Demon’s Kiss

Chapter 1: The Return of Lor

The clock on her bedside table showed five-forty-two in bright red digits. Damnit, I am so going to be late, Jade Kinkair thought, as she rummaged through her drawers. I promised Raven I’d be on time tonight! She was having dinner tonight with her best friend, Raven Santiago, and her husband, Dante. And as usual, she was going to be late; dinner was supposed to be at six.

It had been quite a shock when her friend Raven had married Dante straight out of high school. True, she’d been madly in love with him, but Jade hadn’t quite been expecting it. And then three months later, when she had announced that she was pregnant... well, that had put a cap on it. No normal man could make Raven fall that in love. Jade had long had her suspicions that Dante was not a normal man, but she wasn’t sure what he was. No man was that beautiful or that mysterious.

Except for Lor. Lor was Dante’s best friend and just about the most gorgeous man on Earth, as far as she was concerned. Too bad he was currently out of town, and had been since Dante and Raven’s marriage. And too bad he’s in love with Raven, Jade thought, sighing heavily. That really puts a damper on things. She would have thought that, not having seen him in so long, she would have started to get over him, but it just wasn’t so.

She finally settled on simple jeans and a dark purple top that dipped off her shoulders. Casual; it was just dinner with two friends, after all. Jade paused before the mirror, running a brush through her hair. It was brown and no longer dyed, like it used to be. It was also hanging below her shoulders now. It might have been a bit foolish, but she was growing it out like Raven’s, who wore her hair down to her waist. Jade knew she’d never be able to capture her friend’s grace and elegance, though.

She had grown out of the Gothic chic that had dominated her high school life, at least for someone. Although she still liked that type of clothing and designed a lot of it, she found she preferred some brighter colors and lighter fabrics. Jade had gotten rid of most of her piercings, except for the ones in her ears, after she’d seen some fifty-year-old woman trying to hold onto her youth with piercings, tattoos, and skimpy clothes. It had made her realize how ridiculous she looked, with her face done up like a pincushion.

The phone rang, startling Jade out of her thoughts. She scrambled across the room and made a grab for it, stabbing at the talk button.

“Hello?”

“Jade, where are you?” It was Raven, and she sounded irritated. “Dinner is going to get cold!”

“I’m sorry!” Jade said, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder as she reached for her shoes. “Look, you know how it is...”

“We have a guest, Jade,” Raven said, sounding exasperated. “It isn’t polite to keep him waiting.”

Him? Jade’s heart began to pound, which was pretty ridiculous. There’s no reason it has to be Lor, she thought, shaking her head. They have plenty of other friends ... She’d met quite a few of them, including the charming Bacchus, and the impossibly, devastatingly gorgeous Phoebus and Deimos. All of them are so ... impossible, Jade thought. How do they think people won’t realize there’s something off about them? Because for some reason most people hadn’t, that was why.

“Who is it?” Jade asked, trying to keep her voice nonchalant.

“It won’t be anyone, if you don’t get here,” Raven replied, sounding grumpy.

Jade knew better than to mess when she got into “rampaging pregnant woman” mood. “All right, all right. I’ll get there as quickly as possible.”

Her fingers trembled as she hung up the phone. Calm down, you idiot, she thought, as she grabbed her car keys and raced out the front door. You won’t see who it is if you get into a car accident. Jade cranked up the radio in her car, tapping her hands on the steering wheel as she drove, and pretending like she wasn’t anxious as all get out to get to Raven and Dante’s place. There was no other car in their driveway, which made her wonder.

Oh, damn, why didn’t I dress nicer? Jade thought, running her fingers through her hair. What if it is Lor? Somehow she just knew it had to be him. The door swung open as soon as she knocked, revealing a broadly grinning Dante. It never fazed her anymore, the way he looked. His long hair, nearly as long as Raven’s, was braided and hung down over his shoulder. He ushered her in hurriedly.

“You should know better than this,” Dante said quietly, as he pushed her towards the kitchen. “Raven is very pregnant and therefore very moody.”

Jade chuckled softly. “Hey, that’s partially your fault, you know. Don’t blame me, I didn’t have anything to do with her getting pregnant.”

“I know, I know,” Dante said, letting out a long-suffering sigh. “Come on, dinner is getting cold.”

The kitchen table was set. Raven was sitting at the table, talking softly with a tall, dark-haired man who moved about, setting dishes full of food on the tabletop. His hair was a little longer than it had been before, hanging about as long as Jade’s did, but she would know Lor anywhere. It was his stance and his voice, which was soft and pleasantly husky. Her heart began to pound loudly as she stepped into the kitchen and she feared he could hear it.

