t anybody’s.
     
    Except . . . Greyson had asked his friend Nick to do something for him, back at Christmastime. Something he didn’t want to do, something involving a woman. Could that have been ?
     
    But what favor would Greyson have been paying back then, when he’d been Gretneg for barely twenty-four hours?
     
    Fuck Justine, and fuck all this stupid demon crap. The implication that Megan’s silly human brain was so easily manipulated, that she would be just as likely to run off and join up with a fundamentalist exorcist as to do anything else, rankled. The implication that because she was human she didn’t belong there, that simply hurt. As much as she didn’t want it to, it did. She did want to belong there. She did want to fit in. She just didn’t want to give up her humanity entirely, to lose things she considered valuable and important.
     
    Allowing the demon to grow inside her, to become more of a part of her so she would be genetically demon, might not change that. But she couldn’t be sure. And nobody could give her a truly compelling argument for doing it, so why should she? She’d thought it wasn’t a problem.
     
    And now with one little conversation all that had changed.
     
    Food was put on her plate, and she picked up her fork without thinking, only to be stopped by Greyson’s hand on hers. “Don’t eat that one.”
     
    “Why?” Shit, she didn’t want to sound bitter and pissed off, but she couldn’t help it. She hated feeling like an outsider. “Is it made of human flesh or something?”
     
    He looked at her strangely. “No. Bell peppers.”
     
    “Oh. Right. Thanks.” Oops. She was allergic to those.
     
    “Is everything all right, bryaela ?”
     
    She tried to smile. It didn’t turn out too well. “I’m just—I’m fine.”
     
    His palm stroked her thigh now, gliding up and down over the silk of her skirt as he leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Watching you stand up to Justine was awfully sexy.”
     
    “I don’t think I stood up very well.”
     
    “Oh, I do. Very few people ever even attempt it, so you get points just for that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so surprised.”
     
    This time her smile did work. True or not, it was nice to hear. “Really? I would have thought you’d managed to surprise her a few times over the years yourself.”
     
    “No. She never got my best stuff.”
     
    “Well, didn’t she miss out.”
     
    “I like to think so. But such is life. Unfair.”
     
    She looked up at him, into his eyes. The rest of the room turned into nothing but a discordant hum in the background, a blur of ivory and green, a set