“There you are!” Raven said, throwing Jade a look of mixed irritation and affection. “About time!”

Lor turned slowly. Jade’s heart leapt into her throat as he faced her. A smile touched the corners of his mouth, a smile that made her pulse flutter. Come on, get a life, Jade, she thought, mentally kicking herself. You haven’t even seen him in months! But she remembered the time she’d spent with Lor, back when Dante had been determinedly wooing Raven. And Jade had been so crazy about him even then, as inexplicable as it sometimes seemed. At least then they had known each other to some extent.

“Hello, Jade,” Lor said quietly, flashing a smile that made her pulse pound. “How’ve you been?”

---

Jade. He wondered how he’d managed to forget just how lovely she was. Had he even noticed before? Lor had only seen her once with the dye washed from her hair, but it was actually a soft, ash brown with a touch of gold that glimmered beneath the light. She still wore the earrings that danced up the curve of her ears, which he had always loved, but she’d done away with the facial pincushion look. She’s grown up, Lor realized, startled. When he’d met Jade, she’d been seventeen, just a girl, but now she was a woman.

She sat across from him at the table, eating sparingly as she talked with Raven. Jade, as it turned out, was in college, art school, to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer. It seemed to be going well, from what she was saying. Lor remembered the school dance they’d attended and the dresses Jade had designed for herself and Raven. The ladies back home love her work, he thought, smiling to himself. Too bad she doesn’t know that Raven is the envy of every woman in our world, with all her amazing clothing.

Ah, that brought him to thoughts of Raven. Once he’d been in love with her, or at least infatuated with her. Now she was the Princess of his people and the wife of his best friend. And bearing an heir, Lor thought, eyeing her round belly. The King will be overjoyed ... it’s going to be a real catfight, him and Dante arguing. Because Dante wouldn’t want his father to abdicate just yet, but the King was more than ready. It was part of the reason Lor had returned; Dante had requested his presence for the bout of politics to come.

He had been sequestered away in the Caribbean, actually. As a half-breed, Lor wasn’t much welcome among his kind. With Dante, his only protection, living in the human world, he’d had no choice but to follow. So he’d gone away, escaping from unrequited love, among other things. He hadn’t expected, upon returning, to come face to face with a new problem. Because whenever Jade turned in his direction and smiled, he felt the strange urge to ... well, he wasn’t sure exactly what.

“So, where have you been all this time?” Jade asked, turning to him once more. She folded her hands beneath her chin and smiled. “Raven insists you’ve been in the Caribbean.”

“And so I have,” Lor answered, flashing a look at Raven. “I thought a vacation would be nice ... and once I got there, I didn’t want to leave.”

Jade laughed softly. “I can understand that. How was it?”

“It was beautiful,” Lor told her, smiling. “Warm, sunny ... the land and water were so clean.”

“Bet you can’t wait to go back,” Jade said quietly.

Was it his imagination or did she sound disappointed? It was true, the Caribbean had been beautiful. He’d bounced from island to island, enjoying every one of them. And yet all of a sudden, I don’t really want to go back, Lor thought, eyeing Jade. What the hell has gotten into me? He leaned back in his chair, suddenly uninterested in his food. Demons, unless they were growing, didn’t need to eat as often as humans. It was just an extra pleasure, usually.

“Not really,” Lor answered. “A man can only take being smothered in sunblock every day for so long.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” Dante said. There was a sarcastic edge to his voice. “And all those beautiful women in bikinis, bet they were a torture too.”

Raven reached across the table and pinched him hard. Lor watched their quick, playful scuffle, grinning. Dante had, at the times they’d spoken over the last eight months, expressed his love for Raven constantly. He went on and on in the vein of how she got more beautiful by the day, especially now that she was pregnant. It would be absolutely sickening, Lor thought, if I wasn’t so happy to see him caring so much about someone.

“I hadn’t really noticed,” Lor said, his tone nonchalant. “I think I was spoiled by Jade’s unique bathing suit designs.”

Jade’s cheeks turned pink. “I can’t imagine anything I could do could compare with bohemian babes in skimpy bikinis.”

“No,” Lor agreed. “All of your designs are much more tasteful.”

“All right, enough,” Dante said, flicking a kernel of corn at Lor. “Stop with the flattery, Lor. You sound like a lovesick fop.”

“He sounds like an intelligent man with a great deal of sense,” Jade retorted, narrowing her eyes on Dante.

He waggled his eyebrows at her and she giggled softly. Lor had rarely heard her laugh; he decided he liked the sound. He allowed himself to relax, enjoying the rest of dinner and dessert afterwards. They sat around and talked, speaking of the simplest things, until it was almost nine o’clock. At that point, Jade rose, stretching.